WITHOUT FAITH, THERE IS NO REFUGE.
The orator's voice quiets, dies. Ceases.
It ceases, but his bold timbre lives. It lingers in the rafters, echoes off the stones, and its quiet vibrations fall into the pews and sink within Celestine's mind, to proliferate there, to bring about holy images stained: black, red, black. Such is the glory of morning prayer.
WITHOUT FAITH, THERE IS NO REFUGE.
The bodies who leaden the pews echo the lesson. Now they lift their heads. There are ten or so sat there, all of them clad in the same white cassock, all of them very beautiful. They smell of iron, salt, incense.
One is you, you; another is Celestine. He doesn't consider you until he passes by where you are, whether that is standing, or moving towards the nave's exit, or going towards other parts of the cathedral, or even still sat in the pew.
Celestine's lovely face turning, his cold eyes widening by the barest inch:
"You..."
