Quoted By:
>SELECTED: You pay no heed to the whispers of the pilgrims. You are the avatar of the Almighty. If the Angel bids you speak, you shall shout from the rooftops. Until then, whatever comes is the will of Heaven. The cynicism of the doubters or the faith of the believers will not change that inalienable fact. [Haughty]
You have long since surrendered yourself to the will of the Almighty, and whatever task He may set before you in the coming days, weeks, months or years. If the Angel bids you speak, you shall shout from the rooftops. And if the Angel bids you bide your silence, not one word shall escape your lips. There is a certain peace in that surrender, and you are glad of it. You pay little heed to the musings of those who have borne witness to your part in this ineffable design. Instead you bind those spoken words to memory, committing to writing them down verbatim when the Long Walk concludes. For what purpose you cannot say but the distinction between Adam’s voice and what the scripture now quotes weighs on your mind during the arduous trek down to the bottom of the chasm and back to the city far more than the whispers of your compatriots and other pilgrims behind you.
It is a long walk back to the City, your feet bruised and cut, your body drench in sweat underneath the humble pilgrim robes as you approach the gates. It is here that the procession pauses, the chanted psalms humming from a hundred mouths catching the attention of every bypassing grand trade caravan or lone humble farmer. The next step is Cain’s bearing of the Cross, viewed by some as the most demanding of the sections of the Long Walk.
Where Adam was a great orator, a man of words and much wisdom, Cain was a man of action. Perhaps the promise of a better tomorrow was an empty one to him, empty for as long as those who suffered did not act today. He would confront the wicked and tyrannous wherever he found them, unflinching against the most terrible odds. Adam might denounce the evil acts of the masters and preach to the masses that this was not the way it should be. But it was Cain that would be the first raise a hand against them, to cast them down from their pampered pulpits, to rip the lashes from the hands and tear their garments. To slay the worst of them, whose vice and wanton cruelty would never be judged or condemned by the system designed to keep man in chains. It did not matter if a score of armed guards stood between him and the unfortunate that was to have judgement passed upon him, if they would take up arms in defence of the evil he had come to slay they would die with it.
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