Who: Cesare and EƤrendil What: Match up! Where: St. Michael's When: Tuesday Warnings | Status: None | in progress
The church was quiet and that in itself was both blessing and curse, as though it offered no distraction.. it offered no distraction and Cesare was left with his own thoughts for company. The Hour was approaching Terce and he should be at prayer or doing some other study in relation to his vows as a cleric, but Cesare wandered instead away from the backrooms of the church and into the prayer hall. There were few souls about, as even the most devout came to the church on Sundays if at all in this day. He paused before the crucified Christ and made the sign of the cross, muttering the benediction out loud before continuing on. Cesare was a religious man by rote but he did not attribute all of his successes or failures to the will of God.
God came after, and in all that man did was man's choices and man's choices alone. It wasn't fate, or destiny. It was action or inaction, decision and consequence. God would forgive mankind on their day of judgment, or he wouldn't. So he did not pause overlong to peer at the Crucified form of Christ, but did occasionally lend a prayer when it was necessary.
Michael Carpenter had been a better priest, but then being a cleric had never been Cesare's choice. He followed the footsteps of his father until resigning his position as Cardinal. Now he was stuck in cleric's robes again, but it had been a return to the familiar in a very unfamiliar world. He would eventually cast aside his role as a cleric, but for now it served his purpose. It made him a benign and trusted person within the small confines of this city. People trusted their Priest, their Confessor, a holy-man with God as his witness.
Cesare raised his eyes as he moved down the center aisle and inclined his head toward the man who just entered the church. "Good day," he said, trying neither for friendliness nor animosity. It simply was. He gathered the skirts of the cassock in one hand, annoyed at the hindrance of movement it caused. He would adopt the modern dress of a priest if it weren't important to him to maintain ties to his roots. He represented the old world after all.