Oakmoss sighed. "I have told you, Karyu," he insisted as the tip of his tail flicked against the ground, "that I am convinced that she is just using you."
Karyu replied, "I know that she uses me. I am her mount. That is her prerogative."
"Then why don't you fly away?" Oakmoss pleaded. "Why won't you be free?"
"Because I trust her so deeply," Karyu explained, "that I am joyful for her to use me. If I can find a mate, that also gives her joy because she likewise trusts me. There is more trust, between a Rider and mount, than you could ever understand. It is deep. It is deeper than love, although it is not a replacement for love. In fact, I don't love Luka as I would a mate at all: that kind of love can only happen between equals. My relationship with Luka does not merely lack equality, but inequality is its very basis.”
At this, Oakmoss seemed disturbed and disgusted, and he almost turned to walk away. "It sounds like she can do no wrong to you," he commented. "As if you were living under perpetual delusion. A prison in your mind."
"Until I potentially lost faith in her," Karyu said in a confirmatory tone, "then yes, my judgment of her is suspended indefinitely. It's called having faith, dear. I am lucky enough that Luka is a very good person. Under her guidance, I have learned how to be a good dragon."
Oakmoss forestalled leaving Karyu then and there, and as if he had a feeling in his gut that he was making a mistake, he dropped his raised paw back to the ground and planted it nervously. "How do you determine whether or not you have faith in her?" he asked.
"By whether or not she leads me to being a better person," Karyu stated. "It is just like any other faith. You judge whether or not that faith is worthy by whether or not it makes you worthier, as a person. If it does not, then you are just as bad as a cultist, a person that terrorizes and murders and destroys and rapes and enslaves, saying to the world, when criticized about it, 'my creed forced me to do it. I have no choice.' In truth, you always have a choice."
"The cultists claim they are afraid of hellfire," Oakmoss stated. "Therefore, in their belief, there is really no choice, except the worst possible of fates." The beliefs of the cultists were well-known, since they evangelized their beliefs constantly, everywhere they were permitted to go. Everybody knew them, in detail, and even the loyal followers, in Adam's kingdom, were wracked constantly in anxiety over the nightmares that the cultists had filled their heads with. Even dragons far away in the wild had heard them, and the cultists routinely attempted to enchant dragons with their insane belief...before being eaten. Dragons were immune to fire and brimstone rhetoric, for they were beings of fire: why ought they be fearful of what they themselves were?
Karyu shook his head. "That is the difference between a faith and a cult," he explained. "A cult tells you that you do have a choice, although it is an unattractive one. That's rather odd, isn't it? That they put an option before you, while saying that they have authority over what option you choose. The cultists are truly making a choice, after all, merely a selfish one.”
"The cultists truly are selfish in the long-run," Oakmoss admitted. "But then...how is a faith different? Is there really a difference?"
"Yes," Karyu said, "there is. The difference is that a faith is based on confession, not on fear. Luka has only ever punished me, Oakmoss, for wrongdoing that I have admitted to during confession. If I never bring it up, then she never addresses it, even if she really knows about it. In my relationship with her, I only receive negative consequences if I first acknowledge that I truly deserve them. In fact, she refuses to mete out punishment at all until I have admitted to guilt."
Oakmoss looked very skeptical, still. "Then how are you motivated, then, to confess? It sounds to me like you are being punished for your honesty. That should motivate you to lie, shouldn't it?"
"And be phony?" Karyu said. "You ought to know better, Oakmoss. You are an atheist. You reject anything that you feel is phony. That is how it feels to not confess truthfully. Just as you would reject a belief if you had evidence that it was nonsense, I would reject myself if I gave anything except a truthful confession. It's the same thing, Oakmoss. It's just about moral correctness, rather than factual correctness. If I have disobeyed my Rider, then it is natural that I should be punished because I have actually been bad. Nothing can take that fact away. If I never confessed, then for the rest of my life, that would be an error that lay uncorrected. It would be maddening. It would be everlasting torment, and it would be madness to tolerate that, rather than have a punishment that only lasts for a little while. Yes, I could lie if I chose to, but I would spend the rest of my life knowing that my faith as false. Fake. A lie."
Understanding began to dawn on Oakmoss, at that point. "So you choose to confess," he said, "and you choose to receive punishment for it because, if you didn't, then you would not really be acknowledging the divinity and the justice of your Rider. Your belief that she will lead you rightly is deeply comforting to you. It makes you feel supported and less lonely. You are always free to leave her, but then...you would be adrift. Alone. Unhappy."
"Don't you feel lonely and unhappy without a Rider?" Karyu asked. "Don't you feel tormented by thoughts that you can't tell to anyone? Don't you crave quiet in your mind, so that your thoughts can leave you alone?"
Oakmoss shook his head. "Not ones I would avoid having, anyhow. I guess that I must be weird to you," he said wryly.
"A little," Karyu admitted. However, he leaned his head down to nuzzle Oakmoss. "I will not force you to become a mount in order to be with me, then, Oakmoss, at least not right away. If I started putting conditions on you to make you become one, then that would not be a true faith. It would just be another thing like what the cultists follow...and that would be evil."
"So I will live among the Dragon Riders," Oakmoss said, "as sort of...an acceptable stray, I guess?"
Karyu nodded. "A little bit like a neighborhood cat, I guess. Sometimes, a neighborhood cat finds a home. Sometimes, a neighborhood cat seems to outlive the humans around him and still is just a peaceful rogue. You are peaceful, Oakmoss. You are not a marauding savage. You are not a thief of cattle: heck, you are a pescetarian! Luka is a very good person, Oakmoss. She would make sure that a place was made for you, in the kingdom. Trust me."
Oakmoss licked Karyu's snout and smiled. "Okay, then," he said. "I will come and entertain the thought of becoming a mount, and when or if I do meet a human that I would permit to own me, as his or her mount, I will willingly relinquish my freedom. Not to become your mate, Karyu, but based on me finding a Rider that deserves my faith. I might take a while, though. My standards are demanding ones. I accept that you are a mount, and I no longer judge you for it, even though I have not found a Rider that suits me. I am open to becoming a mount if a Rider can win me over. I will not promise you that one will."
"Then I take you as my mate," Karyu said, "and I love you forever."
Occupations, in the kingdom, were still ones that are taken for life. A Rider would be taking on his/her occupation and keeping it for life, so a Rider would be quite young and still learning his/her place in the world. The Rider’s disposition, skills, and values, though, might be shaped by what sort of family he or she came from.
The Rider Oakmoss finds turns out to be the young son/daughter of: