Begone From Holy Grounds

An ugly, dry laugh writhes out of his throat, spilling between his teeth and sinking in the air. Lost. It was one of the promises they’d made in the frigid classrooms of the seminary. All members of the flock would be guided so gently, kept from straying. They would be both shepherd and lamb, their life mapped out on a nice winding path. Never lost, not even at a distance. Ambrose was supposed to be cradled and held, warm in the promising embrace of never being lost again.

“You know what I want? I still dream of it, heavens above. I want to smoke a nice cheap cigarette, the kind of cigarette brand that’s from a country that doesn’t mandate all the consequence images. We don’t even use decent red wine at Mass, it’s boxed wine funnelled into a bottle twice my age. A gin and tonic to start maybe, then something with vodka,” his voice nearly breaks, head sagging down between his forearms. Even then, the crashes had felt amazing.

“Some days, it feels like it’s not even real. Any of this. When’s the last time you saw an angel delivering a message from the heavens? I know it’s the argument, you gotta believe it all without doubt but…but it just doesn’t feel real some days.”

He is making things worse.

Not surprising, Harper is terrible at talking to people without a script, and even more terrible at comforting others, or so Oliver tells him. He didn't used to think it was that bad, after all, he could guide the people in his parlour through their grief with ease, but his son had told him that so much that he had no choice but to believe it.

Harper swallows dryly, feeling his 'heart', so to speak, beat faster. The priest is having a crisis, and he is talking to the one angel who is so terrible at being an angel that nobody noticed when he left Heaven.

Without his consent or notice, his graces starts to seep from him, a slight scent of smoke in the air. Calm down. It is time to be calm.

"Father Ambrose, I..." Harper hesitates, feeling shame and loss and many things he doesn't know how to express. "I'm sorry."

Seminary made it seem worthwhile; the crowds of people filling the classrooms and their thighs pressed up against one another in pews. A bustling chatter of prayers and the low, radiating hums of their music. It felt like heaven, warm and noisy and rhythmic. Ambrose would breathe in the incense and it drew him back to warm, sweet smoke that used to curl around him, permeating his hair for days on end. “I do all of that and-and it’s still dead! Dead in there, dead out here, dead just like-just everywhere,” he sighs, breathing out in short bursts and struggling to keep breathing in.

“Do you see them? They’re all dead, comfortably dead and their bones finally all still, G-d.” Slumping into his own arms, face pressed up into the rough sleeves of the cassock dragging down his neck like sandpaper. He can smell it, wrapping around his lungs and strangling his bronchioles. Not gradual, creeping like a fire being lit. Walking right into a burning building, heavy ashes filtering through his mouth. Pulse dropping down in a few seconds, grass dancing in front of his eyes. “G-d…”

Grey hair has slowly snuck into his hair, stealing away the edges of his youth and forcibly aging him through stress alone. Neither of the resident priests could keep up with it much longer; Father Abbot had been in hospital for two months with pneumonia the last winter and Father Jack had started to twitch a little too often to be blamed on the whiskey he’d sneak into his sermons. Leaving him, waiting for death to bury its hands into his aching bones and snatch him to the afterlife. What time was there?

“You still run it, and you must be about my age, maybe a little younger. My looks, if you’ll excuse the vanity, don’t exude my youth,” he sucks in a bite of hair, mentally assigning a half dozen Hail Mary’s for his pride. “Really, I don’t have the time to do anything new. A cross to bear, I suppose.” Ambrose’s laugh is empty, staring at the wilted crabapple trees lining the yard.

Technically, he could say he’d helped. Sitting confessionals every other week, where the same rotation of nine people would confess to their tiny, petty sins. Jealousy over a neighbours successful garden, the wandering eye of a widow, and more confessions to their desires than he would dare to remember. “I don’t think I…I’m not sure. What am I even doing anymore? I feel like I’m lying to people every day, they never work to do anything but complain!”

Harper is not comfortable with this conversation. For many reasons. He should have just walked away, but that's not in his nature. His stress calls one of his little ones over, and the wasp lands on his hand. Glancing down at it, it calms him a little, and he relaxes his shoulders as much as he can.

The young priest (everyone is young to him) is deep within a crisis of faith, and Harper's not the right person to help.

"The church is the pillar of the community," the angel murmurs, trying to push past his own feelings on the topic of organized human religion. "Although I've noticed that with your aging colleagues, things haven't been... as vibrant as they once were."

He's glad Fathers Abbot and Jack don't mention the fact that Harper was the one who buried all of their families.

"Would revitalizing the community help you feel less lost, Father?"

An ugly, dry laugh writhes out of his throat, spilling between his teeth and sinking in the air. Lost. It was one of the promises they’d made in the frigid classrooms of the seminary. All members of the flock would be guided so gently, kept from straying. They would be both shepherd and lamb, their life mapped out on a nice winding path. Never lost, not even at a distance. Ambrose was supposed to be cradled and held, warm in the promising embrace of never being lost again.

