A Prayer Meant

     Rhys walked up High Street, his arms folded into his robes, gently humming to himself. The road, long ago cleared of the rusted remains of broken-down cars, shaded over in the comfortable shade of trees grown tall since before the Fall, gave him a sense of hope. Spring and greenery always did. Once, they struggled to reach the second story windows of the surrounding buildings, now life towered over third story windows while birds and gray squirrels skittered about their branches.

     Remains of old black metal arches every two blocks reminded pedestrians of days past. A lifetime ago, the electricity warmed the metal with an LED glow, but now only on the Kritarchy holidays would some of them would be lit by torches and lanterns. While much of the world decayed in silence, High Street experienced a revival. While much of Columbus had collapsed, with windows shattered and building facades crumbling, here, windows gleamed with new glass, and masons chiseled new dates and new etchings into store fronts. Vendors hawked their wares, and kids played in the street.

     Citizens of the Kritarchy nodded and waved to Rhys and his companion, both recognized for the simple but distinct red robes draped over their shoulders like graduation stoles. As they progressed further away from the beating heart of the Kritarchy at Saint Josephs, they found themselves pressed with requests for blessings of the day, protection from the night, and even for food, which the priests often handed out.

     The simple morning routine of baking bread: stirring wet and dry ingredients together whit his wooden spoon, watching the steady rise in the warmth of the basements, pounding the loaves down with bare knuckles before letting hem rise again and working them to smooth shining ball, reset Rhys’s mind every morning for what was to come. Typically relegated to the deacons, he regularly volunteered for the chore, and the smell of the sourdough and starter came unbidden to his memory. 

     “Come on, Blue!” Rhys called and whistled.

     “Why do you keep him around?” asked Franklyn.

     “The kids love him,” Rhys said.

     “He smells.”

     “If you slept outside and lived off scraps, you’d smell too.”

     “We do live off scraps,” said Franklyn. Rhys raised an eyebrow at his fellow priest, but Franklyn smiled. Rhys jumped back a little as Franklyn poked him in the ribs beneath his robes, easily catching bone. “Some of us off less scraps than others.”

     “I’d like to see you try to get rid of him. Blue knows where the bread is baked.”

Blue trotted up beside Rhys, walking at his side in lock step. He was short to Rhys’s tall easy stride. His black fur had just a hint of purple and blue in the right light, thus the name. Every morning before first meal, Blue rested outside the priest’s apartment by Saint Joseph’s rear halls, waiting with his head lying across crossed paws. Nobody knew how he got in and out of the compound. Every night he waited for a scratch behind the ears before he headed off to his nighttime excursions.

     “You could bathe him.”

     “Would you like to help me try?” asked Rhys. Franklyn smiled in response. “How long will you be in Union today?” Rhys added.

     “It is a small gathering. Deacon Mathew is already there preparing for the burial. After the service I’ll finish with the ritual blessing of the boundaries. If laity follow…”

     He shrugged lightly under his robes. Rhys understood. Sanctification of the old cemetery was as much for upholding of tradition as it was to be witnessed by the laity as upholding tradition. Each month and year that they continued on and the Kritarchy improved the lives of the people, the more followers they gathered and the more tangible good came of the daily patterns of the church.

Rhys smiled at the cycle. “This is my stop,” he said as he nodded his head down one of the side streets.

     “Go with God.”

     “Go with God,” Rhys answered.

     Scratching Blue on the head, he walked up the side roads, away from the buildings in better repair, and toward Tuttle Park. Set low, down toward the river, the surrounding area lacked the hopeful shine areas closer by the cathedral maintained.

     First a building with a broken window, and then front steps falling off sideways from their old-world perch. An old plastic tent, with fabric impossibly thin yet waterproof, patched in several places, stood pitched in a back yard, propped up in a semi-permanent position under a tree. No sharp line proclaimed “poorer neighborhood,” only a gradual decline. 

