"I fear something is happening to me," I whisper at last. "I wake with… with heat in my body." My stomach turns at the admission. "I do not understand it."
Theotokos[22] gazes down from her painted panel, her eyes soft, her hands open in quiet mercy. For a moment, I wonder if she sees only a frightened girl where others might see sin.
"I do not want such thoughts. I wish them gone." My words stumble over one another, pleading now. "It felt as though—as though I were standing before a fire," I murmur. "And I did not step away. I—"
"Enough."
A stern finger lifts between us. I fall silent, my heart pounding so hard I feel it in my throat. The church seems to narrow further, pressing me into the corner between altar and wall.
Popa Vasile lowers his hand slowly.
"It is enough," he repeats.
His gaze rests on me, assessing. I feel it travel across my face, down to where my throat rises and falls with each breath. My skin prickles beneath it. Did I speak too much? Was it wrong to name it so plainly?
My fingers tighten together, nails biting into my palm, and I wish I could gather the words back into my mouth.
He steps closer, enough that I feel the air shift.
"You need not say more. I understand."
The pressure lifts so suddenly I nearly falter. He understands; I do not have to describe it further. I do not have to shape the rest of it into sound.
"The devil," his voice lowers, so that I must lean closer to hear it clearly, "tests those closest to grace."
I lift my eyes a fraction.
"Temptation does not come to the impure alone. It seeks what is bright. What is unguarded. The adversary tests those closest to grace."
The phrase settles over me like cloth.Closest to grace.
"Some visions," he goes on, "are permitted so that faith may be strengthened. The Lord allows temptation to reveal where vigilance must grow."
A strange calm begins to settle in my chest. So it was a test. Not a hunger. Not a secret rotting inside me.
The priest tilts his head slightly, studying me as he speaks.
"When such visions come," he says, even softer now, "you must imagine the face of Christ in their place."
My gaze finds it without meaning to—the painted icon above the altar, elongated eyes, solemn mouth. I press that image forward in my mind, trying to blot out what came before.
"Replace the image. Where heat rises, call upon holiness. Where the flesh stirs, summon the Cross. You call His name until the other fades."
His eyes hold mine again.
"Do you understand, child?"
I nod quickly.
"Yes, Parinte."
My voice is steadier now. The panic that brought me here has softened into something ordered, something contained. He studies me a moment longer, as if weighing something unseen.
"You are young," he says. "The body wakes before the soul is ready. That is why obedience is protection."
My throat tightens as I nod again. There are words for what I felt. There is a path to keep myself unspoiled.
"You did well to come," he praises. "You must not keep such disturbances hidden. When the mind is troubled, you must always come. Do not wrestle such things alone."
