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Spooner used to have so much faith when she was a kid. Being raised in a Christian household in the 1920s didn’t leave you much of a choice anyway, but she’d always had such fond memories of it. She loved her church outfit and getting dressed up every Sunday, her Bible readings, which she saw as adventurous stories, and reciting her favourite passages back to back to feel accomplished. Unfortunately, as she grew older, she lost all this excitement. Losing her mom at such a young age had been devastating, and all the nights she spent devoting herself to God so He’d help her proved useless. That just means you’re not ready for it, mija, her mom used to say when she prayed for something that didn’t happen. So, she tried, and tried and tried so hard to be good. But she was never worthy enough, and there was so much a girl could take until she’d lost all faith.
Now that she was older, Spooner didn’t consider herself a Christian anymore. It wasn’t like she had renounced religion as a whole, but all that stuff about God and miracles and praying was something she hadn’t been interested in for decades. However, after joining the Legends, all the world she thought she knew had drastically changed, and she, herself, had too.
“Hey, can I ask you something a bit personal?” She asked Astra, who had her nose deep in a book.
“Sure,” Astra said, still with her head down.
Spooner, who was lying down on the library’s couch, sat up.
“What is your opinion about God?”
“Nice dude.” She answered, still buried in that book. “A bit overrated in my opinion, but he seems popular enough.”
Spooner rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, Astra.”
This time, Astra moved her head up to look at Spooner.
“What do you want me to say, Spooner? That I believe in God?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
Astra sighed and put the book down.
“I don’t know. Personally, I don’t get the hype. But maybe it’s because I’ve lived in Hell for most of my life, so I wouldn’t take my word for it.”
“I just—I don’t know what to believe anymore, cause I used to be a Christian, but then I stopped, and now…” Spooner sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Honestly, the idea that He could exist isn’t that crazy if you think about it. You know we’ve seen worse. And weirder.”
“It’s just that reuniting with my mom got me thinking. I stopped believing in God cause I asked many times to help me, but He never did. Then, 15 years later, I joined the Legends, and…”
“And you reunited with her.”
“Exactly. I don’t know if it was God, or the universe or destiny, but what if this was written somehow? Like it was meant to be.”
“I—I guess it could be.” Astra stuttered and made a face.
“What? Why—why did you make that face?”
“Nothing. If that makes you happy, then yeah. You’re right.”
“I don’t want you to tell me I’m right, Astra. I want you to tell me what you really think.”
“I’m just not a fan of this ‘meant to be’ kind of thing, okay? I don’t like the idea that we have our entire lives all mapped out like that. Where is the free will in all of this? The right to choose? Cause if what you’re saying is true, I escaped one prison just to jump into another.”
When Astra put it like that, it didn’t sound like this beautiful belief about existence she had been curating for a few days. It sounded more like a nightmare.
“I—I’m sorry. That was harsh.” Astra quickly apologised as she saw Spooner had remained silent.
“No, I—You’re right. I never thought of it like that.” Spooner wondered if her need to believe in something stemmed from her past. Like an ingrained habit she couldn’t quite dismiss.
“I think it’s nice that some people have faith in things. It gives them hope, purpose. But I guess I prefer to believe in things I can see. More tangible things.”
“Like what?” Spooner was having a hard time imagining it.
“I don’t know. People, I guess. You, for example.” Astra said. “I—I believe in you.”
Spooner raised her eyebrows, surprised.
“And I want to believe the reason we’ve met, the reason you’re sitting here right now, talking with me, isn’t because someone or something said so, but because you wanted to.”
In that moment, something clicked. It wasn’t about whether destiny, God or the forces of the universe existed, but about her faith and her need to project it somewhere.
“I do want to.”
After talking to Astra, Spooner left the room more confused than before. But there was something she knew for certain. In the creation of the universe, whether this had been by chance or by some mystical force, Spooner knew Astra had been made for her. That was something she knew she could always believe.