Chapter Text
The white nothingness was below me and surrounding me and trapped me from above. The villa and the tree-lined shore were lost from my sight, eaten by mist. In the distance, further into the lake, only the faint figure of Father Woźniak remained, shrinking even more into himself. The distance between my hurrying feet and his aging steps seemed to me, against reason, dilating. I called out to him but he didn't answer. Suddenly he stopped and I saw him lowering his body, his aching knees touching the ice. I closed our distance, to urge him to get up for his health's sake. But those words never left my mouth, for at that moment it was as if time itself stood still.
Under our feet the whiteness was shifting. I thought it nothing but the natural occurences of ice's characteristics in its many cycles of freezing and thawing, but a glint of gold caught my eyes. It swayed gently with the placid current of the lake beneath, and it dawned on me that I was seeing the fringed ends of a sash there. The finest golden threads, at the end of a white watered silk sash only one person in the entire world could wear: our Pope Innocent. Around me the whiteness had became oppressive and absolute. I did not hear footsteps approaching. In my ears, from I don't know where, I hear a ringing so persistent, and from the Archbishop came fevered whispers of "Clement, Clement, Clement…"
Sister Noshafarin, diary entry, 21 December 2020