#hang-ups

She examined the sanguine spray against her long fingers...not unlike how any other noblewoman might inspect her nails.

The Brotherhood of the Light understood what it took to get things done. She’d begun working alongside them even before she fell, and the rest of the Crusade could barely stomach her, these days... ‘let the mad dogs work together,’ she imagined they’d said. The Brotherhood knew her, though. Knew her commitment to the cause - they also knew a good tool, when they saw one. And here was a different sort for their Light-encrusted toolbox...not a paladin, not a priest, no Light at all. Who expected a demon to emerge from the shadows when it was paladins who wanted you to talk? 

Everyone in the Brotherhood understood...the ends justify the means. You have to do difficult, sometimes terrible, things to achieve the greater good. 

“Bitch...broke my nose!” 

Cultists never changed - always one doomsday, or another, to whip up the unfortunate and the forgotten to fill their desperate ranks. She’d been broken enough to make life-changing decisions she shouldn’t have, once. 

Thok.

Thok.

Thok.

More often than not, a display of her demonic form, maybe a little posturing - like this, simply pacing the room, letting the echo of her hooves on stone unnerve her prey - was enough.

This time, it was a wing that shot out, and caught the restrained figure in the jaw.

Of course, she wasn’t necessarily here out of dedication to the Light, these days, but who cared? Everyone got what they wanted, here...and it’s not as though her fellows weren’t enjoying themselves in such interrogations just as much.

There was a certain perversity to it that she liked, if she were honest with herself - the Light hadn’t saved her, had never made her whole, hadn’t ever been enough. And so she would spit in the face of it where she could - she would walk the hallowed halls, she would wear her hard-earned title as Crusader...

She would take from the Light as much as she could, and poison the well while she was at it.

The cultist laughed through his potentially-broken-jaw, muttering to himself about what they didn’t know, what they couldn’t know.

My Bantam at Crown Point in the Columbia Gorge during a bike campout last April. It took almost twenty years of touring to figure out what works for me. Last week I went to a bike touring, er, “bikepacking” meetup at Lords Luggage, hosted by Bruce B. There was a good turnout featuring people I knew and plenty I didn’t. There was talk about places to tour. And there was inevitable talk about…

Here is the devotional: My North Star in life is the Bible because I believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us. The Bible tells me that the God who created me has a habit of being very organized. He is systematic in His approach to things, and He has established definite patterns for the physical operations of His creation. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV), for instance, God has told us, “There is a…