Old candles line the aisle in glass sleeves, the wax still pooled and layered like old tears.
Rows of pews face forward in obedient lines. The altar sits at the front, raised two steps, flanked by statues—Mary with hersweet blank face, Jesus with his ribs and his devotion fetish, saints with their serene suffering.
The pulpit stands to the left, carved wood, polished by touch. I walk down the aisle, slow, letting my shoes click on the stone. When I reach the pulpit, I step up, one foot on each shallow step, and I stand where the priest stands, above everyone, looking down.
I can see why they love it.
Power is intoxicating in any costume.
I place my palms on the lectern. The wood is cool. There are tiny grooves where someone’s rings have scratched it over time. I slide my fingers along the edge, and the front panel shifts.
A hidden hinge.
Of course.
The lectern door opens with the faintest click, like it’s relieved to finally confess. Inside is an old leather-bound Bible. Thick. Heavy. A relic. The cover is dark, cracked at the corners, like it has been carried through wars and baptisms and funerals.
Etched into the leather is a pomegranate.
I pause.
That’s… interesting.
It isn’t a cross. It isn’t a dove. It isn’t a lamb. It’s a fruit.
A fruit with a myth.
I lift it out carefully. The leather is warm from the trapped air in the compartment. I run my thumb over the pomegranate’s etched seeds. Each seed is a tiny oval, precise, deliberate.
Someone took their time with this.
Someone wanted it to be recognized.
I open the book.
The pages are not printed.
They’re written.
Ink, faded in places, bled through in others. Different slants, different pressures. Handwriting changes like personalities.Some letters are elegant loops, some are sharp scratches, some are neat like a teacher’s.
This is not scripture.
This is something else.
The first page makes my throat tighten, not with emotion, but with a familiar kind of alertness—the way you feel when you spot a threat across a crowded room.
In the center of the page, in thick, dark strokes, it says:
DAUGHTERS OF PERSEPHONE
The words look like blood.
Not literal blood. I’m not stupid. I know the difference between theater and reality.
But whoever wrote it wanted the illusion of blood.
Wanted the drama.
