Made By God, Made By Man

"Who is God?" asked the voice. Huul sighed. He had thought this day would come. The anthropomorphic Kirund beside him looked curious, almost worried. Even through her monosyllabic, stilted speech pattern, he could feel it.

"Who told you about God, Ajor?" he asked softly, turning around on the stool he was crouched on, his head leaving the table. His dark black and milky white eyes stared into her soft blue ones, which now seemed much more worried than before.

"It is not right to speak of It?" she asked. "Why are you mad, Huul?"

"I-I'm not mad, Ajor," he said, quickly trying to reassure her. She still stood stiffly, as a soldier would, but her tail, usually laying on the floor or rising to dust surfaces, was now twining itself around her legs. Her body language, like her voice, was stilted, but it was enough to let him know she was truly nervous that he had displeased her. "I'm just curious."

"Nurse did. To Young Mas-ter." Huul ran through his head quickly. Molly, then,  he thought. Well, she does not know enough about...us, not enough at all.

"God is...well, why do you call God It?" he asked.

"Because I asked Jester before this, and he called It He. But Nurse called It She."

Huul shook his head. "'God' is such a general term, Ajor," he said. "But I suppose the God they refer to is the one they say created all life. Even you and I."

Ajor shook her head. "Then God is not real. Be-cause It did not make me. Ein-sor made me."

Huul froze. He had known, of course, that Ajor came from those labs, that disgusting place. But he had always hoped, a blind hope, that she would be blissfully ignorant of those origins. However...it seemed that was not so. She understood, or at least thought she did, where she came from.

"Ajor...God does exist. There is a God, even if he seems not to see us. He...he loves all His creations."

"Then It does not love me."

"Ajor..."

"I do not need love. I serve. That is e-nough."

"Ajor."

"I was made to serve. I was made by Ein-sor. I was not made by God." Her voice, throughout this conversation, had slowly been returning to the curt, flat tone it had had when he first met her.

"Ajor!"

"So-rry. So-rry I made you mad." Her voice suddenly broke, but she seemed to quickly compose herself. Her tail stiffened, uncurling from around her legs, and hung limply behind her.

"I am only mad because of how you are speaking about yourself."

"But it is the truth."

"I don't care!" yelled Huul, standing up to his full height, no longer leaning on the table, now able to almost look her in the eye. The Wombear took a deep breath, then spoke fiercely. "Even if you were not made by God, even if you were made by man, he still loves you! And even if he doesn't, Ajor, I do!"

Both were silent for a while. Then Huul spoke again.

"I'm tired. I need a nap."

"I will take you to our room," replied Ajor, reaching down to pick him up, with little effort. Her undead frame was surprisingly strong.

"..." He was about to say he was not that tired, but then he remembered that, when she was truly unable to speak to him as Huul, she called him Fellow Servant. She had said she would never serve him as she would a master. Perhaps, to her, this was the only way she expressed her love. Just as anger was the only way he could show his...

"Thank you."