     Families sat on the stoop in groups of ten and twelve, avoiding the heat of overcrowded buildings. Though not yet noon, the mid-summer heat shot the temperature on top floors to well over a hundred degrees. At least they all maintained access to running water from the Olentangy River.

Several children ran by and reached out playfully to pet Blue on the hide quarters. All fifty pounds of the dog trembled with excitement. His tail shook his posterior as he walked.

     “You don’t need my permission boy, go.”

     Blue took off at a loping sprint, running after the children, his spotted tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Rhys wondered if the dog spoke fluent English.

People moved on ahead of him, running from building to building with news of his arrival. Within two blocks a small crowd pressed in around him, and the rush of adrenaline at the claustrophobia only people could bring on arrived with it. They reached hands toward him seeking physical contact, and he began to methodically pray loud enough for all in the gathering to hear.

     He reached into the bag that he had brought with him, tied about his chest like a backpack, and drew out small loaves of bread two inches wide and a half foot long. Each one could feed perhaps two people as a snack, but still it was always better than nothing. He handed them out, one at a time, holding them with two hands, and trying to place them into the waiting grasp of the smallest, weakest, or least forceful of the needy. Each loaf left with a blessing on his lips.

     Priests of Kritarchy took on their own particular preferred meditative chants. Rhys’s kept his short, to keep it true. Prayers without meaning were empty words bereft of power, and many of these people were strangers. His chant remained as honest as possible without knowing personally, all those he blessed. Many priests memorized the old prayers, but he had constructed one in his own limited Latin, reciting the words over and over again.

     “Benedicat te Dominus et custodiat te. Tutus semper esto.”

     Even without understanding the words, the act of prayer held power over the crowd. The crux of Orandimancy rested as much in his belief, as in theirs. They knew the language of Orandimancy of the church to be Latin. Knowing he was praying over them sufficed for many to warp the probabilities and realities of their day.

     Rhys stood in the middle of the street, red brick buildings, tents and temporary housing all around. Some hundred encircled the priest, with more coming. He rationed his doling out of bread, but it was always too little for too many.

     Constant touch drew his attention from one side to the other. He had never grown accustomed to it. A hand brushed his fingertips, the weight of an arm pressed on his shoulder, and the tugging grasp at the hem of his robes as he walked, all threatening to pull his attention off his words. His lips moved of their own accord, and his mind focused on the prayer, to mean them and not let them become empty symbols to the people he served. Kavanagh. All the while, he scanned the crowd trying to find in the cacophony that which needed his true attention.

     Today the detail found him.

     Rhys worked hard at remembering the names of at least two hundred of the locals on sight, and recognizing a good deal more, but he did not know the woman who locked his attention. Her brown eyes met his, and she held his stare hard enough, and long enough he stuttered two words of his litany. She strode away from the periphery of the cluster, toward the tree line and the old park proper where walking paths slowly surrendered ground to tree roots. He lost sight of her when she turned a corner.

     Small details of her appearance lodged in his brain. Most starkly, she wore no shoes. Her brown hair, braided in a complex pattern of at least seven plats, tussled about as she moved, frayed and loose, clearly done days ago. Her clothing was in good repair, if patched and worn, hailed from before the Fall.

He lingered in the street amid the throngs, and listened to the hopes of those who needed an ear. Small private bouts of conversation amid the turmoil of bodies ebbed and flowed. An old man missed his children, now many years gone. He lived with friends but lacked a family. A young woman feared she would never find love, and wouldn’t know when she saw it. She had confided in him many times before, always fearful of being alone. A middle-aged man with bags beneath his eyes deeply lamented his inability to properly provide for his family as a part time farmer. Two emotional hours passed before Rhys could gather full breaths free of prayer or consolation

     The church already offered so many avenues of food distribution and tried to find homes for all. They worked tirelessly to find more buildings which could be made habitable, and repaired old apartments, but the making of glass, and the reclamation of the old factories for building new materials lurched back to life but slowly, like a drunk staggering in the dark for a light switch. Even when repairs were feasible, finding people with the right skills proved difficult. So much knowledge had been lost. He rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his thinning hairline, and looked again to where the young woman disappeared. Responsibility to meet with Father Franklyn when his duty completed came second to the needs of the laity. No doubt Franklyn still walked his incense and prayers about Union Cemetery. The blessing of the place was no small task, and one that very publicly soothed minds.

