@Oshha omake
Sunrise Mountain Passage Builders
Covyn is carrying a heavy tree trunk up a mountain with two other men. It's slow, laborious work. When it arrives it will be laid down across the path on one of the steepest sections of the Sunrise Mountain Passage, set into a small hole carved into the mountain's rock. Dirt will then be dug out from below and added above, and then stones laid on top of that, to turn the difficult, slippery slope into safer, easier stairs.
His parents and the elders of his village said that everything has changed from how they used to do things. Farms are different - The compost, digging streams, leaving some fields empty on the word of the priests. And the priests carry stone tablets around, recording which fields lay fallow in which years, how much compost each field receives and how much food it grows, how many days it takes how many men to dig a water stream how long... So many numbers, carefully recorded and added up and considered and planned. When he was younger complained about priests simply standing around thinking all day - what easy work it must be!
But then one of the priests, an attractive woman named Malyn who looked the very image of Arthryn, took him through a day in the life of a priest. They must memorize prayers to each of the goddesses, and the rules for properly venerating each of them. They must learn Arthryn's blessing, the magical skill of bending stone in their hands. They must know about all the work that needs to be done - hunting, fishing, farming, bearing messages back and forth, building and digging, making pots and wicker and carts, how much of it must be done, who knows how to do the work, how much food there is. They must learn to understand and make the carvings that keep track of all these things. They must always remember the teachings of the goddesses and act with those in mind, helping the People in word and deed.
Covyn did not make fun of priests again after embarrassing himself so much on that one day. The priests are People like any other People. They grew up with their parents and the community, and they found that the work of priests suited them. They don't have as easy a life as it might first seem, and they must be clever and insightful to make a good priest.
Seryn the Wise may have been wise indeed, and her insight may have made it so the People have more food and can remember what they have in stone, but the oldest people in his village still act wistful for the days before that, when you simply did your work, ate what was needed, stored away what was not, and thanked the goddesses for your life. They complain that the priests are now counting Arthryn's blessings, not appreciating them. It doesn't help that his village still does not have a proper shrine for worship - just small statues, less than a foot high, placed in a spare house. It's better than nothing, but the goddesses deserve proper veneration, like in the shrines in the older, larger villages.
That sets the elders complaining again whenever it is mentioned.
Covyn doesn't understand why they grumble so. Maintaining the streams and channels when water softens the earth and causes them to fill in is hard, difficult work - but even though he is no priest, he can plainly see that fields flush with water grow much more food than fields on their own. He is a digger - ever since he was fifteen. The work is simple, physical, but necessary and useful. It's satisfying to see a deep, clean, straight channel after a hard day's work. When there were no ditches to dig, he would maintain the trails that lead to other villages, keeping them free of the roots and seeds that seek to reclaim the small strip of land. Filling in holes with dirt dug from the land beside the trail with his stone spade.
When it was decided by the high priests to make a passage north, to the mountain outpost of the People, and towards the Merntir, Covyn volunteered. Seeing the Sunrise Mountains, the Merntir, the proper shrines in other villages along the way, was an enticing prospect. And he thought he was just the kind of man to work on such a difficult trail - strong and not particularly clever.
It is truly a great undertaking. Creating a trail on flat land is simply a matter of removing all the plants and trees, but on a mountain that is just the first step. The priests already know the safest path, revealed by Arthryn long ago when they needed to find and defeat the evil tyrant who misled the Merntirish. The path must be cleared of vegetation, smoothed out by digging and hauling dirt, in some places by painstakingly carving into stone. It must be made durable, so that many thousands of feet, many seasons of rain, will not wash it away. Covyn was very surprised when his idea, to make channels through the trail for the rain to flow so only one spot would be washed away in rain, instead of many, was accepted by the priests organizing the work on the passage, and they spent a moon debating the best way to do it! They even had him join their discussions and speak about how to keep the rain from washing things away! Lining those channels with stones was the solution, in the end.
After delivering the tree trunk, Covyn and his friends rest for a bit, then head back down the mountain, past other workers carrying dirt, past stonecarvers making the narrow winding path into a slightly wider winding path, or building small structures where there is room as shelter from the rain, or storage for food to feed the many People bustling through the Sunrise Mountains. As he descends, he pauses a moment at a certain bend. He looks at the plaque some priest carved into the stone here, holding an image of Ymarn looking serene and wise. He looks down the slope on the progress that has already been made. A mile of easy walking carved into the harsh slope of the mountain. A few sections lined with stones to make them more sturdy, or reinforced with wood - most of it simply hard work and rearranged dirt. He looks forward and around at the mountains still surrounding them.
Nature is vast... But still, they make progress of a few feet every day. Making a path through the very mountains themselves sounds like something only the goddesses can do. But the People are doing it, with guidance and assistance from the goddesses, yes, but this is still something grand wrought by human hands.
Covyn decides, at that moment, that he will dedicate his life to the Sunrise Mountain Passage.
Years later, holding his wife Yrmar and his son Covar as they visit the pass, he goes back to the same bend in the trail he paused on that day and shows them the path ascending into the mountain beyond it, and feels pride at the boy's wonder in it. He laughs as Covar announces that he's going to work on the mountain pass, too, when he gets older.
