Uncommon (Bottom's Up)
Julia Grace didn't believe in God.
There was a time, it seemed eons passed, when she was the good little Catholic girl. Mass every Sunday. Confession on Wednesday. Communion when offered. Rosary morning, noon, and night.
Not to mention the Catholic school upbringing, with its regular theology and catechism lessons, which she diligently and duly applied herself to so she could bring home those report cards full of straight As that her mother and father loved so much.
She would have been an altar boy, had her home church allowed it, and she had had a brief flirtation with the idea of joining a cloister, and dedicating her entire life to God and the Saints and all that entailed...
And then her sophomore year at St Mary's, she almost died, and that changed everything.
She was studying theology and art and music...and okay, maybe also a little bit of business, because God was Good, but money was money, and she may have had a weakness for a good pair of shoes.
That particular morning, she was feeling guilty for spending her monthly stipend on the cutest kitten heels she'd ever seen, and wondered what kind of penance she might be assigned to assuage said guilt, and she was hoping that it was the young father on duty this morning instead of the crotchety old priest who'd made it his mission to turn all women into self-hating misogynistic creatures who could never rise past the fact that "through woman, man fell into sin."
She would never deny the biblical accuracy of those words, but she was a big fan of the women like Hildegard von Bingen and Marie Dentière and, heck, even Isabel de Josa. Women who changed the church and changed the world, and rose above the so-called weakness of Eve.
Father Andreas had sneered at the idea that women could do more than make penance and birth the next generation of sinners, and after a very enlightening, and quite disheartening conversation on the topic, Julia steered clear of him at all costs.
Father Michael was a different creature entirely. He preached the gospel with joy in both his words and his eyes, loved exploring both the male and female psyche in relation to religious practice, and, after a rousing debate on which Schumann was the most influential composer of the Romantic era, Julia had nearly fallen in love with him herself.
It helped, also, that he was kind and handsome and had blue eyes that you could get lost in.
Julia hoped those blue eyes would not hold too much judgement as she confessed her latest shopping escapade; she really was trying to be less greedy, less worldly, more content, more minimalist. But she had a weakness for shoes, for sparkles, for the color red, and she had fallen prey to that weakness once more.
Shoring up her courage, she pushed open the doors of the west portal, and stepped into the nave of the basilica. It wasn't the grandest cathedral she had ever been in; a ninth-grade trip to Notre Dame trumped anything she ever had or ever would experience in that regard. But it was beautiful. The stained-glass had been carefully, painstakingly crafted to tell the story of John the Baptist --his beheading was hidden a column in the ambulatory, though that scene, too, was beautiful-- and she had spent many a peaceful morning in quiet contemplation seated in the sanctuary of the church.
And it was quiet this morning, too. A few students were saying the rosary toward the front, and a church custodian was mopping near the fountain as she dipped her fingers in the water and made the sign of the cross over her person. Her favorite thing about the Church was the rituals. Some people thought Catholicism was boring, doing the same thing over and over again, but Julia thrived on the traditions and sequences of the prayers and masses.
Life might be chaotic and confusing, but God?
God was unchanging and constant.
And wasn't that a relief?
The ivory columns she passed were warm in the natural morning light that shone in, and, whatever guilt she might have been feeling, Julia could already feel it washing away, and she breathed easy. Would it be two Hail Marys and an Our Father for penance? Or maybe three?
A small smile quirked at her lips as she made her way toward the confession box, only to stall as she saw the turquoise curtain was pushed to the side. It wasn't completely out of the ordinary to have no one on hand to hear her words, but Julia had been coming to confession every Tuesday morning since the start of her college career. She looked down at the silver watch that adorned her wrist, and frowned.
Yes, it was just after seven, like usual.
So where was the Father?
(And please, God, let it be Father Michael, she prayed.)
She worried for a moment that one or both of the priests were ill; though she had no warm feelings toward Father Andreas, she did not wish him any harm. And if Father Michael were ill, well, she wanted to prepare herself for an influx of fire and brimstone in her confessions and services until he took well again.
Lost in her worries, she almost didn't notice the sanctuary darkening. A cloud cover, perhaps, she thought, starting to turn around, when she felt it. Someone, or something, was staring at her.
She could still remember the sudden chill in the air, the way the hair on her arms stood on end, the way the murmured rosaries on the air ceased to exist...the way she suddenly felt very, very afraid.
Don't be ridiculous, she told herself, and forced herself to turn, to look and meet the gaze that she could feel pressing into her skin like a brand. And then she faltered.
Father Michael had the bluest eyes; they were clear and pure, like the waves on the shore or the brightest summer day. They were bluer than blue, deep and warm, full of all the love and kindness you could imagine exists in a world where love and kindness are sparse.
And yet...
The creature before her had the bluest eyes; they were dark and fathomless, like the deepest part of the Marianas Trench or the farthest reaches of space. They were bluer than blue, nebulous and cold, full of all the enmity and despair, more than you could imagine exists in a world already rank with such darkness.
And yet there was love, too. Love wrapped in hate and anger and pain and fear...
Julia didn't know if the fear she felt was her own, or this creature's, but she felt it all the same. And felt, too, that love and despair entwined together in a cacophany of sound that she couldn't actually hear.
She felt no surprise at the creature's presence before her. She was in a holy place, and this was, doubtless, a holy being.
Was it an angel? No, it was a bird.
But that was too simple a word.
A hawk, an eagle, perhaps?
What common word could describe such an uncommon entity?
She had the delirious thought that her brother would try to categorize it as a legendary Pokémon of sorts, and she almost laughed.
The sounds around her then resumed, the noise so jarring, she wondered how she hadn't heard it before: the running, the screaming, the distant, but still crashing sound of alarms, and she looked into those blue, blue eyes, and thought, Is it too late for a confession?
The creature smiled, somehow, and she could have sworn she heard it whisper to her, "It's always too late, my dear."
Her voice was beautiful, and painful, and Julia took a step closer, only to freeze as the creature spread her wings, and rose, rose, high above the altar, a sacrifice rising to God, perhaps...
And then she fell.
And Julia fell.
And when next she was aware, there were sirens and shouts and smoke and she felt a strange pressure on her mouth, and strange pressure in her hands, as if she held something, and when she opened her eyes, she saw the somehow not-so-blue eyes of Father Michael, crying, looking down at her with fear and relief, and she noticed a smudge of the color she'd put on her own lips this morning on his as he shouted to someone, somewhere, "She's breathing!"