     His heart hung heavy with their needs. His mind ran ragged searching for answers which did not present themselves, and he remembered almost too late about the woman and her intense stare.

     He walked toward the wooded line at the edge of the cracked and ruined blacktop. A walking path ran into the woods, where tree roots had pushed up the tended lane and grown up around it, pressing in close like a tunnel of bright sunlit green out of a fairytale. One or two more people waved as he went, but none approached him. In the distance, children laughed and a dog barked playfully. A good enough start for one day.

     He turned the same corner she did and looked down the long, elevated lane which ran through the woods. Trees had encroached over the years but the old way remained, lifted up six inches on gravel and hard pack, and he followed it to its end, where a wider lane, with barest hint of yellow paint, ran the length of the park. Only a small stretch of trees separated him from the stream running fast just out of sight, swollen from recent rainfall.

     “You are a very brave man, priest, to follow a woman you do not know.”

     He turned slowly toward the voice off to his left.

     “You are a very patient woman to wait for me. Besides, what do I have to fear?” he answered.

     “Strangers demand things in the poorer parts of the district,” she answered.

     He nodded his head solemnly. “You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal,” Rhys answered honestly, if stealing the quote. “Though I wouldn’t be much to look at walking back to the church in my undergarments. And,” he added “it would be a slow walk, if you chose to take my shoes.”

She seemed to flush at the oblique mention of her bare feet, but she still stood too deeply in the shade of the wood for Rhys to be certain.

     “You help Abnormals?”

     “The church helps everyone.”

     “Your church,” she said. “Are you really a healer? Like a real Biomancer?”

     “We are Orandimancers,” Rhys answered. “We do not heal, but we may ask for the healing. We don’t charge like the Biomancers do, if that’s what you mean.”

He looked to her feet. They sides of both her heels showed hard callouses. She showed no signs of any other injury.

     “Who needs my help?”

     “My father,” she said.

     “May I know your name?” No small ask, Rhys understood. There was a new belief spreading through the Kritarchy that there was power in names. Power to bind and power to harm. Bad enough they had to contend with fear of voodoo and magical images through Iconomancy and the Idemancy. Next might be Nomenmancy.

     “I’m Krisha.”

     She turned and walked along the old bike trail to the south. She followed it without another word, assuming he would follow. The scent of fresh water running below, and sounds of small waves lapping against the banks, filtered between trees. She strode confidently, without glancing back at him, pushing aside branches and overgrown bushes which had almost swallowed the path. She marched out of the park and across a pre-Fall bridge, its tall white supports still standing against the weather of time, and led him west away from town center. They passed under the struts of a massive concrete and steel overpass partially deconstructed for raw materials in new construction.

     As they progressed west, homes grew infrequent. The buildings remained, however a state of decay slowly became the norm. She led him a full ten minutes in a straight line, in apparent contentment.

     “Krisha is a rare name,” he offered up. “I haven’t heard it before.”

     “We are from the north,” she answered.

     They walked several more minutes in silence.

     “You live far outside the town.”

     “They don’t like my father.”

     “Because he is Abnormal?”

     “Because he sees the truth of people.”

     She looked back at him, and cast him a stern appraising look. She did not look at his robes the way other people did, as a kind of status, but instead seemed to see their distinct patterns of red and white and threaded gold as a challenge. She met his eyes again briefly. The intensity of their first stolen glance remained, and grew stronger at close range.

     Like father like daughter perhaps?

     In a non-descript neighborhood another ten minutes west she made several. Once, long ago it would have been suburbia, much the same as any other suburbia. Now the earth swallowed the homes, uniformly dilapidated, with roofs collapsed, and foundations crushed by trees and bushes.

