Translated From Sarconian Scout

Jasper was happy to get back to the farm. The long days in the fields were nothing compared to his first mission as a Junior Scout. To his surprise, however, Jasper did not see Jonathan for nearly a week. When they finally did see each other, Jonathan was very sober. "Well?" Jonathan asked him.

"Well, what?" asked Jasper, sticking his hoe in the storage shed.

"Do you want to continue?"

 "With my Junior Scouthood?"

 "Yes," said Jonathan. "I know that our last mission, your first, was pretty unpleasant. Unfortunately, it's a pretty good sample of what we'll be going through most of the time."

"Well," said Jasper, "I didn't exactly join the Scouts for the fun of it."

Jonathan nodded. "Those who do are quickly disappointed. I suppose you know that Melissa got her Scouthood recently?" Jasper nodded. "She was sent south with two older Scouts into Arnia to steal documents from Malfic Vespertine," Jonathan continued. "Jack's concerned about her, though, and rightfully so, so he's getting an escort together to await them at the border in case they are pursued."

"And we're going with them?" Jasper asked.

"Yes. We leave tomorrow."

"Alright then."

 

The party rode south for only a few hours before Melissa was spotted. "She's alone, but there's a strong detachment on her heels," Jack commented, who was able to see further than most of the others present. They quickly formed a defensive formation and waited. When Melissa reached them, her mount, Dawn, was exhausted, and Jack quickly transferred her to Ember, who was relatively fresh. She rode off quickly for the city as the detachment converged on the people behind her.

Jack suddenly found himself fiercely engaged with the leader of the Aranaran detachment, a tall, sandy-haired man with a golden circlet on his head. His clothes were black, but of rich fabric. Slowly, as the were separated and rejoined by the ebb of the skirmish, Jack deduced who the man was, getting his final confirmation of the man's identity when an Aranaran soldier referred to him as 'my lord prince.' The leader of the detachment was none other than Maleficence Vespertine, Malfic's son and the Crown Prince of Aranar. The confrontation raged violently and, in the heat of combat, Jack plunged his sword into Maleficence's body. The Prince dropped to the ground, dead. Jack had fought before, but he had never killed. He stood heedless in the midst of the skirmish, blood running off his sword, staring down at Maleficence with a sick feeling in his gut. Jasper's scream of, "JACK!" as an Aranaran soldier swung his sword at Jack's head was not heard, and the clash of steel as Jasper jumped in and parried the blade reverberated in his ears as if from a distance. The rest of the battle was a faint whirl of shouts and clashing swords. Someone began shaking him, and his name rang in his ears, but he did not respond. Suddenly, someone slammed into him, and arms wrapped around his waist. Melissa's voice broke through his trance. "Lissa," he whispered, "you're safe." Then everything was lost in an instantaneous chatter of concerned voices as everyone asked him if he was alright.

An exhausted Melissa told everyone that both the Scouts sent with her had been killed. They had succeeded in capturing several documents, which Melissa had safely delivered to the council. After she had done this, she had returned to the skirmish with reinforcements that had boosted Jack's original party. One of the Scouts in the reinforcement group told Jonathan and Jasper that the council wanted them to go east and complete a mission that another Scout had failed to finish because of several bad wounds. Jasper was very curious - this being only his second mission, but from Jonathan's casualness during the briefing of the situation, they weren't being asked to do anything unusual.

As a matter of fact, the mission was unusual, for nothing happened. Both mentor and student had expected to run into serious difficulties, considering the condition of the Scout they were replacing, but apparently he had cleaned out all the antagonists in the area when he was wounded. Even the elements were oddly cooperative. This gave Jasper more time to think and ask on-field questions than usual, and the conversation began turning to religion quite often. Jasper had come a long way from that first conversation with Jack in the attic, but he still lived in terror of the gods, both those of the plains and the Lord. This left him divided. The gods required that he serve them, the Lord required that he serve Him and Him alone. Jasper could not serve both, but neither could he choose one without invoking the wrath of the other. It came down to deciding on which was real and which was the invention of man. Neither existing was not an option for Jasper - he was convinced that there was some sort of deity. If there wasn't, where had the world come from and why did things like snowflakes look like the work of a master craftsman? Why were the stars scattered across the sky in patterns that looked like archers, dragons, or other recognizable shapes, and why did the tip of the Great Horn always point to the north? There were too many proofs for him to ignore.

