Devani let the final line of the poem linger in the air, folding the parchment with slow, deliberate care. She looked up, and her gaze moved from face to face around the table, unhurried, almost searching, like she was counting who among them had actually been listening and who had merely been waiting for the poem to stop. "Can't we worship God a hundred thousand different ways?" Her voice was quiet, but with the steadiness of someone who suspected the answer would be contested.
Anya's eyebrows shot up, a dry smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She set his teacup down with a sharp clink, the porcelain ringing faintly against the saucer. "Who said that there is actually any God to worship?" She leaned back, the chair creaking under the shift of her weight, and crossed her arms over her chest with the unhurried confidence of a seasoned debater. "Humans invent gods for their own convenience." She said it like a closing statement, not an opening one. "The entire concept is merely a socio-political construct."
A quiet hush fell over the room until Carlos broke it, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass. He hesitated, clearing his throat gently. "Uhm, haven't you ever had an experience of a peace that passeth all understanding?"
He looked directly at Anya as he said it, and something in his posture softened — shoulders lowering an inch, jaw unclenching — the physical language of a man choosing sincerity over sharpness even though sharpness would have been easier. "Without an experience like that, religion might seem like nothing more than a social enterprise," Carlos went on, his voice steadying as he found his footing. "But the roots of faith go much deeper than that. Deeper than any logical arguments, I think."
Brice slumped back in his chair, shrugging his shoulders with an exaggerated sigh of utter boredom. "Folks have been yapping about this for centuries." He tossed a hand into the air, fingers splayed, a gesture that seemed to dismiss not just the table but several hundred years of theology along with it. "Killing each other over dogmatic controversies, burning each other over commas in a creed." His mouth twisted, half grimace, half grin, the expression of someone who found the whole business more absurd than tragic.
"To me, it all seems like an idiot's play." He spread his hands, palms up, in a gesture almost like surrender. "Why can't we just admit there's precious little we know for certain?"
The room fell silent again, but it was a different silence than before — heavier, more occupied. Devani's fingers had stilled on the folded parchment. Carlos studied the tablecloth as though an answer might be embroidered somewhere in its weave. And Anya, for the first time, didn't reach for her tea.