     She led him to a simple one-story brick façade home, chipped in many places, but with windows still intact which had recently been chopped free of the overgrown bushes. While its paint had long since peeled away from window frames, the wood had not visibly rotted. The overcrowded car port held the remains of a vehicle, tied down by Virginia Creeper like a Gulliver in Lilliputian land. Its wheels had long ago rotted and sunken into the concrete, surrounded by leaves and tuffs of grass. The screen door leaned on the side of the house, no longer on its hinges.

     Krisha waved him inside.

     “Just you and your father?” he asked.

     “Yes.” She didn’t look back to answer him.

     The house sat squat and dark. Curtains drawn across the windows blocked direct daylight, which instead crept around the edges in insufficient, thin white strips. Interior walls, covered in an old-fashioned faux-wood paneling from floor to ceiling, absorbed those beams, adding to the living room’s shadows.

     On the couch in the front room a man was stretched out. Rhys judged that this man was at least as tall as Rhys himself. Covered in two layers of blankets, his eyes were closed. Although the floor creaked under Rhys's feet, the man did not stir. He did not react when Krisha sat down in a chair by his side, or pat his head gently, and straightened locks of matted white hair back into place.

     She spoke words that Rhys did not understand. “Ca va aller papa. J'ai amené un prêtre.”

     Rhys moved closer to the prone man, leaned over and then he knelt on the floor by his side. He touched his forehead gently, but his temperature was normal without evidence of fever. The older man smelled of stale sweat, and a hint of body odor wafted up from the covers, not offensive but not altogether pleasant. Krisha amounted to barely half his mass. Moving him would have been no easy task.

     “What is his name?”

     “Phillipe.”

     “What happened?”

     “Six days ago, he met a man, and he saw something about him which made him stop eating. I do not understand why. Three days later he grew weak, and went to bed early. I could not wake him, and I cannot get food into him. I have tried the local mancers’ but they couldn’t help him. They took our money though.”

She patted his head again, her fingers lightly tracing the lines on his furrowed brow.

     “What do you mean he saw something?”

     “Your church people would call him, ‘vates.’ Others call him a fortune teller.” She veritably spit the word church.

     Fortune teller was a strong claim, and not one the church took lightly. Questions of free will abounded in a world of fact being literally enforced by belief. Those who claimed to foresee futures, or manipulate them, were investigated by the church for veracity. So far, they had all been hucksters, looking for money or to bend the will of locals for their own ends. When found to be liars, the church exposed them, very publicly, and very loudly, to undo some part of their damage. He understood her reticence to ask a priest for help.

     “People are uncomfortable around him. He doesn’t have control of it all the time, and he sees things he shouldn’t. It makes people … scared. Scared he will see their truths.”

     Rhys’s thoughts went too many directions. Fortune tellers before the fall could demand exorbitant prices for guesswork and tricks. With magic behind his visions now, he could be a very rich man, or a manipulator of politicians and other powerful men. Yet, he lived in a run-down old house on the edge of the city. Perhaps he could be exactly what she said, an innocent chicken farmer, disliked by his neighbors.

     “Who did he meet with? Can you describe him? Or name him?”

     “A squirrely man. Small. Bald, but young. He shaved his head, I think. I did not know him, but he was always nervous.”

     Rhys nodded, then leaned away from her prone father and stood. The pictures on the wall depicted a different family, from before the Fall. Christmas decorations covered in dust waited to be returned to storage on the walls, but the furniture had been readjusted. A low table sat in the middle of the room, but its feet had left permanent indentations in the rug near the sofa where it must have sat before. Old board games covered the tabletop. One looked to have been paused mid-game, with cards and pieces set up for the turn yet to come.

     The house did not speak to the nature of the man. It said visitor, not homeowner.

     "I need more," Rhys said as his eyes searched the room.

     “More what?” Krisha asked.

     From outside came the sounds of chickens clucking and scratching at the earth. Rhys sighed and turned back to Krisha. “I need to understand why I am praying and who I am praying for.”

     “Why?”