“You know what I want? I still dream of it, heavens above. I want to smoke a nice cheap cigarette, the kind of cigarette brand that’s from a country that doesn’t mandate all the consequence images. We don’t even use decent red wine at Mass, it’s boxed wine funnelled into a bottle twice my age. A gin and tonic to start maybe, then something with vodka,” his voice nearly breaks, head sagging down between his forearms. Even then, the crashes had felt amazing.

“Some days, it feels like it’s not even real. Any of this. When’s the last time you saw an angel delivering a message from the heavens? I know it’s the argument, you gotta believe it all without doubt but…but it just doesn’t feel real some days.”

There’s an extra weight of age clinging to his face, squeezing the edges of his face soft. Uncomfortably heavy, attempting to mould Ambrose into the vision of an aged, rotting vicar that had a good ten years left if he laid off the salt. Vainly dreaming of the youth that’s slowly being contorted under the pressure of his droning prayers. It had made him some kind of a man, solid and stable.

A feeble air of being self made came from the devotion, an act of creation. Grapes into wine and wheat into bread, ritualistically studying in the hopes it saves him. “I can’t just abandon it, it’s too late now. I mean, look at me. There’s nothing left now. I don’t think I can switch careers right now.” There wasn’t much left in the beginning, a theology major in university who could just barely make it to the end.

“You’re about my age, aren’t you? Already running a full own funeral parlour. It’s feeling a little harder to keep any faith in what I do. You, you see it every day. People believe in what you do.”

"There is always time to change," Harper tells the priest calmly, radiating an air of kindness and stability. He might be young, for an angel, but even a fledgling such as him is older than any human alive.

At the question about his age, Harper's smile breaks a little and he chuckles, trying to hide his sudden nervousness. "I couldn't say," he murmurs politely.

Redirect the human before he thinks too much about it. "Well, the parlor is a family business that passed down to me," he tells Ambrose. "So it's not really the same."

Faith is such a tricky topic. Harper doesn't feel like he should be talking about it at all. It doesn't feel genuine. Because he knows what is real. "Do you not feel like you help people, Father?"

#a deathly sign #a quiet prayer #unending sermons

Grey hair has slowly snuck into his hair, stealing away the edges of his youth and forcibly aging him through stress alone. Neither of the resident priests could keep up with it much longer; Father Abbot had been in hospital for two months with pneumonia the last winter and Father Jack had started to twitch a little too often to be blamed on the whiskey he’d sneak into his sermons. Leaving him, waiting for death to bury its hands into his aching bones and snatch him to the afterlife. What time was there?

“You still run it, and you must be about my age, maybe a little younger. My looks, if you’ll excuse the vanity, don’t exude my youth,” he sucks in a bite of hair, mentally assigning a half dozen Hail Mary’s for his pride. “Really, I don’t have the time to do anything new. A cross to bear, I suppose.” Ambrose’s laugh is empty, staring at the wilted crabapple trees lining the yard.

Technically, he could say he’d helped. Sitting confessionals every other week, where the same rotation of nine people would confess to their tiny, petty sins. Jealousy over a neighbours successful garden, the wandering eye of a widow, and more confessions to their desires than he would dare to remember. “I don’t think I…I’m not sure. What am I even doing anymore? I feel like I’m lying to people every day, they never work to do anything but complain!”

Suffocated by the dog collar, Ambrose’s fingers try slipping beneath and easing the pressure around his neck. Years prior, it would’ve been a circle of neon green glow-sticks letting the seas of people know he was available. Sometimes, he can imagine the ghostly sensation whenever the chemical concoction inside would break and splash down his skin. That had been real - tangible evidence his faith was solid in this world. Whatever he’d had to trust in any form of heaven was conceptual, airing on the side of fictional.

“Makes two of us,” he dryly laughs, scratching at his cracked lips that keep splitting with every worry he abuses them with. “Trick of the trades, right?” Ambrose picks at the fabric of his cassock, staring down where the grass meets the hems. They’d spent hours in the fields like that; whispering underneath the music and the crackling fires. It must’ve looked devilish, occult.

“Are you faithful? I don’t think I’ve seen you in church here, but maybe you go to another. Or a different faith entirely. I’ve just,” he sighs, finally turning to look over at Harper. “Do you ever feel like you’re in the wrong profession? That you’ve just gone for the next best thing, when there might’ve been something else that would be more…anything?”

Around Harper's throat, there is a yellow ribbon. Certainly not the most conventional of neck accessories, especially for one who dresses mostly in dark clothes, never showing off more skin than that of his hands and face. Beneath it, a glowing golden circle, imprinted into his skin the moment the star had split open, sending him tumbling out into the Father's creation.

