Bathroom Monologue: Going to the Good Battle

Going to the Good Battle
Ron broke his fast at dawn. As he cooked the eggs he wondered murky thoughts. Why had he never dedicated that nightly period when he didn’t eat to the gods? Sleep made him fast anyway, so why not hand them the honor? While the men ate, he dedicated their meal to the gods. When he marched with the rest of the troops for Ral’Hom, to fight the good battle, he dedicated the walk to the gods as well. There was no prayer or symbol. The actions drifted into the ether like any others, save that they were earmarked by a thought.

Ron had always abstained from tributes, but that morning came a question – not a revelation, but a mere question. If the gods were good and necessary as he’d heard, then were not all his good and necessary actions for them? As the troop passed through a mill town, a girl gave him a dipper of water. He thanked her, and wondered as he marched on if he had not thanked the gods in that same sentence. Were not the gods served by the millers baking honey bread and sweet beer to joy up the nights? Were they not served with every meal? Back at Braintree, up the road from his house, where the scholars studied powders and cures, was not every laboratory test and attempted equation was not a prayer? Was father, the great mathematician, more religious than he knew?

His theological epiphany lasted until that afternoon’s good battle, which was not good or godly at all. Never, even in his agnostic years, had he felt so distant from the gods as when tore into another man. He lived, though, and there would be more questions.