Well that was . . . weird.
Not a bad weird, but just . . . not what I was expecting. Reading through it, I found myself surprised, pleasantly, that we were not dealing with 1100 England or France. However, aside from the dialects and the unbrella, there really isn't much to place the setting . . . or the characters . . . at all.
While the sort of "World words," like professor, and that goddess were enough to tell me I was dealing with "not Earth," I would have liked to see more then people walking in the rain and talking. See more like . . . what their wearing (cloak aside) or what the streets are like. OR what the building looks like. How it's decorated, are their horses. Given a clearer view of the actual setting it would actually require less description in the future (unless you're writing something really . . . different) to maintain that setting. I'm trying to do some imagination to visualize it all . . . and I just end up with black blurs, wearing square cloaks and carrying an umbrella, for the vast majority of the piece.
When Esavir shows up, the situation and blocking play out like something I've seen in about six or seven movies and read in just as many books. Boy comes in, gets in trouble, guardian steps in to save him, guardian learns that she's saving him from someone she knows (or he knows in some cases). That, however, is not a bad thing. People have to meet somehow. What made it all feel . . . odd .. . was the substance to these encounters. And by substance I mean the lack of it. And by lack of it I mean . . . I want more then something I can fit in my pocket.
The piece took me along rather nicely at first. We see the boy trying to pray, not getting an answer and being dismissed. He makes plans for the future then sets about to achieve those plans. That's good stuff. The characters themselves are not enough to drag me along, however, because they have about as much substance to them, at the moment, as a crater.
It all feels as if you wanted to put something there, something interesting, but thought that by adding things, you would be taking away from other things. What those other things you thought you would lose are, I have no idea. I can assure you, however, that you won't. In fact by giving us a bit more meat you'll probably solve most of your problems right there.