Honey couldn’t remember their parents’ faces. It had been too long since they died. It had been too long since the temple took them in and raised them, along with the other orphans. They’d had a hard time with connections. Sometimes, the priests and priestesses called them a loner, or antisocial. It felt pretty close to the mark. Honey was good at telling that sort of thing. They’d always had great aim and solid intuition.
Their first memory was praying at the base of a statue. It was the first time they felt like things made sense. It was the first moment when Honey felt they might have a purpose in life. They knew they would take up religion. It was predetermined by the priests who raised them. They couldn’t spend the first ten years of their life in a temple and not feel the sway of the cloth. But, that wasn’t all Honey wanted in life.
There was more to it than religion. It was about doing something meaningful with the help of the gods and living life in their own way. That’s how they saw the gods. They were important forces, but the drive to do good and to make changes came from within. The gods couldn’t fix everything. The gods could only guide and inspire. Fixing things was what they wanted to do. They wanted to figure out what was up with the world and they wanted to help people who weren’t able to help themselves.
They were ready to explore. They wanted to get out into the world.
Luckily, the Historic Society had close ties to the temples. It was impossible for something to exist in Trinity and not have at least a minor connection to the gods. It was like Honey themselves, everything that existed in Trinity was preordained to have a connection with religion, no matter how faint. They left the temple and entered the main library as soon as they were eleven. They became a junior explorer and they met the other children who devoted their lives to knowledge and service to the world.
The strange collection confused them. They expected more people with a drive like their own, and were disappointed to meet so many mild-mannered people. They could not understand why they were in the same category as people who were happy to stay behind and bury their noses in books without ever setting foot into the real world. They were most displeased by the chef. He was talented and kind, which initially impressed Honey, but, they could not get past his chosen job in the society. There were so many ways to serve the world, and yet, this boy decided to cook. It did not make sense.
Even though they never had friends, Honey felt close with the others. They cared about their fellows and they were ready to support and defend them if push came to shove. They even respected the chef in their own way.
The instructors and librarians worked their best with Honey. They did not force them to change who they were. Rather, they made sure they saw the other ways people in the society and in the world at large thought. Each teacher they had stressed that there were more ways than one to get a job done, and Honey understood them to a degree.
Still, they were young. They still had a lot to figure out about themselves, let alone the world. It was slow going, but the Green Lady was confident that Honey would come to terms with other ideas in their own time. They just needed a chance to learn to care about others as much as they cared about the idea of others.