It’s a cold church. An old, crumbling Catholic church. It reminds her of a whale carcass, high vaulted ceilings with blackened timbres holding out the moonlight. Nothing breathes here. Maybe that’s what Zelda likes about this place - it offers comfort, structure, silence. Lilith never cared what churches offered before. Not truly.
If apparitions are miraculous celebrations in Catholic lore, she thinks on what her apparition might be. Melancholic, perhaps. It’s not got the hot, boiling poison of blood and devil spawn that she can usually feel clawing at the inside of her mind. Something about her feels quietened, raw, humble. Something in her feels true. She’s of course dressed for melancholy, the black leather coat swallowing her, offering a minimal heat against this frozen earthly world. Her hair is perfect, her skin is pale, her eyes are sharp. She doesn’t look like the same terrifying deity that reached into the heart of a small girl - one truly so young that it boggled her mind - and set it alight with life and hellfire and power.
Zelda is standing at the heart of the church, the blue light streaming down over her hair, dying it Prussian. She looks like she could drown in the stillness of her own mind, the yellow hands of the False God jutting over the dusty marbled floor. When Zelda turns, her high cheekbones create dark pockets underneath, her tired eyes weighted with that shadow and trauma.
T H A N K Y O U . F O R S A V I N G H E R .
Lilith doesn’t move. She does not so much as blink. It had happened before that she had appeared, and Zelda had snapped - asked where had she been, and why appear now? They are beyond all that, now. Zelda almost lost what she loves most, and she’s here to mourn something, to find a vessel to steady herself inside of, while the world rocks and roils beneath their feet. No one seeks out a Church unless they feel alone. Even Jonah, in the body of a blue whale, was not alone. Still. This church, this glass, all of this. It wasn’t good enough. Her alternative would be better, if she hadn’t skewered that faith with her harsh wars and cold, turned away gaze.
What does absolution mean? What does it feel like to be clean? Because she knows what it feels like to be aberrant, she understands the dual sworded nature of being feared, but more recently she has had a lump in her throat that fills with a bulge as real as if it was grave dirt: I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I? Disappointing the Dark Lord could be titillating when he was unable to hurt her for it. Disappointing her church, the girl - it had felt unpleasant even devoid of consequences. Consequences for her anyway. Learning to nurture was heavy work for honest hands, and hers were slick with birthing blood and gore. Vocalising her worries would mean the words died their death in the coffin of her mouth.
Enough of this.
❛ You’re welcome. ❜ Her syllables are sharp and slow, like a knife cutting through meat. It is a good start. She takes a step forward, her heels making the only sound in this empty chapel. Zelda is welcome. Welcome to her power and her Church and consideration. ❛ You may not be so quick to thank me once she settles into her newfound power. ❜ A joke, but a probing statement also; tell me indirectly - am I a scourge or a deity to you now? Tell me in half measures so I can preempt you if it hurts. It surprises that stony filter she wears like armour how deep-felt the care goes.
She stops at the very arched tip of the long-cast image of that perverse scene, etched in pretty glass. It reflected none of the flesh, none of the sand, none of the scales of the truth. A quiet and bloodless retelling. ❛ You like it ? ❜ Lilith asked, pale eyes leading to the pallid Eden. A small diversion, but she had a genuine curiosity too. This night felt deeper than any other, starry and long, like the entire sky was made of black glass with the images of Sabrina - her last creation - etched across it. If anyone spoke too loudly, the night itself would shatter. After the screaming, after the shock, after the death - there came shy, whispering life.
Lilith is closer, now. She has drifted from the pillar in barbed flight, her job of guarding the Cathedral abandoned ( was it ever a purpose at all ? ). Approached Zelda in that ghostly manner she so often travels by; a manner that makes Lilith a creature both lost and lethal.
Settles in. Power. Beautiful. Powerful. It’s a statement raw and blunt and ominous to anyone else, but Zelda fears no such thing. She wants all for Sabrina that she could not achieve. Zelda, thus, does not answer this. The weight of her response lies more familiar within the throat and it will rest there. Power or NOT. Martyr, messiah, child of the one they once called Lucifer. She is still my niece. Instead, her lips tighten; her exhale is louder. She doesn’t have a smoke; she wishes it were so, and that it might veil her eyes, suddenly. Instead, she glances, as if for the first time, at the stained glass window. Her eyes fall upon the serpent, the tree, the dark, cherrywood bark. From her peripheral she notices the hand of God, but only there.
There is something so small, yet so deep, in Lilith’s question. It surprises Zelda; she finds herself momentarily lost in the depth of its implication. Does she know? Does Lilith know what I know? Eyes soft, brow hardened, Zelda folds her arms in front of her chest, fingers gripping each opposing elbow gently. Such a vulnerable moment they have shared, and she is shaken by how much and how suddenly -- does Lilith know -- the vulnerability that runs here, let so violently, like blood from an old, forgotten wound ? Zelda is overcome with a desire to spare her; and thus she does not look her in the eye as she wishes to do. Instead, she tilts her own head, looking more thoroughly at the scene BELLOWING to be HEARD, SEEN, BELIEVED, before the both of them. She is trying to anchor herself, suddenly impregnated with the inescapable epiphany that this Mother of Demons beside her was once, simply, a being of the cosmos. A celestial creation of God, a woman, of no one’s rib but the dust, who lived in the Garden of Eden.
❛ What I’ve always found to be particularly . . . troubling . . . is the depiction of the snake, ❜ Zelda says at last, referring to the obviously sinister nature of the creature stained on the panel. ❛ It simply could not have been so obvious. Not nearly as impeding as you see here . . . as one might have imagined. Lucifer was clever -- surely he wouldn’t have appeared to Eve like that ? As dark and deadly, smothering that forbidden tree, fangs protruding in wait ? ❜ How could the girl have been so foolish, so as to fall prey to that ?
Zelda suddenly is overcome with sorrow; she swallows, instead, and composes herself.
She finally meets Lilith’s eyes, and strangely, she is not afraid, for she finds nothing but lingering sadness there. Her question seems accusatory but the contact they share sings a different song; what were you like -- what have you lost?
❛ The Catholics have such . . . ghastly imaginations. ❜
This is her final, offered judgment. She hopes it will suffice.
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