"Sometimes it's easier to listen than to speak," Harper prods gently, always calm, always strangely distant. "But speaking to another who can reply is good for the soul."

At the question, the angel smiles, hiding all the feelings that question elicits. "I am," he murmurs, "but I worship alone." Even knowing his prayers aren't being heard or answered by his Father, Harper still prays. Too ingrained in him.

The poor thing is having a crisis of faith. Oh, how familiar. Harper's soul aches for the little human. "You have travelled the path that you're on, Father," he starts, not wanting to make anything worse, "and you will keep traveling for as long as you need to. But there is nothing wrong in changing paths. If you do not feel well in your current role... I would never want someone to feel that way."

#a deathly sign #a quiet prayer #unending sermons

There’s an extra weight of age clinging to his face, squeezing the edges of his face soft. Uncomfortably heavy, attempting to mould Ambrose into the vision of an aged, rotting vicar that had a good ten years left if he laid off the salt. Vainly dreaming of the youth that’s slowly being contorted under the pressure of his droning prayers. It had made him some kind of a man, solid and stable.

A feeble air of being self made came from the devotion, an act of creation. Grapes into wine and wheat into bread, ritualistically studying in the hopes it saves him. “I can’t just abandon it, it’s too late now. I mean, look at me. There’s nothing left now. I don’t think I can switch careers right now.” There wasn’t much left in the beginning, a theology major in university who could just barely make it to the end.

“You’re about my age, aren’t you? Already running a full own funeral parlour. It’s feeling a little harder to keep any faith in what I do. You, you see it every day. People believe in what you do.”

People turn up in droves for the funerals, little kids clinging to the backs of legs in the procession and young adults tracing over the lines slowly setting into their faces. Double or even triple the number of their Sunday congregations as the number slowly dwindles down. Sunday school consists of exactly three children turning up every other week, about to age out of the program. For all the mention and promise of the church as an eternal staple of the community, they're going to sink into the ground like the rest of them. An untouched communal garden overgrown with thick bushels and brambles, suffocating around the sickly poplar and crabapple tree that never drops an unrotten apple. Desecrated Eden, another clawing reminder of how his faith might be misplaced in it all.

Ambrose remembers what it was like to breathe in the sweet smoke found in the private rooms, holding in each breath until his eyes prickled with tears, a gasping wheeze escaping him. That'd felt like heaven once. Shuffling around the church like he's damned there for all eternity is close enough. Thick, clumsy outlines of hymns roll through his head with every breath, eyes shut and pressed into the meat of his palms. "Oh good G-, goodness. Mr. Ward, right? Are you already leaving us?" Back quickly straightening as if a steel rods been driven through his spine, the priest looks back up to meet his gaze. "Really, I'm," he pauses, trying to find his voice again after the stretch of silence. "alright. Just a little displaced, I think"

The priest is not alright.

Harper has learned to read human body language and facial expressions. They're different from his siblings', but enough time has past that he can accurately read them. Most of the time. Some blunders are inevitable. The angel's own body language always seems stilted, a little awkward. Like it's missing something.

"Would you like to talk about it?" The redhead asks gently, moving to sit down next to Father Ambrose, a respectful distance away. His movements are careful, mindful of his sensitive and aching back. "I've been told I'm a good listener." Has to be, in his profession.

The funeral director has golden eyes with strange glowing circles for pupils, and yet, whenever humans look at him, that fact seems to erase itself from their minds. It's better if no one ever finds out.

Not again.

Suffocated by the dog collar, Ambrose’s fingers try slipping beneath and easing the pressure around his neck. Years prior, it would’ve been a circle of neon green glow-sticks letting the seas of people know he was available. Sometimes, he can imagine the ghostly sensation whenever the chemical concoction inside would break and splash down his skin. That had been real - tangible evidence his faith was solid in this world. Whatever he’d had to trust in any form of heaven was conceptual, airing on the side of fictional.

“Makes two of us,” he dryly laughs, scratching at his cracked lips that keep splitting with every worry he abuses them with. “Trick of the trades, right?” Ambrose picks at the fabric of his cassock, staring down where the grass meets the hems. They’d spent hours in the fields like that; whispering underneath the music and the crackling fires. It must’ve looked devilish, occult.

“Are you faithful? I don’t think I’ve seen you in church here, but maybe you go to another. Or a different faith entirely. I’ve just,” he sighs, finally turning to look over at Harper. “Do you ever feel like you’re in the wrong profession? That you’ve just gone for the next best thing, when there might’ve been something else that would be more…anything?”

There’s little space between the burning of his ribs and the incessant cold that fills his lungs. An uncomfortable in between. Ambrose doesn’t belong to either, thrown through dazes day after day whilst trying to keep tally. A cloying evil threaded through the space between the soil, bursting out in thick, heavy chunks with any disturbance. One that chokes the air as the grave is aired out, casket set to the side as the mildewed dead beneath wait with bated breath. Consecrated or not, the dirt beneath the priests feet remains rotten. Head kept low in penance, quietly reciting the prayers behind Father Abbot like a stagehand feeding the actors lines. A life time of service, no sound ideas of retirement for men who’d lived off the withering church purse in a god-given home.

