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The cleric, a stocky, older woman with her greying hair pulled back into a severe bun, heaves a heavy sigh and clutches the symbol of Artemis hung round her neck. There is more than a little barely-veiled disappointment in her eyes as she reaches out, fingertips just barely brushing the edges of the jagged cut that runs down Ed’s cheek. She mutters a prayer and the wound seals up, pain fading.
Ed gives it an experimental poke. His face is still damp with blood and mud and a few tears, but the skin beneath is good as new. He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand, red and brown smearing across his sleeve.
“Shame your mum didn’t have another boy,” the cleric says distastefully. Her nose is all wrinkled up with it, disapproval obvious on her face. That’s kind of weird considering usually people are always fawning over him because his father’s the duke. Maybe clerics don’t have to care about that sort of thing. “Fist fights are hardly becoming of a lady of your stature.”
Ed blinks at her. “I’m not a lady,” he says, confused. Sure, he’s pretty slight for his age, but if his older brothers are any indication, it won’t be long before he’s as broad as a barn. He’d even managed to sneak off long enough to cut his hair before Mum or one of the servents could stop him, so it’s far too short to be a girl’s hair anyway. “And it weren’t a fist fight. There was a pup with a messed up paw, and I was trying to help her, but she got scared and took a swipe at me. She was just trying to protect herself.” He pauses, pokes at his newly healed cheek again, and then brightens. “If I show you where she’s hiding, do you think you could heal her too?”
The cleric just sighs, shaking her head, and ushers him out of the temple.
--
Ed doesn’t know a lot of things, but he knows himself, and he sometimes thinks that’s more than a lot of people get. He knows he’s not particularly smart, would do even if people didn’t constantly remind him, but being smart’s not nearly as important as being kind. Things would probably be a lot better if people remembered that, if they helped each other instead of trying to be the best.
Ed always tries to be kind. It’s hard sometimes, when people keep calling him the wrong name, try to force him into dresses and paint him up like a doll. Mum had told him once, while she brushed his long, golden hair and wove it into plaits, that they’d have called him Edward if he’d been born a boy. That hadn’t made much sense - he was a boy, so surely his name should be Edward now. He’d said so, twisting round to look Mum in the face.
She’d laughed like he’d told a very funny joke and explained no, this was something called a “hypothetical”, that it wasn’t real, that it was okay he didn’t understand because he was likely to grow up to be very pretty, so he’d do alright. He wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything; being pretty didn’t make him someone else.
He’d tried insisting after that, that he was Edward, he just hadn’t known it yet. Mum hadn’t laughed again. She sighed heavily whenever he brought it up, like it was some great burden on her to let him be himself.
Eventually, he just stopped bringing it up. If Mum wanted to pretend he was someone else for a while longer, that was probably okay.
--
The Apollo lot don’t seem to need much in the way of brains, Ed’s father says with a derisive sneer in his voice, so it’s probably the best place for him. He doesn’t ask what Ed wants, has never really cared beyond its effect on the family’s image, but that’s okay. The cults are meant to help people, to heal the sick and all that. That doesn’t sound like a bad life to Ed. Better than being stuffed into dresses and forced to sit through boring meetings, anyway.
He’s always liked the sun.
--
The temple district in York has a house for nearly every god in the patheon, one after the other in two neat rows. Ed’s been given explicit instructions to go straight to the temple of Apollo and hand the explanatory note in his pocket to the high cleric. He’s not to stop on the way, not to talk to or help anyone. His father had been very clear on that point. And maybe Ed is rather easily distracted, but if there’s a frightened child or an injured fletchling, he can’t not stop.
It’s an overcast, grey day, the air heavy with autumn’s chill. Every so often, a stray sunbeam breaks through the cloud cover and lights the road before him. He knows where he’s going, of course, but the sun seems to show him the way.
Ed hums to himself as he walks, a little nothing song, and fiddles with the pendent hung round his neck. His father had impressed upon him the value of the pendent before he’d left, the little crest that means he’s someone important, that he’s “descended from greatness”. That doesn’t mean much to Ed; who you’re related to shouldn’t matter as much as who you are. But he supposes that’s exactly why he’s being sent to the church in the first place.
