PROLOGUE II

They congregate within the opulent mausoleum walls bedecked with painted angels and cherubs of the One True Faith whose names are now buried by time and dust and bones shriveled six feet under the dying soil. They prostrate before a glass coffin gilded with gold under the watchful eyes of a seraphim faceless and shrouded in feathered wings drooping like a moistened cape and housing a body lain and pillowed on purple satin. Gaze upon this martyr. See his dress. It beautifies him with gold and jewels pillaged from crypts of assumed apostates. The empty sockets fitted with false porcelain eyes half-lidded and the pupils tilted back. He looks as if he is napping. A couple of jeweled rings worn on the bony and crossed index and middle fingers. On the roof of the glass coffin an arm detached from the body of another saint stands on its rigid stump glued with some resin. The fingers likewise crossed as the martyr’s facing the gathered mourners as if gesturing a benediction across them. They murmur a prayer and raise their hands to supplicate and wail like sirens for a god that never was and begged for the martyr’s safe passage across The Shimmering Fields.