An Etyries Anecdote

This story is one that is fairly traditional among those members of the Etyries cult engaged in missionary activity. This particular form, possibly the original, may have been written by a traditionalist, but I, for one, suspect a healthy dose of irony. I copied this out from the library beneath the Grand Auditorium in Torang. A much less entertaining place than its name would suggest.

The Goddess's truest followers have always been the lowly of the world. Bandits, street girls, disgraced scholars, queens without regalia, followers of the Wasp God too waspish for Carmanians, madwomen who barter with spirits, slaves. Etyries was a merchant, and who expects much from someone who leads jackasses around by the nose for a living? And yet when she came before the Goddess, in those days when the Victory was fresher than morning dew, she started and nearly fainted, it is said, and the Goddess pulled her out from the line and said, "Here, she is a Natural!" She did faint, at that.

And between her and Valare, that is how we learned what Naturals were. Etyries had all three of her eyes open, and all of them caught the Goddess's light. The unfiltered light of the Goddess, in those blessed days of the Zero Wane, brought madness to anyone who saw it, and Etyries was no exception. But her madness went deeper, and she saw further, and when she recovered from fainting, tended to by the Goddess Herself, she looked up and pulled out a coin from her purse. She held it up to the Goddess and said, "This I might have offered to you before, but I see now that it is a glamour, and so it already belongs to you."

The Goddess, it is said, clapped Her hands and laughed and said, "You, I shall personally instruct! You are already well along the Way." Etyries learned quickly at the Goddess's side, and then she sallied forth and shared her insights with the merchants, the traders, the lenders, the tax-collectors, and the speculators. Some understood, some said she had gone round the bend, some merely scratched their heads and returned to their abacus. 

Etyries returned, frustrated, and consulted with the Goddess for a long time, and then with Irippi Ontor for a while, and then she spent her time writing and writing, even as she instructed those who had proved receptive to her revelations of the intangible. 

She wrote even as the Goddess ascended into the Air and wrapped the Mask of the Red Moon about her. Finally, a year before Yelmgatha died, she finished her work and apotheosized. It was an explanation of the Lunar Way in simple, clear language that even the most prosaic shopkeeper could understand. Unfortunately, it was so perfect that it apotheosized with her. And so we who follow her have been bedeviled with hecklers ever since. If you are lucky and capable and pious, you may be privileged to someday see it in her emporium on the Moon, and perhaps copy out a single sentence.