The Elvish Sanctuary

A friend of mine, the lovely Sarah de Nordwall, gave a delightful poem as a prompt for reflection once at a Bard School event. It was called If your name was a Temple, Mary, and I've put it up at my blog, if you want to see the inspiration for this scene. When she read it out loud, it went up in my mind like a rocket. I had to apply it to the characters in The Retribution of Thengon: here it is...

Rodi and Thengon were the last in the door. Rodi was even more foul-tempered than usual. He looked like he wanted to start a fight, so Thengon kept quiet.
Inside, the Sanctuary was wide and cool, lit by stained glass and skylights. The building had been added to over the years, with the latest addition being a sanctuary of Marta the Mourner.
Thengon was stunned. The ceiling, vaulted impossibly high above, rose to a dome where light blazed in the centre. Stained glass and mosaics coloured the interior walls. Every flat surface was a polished plane of veined stone, in between the mosaics of turquoise, green and gold. The scenes in the mosaics were of a vast number of stories of the Lore of the Sunlands, the long tale of the journeys of the Oreladi. Thengon thought he would have to ask his father, some of the scenes he didn't even recognise.
He lost sight of the others in his wanderings. Eladon sanctuaries were havens of light and cool shade, incorporating fountains and open cages for wild birds. In the centre of the entrance chamber was a great fountain: three vast scalloped basins of solemn black diorite. Thengon washed his hands and sprinkled himself with the fragrant water, as one does in such places, and passed further in. His heart sank when he heard Rodi shouting.
'Why did you take them from me?' Rodi demanded of the statue in the Mourner's Sanctuary. 'They didn't deserve to die, rot it all!'
Thengon went to intervene, but knew he'd need the others to help. When Rodi got shirty, things could get bad really fast.
But, then he saw, Rodi, standing forlorn in the cool gloom of the chapel. No-one seemed to notice - or they  were allowing him to vent. The Sanctuary was now quiet. No-one disturbed his grief.