Mercy for the Lost
16th of March 2007 A.D.
Dad isn't exactly surprised when you call for him to pick you up, it's less conspicuous than Black Rider, he is surprised when you explain the passenger it's probably best not to advertise, the soul and Hunger of the Black Court. "I'll get a rental. Stay safe Molly."
Oh right, probably best not to put him in the family car. You're sure that you'd be able to clear out any unwelcome resonances, but you can see how he wouldn't want to take that risk.
The old Ford pickup had seen better days, probably at some point during the Regan administration, but the way it's lights seem to dim when it comes close, that's not on the car. A look down at the small figure beside you finds him playing some odd clapping game with the air , only something tells you it's not just the air. The ghostly voices of children fill the air, just on the edge of hearing.
"They think I'm one of them. It seemed polite."
As the door cracks open he stops, head turning a little too fast and too far, one small pale finger points at the sword across Dad's back. "That can harm me."
"But it will not unless you harm the innocent, on that you have my word," your father... no rather Michael Amoracchius's bearer.
"What is innocence? Are not all stained by the sins of their fathers?"
He doesn't mean Genesis, you know instinctively and yet he does, older truths in guises new a thousand times a thousand retold, the truth of mortal beings so often lead astray, from one who knows the evils of the human heart all too well.
"Innocence is not a treasure to be held and coveted, it is not just the privilege of one creed nor bound by age, it's that which doesn't harm another the gentle spirit that makes this world worth being," Dad says and points first to a man handing out left-overs to the needy, then to an old woman feeding the birds, to a child arguing loudly about his kite being stuck in a tree to a pair of cyclists arguing about what movie to watch when they get home.
"Guilt should be proven, innocence assumed," you agree.
"Yes, but what is it to be guarded by so fierce a thing and yet spread so thin over the world?"
You stop in front of the Saint Mary's, coincidentally lacking any other visitors tonight. Yeah, right, you glance up at the clouded sky suspiciously even though you know Heaven's not really that way.
Father Forthil is waiting patiently, only his hands folded over the front of his cassock hinting at his nervousness. He looks though the ancient herald of the black, then at him and for a moment his breath catches, his eyes go wide and it looks like he might run, but one hand holds a cross, white from the strain, his lips move in a prayer though no sound escapes.
"Be welcome," says the priest to the dark that recalls faintly having been once a child by alien seas.
"You risk much." The words are carefully spoken, as though he is concerned speaking to an ordinary mortal will shatter him like glass, for all you know he might have the power.
"Life is risk," Father Forthil answers.
"I am not alive," the porcelain face cracks in something like confusion.
"And I am no wizard to judge the technicalities of life and death. You walk, you speak, you ask to enter and do no harm, you are welcome."
"I could be lying you know, I'm not a faerie thing and even they can lie when the Stone Heart finds them." Does he mean Nemesis?
You briefly consider just how much he would know about the darker parts of the Supernatural world just being what he is, but now's not the time to get excited about that, not the time to ask.
"You could," the priest agrees amiably while you had been thinking.
Struck by some suspicion he turns to your dad and asks. "Do you think
I'm innocent? This is just a shape you know, I could take another that only you and the Green Sun Prince could behold and not be broken by in all this place of life."
"I know," Dad answers simply.
"But you have faith that I would not, faith begets innocence, innocence begets faith, not because it is ignorant, but because it refuses to bend to the exigences of the world. Faith is a finding, again and again, that which
should be lost. A bargain then, a path for them-whose-Hunger-I-am, to be what they have never been and when one does I will be watching."
"I can't..." Father Forthil begins to explain that he only speaks with the Holy spirit in very limited ways and offering the promise of salvation to cursed cadavers isn't one of them.
"I do," the very unremarkable 'man' whom you had met once before in your parent's living room is standing in one of the pews suddenly yet without fanfare. "Mercy is given, no price asked."
"How?
Oh."
You're curious of course, it's your nature, as much as eyes shine around you when you call power or cold winds blow when you summon the whole of your power. Without words you realize that you had by your actions, however disruptive been given the chance to ask one question, not about God or angels abut about the world beyond what even your Crown can see. What will it be?
[] What kind of mercy can be extended to the Black Court
[] Something else
-[] Write in what
OOC: You can think of this as Golconda for the Black Court or the means to become real boys/girls for much creepier Pinocchios 
