Her footsteps, dusty and worn through the rocky precipice to her hut trudged tired after the long journey. No matter how much grace she had given and asked for ,the wild herbs were bitter to the taste and just enough to remind her that no matter how she tried to escape him, God was watching. And though he always protected her, she felt the lessons, harsh and unjust. Many disagreements did they have over the years. Long silences and torn apart words. Many times, she looked up at the sky and threw up her fists. But not once did she take down the crucifix from the mantle. Love and Anger for her service and the punishments of others. Her fingernails torn to shreds. Her skin browned from the sun with textured lines in her frown. The gate heavy in her return with thistles and screaming felines at her heels. Their teeth tearing into the vermin she threw at them, ripping apart fur from skin as the blood stained the stone floor.
The words hours before sickening her mind.
‘This is what your practicing arts have brought you. The devil at your doorstep my child.’ ‘You must repent for your dabbling in the unknown. You must confess your sins and leave your anger at the church door’
‘Had I not done so priest, would I have passed through this threshold? You speak to me of repent? What would you know of a woman’s suffering, hiding amongst your icons?’
‘Child you are in blasphemous tone to your Priest. I am God’s voice in this house. Come not with your pride and choose humility. Come to God naked and bare. Let him punish your sins so you may be cleansed and leave the conjuring to the unholy women lest you become one.’
‘Shall I allow God to thrash my soul so I may preserve it? Shall I let him wonder into my mind with a weak and unadmirable conscience? One where I will fade into obscurity?’
‘ If humility is adversary with hubris, then you have no place in this church nor shall you ever find peace. Go now as I cannot help you. I see your mark carried on your wrist. That of the eclipse. You have opened the door to Satan and invited him in.’
‘If Satan gives me free will and allows my suffering to end, then so be it. I came here to find love and I have found yet more punishment. I will do what my soul commands. Shall it be with God? On my terms. Shall it be with his fallen child? Again, on my terms. One thing priest, you must know that you cannot command a daughter of the moon. For my true god sees my cold heart and loves me with it. Takes this body at midnight and responds with heated tongue through my spine. This is where I find God. A God of whom a name asks not for punishment but for caresses of passion and true love. If this be my God, then I be damned and my feet never to pass through this arch. My face shunned for a love from God I was never given. May he forever abandon me as I pray with sage and incense to his crucifix. And mock his agents on earth for they do not have any knowing of who God truly is.’
The dim light from the candlelight flickered softly as she lay on the iron bed. The hanged man upside down from her vision. The cats curled at her feet, hungry no more as she slowly drifted into a slumber with blood on her hands.