Soon enough, he’d be one of them. Frankly, he should’ve been one of them a long time ago. A feeling only a little warmer than death itself scrapes down his back, flickering at the gaps between each vertebrae. Ambrose hushes the sensation, eyes glossed over as if they’ve been embalmed as the casket is carefully lowered into the earth.

Pleasantries reserved for the bereaved slide from his lips on command, automatic apologies and internal penance for the death long overdue. Passing on by him with the uneasy steps into the garden, cassock snagging across the unkempt shrubbery. Barely touching thirty but his back aches like he’s seventy, Ambrose can only pray that the good samaritans will come and clear the garden. He’s always wanted to meet one.

Sinking down onto a bench and dropping his head into the clammy skin of his palms, vaguely daydreaming about the things he’s so unfortunately missed. No vices, not for the ‘youngest’ priest of the local clergy. All the gentle relief found in the backs of nightclubs and their pulsating lights is long behind him. But god he would kill for a smoke.

@waveringfaith

Life on Earth is simple.

They are born, they live full lives, they die. And they need help every step of the way. Yet, humans are sweet little things, creative and fragile and short-lived.

Harper loves them.

Standing a few paces away from the service, the funeral director watches the proceedings, making sure everything is going exactly as planned. He leaves himself available for anything the family might need, but as guests leave the cemetery, he finds that his services are no longer needed for now.

Standing so close to a temple built to his Father is always bittersweet. As is interacting with those who worship him.

As the last of the family leaves, the angel turns to leave as well. His back aches something awful, and he'd like to free his wings when he returns to his home. And yet, as he walks amidst the graves, something catches his eye. A young man, folding in on himself in a familiar way. The young priest. Almost lost in the middle of the wild greenery of the garden.

Harper hesitates, before slowly making his way over, always expecting to be sent away the moment he's noticed. "I'm sorry," he murmurs quietly, folding his hands in front of him, "are you feeling well, Father?"

People turn up in droves for the funerals, little kids clinging to the backs of legs in the procession and young adults tracing over the lines slowly setting into their faces. Double or even triple the number of their Sunday congregations as the number slowly dwindles down. Sunday school consists of exactly three children turning up every other week, about to age out of the program. For all the mention and promise of the church as an eternal staple of the community, they're going to sink into the ground like the rest of them. An untouched communal garden overgrown with thick bushels and brambles, suffocating around the sickly poplar and crabapple tree that never drops an unrotten apple. Desecrated Eden, another clawing reminder of how his faith might be misplaced in it all.

Ambrose remembers what it was like to breathe in the sweet smoke found in the private rooms, holding in each breath until his eyes prickled with tears, a gasping wheeze escaping him. That'd felt like heaven once. Shuffling around the church like he's damned there for all eternity is close enough. Thick, clumsy outlines of hymns roll through his head with every breath, eyes shut and pressed into the meat of his palms. "Oh good G-, goodness. Mr. Ward, right? Are you already leaving us?" Back quickly straightening as if a steel rods been driven through his spine, the priest looks back up to meet his gaze. "Really, I'm," he pauses, trying to find his voice again after the stretch of silence. "alright. Just a little displaced, I think"

wonderful-rp-resources

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moriaenships

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wesandlachthings

Dozens of notices had been pinned up in both holy and less than holy places. Printer ink still running down the grain of the paper, bleeding into whatever surface it’s nailed, pinned, and hastily taped to.

‘Help Wanted: General Housework and Organization. Offering room and board along with weekly salary of 400 dollars a week. Please contact Father Ambrose at St. Vitus Church at the following number. Leave a message with your name, any previous experience, and an appropriate number to contact.’

No tabs have been torn from the paper, just left unattended on the walls. Rustling in the wind as a priest sits, attending to a silent phone. Eventually, he falls asleep at the armchair, one arm gingerly resting across the receiver.

@waveringfaith

Lach was not religious by any means. The closest he'd ever gotten to God was when his dad cursed out the TV in the lords name whenever his fantasy sports wasn't playing out right. And besides, he'd committed way too many sins to even be considered 'Holy'. He and religion just didn't mix... That was, unless, they needed to.

Yeah, he'd help the occasional band play for some youth groups. Or the rare pastor looking to 'Spice things up' for a sermon. It almost never worked out, but he'd gotten paid. He could play nice.

And when he spots a poster at a dive bar asking for help (and offering a nice paycheck), he figures that he can play nice again.

He sits at home, quickly putting the numbers in his phone and calling, hoping they hadn't filled the spot yet.