Random litany

On the third morning of her trial for heresy, Acanthe Almathea Telmacris was asked by the Rathist Heresiarchs whether she denied that the wife was subordinate to the husband.

She replied, "It is true that the in the Book of Life it states plainly that the wife shall be obedient to her husband's spoken commands. But did not the Reith also cause to be written through the prophet Lycurgus that the husband shall also be obedient to his wife's unspoken wishes? That for the wife to obey is easy since her orders are words, but the husband's burden is such that only one man in fifty enters the Second-Highest Heaven?

"Does he not also write that the key to the Gates of Silver and Steel is Love? That Love alone allows a man to hear the murmurs of his beloved's soul?

"And does he also write that the Highest Heaven is reserved only for those men and women who realise the key is not a key, but a window onto the Most Numinous?"

The Heresiarchs were silent. One finished scratching a note that he passed to his neighbour. It read, "I told you we should have purged that bloody gnostic from canon a decade ago."