–5. Adsum

adsum ~esse ~fuī, intr.

1. to be present

1. to arrive

Clothed in rags, Rain prays in a near-empty Mid Ward church.

His lithe body kneels at the whitewood altar, and he prays—for what is about to happen and what has already happened. The shake in his hands is bad today—he hasn’t had dust in two days, and he’s more afraid of the withdrawal window narrowing than what it does to him. He meant to take dust as a stopgap, as a way for Polaris to feel as if it had him under its boot in some capacity, but it’d become so much more than that—not a way to forget but a way to remember; his brothers and sisters, Violet-Two and Father, the better days when he was ignorant and surrounded by likewise beautiful ignorance. He is a shadow chasing shadows.

Rain stands and goes to the confessional. He ducks beneath the moth-smelling curtain, the slatted screen shrouding the robed figure on the other side in spots of light and dark.

“Father, I do not deserve forgiveness,” he says.

The robed figure stirs. “None of us do, my son.”

The correct words. There’s a long quiet, Rain’s ears searching for any sound beyond the confessional, any eavesdropper. When he deems it safe, he puts his hand to the screen.

“What can I do to atone, Father?”

“In five days, you will visit a young nobleman. He is the registered proprietor of Idaxvale Incorporated. I have written his name on this paper for you. Take it, and go with grace.”

Rain takes the rolled paper that slots between the screen. The robed figure rises and leaves the booth—not Green-One; one of his informants—but still, seeing someone so close to his last remaining family puts Rain’s heart at ease. He is not completely alone.

Soft smog sunset lights the world outside the church’s doors. He leaves the confessional and approaches the real priest in a still moment. “Father, I have a question.”

The priest smiles. “We all do, young one. Ask yours.”

“Do you ever wonder what the soul is made of?”

“When I was your age, I did think the soul might be made of memory.”

The lights in the church flicker briefly then, and Rain looks up—that’s the fifth time today, and they’re in Mid Ward.

The priest presses on. “If one forgets their memories, do they not forget their ‘self’? What we grow up seeing, feeling—what we remember of our childhood, of the people who come to us and leave us and love us…is that not what makes someone ‘someone’? Is God’s gift to us not life and therefore memory? Can memories be called the ‘soul,’ then?”

Rain thinks on this, opening the paper minutely and reading the name within. YAVN VON VELRAYD. He holds it to a holocandle, fingers shaking, and only once the flames have burned the note to ash does he ask:

“If I have denied many people God’s grace, Father, does that make me the devil?”

“No, my son. The devil is not human—he can work through us, but he can never be us.”

The bells toll above them seven times, and when it’s silent, Rain asks again:

“Do you ever wonder, Father, if the devil has memories, too?”