so when i saw this prompt i though wow that is gonna be a lot of weddings and i didnt want to write about a wedding so i thought i would write about a tribe of people from a book im writing. so here it goes.

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I don’t know what to write. I was asked to tell about the ritual. Apparently it is tradition for the oldest of the new adults to write a journal like thing for the records. I am the first one that was asked to write in a way that the humans can understand. I think it is so they can learn more about our culture. Now if a human is reading this that doesn’t know who we are I have been told to tell them. Our language is slightly different than the humans so it is hard to translate our name perfectly but basically it is ‘the calm ones’. The name was given to us by a different people that no longer exist that witnessed our ritual. We are animal like beings that are more diverse than you humans. For every beast on our lovely planet there is a calm one. There are some hybrids among but they are not that common because he have the same traits as our beast counterparts including our lifespans. It is uncommon for someone with a short life span to be with someone with a long one for it is hard for our people to deal a loss of our partners. But if you want to know more about that read a book about us or something, on to the ritual.

Well as a child we have no real idea what happens in the ritual. We are placed in a room in our homes that has no windows and we are not allowed to leave until then next morning. Only ones who have reached the age of adult hood are allowed at the ritual, but if you are sick on the day of the ritual you are excluded and are still not considered an adult. This is actually why I am the oldest. I was sick and confined to my bed that day of the ritual last year. People in our situation get a bad nickname for our extra year as a child and I will not repeat it here. Humans and other people are not allowed near the villages during the week of the ritual because it is sacred and cannot be interrupted at all.

All the adults sit in the village square around a large fire built in the center. All the new adults are told what to do but not what will happen during the ritual. To outsiders it only looks like we are in a big circle humming but we are actually meditating. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced the ritual but I will try my hardest. What everyone experiences is different our first time tells us which of our gods we are fated to have as our ‘personal true god’. I know that sounds confusing but it is basically we all worship all gods but my personal true god is the one that I will send my prayers to and ask forgiveness from. How we find out our personal true god is after we begin the ritual we are actually visited by our god. They speak to us and fill us with warmth and comfort. Then they show us our history. We are told our history as children during our education but this is different. It is shown to us in vivid detail. We see how our people evolved and developed into the people we are today. We see the wars and conflicts of our past and not just from our point of view but from our enemies’ as well. Our history is not written based on who won but on what actually happened.

The nest question that is popping in your head is if that is what happens when you perform the ritual then why do you have to do it every year and well it is because it is how we are able to talk to our gods. We don’t have priests as you humans have them so we don’t have someone who ‘talks’ to our gods for us. We talk to them ourselves. Our ‘priests’ are just people chosen by the gods to tell our children and others of them and to be council members to run our government. Our ‘shaman’ or ‘high-priest’ is the one chosen by the goddess of life who in a sense is the head or leader of our gods. She is actually my personal god and she is a wonderful and caring god. The warmth she filled my body with could only be described as motherly. I was a little surprised to learn that she was a hybrid but it did not deter from her beauty. I’m not really allowed to describe her appearance because I am not a priest so you will have to take my word for it. Well I am not a priest yet. It is actually amazing, all priests are not told that they are to be such until their third year into adulthood but I was told during my first ritual and not only that I was told I was going to be the shaman. Soon all the new priests will have to go through a special ceremony to mark the start of their training as priests and I can’t wait.