     He considered how to answer that question. He wrestled with it himself more often than he would like to share. Only the bishop and archbishop heard the confessions of a priest, and even those he didn’t enjoy giving, though he dutifully did so.

     “If I don’t understand, I can’t be true to my orders.”

     “Your order?”

     “My orders,” Rhys answered. Her brow furrowed. She looked at his colors again skeptically and he tried to think of a simple example that couldn’t offend a stranger he didn’t know.

     “Imagine if tomorrow it was supposed to rain, but there is also the wedding of every woman in the city. All of the people are praying for it not to rain, because it would make the day more difficult, less pretty, or less perfect. At the same time, imagine all the farmers in the surrounding villages, praying for rain, because their crops need it. Which prayer is the right prayer, when they can’t both be right?”

     “What does this have to do with you?”

     “Gives us this day our daily bread. Thy kingdom come and all that,” Rhys answered. “I have to understand, and believe in what I pray for. I have to believe that it is right.”

     “You are asking if saving my father’s life is right?” A sharp edge of anger rose in her voice.

     “We all pass away, one day,” he said softly. “Death is not itself the enemy. It is a sleep, until we are called back.”

     “You pretend to help people, but when they truly need you, your doctrine stands in the way? Next you will tell me that, ‘He works in mysterious ways?’”

     Venom dripped from her tongue.

     “I’ve never liked that phrase,” Rhys said. “It implies a failing in something larger than mortals, when more often the failing would be in us. Please, tell me about him. Tell me a story about your father. Something personal.”

     “So, you can decide to listen, and then not help him anyway?”

     “I promise you, that this robe, and my title means everything to me. I will do whatever I can do to help, but I can do nothing if I don’t understand the need.”

     “He’s dying. Isn’t that enough need?”

     “Everyone sleeps in the end. Tell me about him, about the two of you together. Tell me why to beseech our lord to save him.”

     Not their long-term home then. If they had been in the Kritarchy long she would understand not only how Orandimancy worked, but likely his role specifically.

     Krisha leaned back into the chair, her arms crossed on her chest. Her eyes scanned the priest up and down several times, and Rhys wasn’t certain she would say anything at all. Her descriptions were simple at first. She told Rhys about their daily routines and household in short clipped sentences. Utilitarian activities about tending the flock, foraging, and cooking out back, gathering wood, and day to day existence. Only when she discussed the evening activities did it feel like she told him anything unique to them. She nodded to the table in the middle of the room.

     “We play board games together at night by candlelight. We found some in this house, but we’ve always had a few with us. We take the ones we like the most each time we have to move. My father makes dice, throwing sticks and figures from wood. He sells some, but he keeps others.” 

     She pointed to the kitchen table where several small blocks of wood and small knives with hooks, different angle crooks and serrated edges lay, waiting for his return. Shavings of wood, scattered on the old linoleum floor, curled up around the edges like a balding shag carpet.

     “Not as common a pastime as it once was,” Rhys said. “What started you playing board games?”

     She uncrossed her arms and pulled her chair closer to her father, her arm reaching down absently to rest on his shoulder.

     “In the winters I don’t like to go outside much. It is too cold.”

     Rhys stole a glance to her still bare feet. It was summer now, but by early fall it would be difficult without shoes. He nodded for her to go on.

     “He started to make things for me when I was small. Maybe six? Other kids threw snowballs at me… but they had stones inside them. They hurt. He said he was scared that I would…” She paused. Rhys knew the small verbal tic well enough from confessions, as a person traded a detail for one slightly less damning. A hidden truth they were not willing to share yet. “He was scared for me. So, I started to spend more time inside. I read a lot, out loud to him sometimes. I would sit near windows and talk to him while he worked, or while he whittled. One time when we had to move, we found a big collection of games in an old closet. He used to sell things we found, like the old-world scavengers, but this time we kept them all, and we would make stories as we played, like the things on the board were all real. The games became our safe worlds.”

     The happiness in her eyes drifted away to something more remote, and more negative emotions played on the surface.

