"You don't ascribe to the church's words either, do you?" Mustadio startled Rapha with both his words and footsteps, gentle as he tried to be. There was a moment he wondered if the mageling would scatter or seek the comfort of her brother's presence.

Instead she swallowed and adjusted her crossed legs from where she sat against the splintered remnants of a Yugue tree. Mustadio did not sit beside her.

"No. I do not. Not quite." Rapha's fingers idly scratched at grass, brittle and bright against her half-cupped hand. "I have more faith in the workings of the world than the people who attempt to enforce them."

The young man nodded. "I guess I don't believe in outer forces so much as I do that people make these greater forces. Nature aside."

An almost wry grin traced faint on her lips. "Is that not what the workings of the world entail?" Mustadio blinked, taken aback internally. He thought she meant solely magic and spirits... not.. "Nature is the world, and the world works regardless of us. We're but small playthings to the whim of nature and our faith can blind us to the reality of such."

"I can believe that." Mustadio knelt. "In fact... the sea has tides. That's nature. But if a man does not heed warnings, that was his own sensibility and choice surrendered to the will of the tides."

He almost does not see Rapha glance up. Her eyes are as umber as her hair and it is night in the Yugue.

But she stared at him for a long time and he in return. "You understand, then." Her voice softened. "What man has done to faith, to the workings, to religion itself." Her hands fold into her lap.

"Yes." Mustadio uttered back. "I think I do."