So much has happened since last I wrote in this journal. Good heavens, I swear the parish is growing by leaps and bounds since Fr. Eamon took up his post as elder priest. And for the first time in many weeks, despite the darker events that have shadowed the church of late, I start to feel real hope that the parish and its people will survive intact. It is not only the Catwalkers now who watch over us (although many of them continue to guard the church, like furry angels standing sentinel in the dark). There are others now as well--some of them strange and fell souls, almost as nervewracking as the villains who continue their attempts to harm the parish--but their grim and determined loyalty to the Church seems so very genuine, and despite the occasional unease I feel in their presence, I couldn't be happier they are here.

The father has restored the office of the Templar Swords, a small gathering within the parish itself that exists by special dispensation from our bishop--their purpose to provide additional protection to the parish, its clergy and congregation. It is currently being headed by a new arrival to Midian, a retired police officer from Chicago named Matthew O'Keeffe. He is an older gentleman, but hale, and so very kind to everyone who has come to the parish for help. And he has been such an incredible boon to the parish! It seems Matthew owns both a construction company and an importing business. And bless the man, he saw to acquiring the supplies we needed for repairing the church! The pews, carpet, and windows have all been replaced, and the church looks more beautiful than ever.

Poor Matthew, though--his health is not the best. I keep him in my prayers, and hope he will quickly heal, but Midian is not known for being kind. He is such a great and kindly soul--I pray God will keep him safe. Matthew has also joined our tiny choir as our organist; I had the opportunity to hear him play yesterday, and his talent is truly extraordinary. We are so very lucky to have him!

Yesterday's repairs to the church went surprisingly well. It is true, what they say, that many hands make light work! We were joined by a rather interesting woman--a biomech, I believe--named Samantha Han, whose strength was truly amazing. She was able to go to the docks, to Matthew's ship, and bring all the stained glass panels back to the church in a single trip. Then between Matthew, Sam, Guin, and a pretty neko named Tae (I think? oh, I am so bad at remembering names!), they were able to remove all the wood that Fr. Eamon put up to cover the empty windows and replace them with the brand new glass. The church is so lovely now! (I'm afraid I didn't do much myself, other than hold the doors for Sam when she returned with the panels. If the church looks beautiful now, it is because of them! God bless them all!) The conversation I had with the neko was an interesting one. She seems such an innocent where the Church is concerned--trying to explain the nature of my position and the priests of the parish was an exercise in comedy and misunderstanding. But I found our conversation enjoyable, and I hope she will return.

Unfortunately, she does seem to be terribly skittish, bless her heart. Sammy seemed to set the neko on edge more than once, and Matthew's organ playing, while very beautiful to me (and I would imagine Sam as well, as she seemed very taken with the music while Matthew was playing) appeared to be making the neko nervous. To her credit, however, she did remain, and her nimbleness and skill at scaling the church's old stone no doubt eased the difficulty of replacing the stained glass windows. I hope she comes again, as I would love to talk with her more about the Church. Perhaps it would be in vain, but one never knows. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I take heart in this, our brief moment of brightness, and hope it will continue. There is such darkness surrounding the parish of late, with rumors and whispers of terrible things waiting to strike against us, but the continued determination of the father, and now the stalwart presence of Matthew and our new friends, leave me hope that we will weather this too and be stronger for it in the end.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me...

"The will of God will never take you to where the grace of God will not protect you."

Fr. Eamon and I have been in discussion about how to acquire the necessary items for repairing the church. He suggested a group of suppliers (smugglers? oh dear, it is probably better not to ask) who operate out of the gas station on the bluff behind the church. It seems he made their acquaintance some time ago, and Luci confirmed that they have a reputation for securing hard-to-get supplies from the mainland (although Luci also said that their trade usually consists of unsavory stuffs, but when I put this to Fr. Eamon, he dismissed it with a glower and muttered something about the need overriding the origin. *sigh*)

Unfortunately, my attempts to contact someone have been unsuccessful. I did leave a letter yesterday in the hopes that someone would contact us, but so far there has been no word. Guin, the poor dear, has been making inquiries as well, and it seems we may have some method of replacing the glass in the windows soon, so things are slowly coming together, but I'll be so much happier when we can actually start to do something, rather than trying to ignore the empty front of the church every time I walk up the aisle.

