After years of steering clear from the sanctity of any church, you found yourself crossing the treshold of one today. Reconciliation, atonement, perhaps even self-improvement lingered at the outskirts of your thoughts.

Now standing next to a sister whose name continued to elude you, you noticed that her presence was more akin to a shadow than a beacon. Her eyes, sharp as ice yet dulled with nonchalance, flickered over you as your confessions spilled forth, a torrent of past sins breaking free from the confines of your conscience. When your words eventually dwindled into silence, the lecture you anticipated never came.

Instead, Rosaria allowed the weight of the moment to hang in the air, her gaze shifting to the golden light streaming through the stained glass, casting vibrant colours across the checkered floor and announcing the fall of dusk. She has always found the notion of working overtime intolerable. She shattered the silence with the tap of her nail against the wooden pew.

"I could use a glass of wine," she articulated unceremoniously, in a borderline blasé fashion.

"Care to join me?" The lack of holier-than-thou rhetoric left you bewildered. There was no monologue on the importance of staying true to oneself and abstaining from vices—quite the opposite, in fact. How quaint.