Glass Beads and Processional

The Processional was taking place. It was the one day of the year the markets of Jerukkasar shuttered their doors and ceased their hawking. The yellowing stink of incense made the crowd nearly silent, as snow can quiet a herd of shuffling cattle.  There would always be the one or two men that coughed in involuntary protest to the smoke, breaking the surface of the hush. 

Their weakness broke the otherworldly illusion as well.  What persisted though, in the quiet between the coughs, was a gentle patter, almost like rain pelting a hard packed dirt road.  It came from the sins of the priests that passed, which hung in the form of beaded strings on their mortar boards.  Artificial tear drops, etched with foul words, they swam in the vision of the solemn walkers, permitting anyone brave enough to come close to read the treacheries and betrayals those men had wrought upon the city and each other during the year. 

At the end, the priests would hurl their beads, their strings, their hats and sometimes each other into the Lubangterak.  They’d break their silence then, wailing and tearing at themselves and each other, and come out sinless, sweating, bruised and caked in the soot of the slag pits.  They’d call themselves clean, then. 

But really, everyone knew better.  Especially those that had to clean up the bodies afterwards.  Not every sin was successfully burned.  Not every bead melted.  At some point during the next year, it was likely that a priest would open a bound, leathery flower, as yellow as the incense smoke, and find inside it their sin, coated in soot and pollen. 

It was the people’s reminder to them that, sometimes, true repentance needed to happen more than once a year.

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Originally posted on Reddit.