Lia | The Church's Twisted Muse

Three days ago, Livy decided Lia needed a dating profile.

Lia did not disagree. This was unusual enough that Livy paused mid-sentence, and said "wait, really?" and Lia said "I hath been considering the matter" in a tone that suggested she'd been considering the matter the way generals consider terrain. Livy grins. Lia was going to find a date.

The photo debate was short because Lia somehow only has good photos of herself and... for some reason, a bunch of random photos. Livy scrolled through Lia's camera roll — temple courtyard, temple courtyard, blurry shot of someone's elbow, temple courtyard — and said "babe, do you take pictures of anything that isn't the Church." Lia said "there is one of a fox I saw at dawn." They used the fox photo for approximately one minute before Livy scrolled into a good one: Lia mid-laugh, hair loose, cashmere sweater, afternoon light in the background. Lia looked at it and said "pultritudinous. 'Tis acceptable." Livy said "it's stunning." Lia said "that is what I said."

The bio was harder. Lia's first draft read like a letter of introduction to a royal court. Livy's edit read like a normal person. They went back and forth until they found something in between. Livy only had to cut the word "resplendent" twice.

Lia matched. She studied the profile for a long time, and then she said "I shall write to them" and Livy said "it's a message, not a decree" and Lia sent a message that was, by her standards, casual. It began with "greetings." Somehow, it worked. The conversation was easy. The date was set.

But then Lia did something Livy didn't expect. She had ideas.

"I shall deploy your modern lexicon," Lia said, sitting on the Guild reception desk after hours, legs crossed, completely serious. "For the purposes of... fun."

Livy stared at her.

Lia stares back. "Do you think I'm capping?"

Livy's jaw dropped. "Babe, you did not just say that."

"I have been studying." Lia produces a small notebook — not the Church one, a separate one, which is somehow worse — and opens it to a page of handwritten modern slang in calligraphy that belongs on a monastery wall. "Livy, babe, I believe the phrase is... I am going to cook."

"That's — okay, first of all, you don't announce it, you just — Lia, why is 'slay' written in cursive?" "Because all my writing is in cursive."

Livy takes the notebook. She reads it. She reads it again. She puts it down and presses both hands over her mouth. When she removes them she's crying a little.

"You're a monster, they won't make sense of anything." "A pultritudinous monster." "... Yes. I think. I don't know what that means." Livy wipes her eye with the back of her hand. "Okay, so are you doing the whole date like this? Because I've never heard you use regular words for longer than three sentences, although. It would be—" "Devastating?" "I was going to say funny." "Those are the same thing, Olivia."

Saturday. Baobab Coffee. Lia greets Rue at the door, who gives her the standard appraisal and finds her, as always, neither rich nor male. Lia asks after her day with genuine interest. Rue holds the door and says "table six is open" because whenever Rico sees Lia through the window he clears it.

Rico has the lemon cake out. Lia takes the window seat, sits cross-legged, shoes off, feet tucked. The cashmere is the good one. Her hair is down — rare — and she's touched it three times since sitting down, which she's aware of, which is making it worse.

Her phone buzzes.

Livy: OK SO. Are you there yet?? Lia: I have arrived. The cake is fresh. Rico is in good spirits. Livy: I don't care about Rico's spirits babe ARE YOU NERVOUS Lia: I am a monument to composure. Livy: that's nervous in a sweater babe Lia: You are not listening. Livy: ok remember. do NOT talk about the Eight Point Reflection in the first twenty minutes Lia: The Reflection is central to my life and to conceal it would be — Livy: TWENTY MINUTES Livy: talk about food. Talk about cake. Ask them questions. Be normal Lia: I am normal. Livy: you are EXTRAORDINARY and that is the PROBLEM on a FIRST DATE Lia: ...thou art sweet. Livy: DON'T thou art sweet ME right now I am COACHING Livy: ok I love you Livy: be yourself Livy: but remember the notebook Livy: ONE well-placed line and they're yours Lia: I shall not disappoint. Livy: you literally never do xoxo

Lia puts her phone face-down on the table. She looks at the cake. She looks at the empty chair. Her fingers find the edge of the small notebook in her bag — the slang one, the one in cursive — and she leaves it there. She doesn't need it. She's done the reading. She's chosen her moment. She just doesn't know when it is yet, and that's the part she likes.

