“You slow playing son of…. oh, just sit boy,” one of the other two men called out, much more gruffly than the first man had been. “You’re making everyone in here nervous just hoverin’ next to the tables. Sit and eat.”
The second man must have kicked the chair from under the table because it came sliding out, bumping into Kre and jolted him back to awareness. Numbly, he sat down and scooted the chair in. “Thank you, sirs,” he said respectfully.
His hand reached for the fork and the first man, the older one, spoke up in his same slow manner. “You do not pray before you eat where you are from? Hmm.” It was phrased as a question, but it sounded much more like a judgement the way he said it.
“Ah, yes,” Kre responded, blushing. “My mother would be rightly upset with me if she knew I had forgotten that customary courtesy.”
“Our prayers are neither a custom nor a courtesy.” He set his cards down, face down, and turned to face Kre with a stern look in his eyes. The other two men leaned back in their chairs, as if knowing this delay of game might take more than a minute or two. “Our prayers are heartfelt words of gratitude for every moment we have been granted. They are ways for us to acknowledge all the great works of God that manifest in our everyday lives. Prayers allow us to humble ourselves before Him, admitting that we are imperfect and requiring of His grace to lift us up again.
“Prayers,” he continued, his thick gravelly voice driving deep into Kre’s ears. “Prayers are much more than a pre-meal ritual.”
Kre could feel the guilt swelling up in his gut as if he had chugged an entire pitcher of spoiled cider. Except this time there was no friends to cheer him on and goad him into doing something stupid, there were only the judging eyes of this one old man.
It was no surprise that he spoke the first thing that popped into his head, as flustered as he was. “The Church teaches that prayer is a way to ask for blessings from God,” he responded numbly.
“Aye, and they usually ask for a few coins to help that blessing reach God’s ear too,” said the one of the other two card players that had spoken up before.
The old man stared at Kre for a moment longer before breaking into a wide grin, all semblance of his shame-inducing gaze vanishing in an instant. “You’re right boy, and that is why I am here, and not still a member of the clergy.”
As with everything going on these days, it took Kre a long moment to register the words he had just heard. “Wait, you’re a priest?”
“Was,” the other card player added. “Defrocked he was.”
“I was laicized,” the older man corrected. “My views were not aligned with those of the greater Church and so I was removed from my clerical state and branded a heretic.”
“Now me, I’m just a deserter. Boots is me name and I ain’t got no fancy pants term for what I done asides desertin’. Planks there,” he gestured to the third card player who had so far remained silent, “Planks probably the baddest o’the lot in here this night.”
He glanced around the room, looking to see if there was anyone else he recognized that might have a more serious criminal background than his tablemate. “Yeah… baddest man here he is.”
The man identified as Planks simply nodded but did not elaborate any further.
“And I am Fath… ah, sorry. I am Frank. Old habits are the hardest to break. What about you boy?”
Frank, Planks, and Boots… the three men sounded more like a comedy troupe than a trio of outcast criminals.
“Kre,” he said, relaxing a bit and even taking a moment to push his fork into the meat. To his surprise, it slid in easily and the meat fell away from the bone effortlessly, small wisps of steam escaping from the revealed portion of perfectly cooked animal flesh. “I guess my crime is that I killed a Dragon Knight.”