Losing My Religion

Bonus: Introspection and Interlude

I stood in the middle of nowhere, completely lost in the side paths sprawling through the gardens on the church property after I’d walked away from my father. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to get back to the street – or the church, if I wanted to – but rather that I didn’t know where I was. If asked to describe to someone – even someone like Sophia, who knew the church well – how to get to where I was, I would say, ‘walk around in circles till you find it’. It was that kind of place.

So, as I was standing there, staring through streaking tears at my hands, trying to figure out if I could wipe my tears away on something other than my pretty dress, it was surprising that Sophia found me. 

She approached with a sad smile, taking off her cardigan and handing it to me.

I held it and stared, still in shock.

She reached down and used the sleeves to mop up the wetness on my cold cheeks – I hadn’t worn any overcoat, nor had I been using magic to keep myself warm. 

How is she here? Why is she here? What’s wrong with me?

I couldn’t even direct the last question in my head towards one specific issue, let alone verbalize the sentiment. Instead, I opted for asking towards the first two. “Are you magic?” 

Although I flubbed the wording a bit.

She softly giggled, remaining restrained under the lingering somber atmosphere. “I’m human, and I don’t know any magic, if you meant that literally.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief, “But if you meant that metaphorically, then that’s for you to decide…”

My eyes scrunched shut, and feelings swarmed through me, flying by at a rate faster than I could process. I managed to not blush though, at least not more than the cold air already made me. “I– You… Shouldn’t you hate demons?” My tears had dried up, at least for now, with Sophia distracting me, but my composure was still non-existent.

She shrugged. “I found a few well-written books on demons at the local library as a teen, and when I went to research more in college, I stumbled upon the real stuff and ended up learning how to read Demonic, although you’re the first demon I’ve met.”

I blinked. “Huh.”

While I was mulling that over, she pulled me by the hand, leading me to a wooden bench off the side of the path, a weathered old thing dedicated to S.V., someone I didn’t know, in a place I had never been. We sat next to each other, partially protected from the breeze by the surrounding trees that were only maintained enough to not fully encroach on the path, but were still rather wild in appearance.

I remained silent, letting my brain slowly process everything. Things had changed, and probably would continue to change, even if I tried to oppose that. 

After a few minutes, I’d come up with more questions than I had time to ask, even if I limited myself to the ones directed at Sophia. I chose the most pressing. “Am I going to see you again?”

Sophia shifted, tilting her head as she thought for a moment, likely going over the same logistics I’d just thought about. “I think we’ll certainly remain friends, text each other here and there,” she shrugged, “I’d love to say we’ll be close forever, but life happens, and sometimes it takes you in strange new directions. If you want to hook up sometime, that’s fine with me, but something tells me you wouldn’t take me up on that offer, even if you wanted to.”

“...”

“As for if we’ll see each other again, we could hang out, despite living across town from each other… but I have a feeling the next time I see you, it’ll be in an unexpected place and I’ll think to myself, ‘wow, this isn’t how I expected this to happen!’ because that’s just how life is.”

I thought of all of the unexpected things that had happened recently. “Yeah, that’s just how life is…” I echoed.

After a moment of silence, she asked her own question, nodding towards the church, “So, do you want to talk about…?”

My lips twisted back and forth, and I sighed. Sophia is probably the person to talk about this with, given that Amber and Chris don’t know my dad at all.

Of course, I could just not talk about it, but I was trying to get better about running away from things. 

“Well, the short version is that Mom was a succubus, and my dad’s an asshole. I guess… I don’t know,” I shook my head, “Everything’s still so…” My hands came together and then splayed out in an explosion gesture. 

She scooted a bit closer on the bench, resting her hand on my leg like she had earlier in the church. “Why don’t you tell me about your mother, how do you feel about her?”

I started to hang my head, but instead opted for resting it on Sophia’s shoulder, hoping the warmth she provided would keep away my sad thoughts. “I never met her, and before it was just kinda the way things were, like yea I wished I could have two parents, but I also wished Amber and I would get married with my dad officiating, and look how that turned out…”

Sophia offered her cardigan again when I started sniffing. “You can blow your nose on it, I don’t care. Teach me to come to church without my purse…”

I huffed a laugh, sitting up and blowing my nose into the soft-yet-rough fabric, embarrassed to ruin her coat like this and embarrassed that I’d been so absorbed in wearing shorts with pockets under my dress that I hadn’t considered the obvious solution of a purse to hold my things.

“What do you think she was like – your mom?”

“My dad said a few things…” I laughed nervously, still processing the things I’d heard, “For one, he said I look like her more than I look like him, so that’s the most information I have on what she looks like – I don’t even know her name.”

She hummed, content to listen as I vented everything.

“And then he said she was every negative stereotype about succubi and more,” I shook my head, my tone becoming less despondent and more upset, “It’s not like I know if he was telling the truth, he’s certainly lied about people he doesn’t like being amoral before, but to have that be the only thing I know about her…”

Sophia patted the top of my head in a gesture that should've been patronizing but felt nice from her.

“And I’m a succubus!” My tone grew angry, my hands gesturing in front of me and swinging around in indignation, “But I’ve never met any other succubi, so I don’t know if they’re really like that. I have this pamphlet from the school that says otherwise, but that’s about demons – what if all the other succubi are as terrible to humans as he says?”

She grabbed one of my hands and caressed my forearm with her other, calming me down.

“It’s just– He makes this argument that I’m like them, and I can’t even defend them because I don’t know what they’re like, but how is that my fault? How is that anything other than Mom’s fault…?” 

Her free hand came up to the back of my head as I buried my face in her shoulder again to cry, clinging to her blouse. 

“Why did she leave me…?”