Today is as good a day for the Cultist to come by the Church of the Good Shepherd. The congregation is in mourning and they've burned last year's palm and their Father did press the ashes of it onto the foreheads of all of the flock at services today.
Theirs is a religion not so oppressive as the Roman Catholicism from which they descended and yet they have not cast off their rituals.
Time between the afternoon Mass and the evening. The daycare has not yet dismissed its students for the day and the children are running around with ashes on their forehead because the March afternoon is warm.
Claudia and Father Francisco stand by the fence. She wears slacks and a modest sweater and he wears all black his shirt-sleeves short and his collar on. The aides are watching the children and Rosa is inside finishing up her work for the day so she can attend the evening Mass. Both adults are smoking cigarettes and looking weary but content in their weariness.
SerafíneHe knows she's close; he can feel her in the air. Taste the skim of her resonance; the oh-so-familiar threads of it, and then the newer, stranger note that he will nevertheless know and remember, too. This time it's a fucking yellow cab, of all things, pulling up to the curb in front of the spare church, where forty days of mourning and preparation, forty days of deprivation, forty days of fasting and prayer and privation will prepare them for spring; for what comes: birth and rebirth.
Maybe there was a Mardi Gras dinner at the church. Pancakes and sweetbreads and beads and everyone with their top on. Games for the children; some laughing celebration that honored Fat Tuesday before the Lenten season started. Everyone at the Church of the Good Shepherd probably kept their clothes on.
So now, Ash Wednesday, afternoon sliding into evening; warm bright sun and weather advisories, the constantly changing life of the high plains. A yellow cab by the sidewalk, one tanned Cultist of Ecstasy slipping out of the back door, her laughter breaking through the bright afternoon like a wave, loose and lovely and a bit surreal. She bends over to talk to the cabbie, loops an arm over the frame of the taxi, probably to pay and even from a distance the priest can tell that she's drunk. Still drunk or drunk-and-hungover or something and something.
Then she ducks in the back and slips back out with an armful of something dark and rather heavy. Cradles it against her body as she struggles to close the back door of the cab with a movement of her hip, while simultaneously trying to wave to Pan all happily even with both arms engaged.
It is a sight.
She is not wearing her Carnival outfit. Not the one with the feathers.
Still, that push-up bra she wears sometimes covered in tight little pink silk rosebuds, beneath a sherpa-lined black leather jacket, a leather skirt fringed with chainmail that does not really cover her ass, the remainder of last night's/this morning's body glitter, the odd stray rhinestone and a golden fucking tan.
Fr. Echeverría"Me disculparán, ¿cierto?"
This from Pan to Claudia upon the taxi's arrival and the occupant's exit. He feels no shame before her or for her but she knows as well as does anyone else that the women of this church do not approve of her presence nor do they approve of her dress. It's likely he had to explain what she was doing at the hospital in the days after his ascent from coma and none of his explanations were sufficient.
He cannot claim she is nothing to him and yet he cannot explain to them in what ways she is dear to him without them thinking their shepherd has strayed. If he is not a pillar of virtuousness for them to build up their faith then they do not know what to make of him.
Rosa knows. But for having the knowledge she does Rosa does not approve either.
He excuses himself and Claudia nods and puts out her cigarette. Pockets the butt and goes back down the path to see to the children. The priest comes out from behind the fence and holds out an arm.
"Ay, eso debe de pesado," he says. "Dámela."
They're going into the rectory. It's quieter there.
SerafíneSera has instincts and her instinct is to flash Claudia a little grin, which she does, which may not be returned, and give up the rather large Moqueca pot to Pan when he comes up beside her, which she does, and to lean into the warmth and immediacy of his presence, which she does, and to lift her chin and kiss him on the cheek. That she foregoes, the kiss on the cheek, in favor of a glance past the priest, down the line of the fence, where the boldest of the playing children have stopped perhaps to stare at her. Maybe they can feel her; the inherent potential of her magic and her avatar, her resonance, just as they feel Pan's. Children are after all closer to God or god, closer to wonder, aren't they? So Sera wiggles fingers rather happily, winking at the kids before they are hurried away, as Pan takes the pot and the pair of them cross the street to the rectory.
She's swaying a bit as she walks, the world slews around her, the combination of sleep deprivation and debauchery and a long night's flight half-way across the world. That sense of dislocation that comes from air travel, all of it.
"You ever had moqueca?" Sera is asking him, somewhere along the way. She doesn't remember where but once they get inside; once he has the chance to put the heavy pot down on the kitchen table or some fucking place she is going to slip in and give him a sliding hug. Hold on to him for a minute or more if he allows it, just breathing him in.
So now she remembers and now she is disentangling herself and it is the kitchen, she remembers the kitchen. She lets him go and leans back against the counter while he probably starts to make them some tea.
"There's a recipe inside. It's in Portugese but I figure you can probably puzzle it out. I mean, when I got fucked up enough they could almost understand me."
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