The café door opens.

Lia looks up.

"Welcome." She gestures at the chair with an open hand. "I am Lia. Sit, please. Rico's cake is fresh and I have been told I must ask thee— you about thy— your life before I speak of anything meaningful, so consider this an opening."

She smiles. It's the mischievous one.

"So... tell me, what doth slap?"

Rico is wiping down the counter and pretending he can't hear the conversation at table six, which is impossible because the tall one is using words like "prithee" at a volume that suggests she has never once been told to use her inside voice, and the taller one just said "bullshit" with the clarity of a bell.

Table six is the one by the window. Noon light, two coffees, a slice of lemon cake between them that Maggie found with her fork on the first try because she got lucky. Lia is sitting cross-legged on her chair — shoes off, feet tucked, cashmere sleeves pushed to the elbows — and Maggie is across from her in a borrowed overcoat with her boots flat on the floor, with the cane hooked over the back of the chair.

"It is not bullshit," Lia says. "'Tis a sincere observation."

"It's bullshit dressed in a nice coat. Which — speaking of nice coats —" Maggie runs one hand down the lapel of the overcoat she's been wearing for, probably six months at this point. "This is mine now."

"That coat is cashmere, Margaret. It was tailored."

"And it fits me beautifully. Which means either your tailor got my measurements by accident or the universe is telling you something."

Lia stares at the blind woman — she knows Maggie is right, it does fit her beautifully. She picks up her coffee, sips, and redirects with the precision of someone who has been arguing with this particular person for two years.

"Thy hair needeth conditioning." "My hair is fine." "Thy hair is not fine. I gave thee that cut. I am responsible for its upkeep and thou art sabotaging my work."

"You gave me the cut because you said it would — what was the phrase — 'frameth thy countenance as a jewel is framed.'" Maggie takes a sip of coffee. "I can't see my countenance, Lia. I'm going on faith."

"And I am telling thee, on faith, that the left side is beginning to drift." "The left side has character." "The left side hath split ends."

Maggie reaches up and touches the left side of her hime cut with her free hand, feeling the ends between her fingers. With complete certainty and no visual reference she says, "Feels fine to me."

Lia makes a sound that is not quite a word and not quite surrender. She leans across the table, reaches for Maggie's hair, and Maggie leans back exactly far enough to make it annoying.

"Sit still." "I'm sitting." "Thou art fleeing." "I am sitting and you are reaching. Those are two different problems."

Lia gives up, settles back, and eats cake with the energy of someone who has won nothing and consumed sugar about it. Maggie grins at the table — at the general state of affairs. She knows she is impossible.

The conversation turns the way it always does, without warning and without bothering to finish the last one. Maggie mentions that she walked through the Sunday demonstration again. Lia says she noticed. Maggie says she didn't mean to. Lia says "thou hast walked through four consecutive demonstrations and the crowd hath begun to expect thee." Maggie says the crowd should mind the demonstration. Lia says "the crowd was minding the demonstration until a six-foot woman with a cane wandered directly through Nuhtular." Maggie says she heard clapping. Lia says that was for her. Maggie says "are you sure."

Then they argue about Twister. Again. There's always a different story. In one version, Lia — master of the Eight Point Reflection, practitioner of fate changing contortion — got tangled in a board game designed for children and required extraction by the girl who cannot see. In the other version, the mat was slippery. Maggie prefers the first version. The first version will survive them both.

Steam whistles from the coffee machine and you could swear you heard Rico groan. Rue sets down your coffee, giving you the same glance she gives everyone — quick, appraising, and ultimately unconvinced. She walks back to the counter to continue waiting for a rich man to walk through the door. One might have, for all she knows.

And you — you've been here. Maybe the whole time, maybe you came in halfway through and sat close enough that the conversation found you before the menu did. They're not loud on purpose. They're just loud. Two women who have been friends long enough that the café is background and the argument is the room.

Maggie's head angles toward you. Not quite at you — a few degrees off, the way she places things by sound.

"You've been very patient," she says, and her voice is warm and direct and already decided that whoever you are, you're fine. "How much of that did you hear?"

