Acceptance

It hung high in the corner of the church among the cornices perpetually swathed in shadow like a spiderweb -defiant of gravity- waiting in silken silence for its prey. It shared the dust with ancient gargoyles. Its back lay against the ceiling. Its legs tucked up against its chest, while its arms and long black hair hung down, reaching out to the polished floor far below. It took the form of a girl entirely obscured in loose folds of black, save for pale fingertips and white toes. 

Bells echoed through the church, resounding like pond ripples off the walls and pillars. She stirred. Dust drifted the long distance down from the rafters. As her head rose, a ghostly face emerged from behind the curtain of long black hair. Eyes engulfed in pupil -save for a thin ice-blue rim- pierced the hollow space with a malignant stare. 

The bells foretold the time of light dwellers and the rise of the fiery star that banished creatures of the night.

The bells summoned the humble man who opened the church doors. Rays of fire violently split the gloom of the church and crashed against the stone floors. Warm light flooded the expanse, spilled into nooks, and devoured the darkness. Except for a single chance corner. The humble door master looked to this abyss tucked in the furthest reaches of the church. It seemed to him darker than it ought, and he felt it staring back with cold eyes.

The rest of the light dwellers followed soon after. They sat in the pews with clasped hands, reverent to the central altar. Some left, and others came. They exchanged hushed conversations that floated through the highest rafters and trembled like moths in the ears of the creature with her back against the ceiling. Every sound came to her clear as the bells. Every whisper, and every prayer. She listened, and their worries filled her, coaxing a curled smile. She closed her eyes to bask and fell again into sleep. 

To her, the people meant nothing more than souls for a web, despite their posturing. Even in her stupor, she felt their thoughts and attention flick from the altar to her ominous corner, like wings stirring the strands of her web. Their trembling fear buttressed her contented sleep through the damning fires of the day.

In fleeting moments of wakefulness, she admired the architecture in the daylight contrast. The vaulted domes glowed, stained glass windows blinded her, and in the alcoves, the empty faces of statues stared back. Even fully lit, she could not define their expressions that sent horripilation across her skin and forced a cringing snarl.

Dozing, her ears pricked with the words of a foreign tongue. Phrases repeated and shared among all the churchgoers in their prayers. The words held no meaning to her, except one phrase, “immortal soul,” for she knew she was not allowed one. If she gained a soul, it would float out of reach in the dead air. No matter how she crawled the walls or across the ceiling or along the rafters, it would never be within reach, and if she dove through the dead air towards it, her hands would go right through, and she would drop to a heap of dust far below.

With a dreamy smirk, the creature lifted an arm. The sleeve slipped from her white skin as she reached out into the space. She could almost feel the amorphous thing humming at her fingertips. She ran her fingers through the air like pond water.

Far below a pew creaked. Her cold eyes snapped open to meet those of a churchgoer, watching her weave her hands through the air. The churchgoer turned quickly away when they felt the cold feral gaze emerge from the darkness.

Soon, her eyes fell closed again. 

The people didn’t want her here. They didn’t believe her kind could enter their sacred ground, and yet, here she was, a testament to their folly. She came here to soak in their festering doubt that soothed and strengthened her.

Each morning the door master let fresh searing light into the church. He looked to her corner hoping the light would reach there and banish her, but always she lingered. In the day, the people in the pews flicked their eyes away in fear. Each evening, the bells chimed, and the creature roused herself in anticipation of night.

She lost track of the years she haunted the church. The churchgoers stopped screeching in fright when they caught sight of her. They no longer shivered in paralyzed fear when she caught them. They grew accustomed to her, and it stifled. She remembered when the holy ones said prayers below her perch and blessed the grounds in vain. This entertainment, too, eventually ceased. Then one day, the faces of the people that looked to her corner went blank like those of the statues. Only over time did she stop flexing her claws and baring her fangs in return. 

Brave children, ignorant of her legacy, stood beneath her perch and stared at her through the church’s heights. She contemplated them a while before she growled long and low. The children quailed, huddled together, and spoke in hushed whispers. The creature smiled, then tucked her head into her knees. 

A voice called up. 

She opened her eyes and sneered at the witless imps still standing like mice beneath a falcon’s nest. 

The call came again, “What is your name?” 

The question astounded her. She whispered. The word escaped her mouth, and fear overcame her. With one swift motion, she grasped the air that tingled with the sound of her name. 

She looked down at the children, their faces gone blank and unreadable as the statues. What did those faces mean? She searched for any hint of fear, anger, or guile, but every facial cue she knew eluded her. These faces contorted to convey emotions she did not understand. What would they do with her name? Why did they want it? Grimmacing, she opened her hands. With a halting sigh and flick of her slender finger, the whispered word escaped and rode the dust down to the waiting children, who each heard the sound of the creature’s voice at the nape of their neck.

“Lepidoptera.”

 They squealed like piglets and scattered to their mothers in the pews. She felt eyes upon her and heard her name float from ear to ear. From that day forth, her name echoed off the walls of the church, off the pillars and statues, the altars and candles and pews. When the light dwellers prayed, they wove her name into their strange language.

Evening beams of light burned orange and stretched long clawing fingers deep into the church. A lone woman knelt in the pew. Her prayer held Lepidoptera’s name among many others, spilled like butterflies set free from a jar. 

