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There’s something to be said for religion, or at least the parts of it that aren’t clearly designed to subjugate entire genders and races ‘for the will of God’ or whoever else is believed in.
The tenets, the core philosophy, of most religions isn’t exactly something to turn away from. The term ‘religious experience’ doesn’t have to be literal, after all; any of these tenets, love thy neighbour and so on, don’t have to be tied to a religion to be followed.
But religious experiences provide one with the feeling that they have truly approached the divine in any way.
The divine. Blasphemous to call anything divine nowadays, but at the same time Sophia Ascarte is an atheist so she’ll call a cream puff divine if she so pleases, thank you very much. She finds the foibles of religion to be a shackle; why bind yourself to a god or a pantheon, when you can just apply their tenets without limiting yourself? Why do you need a god to tell you to be nice to someone, when you can do that easily without them?
why listen to the divine, when you can listen to yourself?
There’s a saying in her House; ‘The Divine birth us, and we, in turn, birth the Divine’. It’s a core philosophy that many people throughout the years have called something else, something along the lines of ‘we make the divine with our imaginations, but if we didn’t, then the divine clearly made us. But who made them?’
Sophia wants to know when the fuck she gave birth to such an angel, and why she wasn’t made aware of it.
She isn’t too sure what Katarina Claes is, exactly. She walks and talks and breathes like any normal human being. There’s an air of apathetic normality around her. She looks normal, sounds normal, smells normal. There is nothing abnormal about her.
But there is. And it is driving Sophia insane trying to figure it out.
First, she is gravitational. She pulls people into her orbit like the sun would planets, and her entire being just sucks people in whether they want to be there or not. Alan is only there for Mary, this is obvious, but he could easily walk away, yet he doesn’t. a prime example.
Second, she is charismatic. When she can will herself to speak more than five sentences a week, that is. Katarina knows what to say to people to calm them down or rile them up, how to press their buttons and how to soothe old grudges. With a few scarce words she could turn her entire ‘friend’ group against each other, and nothing would lash back at her for it.
Third, she is apathetic. Down to her core, depressed and alone in her own head. She looks off into the distance, speaks what sounds like a different language altogether sometimes, and Sophia has scoured books for that language to find nothing. She either made it up, or it is a language so dead only Katarina knows it.
Lastly, with no effort on her side, she is beautiful. Down to the marrow, down through the bones, lingering in muscles and joints, Katarina Claes is beautiful. The way she sits, when she stands, how she speaks, even that strange language she slips into sometimes. It is all beautiful.
And Sophia doesn’t know why!
And it is maddening! Because Sophia, in her efforts to find out why Katarina is so magnetic, got pulled in too. Because Sophia, in her efforts to find out why Katarina is so charismatic, got charmed. Because Sophia, to find out why Katarina is apathetic, became empathetic to her plight – and she didn’t even know what that plight was!
Sophia Ascarte is along for the ride, now, and she knows she is. But no Ascarte has ever done anything by halves. No Ascarte has ever been a quitter.
Sophia Ascarte may have been drawn into Katarina Claes’ orbit, but by all the divine beings above she will stay there.
She eyes Mary Hunt and Jeordo Stuart.
Yes, only she will stay there.