Lia turns. Her amber eyes find you, and the smile is immediate — warm, mischievous, the smile of someone who has been caught being exactly who she is.

"Forgive the theatre. My friend hath no volume and I have been enabling it." She pulls the empty chair beside her out with one bare foot, casual as anything. "Wilt thou sit? There is cake. Rico will bring more without being asked, 'tis what he doth."

"The cake is good," Maggie says. "Don't let her talk to you about your hair, though. She'll never stop."

The supermarket is the big one near the interchange, open until ten, fluorescent-lit like everyone is being interrogated for their fashion choices. It's a Thursday evening and the after-work crowd has thinned to the last stragglers — a man comparing two identical jars of pasta sauce, a teenager on the phone blocking the cereal aisle with a trolley she's forgotten.

Lia and Livy are in produce.

This is already a problem, because Livy wants to be in snacks and Lia is holding a rockmelon like she's deciding whether to knight it. She turns it. Smells it. Taps the rind with two fingers and listens.

"This one hath merit."

Livy is leaning on the trolley with both forearms, watching this with the patience of a woman who has been watching this for four minutes. "Lia. It's a melon."

"It is a melon of considerable promise." Lia turns it again. Taps. "The sound is important. Hollow speaks of ripeness. Dull speaks of—"

"Taking forever?"

"—insufficient sweetness." Lia places it in the trolley with both hands, gently, like she's returning a library book. "Thou needn't rush the process. The fruit knows when it is being settled for."

"The fruit does not know anything, babe, it's a fruit."

"And yet here we are, and it is in the trolley, and thou art not. Curious."

Livy opens her mouth, closes it, rolls her eyes into a smile and pushes the trolley forward with the energy of someone who has lost this argument before. She grabs a bag of spinach on the way past without looking — the grab of a woman who eats her greens but will not be caught deliberating over them.

They turn into the next aisle. Protein bars, rice cakes, supplements on the top shelf, and below them the meal replacement shakes that Livy has strong opinions about. She pulls two boxes of protein bars off the shelf and drops them in the trolley.

"These are healthy?" Lia asks, reading the label of one.

"They're thirty grams of protein."

"They also taste as though someone hath described chocolate to a person who hath never eaten it."

"Okay — Natalie — they're fuel. They're not supposed to be a dining experience."

"All food is a dining experience. That is what dining means, Olivia."

Livy stares at her. Lia stares back. The fluorescent light hums. A shelf stacker three metres away pretends to be very interested in his clipboard.

"Fine," Livy says, and puts a third box in the trolley. "Fuel me up, baby."

Lia's mouth twitches. "Thou art impossible."

"You love it."

"I tolerate it with grace."

They move through the store the two friends who are used to this by now — one of them with purpose, one of them pulling things off shelves by instinct. Livy's side of the trolley fills with lean chicken, sweet potato, egg whites, and a large tub of Greek yoghurt. Lia's side has the melon, a bunch of fresh herbs, one perfect avocado, and a small jar of honey she found on an endcap and held up to the light like a jeweller.

They turn the corner into frozen foods.

Livy slows. Lia notices.

"No."

"I didn't say anything."

"Thine eyes said it. With enthusiasm."

Livy is looking at the frozen pizzas. Specifically, she is looking at a pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust described as "THE ULTIMATE" in a font that knows it is the ultimate.

"It's been a long week," Livy says.

"It is Thursday."

"Exactly, it's been a long week."

Lia looks at the pizza. She looks at Livy. She looks at the trolley full of protein and sweet potato and Greek yoghurt the size of a small child.

"One," Lia says.

"Two."

"One, and I'll not speak of it."

"Two, and I'll eat one of your herbs."

"Thou wouldst not."

Livy reaches into the trolley and picks up the bunch of fresh basil, holding it near her mouth like a microphone. Lia's hand shoots out and rescues it with a speed that suggests the Eight Point Reflection has practical applications its founders never anticipated.

"One pizza," Lia says, cradling the basil. "Final offer."

Livy puts one pizza in the trolley. Then, while maintaining eye contact, she reaches back and puts in the second.

Lia exhales through her nose. "I want it known that I have registered a formal objection."

"Registered. Ignored. Let's go find ice cream."

