This young girl's open and forthright responses to his inquiries seemed
too emboldened by the light of inner truth. Furthermore, she had
remained utterly adamant in upholding her vow of silence in the face of
certain death for disobeying so openly and blatantly his commands to
speak, vow or no vow.
The other one, contrariwise, had an attitude.
That was it.
One called Sorpiala exhibited an attitude that was like the undeclared
and unpunished crime of having stolen a three-day old fish, a crime
whose very nature declared itself to all who happened to venture
downwind of the evildoer. It was exactly like that; a stink in the
discerning nostrils of the mighty and terrible Emperor Euphrates, whose
mercy customarily extended to the tolerance of such attitudes, although
it was his desire that only pure worship and obedience should ever be
seen or demonstrated in his subjects. He tolerated their impious and
disrespectful attitudes usually because ones such as Sorpiala simply
did not realize how much their sage Emperor saw and forgave. Often they
did not so much as realize that they even had attitudes with which to
offend him.
For attitude was like human will, a contrary condition under the best
of circumstances or at the best of times.
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