Faith is a piece of fiction for Gods of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.
The acolyte knelt on his simple rug, holding still in the silence. The echo of his question was ringing in his ears, and he was fighting a flush of embarrassment that he’d asked it at all. His teacher, an older, handsome woman with her lips stained as red as her robes, regarded him quietly. There was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and lurking behind her eyes. The acolyte dropped his eyes, but kept his head held high.
“I was wondering when you would find the courage to finally let that one off your lips,” Amari said, her voice playful, but not mocking.
“You knew?” Vitar asked.
Amari’s smile finally broke the dam, and her laughter came with it. She shook her head, carefully dabbing the corner of her eye so as not to smudge her carefully-applied kohl. “Vitar, my dear pupil, every priest who has knelt on that rug has wondered that same thing in their hearts. And if I am to tell you the full truth, as I swore to do when I accepted my position, it would not surprise me to learn that most pupils of all the world’s faiths from the great to the small have asked it in one way or another.”
“So there is an answer?” Vitar asked, raising his eyes.
“There are many answers,” Amari replied, nodding to him. “I don’t know which of them is correct, but I can tell you the one I have come to believe over the years.”
Vitar swallowed hard. He’d been expecting to be chastised, or worse to be brushed off. He leaned forward, his hands on his thighs, his eyes bright with expectation. Amari smiled, and for just a moment wondered if she’d looked as young and innocent as her charge when she’d finally gotten up the courage to ask the question that came out of every acolyte’s mouth sooner or later.
“Are the gods real?” Amari asked, repeating Vitar’s question. “Yes. But they are real in the way the sky is real, or that time is real. Or the bottom of the sea. They are too large for us to see in their entirety, or to truly contemplate without feeling very small inside ourselves. For while we may understand them in part, it is often impossible for us to truly know them except in the way that a mouse might know a thunderstorm.”
Vitar swallowed, and nodded. He started rubbing a fraying patch on his robes with his thumb; a nervous habit Amari had yet to break him of. She waited, letting him work through his thoughts in his own time. Part of being a teacher was to know when to let the student do the work for themselves.
“If they are real, but we cannot know them, then why do we do this?” Vitar asked, swallowing.
“You know the answer already, don’t you?” Amari said. It wasn’t a question, though she asked it like one.
“Faith,” Vitar said.
“Faith,” Amari agreed, nodding her head approvingly.