In the meantime, however, little Luci has proved enterprising once again. She arrived at the church this afternoon, a battered old Radio Flyer in tow--I clapped when I saw it, as I had one almost exactly like it when I was a girl! Her wagon was piled with scrap sheets of wood--mostly particle board and warped plywood, but better than I could have asked for, all of it salvaged from the ruins on the far side of the island, and she even managed to find a tin can full of nails. All these items have been stored in the back room of the church for now, and I left a note for Fr. Eamon so he knows they're available for sealing off the window frames at the very least.

And Luci--bless the child! I hugged her hard and treated her to a milkshake at Zoe's!

On another note, the parish has welcomed a new member of the clergy. A young monk, Brother Lincoln, comes to us from the mainland, and while I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him, by all accounts he seems to be settling well into the life of the parish. I am so very pleased over this news, as we have been terribly shorthanded since Fr. Zelenski's... ah... vacation. The extra help will not only be a boon to the parish itself, I'm sure he will be able to help us repair the church all the faster. God's good blessings upon him!

((Written in a close, neat hand on both sides of a piece of paper.))

Dear Reverend Mother:

I write this in the sincere hope that my letter reaches the mainland, but the post from Midian is rather unreliable. I would attempt a call instead, but the phone lines in the church are down, for reasons I'll explain in a moment. I could have asked the father for permission to use his personal line, but he has been terribly distracted of late, for reasons you'll soon understand, and I could not find it in my heart to trouble the poor man further.

There is so much to tell you, but in this letter I will keep myself to the news of greatest importance.

I am writing this letter from Zoe's Cafe, a small eatery on Midian's main street, little more than a block from the church. I feel safer there, especially during the daytime, than I do anywhere else in the city--and yes, I know you read this with surprise, but you will understand when I tell you what happened in the church on Palm Sunday. The church no longer feels like a sanctuary, and even the stalwart presence of the father comforts me only a little. I am, in truth, more terrified than I have ever been. A week ago last Sunday, a young cat of the church--one of the nekos, you'll remember--was murdered horribly, and in her will she asked Fr. Eamon to give her a Christian funeral. She was well on her way to the catechumenate, and Fr. Eamon agreed. Many in our parish mourned the young woman deeply.

The father received word from the deceased's daughter that one of the woman's suspected murderers was planning an appearance at the funeral. The city's police were notified by the family of the deceased; many of her fellow cats made plans to stand watch as well. I could not attend due to parish duties in another part of the city, but from all accounts, the service started well, and the father and the attending mourners were able to make it through most of the requiem mass itself. Unfortunately, it was not long before the aforementioned suspect made an appearance, accompanied by other allies, and the funeral service spun rapidly into madness.

Oh, Reverend Mother. You cannot imagine. The woman's body was desecrated with violence. Her daughter was terribly injured, along with many others who fought hard to stop the intruders. Gas of some nature was released, and the father tried to save some of those in attendance, but a subsequent explosion and some sort of tranquilizers used by the monsters invading the church put the father out of the action. And... oh heavens, it is too terrible. The father and at least one other parishioner--there may have been more, but the father has not yet discovered the details--were kidnapped by the intruders and carried off into the night. And tortured. Yes. I do not know the fate of the young woman kidnapped with the father--Fr. Eamon would not speak of it, except to say that she survived--but the father himself has been grievously hurt. His face is battered--bruised and badly cut, his nose broken. His arm was broken as well. And when he asked for my help in changing his bandages, I found multiple lacerations to his back and a deep stab wound to his shoulder.

You may well ask who treated him initially. There are angels in Midian still--he was rescued by Guin, another catwalker, and two unnamed friends of the latter, and treated with expert medical attention as far as I can see. I was impressed with the care taken in his bandages and the setting of his arm, and you know how exacting a nurse I can be. Still, when I took my nurses' training, I did not expect to be tending to a priest. Perhaps God knew when he led me to that vocation how much it would be needed here in Midian, where the monsters are.

Everything has changed, Reverend Mother. The church has been badly damaged. I spent today cleaning the char marks from the stonework--which despite the explosion, still stands, as sturdy as ever, thank heavens--and cleaning up the shattered remains of the pews, the lectern, the broken glass from the windows (oh, that lovely stained glass!), the remnants of the burnt aisle runner... and the huge old Bible the father used at Mass. I found it, torn into pieces and stained with blood, buried beneath the ruins of the lectern. Until that moment, I had not cried, but I confess I did so then, kneeling in the midst of the chapel's destruction, the Bible's tattered pages pressed to my chest.

Praise God, the front of the church before the altar, the beautiful organ, the confessional and the holy water font--all of these are intact, so I thank God for the small favors we have. And we have not been idle with our sorrow--the church is slowly being cleaned, and the father is already making plans for repairing and replacing what we have lost. I attempted to contact one of the city's "suppliers" this afternoon, in fact, but no one was in--I shall try again tomorrow. So yes, we are working to fix what was broken, to replace what was stolen from us, but I fear there are some things that can never be truly healed. I pray and know that we must be strong, that we will come through this trial tempered by fire and greater for it in the end--as the father says, triumph is born of adversity. But I am so terribly afraid, Reverend Mother. The shadows seem longer inside the church, and despite my hard work at cleaning, I still see the ghosts of bloodstains on the floor, and the spaces were the pews once stood, where the beautiful Bible rested... they seem to mock me with their emptiness.

And the father... he has cloaked himself in darkness. He speaks little now--and he spoke little enough to begin with--but I find him now standing in silence in the middle of the night-dark church, his arm in a sling, his eyes seeming to burn in his battered face. Depression I could understand--this is a terrible thing that has happened to him--but it is not sadness I feel. It is anger I sense in his unreadable expressions, in the clench of his one good hand, and I cannot help wondering what will become of us all.

Pray for us, Reverend Mother.

Yours in Christ,
Sr. Lisbeth Dollinger

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual Light shine upon them.
May their souls
And the souls of all the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God
Rest in peace. Amen."

I am full of such sadness and horror, I cannot speak. It is only here, in the quiet pages of this diary I keep, that I can bring myself to give voice to the terrible things I have seen today, and the nightmare that has been visited upon another. My hands shake as I write this, my vision blurs, and I would give much to be able to go to sleep, in the hope that when I awakened, this would all prove some dream, but I cannot close my eyes without seeing blood and darkness, and I fear my dreams will be haunted now, for many nights to come.

My day began badly enough (although it is nothing to what happened later). Luci was sleeping in the cloister, as has been her habit since the affair of the sylphs--and I'll admit, I feel safer myself having her there. But she woke in the wee hours this morning from a screaming nightmare, and it took some time to soothe her and coax out what had frightened her so. The story she told both frightened and shocked me. It seems that a few days before, she had been wandering the sewers (although why the child insists on doing that, I haven't a clue).

Down in the tunnels beneath the city, she found a strange pair of doors, and on the other side... well, to be perfectly honest, I almost didn't believe her, but Luci claimed to have found a morgue of sorts, but one splattered in blood and other, fouler things. She described it in eerie detail, her voice soft and still thick with tears--how its walls were tiled in clinical white, with bags of bloody viscera in one corner, a blood-smeared table in another, and a wall of drawers such as those used for storing cadavers. There was also a ladder leading up, and she ventured up there as well, only to find a dark place filled with cells and other things I will not name. She had told Guin something of this, she said, and promised not to go back, but I have no idea if the father knows or not.

Be that as it may, I thought about it long and hard after Luci had gone back to sleep, and I decided to find out for myself what was to be found beneath the city. I honestly do not know what possessed me--I have never been so brave, or for that matter, so afraid--but the father was not in, and I have been so determined lately not to cower within the church. So as soon as my duties permitted, I slipped quietly away from the chapel, Luci's descriptions of the tunnels in mind, and ventured down into the shadows of the subway to find this slaughterhouse for myself.

I hope I never have need to enter those tunnels again. To say they were horrible would be grossly understating the truth. The smell was atrocious, and everywhere green filth covered the walls and floors. Thank heavens, the tunnels I walked were mostly dry, and I saw no one but the occasional rat, but my heart was in my throat for every step I took. Unfortunately, it did not take me long to find the room that Luci had described. And it was every bit as terrible as she'd said. I was not brave enough to actually climb the ladder, as she had done, but I opened the door a tiny crack and peeked inside. And the blood... oh heavens...

What atrocities have been committed in this place?! The smell alone was enough to make me sick and faint, and I could only imagine what horrors might hide behind those labeled doors. Or what in the name of all that's holy lay lumped and smeared on the table! I forced myself to see everything, so if no one else had told the father, I could be sure to do so, then I fled as quickly as I could back the way I had come. There are no words to describe my relief at stumbling through the subway tunnel once more, and never has that scrap of graffitti-covered concrete looked more welcoming. This in itself would have been bad enough, but it was nothing compared to what followed, after I had returned to the church to calm my jangling nerves. Strangers entered the church--acquaintances of the father, I believe--and the news they had...

*takes a deep breath and forces herself to write*

A dear friend of our parish was murdered this night. Chisaki, a regular attendee at Mass, and from all accounts, one who might have soon been won back to the fold, was tortured, mutilated, and crucified to death. Her body had been found at the Pool Hall, and her friends had come to the church, hoping to inform the father, I believe, in addition to asking for prayers and candles lit in Saki's memory. (I must go find the father, in fact, as soon as I finish writing this, so he can look into Saki's last rites. Father Eamon considered Saki a friend--I do not want to think what his reaction will be when the poor man hears this news.) It twists my heart to think of it, but the nature of her death leaves me no other choice: Was this some sort of mockery of Saki's renewed faith? Or a message to the parish itself?

Her friends could not tell me with any certainty what had become of her body, only that they suspected it was still at the Pool Hall. I did not know what to make of this, and after they left and I said my first prayers for Saki, I decided to do what I could to see that her body was being cared for. Perhaps my foray into the tunnels today was God's way of preparing me for what happened tonight, for I swallowed past my fear of the waterfront (and tried to forget Fr. Eamon's stern injunction never to go there alone--God forgive me my disobedience for a just cause!) and left the church to find the Pool Hall and what had become of poor Saki's remains.

Oddly enough, I found the Pool Hall empty. I hesitated outside for a moment or two, jostled rudely by various drunks wandering to and fro on the waterfront, but no one answered my nervous calls when I stood at the pool hall door. So I ventured inside, but there was no one to be found, and no sign at all of Saki's body. I didn't know whether to be worried or relieved, but I can only hope that Saki's fiance claimed her body and took her to be properly cared for. I can do no more myself, except to ask Fr. Eamon to let me know what he can as soon as he finds out more. But oh, that poor child. My heart breaks, and I mourn her, and the horrors she must have endured before the end. I pray God it was quick, but my heart tells me it was not.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death.

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

Word arrived from the bishop that we would soon be receiving a new and potentially permanent priest in our parish. I am so happy to write here that he has arrived! With Fr. Zelenski's mysterious absence (an absence Fr. Eamon explained to me, at least as much as he could, although I dare not write the details of it, even here), we have all been feeling the strain, and particularly after the week we have had, what with the strange green things roaming the city's streets, it was indeed a welcome relief to see another friendly face making an appearance within our walls. His name is Father Dark, which is a terribly unusual name for a priest, but God is nothing if not good-humored. There is a sort of amusing irony in the father's name, but during our short meeting, I felt he was a very good man. I am so very pleased that he has come to Midian, and although he will be here in a mostly unofficial capacity until Father Eamon feels he is ready, I do hope that he stays.

His arrival was a moment of brightness in an otherwise terrible week. The green-skinned, tentacled things that have invaded our city have made the past few days within the church feel like suffering through a siege. Father Eamon has all but forbidden me to go out, and for once I do not feel up to arguing, as there is simply no way I could hope to outrun the... sylphs, I believe they are called, should one of them take a notion to come after me. We found very old gas masks in the church's storage (how they came to be there, I haven't a clue, and it disturbs me more than I care to admit to try imagining why they were needed in the first place), so the father and the orphans have been able to venture out to acquire supplies. Some of those "supplies" have included a small, battered container of gas, which we have been using to form rudimentary fire-starters (Fr. Eamon calls them something else--a sort of cocktail, I believe?), as we have found that setting these plant things ablaze is the only effective way of destroying them quickly.

I'm not sure where Luci found the gas, and she was very evasive when asked. Fr. Eamon and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us pressed her further. In this, at least, I think we both opted to agree that the end justified the means. I can only pray that God feels the same. It would seem very foolish indeed to quibble over a bit of theft when there are so many lives at stake.

And now there are other things roaming the streets. I pray there is an end in sight.

Watch, O Lord, with those who wake,
or watch, or weep tonight,
and give your angels charge over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ.
Rest your weary ones.
Bless your dying ones.
Soothe your suffering ones.
Pity your afflicted ones.
Shield your joyous ones.
And for all your love's sake. Amen.

"The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked."
~ Proverbs 10:11

I returned to the church this evening to find an abattoir.

I'm not sure which frightened me more: the long trail of blood drying on the runner down the center aisle, or the blood I could still smell on Fr. Eamon as he approached me from the altar. His coat and shirt were stiff with it; I could feel it beneath my fingers, tacky and revolting, when I reached out with shaking hands to touch him and convince myself that he was truly all right. Some of it had even marked his collar, drying like a tiny maroon flower against that square of former white. But it was not his, thank God in His mercy. The blood did not even belong to the same person. There was apparently a shooting at Mass today. Two women were shot, one unknown to us, the other a catwalker we know only on sight. The woman was quickly carried to the medical center, while Johnny and Elise, catwalkers of the parish, tended to the injured neko.

Most horrible of all, however--it seems the woman who did the shooting was one of our regular parishioners. The father would tell me no more than that, and indeed, when I left him, he was on his way to the MPD to give his statement to the police. But things have come to a troubling pass indeed when our parishioners take to attacking each other even during the Mass.

That explained the blood on the carpet. As for the blood on the father himself, it seems my strange visitor from days before, Hilda, arrived again at the end of Mass, after all the other madness had died down. In the process of scaring the remaining parishioners, she... well, she apparently died. Right there, in the rear foyer of the church, vomiting a stream of blood on Fr. Eamon as she did so. Only to... well, it sounds fantastic, I know, but she came back to life immediately after. I have heard of such things, of course--the biomechs, for instance, can apparently be "brought back" as long as there is technology to do so (I will not get into my feelings on that here. Not now, not tonight, with the scent of blood still hanging so heavy inside the church). But Fr. Eamon also said he thought she'd been a neko once.

*shudders and crosses herself before continuing to write*

I asked what had become of her, and he said she'd fled the church shortly after... coming back, or whatever it was. Truth be told, the good father seems troubled and distracted, and I did not have the heart to pry further. Instead, I waited until Luci arrived from wherever she goes when she's not in the church, and the two of us busied ourselves with cleaning the blood from the floors.

And now I wait for news.

"To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come..."
~ Shakespeare's Hamlet

All is quiet in the church this evening. The only strangeness was in finding a young woman sound asleep on the floor in one of the back rooms of the church. I was surprised to find her upon entering the chapel on my way from the cloister, but I stepped around her carefully and let the poor thing sleep. She is not the first to find safety and some measure of sanctuary here, and I am certain she will not be the last. If she is still there upon my return, I shall fetch a blanket from our supplies and cover the poor thing. I did not do it before for fear of disturbing her slumber, as anyone who stretches out on the floor must have been tired indeed, but if she remains there too long, the chill of the stone beneath that old carpet is likely to settle in her limbs and make her stiff. No need to add insult to the poor girl's exhaustion.

I spent some time in the quiet of the choir loft, reading a book while keeping one eye on the chapel itself and the curtained room where the young woman slept, then when it seemed she would not be waking, I went out to take a late supper. Zoe's Cafe was closed again, although I was hoping Guin would be there, and while the sushi bar can be enjoyable, I don't like eating there alone with the Midian street at my back. So I stopped by the Sari-Mart instead and purchased a few small things for an impromptu "picnic" of sorts, then made my way toward the Ruins and the Midian City Park. There, I chose my usual bench to the left of the initial crossroads (marked, much to my interest and curiosity, by a voudou veve--I believe it is Papa Legba?), and ate my simple supper in the soft shadow of the trees. Oddly enough, for all its loneliness and gloom, I quite enjoy spending time in the park. There are interesting people to be found there--strange people, to be sure, with odd mannerisms and quirks of speech, but they have never done me harm. It's as if there is some Other watching over the park and those who wander there.

I took the long way back to the Church, and wrote these words while sitting on the grassy bluff that overlooks the gas station, the ridge of trees... and beyond that, the breathing ocean. There is no place safer than the Church, of course--at least not for someone like me--but sometimes it is good to be out in the open, with these towers of stone and sin at my back, and God's nature unfolded before me. Even here, in this hell on earth, sparse grass continues to grow, trees reach for the hazy, cloud-dark sky--not as healthy as they might be, perhaps, but there nonetheless, reminding me in their tenacity that even here in Midian City, life goes on.

"Compassion is the only one of the human emotions the Lord permitted Himself, and it has carried the divine flavor ever since."
~ Dagobert D. Runes

While praying the rosary this morning in the candlelit silence of the church, I heard the front doors open, and the hesitant, dragging step of some person making their way up the aisle. I did not look up at first, content to be pleased that I was sharing the church with another soul, but the wretched sound of its twisted limbs as it entered the space before a pew, and knelt on the cold stone floor, caused me to lift my head and seek out our visitor in the shadows. And what I saw both shocked and humbled me with horror.