The question burst out of him one night beside the campfire. "What about the third condition?"

"What?" The confused look on Jonathan's face made Jasper realize that he needed to explain what he had been thinking about before going further.

"Ryan did a lesson one night about the three conditions. But he...as he covered everything the Lord did, living a perfect life and then willingly giving it up - it only covered the first two! So what about the third condition?"

"The guilty accepting the sacrifice of the innocent?"

"Yes. How does one do that?"

"You have to die," said Jonathan, "and you have to be buried."

"As the Lord was?"

"Yes. If we are united with Him in His death, we shall be united with Him in His resurrection."

"Did you die?" Jasper asked slowly, after mulling this over.

"Yes," said Jonathan.

"So...this must not be a...uh...death death."

"Physical death, you mean?"

"Yes," said Jasper. "So how is it done?"

"Well, you die, meaning that you utterly forsake your former way of life and commit yourself to living in a way that will please the Lord."

"And the burial?"

"That is done in water. It symbolizes the grave."

"And resurrection?"

"That is when you come up out of the water."

"So what, in short, does the Lord want from me?"

Jonathan looked Jasper straight in the eye. 'Everything."

"Isn't that a little, well, drastic? I mean...everything! It's too much!"

"It's no more than He asked of Himself. While He was here, He devoted himself to teaching and caring for people. When He died, He gave His life for you so that the powers of evil would have no power over you. He gave all He had to give and then some."

Jasper was shaking his head. "Still..."

"Life is easier when you are in His hands, too. I know, it looks rougher; you have to give up things that look good, but later, it pays off. You live a life with fewer regrets, and the regrets you do have are from times when you strayed from His ways."

"Ryan once said that is was a terrible thing to fall into the hands of God," Jasper commented.

"God is perfect and just. If all of us got our just deserts, we would die, for no one is perfect, and God cannot accept someone who is not perfect. But what has been done in His sacrifice allows us to fall into the hands of God without the stains of our past life, and God is not only just, but loving and merciful." "

So, let's say I give God everything, what do I get?"

"You get the privilege to stand in the presence of God as his child, holy and loved beyond measure." Jonathan watched Jasper's face for a moment, then said, "You take the first watch and think." He rolled himself into a blanket.

Jasper sat and pondered. Everything. Everything. He pulled up his knees and rested his chin on them. When you give someone everything you have to give, you give them your very self. He considered similar happenings back on the plains that he knew of; debtors who could not pay back the money that had been loaned to them and so had to give up everything of value that was their's - even themselves. When you give someone yourself, you belong to them, and they can deal with you as they like; you have no rights. But when you give God everything, he makes you his child...after he gave you the ability to even approach him to give him everything. Now that I consider it, what do I have that I can truly call mine? Myself, my life, and my family; Kaia and the Breakers. But God created me and gave me life, so those are a gift from him. And God granted that my sister would be born into my family, so she is a gift from him. And then he granted me my second family after I lost my first, so they are a gift from him as well. So in the end, God gives me everything I have and gets nothing back but a willing heart, and that only if I come to Him. To me, it seems he asks so much, and yet, in truth, it's not hardly worth anything at all. But somehow, it's enough.

Jasper had stopped wearing his talisman after he became a Scout Student, but he had never put it from his person. It had ridden in a little pocket for some time, now he drew it out. 'Everything' is still hard, but I'll start here. He dropped the talisman into the fire. Slowly, as the night went on and the wind moaned its lonely way through the pines, he began to give up the hatreds and grudges he had held within him. A thing Ryan had said helped him in this. "Hatred and grudges don't die in a day, and you won't ever be completely free of them in this life. The important part is not so much getting to a place where you don't have those thoughts as it is getting to a place where you surrender those thoughts to God as soon as you have them. Giving yourself to God is a starting point, not the finish line."

It was at that moment that Jasper realized that Jonathan had only been pretending to be asleep. Jonathan now looked keenly at Jasper. "There's a deep creek down thataway," he said, meaning that he was willing to immerse Jasper on the spot if Jasper wanted him to.

Jasper hesitated. They were on a mission. The Aranara could fall on them any minute that they were not on guard. But then Jasper decided that the Lord was more important than the Aranara; if he got himself killed doing what the Lord had commanded, so be it. "Let's go."

The water in the creek was ice cold and took Jasper's breath away as Jonathan lowered him under it. When they came up out of the water, Jonathan left Jasper alone on the creek's bank, sensing his student's desire for solitude. A shining light came from the trees, and Jasper turned. The light was brighter than midday, and yet Jasper felt no need to shield his eyes. He became aware of a presence, awesome and powerful. Jasper trembled as the majestic figure emerged from the light, but he felt no terror. Instead, he looked into the figure's deep, ageless eyes, his heart throbbing with alternate joy and fear. The figure stepped forwards and laid his hands on Jasper's shoulders. Jasper stood and shook, his blood flying through his veins many times faster than it should have. "Be still," said the figure gently. Jasper shivered once more in response to the figures deep, unearthly voice, then stood still. "Tell me your heart," the Lord said, beginning to walk.

"I daresay You know it better than I myself, Lord," said Jasper, naturally falling into step beside Him.

The Lord smiled. "I know everything, Jasper, but that does not mean that I do not enjoy it when My children talk to Me about what they think and feel."

Jasper's mind was blank for a time, but then a question he had wanted to ask for a long time came to him. "Why did my parents die? Why couldn't we have just stayed the happy family that we were?" Emotion poured into him at a rate he would not have thought possible, and tears started pouring down his cheeks like a spring thaw. In front of anyone else, he would have been embaressed to be crying so hard, but here, it seemed natural to let emotions surface and play themselves out, since there was a tangible sense of not being able to hide them.

"I have a plan for you, Jasper, and it involves you being here, in the mountains. If your parents had not died in the plague, you would have been brought here a different way; a way that would have been far more painful."

"What would have happened?" The Lord reached up and wiped the tears from Jasper's face.

"It is not for you to know what would of happened, for that knowledge would only hurt you. What did happen is far more important."

"Is that why I was adopted into the Johnson family and engaged," Jasper flinched at the memory, "to Misty? So that I would run away?"

"One of the reasons, and the only reason you are to know for now."

"Why can't I know the other reasons?" Jasper burst out.

"Because they will be revealed in due time, and it is not a good idea to rush such things. At this time, you are not yet ready to accept the other reasons."

They walked a little further, then sat down near a small cataract. "Will I ever see my sister again?" Jasper asked.

"You will."

"I was so angry, being separated from her like that. I never thought of myself as an angry person, but I was angry. Angry at the people who took my sister from me, angry at Misty for treating me like she did, angry at the Johnsons for pledging her to me with no regard to how I felt. Did...did all of those things have a reason?"

"Nothing that happens happens for no reason. The reason may be quite small, but there is still a reason."

The longer they spoke, the more words poured out of Jasper. It was as if his heart had become a book that lay open on the rocks for them to read. He did not know how long they stayed there; time seemed not to exist when the Lord was present.

At last, the Lord rose to leave. "Will I see you again?" asked Jasper wistfully, looking up at him and feeling like a time of joy and healing was drawing to a close.

The Lord looked at him gently and placed His hands on his shoulders. "Yes, you will. But, until then, always remember: No matter where you are, I can always hear and see you. Read the Words that I left with you, talk to Me, and I shall be with you, always, even at the very ends of the world." Turning, He melted away into the trees.

Jasper returned softly to camp. Jonathan lay on his back, breathing quietly. Jasper lay down on the other side of the fire, curled into his cloak and a wool blanket, and fell asleep.