The temple of Apollo is a large, stone building draped in gold. His father had always called it garish, but Ed love it, how the odd sunbeams catch on the gilded windows. The stone almost seems to glow, like it absorbs any bit of light it sees and holds onto it, surrounded at all times by an aura of warmth.
There’s another sunbeam scattering across the steps of the temple. Ed rushes for it, hoping to warm himself just a bit before it’s obscured by the clouds once again. As he steps into the light, something tickles at the back of his head. It’s not unpleasant exactly, just strange. Ed frowns as the feeling grows, spreading across his skin. After a moment, it fades away, leaving behind only warmth and a vague sort of contentment. He feels, oddly, the way he imagines a cat must feel after a long nap in the sun.
He shrugs and heads up the stairs into the temple.
--
The dormitories are simple compared to his bedroom at home, and there are several beds in each room, but Ed doesn’t mind. He thinks he might like sharing a room for once - it can get awful lonely waking up alone in a cavernous chamber. According to the cleric who’d met him in the temple foyer, most of the other acolytes are in afternoon prayer at the moment, but he’ll meet them later, and begin his lessons in the morning.
There’s a noise from the doorway, and Ed looks up from unpacking to see a boy a bit older than himself lingering in the doorway. He’s wearing acolyte’s robes and a broad, friendly grin, dusky skin slightly flushed like he’d been running. Ed smiles back and waves. “Hello,” he says, booming voice filing the room in a way that always made his mother wince. “I’m Edward. I’m gonna be a paladin. I didn’t take your bed, did I?”
“No, no, mine’s over there,” says the boy, pointing. His voice too is slightly overloud. He pauses, face twisting momentarily in thought. “You’re the duke’s son, aren’t you? I thought he was sending a daughter.”
Huh, thinks Ed. He can’t remember the last time someone didn’t mistake him for a girl first. It makes something warm and bright well up in his chest, like kindling catching fire, and his cheeks go a little pink. “I’m just Ed,” he says with a shrug.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Just Ed,” the boys says. “I’m Richard.”
“No, my name is -- ohh, I get it,” Ed says. He grins, and Richard grins back, and Ed thinks maybe he’ll like being a paladin of Apollo.
--
Richard has to scamper back to afternoon prayer, but once Ed’s things are stowed, he wanders back outside, hoping to get a look at the grounds. There’s a garden out back with a winding path that runs through it, benches dotted along every so often. Not much is still in bloom this time of year, but the leaves are starting to go red and gold.
There’s a stray sunbeam falling across one of the benches, and Ed supposes that’s as good a spot as any to introduce himself to Apollo properly. He doesn’t know much about religion, but he’s willing to learn, and anyway, Apollo seems like a good ‘un.
He sits down and laces his fingers together, tilting his head back to face the sky. The sunlight is warm on his face, and Ed closes his eyes against the brightness. “Hello, Apollo,” he says. “I’m Edward. Uh, Ed, I guess. I’m gonna be a paladin.” He pauses, in case Apollo wants to respond, but there’s no answer. “I hope so, anyway. I don’t know how good at it I’ll be cause there’s lots of stuff I’m not good at, like memorizing stuff and sitting still and keeping quiet, but I’m gonna try real hard. I like helping people and animals and stuff, so if there’s lots of that, I reckon I might do okay. I hope you think I’m decent at it, anyway.” He pauses again, cracks one eye open. “Um, the end?”
He decides to sit there for a moment longer, just in case. The afternoon has turned warm out behind the temple, and some of the cloud cover has moved away. Sunlight spills down over the garden, over Ed, and that weird, warm feeling from before, on the front steps, tickles the back of his mind. There is something almost familiar about it now, like a name he can’t quite remember or an old relative he hasn’t seen in a while. It’s nice, he decides.
Ed doesn’t know a lot of things, but he knows himself, and here, in the golden light of Apollo, he knows where he belongs.