A woman knelt there--or what might have been a whole woman once, or even a girl, as her age was impossible to determine, but what had once been mortal flesh was ravaged and ruined beyond my ability to comprehend. Her skin was pale and fleshy, ridged with lines and deep wrinkles, pouches of tumorous swellings and wounds that healed and opened, wept blood and then healed again. Some sort of scarf was wrapped around her neck, soaked with blood that dripped against her torso and left smears of dark crimson with her every swaying movement. That she was some sort of biomech, I had no doubt, as her limbs and the bald curve of her skull were augmented with cybernetic devices, the latter in the form of swaying, snake-like cables in a mockery of hair. They erupted from the reddened, oozing sores that dotted her scalp, scraping against the wooden pew at her back as she bowed her head and rubbed fretfully at her temples.

But her eyes... God in heaven. When I spoke to her, rising from my pew to approach and offer what trembling help I could, she turned eyes of black and fiery blue on mine... and for a moment, it was like staring into the pit of the eternally damned.

I thought perhaps that she might have been one of the terrible experiments I'd heard tell of since arriving in this city--or worse, an escaped project of the Legion. Father Eamon told me with quiet fury in his eyes of what happened to the Catwalker's Matron. (He hides his anger well, and the Lord teaches us to forgive, but in my heart I know the UAC has made a bitter enemy of Fr. Eamon and the Parish.) The Legion's experiments seem to be of an altogether different nature, but who's to say what horrific new project those monsters have concocted now?! But no... with halting words and fractured speech, the girl told me her name was Hilda, and that she came from a ship--I'm assuming one on the ocean somewhere between Midian and the mainland,

but even my best efforts at comforting this poor, tortured creature could coax forth no further information--or at least no information that made sense. She did not accept my offer of getting her to a doctor, and in truth, upon observation it seems her wounds have the uncanny ability to close on their own, although they reopen again from time to time, leaking blood as sluggish as syrup. But I hope and pray I see her again, and that somehow this tormented soul finds a place, and peace, in the shadowed streets of this haunted city. I will not sleep well tonight--I cannot stop thinking about her, or the horror that's been inflicted. And God forgive me, but my heart cannot help but cry out, Why? Are there truly no limits to the depth of our inhumanity? We create monsters... and so become monsters ourselves.

"Verflucht wer mit dem Teufel spielt."
[Accursed be he who plays with the devil.]
~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Wallenstein's Tod

Success at last! Although with God's grace, I am not too proud to say it took a measure of courage I did not know I had. I am not some timid thing, to be frightened of shadows and the sleeping dead, but sitting on a tombstone in a night-dark cemetery is a far cry from pleasant.

I was determined to make some headway in my investigation of Artika, so once more I descended the narrow stone steps that lead from the chapel to the cemetery. I wasn't as nervous about ringing the doorbell this time, for despite night having fallen (or what passes for night in this city, which is only a deepening of the ever-present darkness), the street beyond the cemetery's gate was relatively busy with people, so while I hardly expected protection should something go awry, there was something comforting in the presence of so much noisy life at my back--particularly standing as I was, in Midian's city of the dead. Still, there was no answer once I'd squared my shoulders and rung the bell beneath the nameplate, but rather than return to the church, I decided to remain in the graveyard for awhile, in the hopes that someone would arrive.

Thanks be to God, I did not need to wait long. It was uncomfortable, I must admit, sitting as I was on a small, above-ground crypt while waiting for an arrival. I hope the soul whose crypt it was did not mind too terribly me using their grave as an impromptu seat. The stone was gritty beneath my palms, worn away by time and weather, its name obscured beneath a clinging, tattered carpet of dark green moss. And it was cold; I shivered as I waited. But soon I heard the door of the Society's "mausoleum" open, at the same time a woman unknown to me entered through the cemetery gate. I rose, and found that a man had come to the door to greet the arriving woman, and before I could lose my nerve, I cleared my throat and addressed them both, asking if I might interrupt them long enough to ask a question.

Thankfully, they did not seem put out by my appearance--on the contrary, they were both reserved but very polite. I asked after Artika, and the woman confirmed that she was indeed a Society member, but that she was currently out of the city for reasons unknown. I did not press, and left only the request that they pass a message on to Artika, telling her that Sister Lisbeth of the parish would greatly like to speak to her when and if she had the time. And with their promise to convey the message, I took my leave of them both and returned to the blessed, candlelit safety of the church.

So! Not as fruitful a visit as I would have liked, but more than I have accomplished on that score in over a week. With God's help and a little luck, I may get to the bottom of this yet!