VIII. Believe
-—Sometimes, Lust wishes there is a God.
She's been in Liore for a couple of months, now, with Gluttony and Envy...and she still finds this concept of religion to be strange.
A higher power that watches over the believers—something benevolent and giving and loving...something that created everything and can take it all away, but will not because he loves his creation too much.
She knows of the Gate; she knows of the Truth and its cruel ways of equivalent exchange. Even if she cannot practice alchemy herself, the memories passed from her Father tell her everything; she knows the only thing in the world greater than the Homunculi is the self-proclaimed God of alchemy, who will smite you down for any hint of blasphemy. There is no such thing as the gods the humans imagine; there is only her and her brothers and her Father, and the being above even them.
(She hopes with everything she has that she will never meet that monster.)
She's standing in a crowd, looking on as Cornello performs miracles, turns water to wine and turns vegetable to crystal. She knows it is the Philosopher's Stone, but the humans do not; they scream and wail and cry out to Leto, thanking their god for his generosity and begging for more to come.
Their eyes are full of something she has never felt before. The humans, surely, have a wider emotional range (weakness), but she has never seen it so intense, so all-consuming, so...
The closest thing she's ever felt to this, she thinks, is the respect she has for her Father.
She frowns as she moves through the crowd, avoids the adoring faces as they gaze up at Cornello's acts of God. It's unsettling her, even if she'll never admit it; it's as if these people truly believe...they really think that this being exists, that it loves them and has always loved them and will always love them...
(Of course, she's never truly understood the idea of love, but she gets the general idea of it. In her moments of weakness, she thinks it would almost be nice to have.)
Human emotions are nothing. She must remember this, or else she will be obliterated for blasphemy; she doesn't wish to have this—not really—because faith in something that doesn't exist makes one weak, and weakness is unacceptable.
But there was something in the humans' eyes...something she's never seen before. She wants to know. She needs to know. What is it about religion, about gods and faith and trust in some higher being, that is so enchanting to humans? She cannot understand...she can only think that trusting in something you cannot see will only leave you vulnerable and weak.
So why do all the humans seem so happy?
She tells herself she does not care...