The pew creaked, and the woman looked up at Lepidoptera with a statue-blank face. She spoke as softly as her prayer, knowing the sound would reach the corner.

“Why do you sit there, dark Lepidoptera?” the words pondered.

The creature’s sneer came in return. “Stay after the evening bell, and I may tell you.”

A hint of fear cracked the indecipherable face before the woman turned away. The fingers of the sun slid away, and the evening bell rang. The woman looked up.

Before the last toll died away, gravity overtook Lepidoptera, and the creature fell. Hardly a moment later, she stood facing the woman, pale toes brushing the dust beneath them. Blue-rimmed eyes glared from under her dark hair. “Why do you say my name? What is it for?” Lepidoptera asked with an accent of unuse and antiquity. 

The woman stood stunned, but gradually the fear melted away, and only an unfamiliar pulling of the lips and dip of the eyes remained. She stuttered as she spoke. “I, I pray for-for you, Lepidoptera.”

The creature stepped forward. “Why? I don’t understand your prayer,” she said, “Do you cast spells on my name?”

The woman’s features shifted to a new unknown expression. Lepidoptera studied the face. Some sort of sadness, perhaps? The woman asked in a voice like sorrow, “You don’t understand prayer?”

Envy spread like poison through Lepidoptera’s core. She felt suddenly blind to an obvious secret. In all her years haunting this church, she’d been unwittingly exempt. A hiss slipped through Lepidoptera’s teeth, and the familiar hints of fear flickered on the woman’s face. Lepidoptera turned away, flexing her pale fingers. After composing herself, she twisted back towards the woman. “Tell me,” she barked.

The woman trembled. Her eyes watered. She opened her mouth and found her voice choked, but she braved the words. “We believe in a being that holds the universe. In our prayers, we ask this being for its kindness.” She paused to swallow. “My ancestors told stories of you, Lepidoptera. In all the years you’ve haunted this church, you’ve caused no illness or injury, though we believe it to be well in your power. That is why we pray for you, Lepidoptera, so that we may repay your kindness.”

Lepidoptera blinked. She stood there, unmoving for so long the woman thought the creature transformed to stone. Then Lepidoptera rose as suddenly as she had fallen and returned to her perch with her back against the ceiling. The ice-rimmed eyes glared down from the heights. A loud hiss slithered through the whole of the church. The woman fled.

Lepidoptera contemplated the words for the rest of the night and all the day after. Her eyes burned. Near evening of the second day, after the sun retreated from the vast hall, she lifted a finger to her cheek. A black tear nestled there. 

Again, Lepidoptera fell. Her clothes fluttered to the ground where she knelt in the aisle, face hidden behind a curtain of hair. The churchgoers cried out and leaped away, but Lepidoptera made no further movement. They all froze still, fearful and uncertain. Then, as the evening bells rang, a groan built from her chest, reverberating into a yell, then a roar. The churchgoers fled as her voice resounded through every corner of the church. 

Lepidoptera roared until only she remained. Even the mice and the insects that crawled beneath the floors and in the walls scattered, leaving Lepidoptera unutterably alone. She screamed. It crashed against the walls with each savage echo and shook the church’s foundation. She screamed through the deepest hours of the night, never needing breath. When she finally stopped, the silence crackled.

She stood, cheeks stained with charcoal lines that ran from her eyes and down her neck like scars. She moved down the aisle towards the altar, each barefoot step a soft tap. She’d stood here countless times before but now approached as if for the first. The moonlight bathed the altar, and she admired its beauty anew through tear-stained eyes. She knelt and lifted her hands. Her voice did not sound, but she formed the words and imprinted them on the air so that only a being that held the universe might hear.

“I cannot grasp what has been done with my name. I do not know you.” She lifted her eye to the altar and looked into the unfathomable faces there. “I wish to.”

The soundless words drifted up like curls of smoke. They wrapped around and cradled her like a multitude of sourceless wings. Then, gently and slowly as a lover’s touch, the smoke lifted her into the air. She floated weightless before the altar, transfixed. Reaching out her hand she felt a phantom tingle. It pulsed through her fingertips, palms, and wrists, working its way up her arms and across her entire body. She gasped as her soul, once unreachable, flooded through her.

She heard a voice, low and comforting. The same ineffable voice that had welcomed her into the church so many years ago. It called her name. “Lepidoptera.” And she followed it away.

The next morning, the door master unlocked the heavy double doors of the church and entered the silent gloom. Pale gray light filtered through the rafters. His steps echoed down the long aisle between the pews, and then he halted. The corner always glimpsed out the corner of his eye, didn’t hold the same darkness. No dread filled him as he stared. His eyes adjusted as they never had before, and for the first time, he saw into the shadow of the corner. It was gone.

Something crunched beneath his foot, loud as the crush of fallen leaves in the silence. A moth. Further down the aisle, strewn across the floor, lay a thousand gray moths. The man looked again towards the corner with its absent creature, and he understood. The creature had perched there all his life, all the lives of his ancestors, and now was gone.

As the light of the morning reached the aisle, the moths fluttered their wings. He watched in wonder as they flew up into the darkness and disappeared among the church’s rafters.