     “One time, when I was maybe ten, I was down by a river picking up the drift wood from along the bank. The old worn timber made some of the best toys. The grains are already worn down, the pieces are dense … anyway. I didn’t know I wasn’t alone. There were a pack of boys and girls there and they began to call me names and pointing at me. One of the boys shoved me, and I fell and hit my head on one of the branches.”

     She lightly reached a hand up to touch the side of her head, where a light line, the hint of a scar, reached from her temple back into the brown braids of her hair.      “Papa was there. I don’t know how, he was simply there. I didn’t know it was him at first, I just felt the hands. They were warm, strong, gentle, calloused, and they wrapped around my arm, and touched my head and lifted me up. He didn’t yell. He didn’t rail at them, or threaten any of them. He looked at them all, one at a time. They couldn’t meet his gaze…”

     Rhys had listened intently to her, trying to tease out the nuances of her words, as her story came to life. Flashes of light danced about the room, scattered at first and then more coherent, like pictures he had seen of a hologram from before the Fall. It moved in time to her narration, and he watched her father from her perspective, like a projected memory, standing tall, proudly defending his daughter, and saw no malice in Phillipe’s eyes.

     He witnessed them packing a cart of books, games, and a second small cart of chickens to start the flock over again, somewhere new. Her words bled out of her into visual images that he could see.

     They moved again and again. He felt her pain, a stabbing at his heart and shortness of breath as if the loss had became his own. Another shift, and she was a little bit older. He felt her fear of others learning about her power, and her father’s fear of others hurting her if she was alone. Rhys felt Krisha’s sadness every time she had caught her father’s special look when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. A torrent of emotion surrounded a small still harbor in the trackless undulating sea, at a coffee table in a dark home, between two couches.

It all came so fast, and so powerfully, Rhys was barely able to keep his feet under him. He stumbled away from the image, but it followed him, her words anchored to his mind like coral on rock. He shook his head and, as she stopped speaking, the images and impressions faded.

     He looked at her, and she was sitting as still as a deer which had seen a wolf. Her hand stopped stroking her father’s head and she looked to the priest as he took the event in.

     They moved every few years.

     “You’re a…” He searched for the right word. “Verbomancer?” 

     “No!” she said. “No,” she said again, more calmly.

     “I’m an Abnormal, I can’t always control the images, or the feelings. But I’ve never hurt anyone with the words, I swear it!”

     Rhys took a calm, slow step forward, holding his hands wide and open, trying to show he meant no harm to her or her father.

     “He calls me a storyteller.” Her eyes settled back down to her father, and they shimmered wet. “He says that someday people will be truly accepting of us, and someday they will all love to sit down and listen to my stories. For now, we have to be patient, wait. I keep trying to control it.”

     A tear rolled down her cheek and she didn’t try to catch it.

     “I make up stories about each of the little pieces of art, before he sells them. They feel more real to us when we do that.” She sniffled lightly. “We don’t move every few years because of him. People rarely notice his skill unless he wants them to. We move because of me.”

     The sheen of moisture on her eyes thickened when she spoke the last sentence, and tears wanted to form, but were held back in the presence of a stranger. She no longer met his eyes with challenge or at all for that matter. His heart pounded in his chest, and he wanted to reach out and hold her close and promise that she would be fine, and that her father would be ok. He found himself overwhelmed with remorse for the situation that they found themselves in, and a desire to see it fixed. He could not change who the man was, what she was, or how many others felt about Abnormals, the gifted among them, even so many years later, but perhaps he could beg for what little help he could give them.

     “A parent’s love…” Rhys whispered.

     He reached out a hand toward the forehead of the man, touching him gently the way his daughter had touched him. He ran his fingers across the man’s brow and knelt down by his side, looking from loving protector to a young woman with a concomitantly outstanding beautiful gift, and terrible curse.

     The sleeping man turned his head just a hint, and his lips whispered a word in his un-waking sleep that Rhys could not understand.

     “I will pray tonight.” Rhys said to her, as much as to the man.

