It is said that a traveler once came to a city with seven temples. The journey had taken nearly everything they possessed. Their shoes were split, their cloak had been patched more times than its original cloth could bear, and the few coins with which they had begun were gone.
Still, the traveler wished to give thanks for arriving safely.
At the first temple, worshippers offered bowls of grain and summer fruit. The traveler had neither. At the second, they burned rare incense, but the traveler possessed only the dust that clung to their clothes. At the third, silver coins were laid upon the altar. At the fourth, petitioners brought wine. The fifth received flowers, the sixth accepted finely worked candles, and at the seventh the faithful carried written prayers tied with ribbons of blue and gold.
Each time, the traveler stood at the entrance and watched. Each time, they departed without approaching the altar.
An old priest followed them from the seventh temple and asked why they had come so far only to leave every sacred place empty-handed.
“I have nothing fit to offer a god,” the traveler answered.
The priest considered this before asking, “Did nothing happen upon the road?”
The traveler almost laughed. Much had happened. There had been a storm that turned the path into a river and a farmer who opened his barn to strangers. There had been wolves beyond the firelight, a child who shared the last of her bread, and a bridge the traveler crossed only moments before the flood carried it away. They had seen mountains crowned by morning and fields silvered beneath the moons. They had heard an old woman singing to herself as she buried her husband beside the road.
“Then you did not arrive with nothing,” the priest said. “You arrived carrying everything you witnessed.”
The priest led the traveler inside and placed no bowl, coin, or candle before the altar. Instead, the traveler knelt and told the story of the road from its beginning to its end. They named those who had shown kindness, mourned those who had been lost, and gave thanks for dangers survived. By the time the telling was finished, evening had become morning.
Traditions disagree about which god received the offering. Some say it was the deity honored within the seventh temple. Others maintain that every god heard it. A few teach that Aeru alone received the story, for nothing honestly remembered is ever truly lost.
All agree upon this: the traveler entered the temple believing they possessed nothing of value. They departed knowing that an offering is not made precious merely because it is costly. Sometimes the only worthy gift a mortal carries is the truth of where they have been.