The Bone Queen

Chapter One

     From the view outside her window, Rina guessed that the cold weather that permanently affected the area was about to become more intense. She stood in a floor length puffy robe that swirled with various shades of deep blue, a cup of dark tea burning against her cold hands. Her view of the Temple was immaculate as her bedroom was on the seventh and final floor of the Main House. It made for decent entertainment alongside her morning beverage.

She could see the large expanse of clove grass covered in frost that covered the ground between all of the major buildings. Lithe bodies moved from the Main House through the doors of the Temple, their arms full of fish and grains for daily offerings or baskets overflowing with scrolls for lessons. Despite the cold, they walked gracefully across the ground without boots or sandals on their feet, their bare skin crunching against the frozen grass.

A head cleric, Arelen, had explained that foot coverings of any kind were considered a hindrance to servants who serve within the temple. They prevent the clerics and scholars from learning through all of their senses. Rina had asked how they walked through the sting of the cold, how their feet didn't get hurt and all the old cleric would say was "our Great Mother protects us when we are doing her work". To a twelve year old girl that just sounded creepy.

Rina curled her toes within her thick stockings, enjoying the warmth they brought her while she watched the others weave in and out of the two buildings. In her 23 years at the Temple, not once had she been able to make more than four trips between the Main House and the Temple before she'd sneak away to warm her feet and don her thick stockings and fur-lined boots. The Great Mother must have forgotten to protect her alongside the other clerics.

The sun rose above the fields beyond the Temple and she admired how the building glowed in the daylight. It was an impossibly large building, only four floors in height but hundreds of feet both long and wide. Approximately four hundred people served at this temple, each having access to private quarters within the Main House. The Temple regularly contained them all throughout the day as they studied, taught, prayed and served.

The building was made of white quartz laced through with silver and icy blue veins, as if the frost that coated every surface could infiltrate even solid stone. Seven pillars held up the thick quartz slab that acted as the ceiling of the temple. Each pillar was smooth and cylindrical from top to bottom, with rivulets of molten silver running down their lengths as if they were bleeding under the weight of the block they kept from crushing the dutiful followers moving in and out of the building. The silver disappeared less than one foot from the base of the pillar as if being absorbed by the stone or Temple itself.

     She had tried to catch the silver in her hands when she was just a child, and while the silver had felt like liquid against her fingers, it would not collect in her small palms. It was another subject Arelen had been hesitant to discuss with her, and had waved away her questions regarding the curious liquid. 

As the last of her tea warmed her throat, she watched as the single doorway at the front of the temple was sealed shut with a heavy oak door by one of the High Clerics. It would not open again for an hour while they arranged the morning's offerings and fires.
A light knock on her bedroom door had Rina spinning on her heel, grateful for the thick socks she wore as she felt the cold, white marble floors beneath her every footstep. Another knock, this one less gentle came just as she turned the lock on the door and let in the tall woman readying to knock a third time.

"Ri, I don't understand why you lock the door. Who else would ever come in here besides me?" The woman asked, brushing past her and jumping onto the bed in the center of the room.

"Ah, but who says that I want you to be able to just barge in unannounced, Oria? Perhaps I lock the door to keep you out", Rina smirked at her friend, now at home and bundled in blankets within the bed.