     With great effort Rhys stood again, resting a hand on his knee and pushing himself to a standing position. He waited a brief time, giving her the opportunity to speak again, or for the father to move, and when they did neither, he nodded, feeling his time in the home done, and started toward the door.

She rose from her chair with a squeak of wood after he made it to the doorway.

     “He called you guardian,” Krisha said.

     “Some people call me a guarded one, yes.”

     “You are a Protected? You have seen your angel?”

     “That is what they tell me,” Rhys answered as he left.

     He did not want to go into the details. How many details did people hold from the age of five which were reliable anyway? He saw her in snippets sometimes, with her halo and glowing light, leading him through a skyscraper. She had called him away from his friends when they went to the van. He remembered being hungry, but she had been so insistent. The adults who had found him had described a luminescent six-winged angel who guarded him from being bargained off for canned food, in fallen old New York City. A lifetime ago. 

     Rhys always kept to his word. He had never once made the promise to pray for a person for whom he did not pray earnestly. The cornerstone of the Kritarchy, and his priesthood lay in truth. That promise was too great to consider breaking, and so he never made it lightly. That night the urge to pray washed over him fervently, though he could not place why. The woman was sad, but no more so than many who were sad. The man was an Abnormal, yes, but he had prayed for many of them over the years. They were people like anyone else, with needs, wants, feelings and motivations. The pair felt tied to him in a way he couldn’t explain.

     He went straight from his meeting with her to the chapel at the heart of the Kritarchy, forgetting entirely to meet again with Father Franklyn on his way back from Union Cemetery. The evening crew who normally dusted down the building, and wiped up the floors and the deacons who cleaned the chancel saw him there in the front row, kneeling throughout the night. They did not bother or approach him. He prayed until the morning sun just crested the horizon and the first hints of light found their way into Saint Joseph’s cathedral.

     He staggered out of the church, exhausted both from the earnest nature of his prayers and the lack of sleep. He only barely registered the shaggy figure that lopped up to his side and nuzzled him in the thigh with his forehead.

     “Hey, Blue. Good play time yesterday?”

     He scratched its head and the dog followed him every step as he returned to the apartments around the back of the church. Normally he would go through the inner doors, but he hoped sunlight would reset his rhythm for the day. Rhys’s steps were slow and lacked any bounce, but Blue’s click-clack of toe nails kept an energetic cadence. He wouldn’t have time for a nap but did require a brief wash and a change of clothes. Perhaps that would wake him enough for morning duties to be done adequately, if not well.

     “Father Rhys?”

     He looked up, saw nobody in front of him, and turned to look behind. A young boy on the other side of the street waggled a package at him. It was a bundle of wrapped brown paper tied off with a simple bit of twine.

     “Father Rhys,” the boy repeated and jogged across to meet him. “This was to be delivered to your apartment this morning but you weren’t home. I was bringing it to the church for you.”

     “When did it arrive?”

     “This morning, very early, as we were sorting the deliveries. A strange lady with no shoes delivered it. Didn’t say a word.”

     He looked at the package, which had only his name on the outside. It was surprisingly heavy and sat lumpy in his hand.

     “Please, wait a moment.”

     Father Rhys untied the neat bow of twine. Inside the package sat eight fresh unbruised apples and a single slip of paper. He reached in and took out the small note.

     - He woke this morning. Perhaps my father did not speak wrongly. You are not the guarded, but guardian. Thank you. K. –

     Tension Rhys hadn’t realized he still carried dissipated from the back of his neck. He still couldn’t place why the old man meant so much to him. Perhaps he would understand in time.

     “Not my will but yours.”

     “What, father?”

     “Sorry. Please, take these to the morning mess in the clergy house?”

Reaching in, Rhys kept one apple out of the package as well as the note. He handed the rest to the child.

     “Yes, father.”

     Rhys continued toward home, and bit off a piece of the fruit to hold in his hand. He looked down to the dog who wagged his tail expectantly and tossed a wedge into the air which disappeared down Blue’s muzzle.

     Rhys smiled and Blue made happy snarfing noises. A good enough start for the day.