Victorian Nocturne

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been three months since my last confession."

The seat beneath Fox's backside was newly padded, and she shifted on the cushion as she looked at the mesh between herself and the robed figure on the other side of the confessional. She'd waited until almost everyone had spoken to the priest before coming into the small space, and now she sat with her hands folded in her lap as she tried to sit still. She'd sat up almost all night thinking about this, made her decision as the sun came up. With her foster mother so far away, there was no one she could talk her about her predicament. Who else should she turn to but a man of God?

"I've taken the Lord's name in vain while at work, had disrespectful thoughts towards my elders, accepted an apple from a street vendor without paying for it." Minor sins, things she'd done in moments of thoughtlessness. A springboard, perhaps, to the thing that had begun to wear on her. Fox looked down at her shoes. "Entertained impure thoughts." In the dimness of the little booth, her face was turning red.

"I seek absolution, Reverend."

( A Woman's Worth )

Reverend Edward Cooper was written by Tim