"No, I'm not a normal priestess." She said, wetting her towel again. "I suppose it's because I was not exactly willing to join them. I was a ward after my mother fled my father, and after she died I was given the choice of attending school to become a priestess or becoming a cloistered nun. I stayed, learned the rules and the history and the sermons, but I have always questioned everything. I was sent here to get me away from the younger students so I couldn't influence them with my curiousity."

Thinking about her mother made her cringe. The shell of a woman who had birthed her could harldy be called a mother, but Ayrie knew it wasn't her mother's fault. Her father by all accounts had been a horrible man, a drunkard, and on the night her mother had stumbled to the church he had beaten her so badly they thought she would lose her pregnancy with Ayrie.