[center][h1]The Eye of Gods[/h1][/center]
There was a reverence about the Glade as earlier in that morning songs of mourning racked the air and yet still echoed in the corridors. It was on behalf of those poor souls who died on the planet's surface so far from their own world. Now it was a sullen silence that befell the Geological Research Institute. From the heart of the Cathedral to the outer-most mouths of the River. 

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The news of the deaths on the planet's surface came to the men and women of The Glades they way news always travels in the underworld. Through whispers on the surface. Through the faces of those affected by hearts twisting with knives. Through emanations of grief beyond the control of the uninitiated, and that which is reflected off the tongues of the unsympathetic and sympathetic alike. As large as the ship was it was minuscule when compared to, and confronted with, the controversy of loss. The air about the ship itself had changed and The Keeper of Traditions would need be metaphysically blind to not notice. 

She called upon the congregations, cabals, and covens in the area to speak, to pray, preform rituals, or otherwise offer up kindness into the Vitae to help fill hearts of the survivors, before darkness could rush in in the hole cut out by the death of family and friends. It was in light of this that she stood atop the Cathedral with another in an attempt to create a new light to bathe the Cathedral in. 

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A manifold technician stood uncomfortably on the roof, with Aria Summers, and once again attempted to refute the insanity in which he had been ordered to participate. "The mark two hydro-plasmetic cleansing gate is an older model. Almost discontinued before the Vitae's construction..." His sentence found no footing on the technically under-educated. While he had not been, nor could not be, ordered to participate in their ritual he had been requisitioned to install a fixture that would be used for religions devotion. Still, the emphatic emphasis of the inferior technology did little to move the heavily robed leader of ritual who presided over its installation. 

Aria Summers turned her head to inspect the technician and, as she did so, her face peaked out from her cowl revealing it had been painted to resemble that of a skull. "Yes," the word was pushed through pursed lips, "It is attuned with the flow of life, and its ending. It will serve perfectly." 

The technician shook his head, and tapped his fingers to his forehead, before thrusting his hands outward in frustration. "But it's not hooked up to to anything!" The rectangular gate stood exposed, poised to burn in the open air. Its original design, as he continually explained for the last hour, was that it was part of the waste reprocessing system and meant to be installed within adjoining. Hydrogen-oxygen plasma was to flow through it, as to strip the impurities from it, thereby allowing water to be broken into its base components for storage as its component elements could be more easily compressed than their compound form. 

The Keeper of Traditions dismissively waved her hands at the explanation, and grasped only a superficial understanding of the technical specifics as she inspected the frame from all sides. "It bears the cleansing reflection of renewal. Through this gate those lost souls may choose to pass to find their way into the first plane."

The technician burred his face in his hands and through them came a furtive muttering "You can't teach a pig to sing. You'll waste your time and annoy the pig." A long dejected sigh parsed his words as he followed up, "Alright lady. Whatever you say," he finished by pointing to various elements of the machine, "Don't touch the feed, or the plasma. You know what just don't touch anything."

The skeletally adorned priestess nodded. "One does not defile a sacred relic of cleansing with dirty hands."

It was perhaps the most exasperating assignment of the technician's week. While he had better things to be doing, the religions based in the Geological Research Institute were often given unparalleled latitude to practice their religions so long as doing so did not interfere in the ships operation or personal safety of any whom lived aboard. He argued with his superiors that setting up a water cleansing system on top of a roof would be a waste of resources and power, but had been informed that the coven's members had each volunteered a portion of their energy allowance as a tithe to ensure its continual operation for the next two weeks.

It was clear that he did not understand, and as he worked Aria Summers decided to educate him. "There is no religion on Earth wherein one simply passes to their final destination immediately after death." She gently caressed the filter's frame. "And, the first Astral is an emotional reflection of the material realm. In that way there are many heavens, and many hells. It is this device's emotional resonance of cleansing that shall draw these souls back to us." 

It was here on the GRI's central spire that, through some orchestration, the spiritual energies of the Vitae's nature all coincided. As much as it was the physical heart of the ship it was also the ship's soul. The souls of those lost on the planet would find their way here, be it through being caught in the tide, or by the shining beacon that had constructed and they would then be able to be cleansed by passing through this oculus. 

[center][h2]Cancer in the Soul[/h2][/center] 

A light floof sound came from the priestess as she flopped into the ground in the Garden of Eden. Her layered and heavy robes unevenly distributing the air over the grass as her cowl fell away and her eyes turned 'heavenward'. Her crown tarnished by her painted face which, in turn, was faded and smudged from the day's wear. The dark colors associated with funeral attire was blatantly out of place in the vibrant greens of the park.

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Despite it's 'natural' aesthetic, its simulated sky and horizons, and real clouds created by careful weather control, it was rare to see an under-city naturalist in places like these. Even so, Aria only found herself here by walking the River and finding that many branches and wells were devoted to keeping these places alive. She had spent all day considering and attending to the supernatural needs of those in and outside of her community and felt that was why she was guided to this place.

While dressed as death she allowed herself to sink a little further into the dirt, a millimeter or two, but one need not dig any deeper to find the lie of this place. Of places like this, and the reason why the undercity naturalists stayed away. While one might expect the facade to only go skin deep, she imagined that was not the case, as her travels in the river indicated that the ground here was no less than five meters deep at any given point. Therein lie the problem. 

As she lay in the grass the harsh truth all but landed on her face with that of an insect perching itself on her nose. For all the natural ingredients in her cosmetics, as well as the branches she walked, she had certainly amassed an innate set of chemicals in her skin that was certain to confuse the brightly colored yellow and black arthropod. The bee crawled momentarily along her face before she breathed a shallow gust to discourage it from continuing and to find a flower instead to pollinate. 

It was more than a thinly veiled lie that the people told themselves. It was a piece cut directly from the Earth and cultivated to be its own ecosystem. In this park, and others like it, was a deviation: a total corruption of the natural energies of both their old and new worlds. A pocket of nature and natural manipulated by those with no thought to its place or its nature. It inspired a sense of unease in the priestess, and she drifted to sleep bathing in the spiritual turmoil it was certain to invoke in others. Others who refused to visit without really understanding what about the place forbade them from feeling at peace in it. With luck she might have nightmares in this place. Dreams in which she battles this cancer and comes to better know those who suffer from it.


[hider=OOC - To Speak] One of the oldest traditions of witchcraft is "the Spoken Word Tradition". The tradition includes Words of Power--the ritual rhyming of spellcasting--mantras, and spoken reality. The statement "to speak" is evoking the spoken word tradition's ability to "speak their will into existence." It is the basis of modern religion's ritual of "prayer". The speaking of one's will into existence is the fundamental teaching of the tradition. Here, Aria is encouraging witches of that tradition to speak into existence positivity and is essentially the modern religion's equivalent of requesting to add someone to another's "thoughts and prayers". The difference is that to a witch, it's a statement. A demand. An enforcement of their will on the universe. Whereas to a modern praying religion such a thing would be a request of the universe. To "Speak" a far more active and assertive thing, than to "Pray" but otherwise only different in that subtle distinction.[/hider]
[hider=OOC - the Cancer] Cancer is, in a nutshell, the genetic mutation of natural cells. When something inside them breaks, and stops being 'normal' in the body, to the point where the body declares it an enemy. In short, that's how Aria Summers sees the 'natural' environments artificially constructed and maintaind on the Vitae, and helps explain why the many 'weird' religious people on the vitae she cares for and presides over, haven't run amok in the common areas.[/hider]