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You watch Kevin make his special All Smiles Day prayer with loving curiosity, memorising the gentle lilt of his words, the warm sheen to his skin. The slow, subtle swaying of him, like a flower in the slight, summertime breeze, floral and honeyed, wafting over a grassy meadow.
When it's over, he kisses your cheek gently. You've never celebrated All Smiles Day, and you're excited to try. You're always excited to learn about new religions, new practicees, new ceremonies. But with Kevin, it's more than that, always.
You help him lace up his special dress, gently, lovingly tracing your fingertips over the heavy scars across his back and neck. He shivers pleasantly, and turns around for you to admire him. He's lovely, dressed up all beautiful like the Princess Andromeda on her alter. With gold makeup and gold jewelery, stunning against rich brown skin and deep black eyes. Glossy scarlet blood glistening on his lips, smeared tastefully across his cheeks, drizzled across the flirtatious white sundress he's wearing, which swishes around his hips as he happily twirls.
He spends the morning baking, letting you help, just like with the caramels the eve before, in which you spend more time at the stove, and he spends time sitting on the counter, or staring lovingly at the sun, and at his town. While the bread is in the oven, gently plumping and crisping under the loving, hot rays, Kevin bounces slightly on the couch while he reads to you from his large, embossed book of prayers.
"Prayers of the Prophet," reads the front in gold, and it's decorated with an image of the sun enveloping a smiling, black eyed figure. It has pages that smell perfumed, and that make a very nice sound when turned. He has a small, portable microphone with him, which he pulls out to read with, because it reminds him of the radio. He informs you that he's later going to read these same prayers on the radio proper, and again at the cathedral, and you tell him you're willing to hear every version of it. Every word he has to say. You love them all.
The prayers themselves are lovely, in that grotesque, religious, romantic sort of way. About becoming sacred bread for the sacred feast of God, about devouring and light and sweet blood and sweet meadows. Hearing them in Kevin's beautiful voice makes you feel slightly weak, even though he hasn't embellished it much, and is only speaking in one voice, and one language, because he isn't on the radio yet, and doesn't want to stress himself.
By the time he's done reading, and you're done playing with his hair and the straps of his dress, the sacred bread itself is done, and he pulls it out of the oven with that nice fresh, warm bread smell. He gently slices oranges and apples to eat with it, and spreads honey across the warm bread with a heavily decorated ritual knife. He pours you each a glass of fizzy champagne to have with it, and the bread and the alcohol warm you very nicely. It all tastes amazing, pastoral and divine and special. Kevin smiles, glad you're enjoying it. Enjoying his culture. Enjoying him.
Later, after he's returned from his radio show, but before he heads to the church, he's full of a shocking energy, when usually he comes home so tired. He puts on a record mkxing traditional hymns and MARINA, and he spins you around dancing, laughing, spinning your skirts until you both collapse in a giggling heap on a nearby pillow pile, him on top of you. He sighs, relaxes, his warm skin against your cold. You run a gentle finger through his tired hair, then carefully roll him off of you and onto his back on the pillows. You hurry off, and before he can be worried about you, you're right there again, with an envelope in your hand.
He takes it from you, dark black paper with glowing green ink, a dripping black and silver seal, made not with the sap from the humming pine trees, but the flowing sap from your very own veins, which you know he adores so much. He grins, the Smiling God’s light fizzing through his fingertips for a moment, to gently melt the seal, releasing the scents of sap and frost and graveyard fog and old, old forests. He inhales deeply, happily, gently sliding out the card you had made him.
He blushes bright and golden and pink, like a sunrise lighting up his face when he sees it. His joy so radiant it lights up the house. He leans forward and kisses you, nips your lip with his sharp, carnivore's teeth, playfully licks the thick, dark, heavy tasting sap that wells up slightly. You laugh, and help him to his feet. He stumbles over to his vanity, to let you help him get ready for the church.
He smiles into your makeup pen as you draw glittery suns and spirals and hearts across his cheeks, blushing warm and soft. The ribbons threaded through his cheeks gently pulls his smile up, and they feel silky under your hands, as you help attatch gleaming golden charms to the stitches. They clink against eachother softly, and his eyes flutter happily shut, allowing you to brush gold eyeshadow over the lids, making the dark portals of his eyes stand out.
He's captivating at the curch, as always, his angelic chorus of joyful voices, buzzing and fizzing and clicking, some in English, some in Latin, some in that strange language of centipedes, and some in that holy, flowing language of light, the sound of the Smiling God speaking through him. Not even a Radio Host can truly withstand that level of power, and he comes home exhausted and weak, with you holding him around the waist to help him walk, and leaning heavily on his staff.
You gently help him lie down, and smooth your hand over his creases, work out the knots and feel him melt gently with relief. He smiles, squeezes your hand in his. A wonderful holiday completed.