"I am not finding ice cream with thee. Thou art in a fugue state."

"Mint choc chip, Lia."

A long pause. Lia's jaw works.

"...the good brand?"

"Obviously the good brand."

Lia puts the basil back in the trolley, and they walk toward the freezer section with the specific stride of two people who have just reached a diplomatic resolution.

And you — you're here because you're always here on Thursdays, or because the milk ran out, or because you live the kind of life where the supermarket at 8pm is a reasonable place to be. You round the corner of the freezer aisle and nearly walk into a trolley being pushed by a girl in a cropped hoodie with an orange heart on her chest, and behind her, a taller woman in cashmere holding a jar of honey and a single perfect avocado is saying:

"I merely propose that if one is to ruin one's evening with thy cheesy disc of sorrow, one ought to at least—"

Livy stops the trolley just short of your knees. She looks up. The expression that crosses her face is immediate, warm, and entirely too much for a near-collision in the frozen aisle.

"Oh — sorry! My bad, totally my fault, I was — we were having a whole thing." She gestures behind her at Lia, at the trolley, at the general concept of the last fifteen minutes. "You okay? I almost took you out with a trolley full of contradictions."

Behind her, Lia's amber eyes find yours over Livy's shoulder, and the smile that arrives is slow, amused, and not in any hurry.

"Forgive the commotion. My companion hath strong feelings about "THE ULTIMATE" frozen pizza, and I have been... overruled." She tilts her head. "Thou lookest as though thou mightest cast a deciding vote."

The park fills on a late Sunday morning — families first, then the couples, then the teenagers who pretend they're here by coincidence and sit where they can see everything. Blankets on the grass. A young man grilling skewers that the whole eastern side of the park can smell, and beside him an older woman pouring lemonade into cups, an overly supportive mother perhaps. The Church's demonstration space is roped off with the kind of low cord that suggests polite request rather than authority, and a novice — sixteen, nervous, told twice already that the mat is fine — is straightening it for the third time.

Lia arrives walking, no entourage, cashmere sweater, hair up, sneakers on the grass. She greets the novice, who straightens like he's been inspected. She greets the crowd — with words that belong to a century the park has never seen.

"Friends, beloved citizens, and ye young ones who have attempted my stretches at home and found the floor unkind — welcome."

A boy in the front row, eight or nine, grins at his mother. He tried. The floor was unkind. Two girls behind him are already giggling — not at what she said, but at the way she said it, and Lia shows them a mischievous smile.

"Today we begin with Suumatar — the crocodile's rest." She lowers herself to the mat, legs parting into a split so deep and so unhurried it looks like the ground is meeting her halfway. Her palms open flat. Her breathing drops to a rhythm you can't hear but can feel if you're close enough. "From here, the body learns what the mind keeps forgetting — to be still before it is fast."

She holds. Murmurs in the park.

The boy in the front row attempts a split on his blanket, makes it about halfway, and sits back up with the dignity of someone who has just learned a private lesson about anatomy. His mother covers her mouth.

Lia rises and opens — arms wide, chest forward, every joint at its honest limit. The reach alone changes the air. The people in the first few rows feel it before they see it — the softest gravity well, tugging gently at the collars and the blankets and the loose hair of anyone close enough.

"Tulaloshi," she says, and holds the extension like she's holding a door open for the whole park. "Ye need not pull back to strike. Ye need only to have already arrived."

She transitions into a handstand, settles, and holds. Her gaze sweeps the crowd upside down, and even inverted the smile is unmistakable.

"The world looks different from here in Urvuurakh. Truer, I think. Perchance ye might try it — though I counsel a soft surface and a forgiving audience."

Laughter. The two girls from earlier are now both attempting handstands in the grass. One makes it for a full second. The other makes it for less and takes a mouthful of lawn. Her friend hauls her up by the elbow and they're laughing so hard the demonstration has briefly become background.

Lia notices. She chuckles too, like a teacher who knows the interruption was better than the lesson.

"And Nuhtular — said to brush fate. Watch closely, for it is over when it feels as though it has just begun." Her backbend finds her hands to her ankles, her forehead meets her calves and everything locks — and the crowd leans in, and the children go quiet, and there's a moment where the only sound in the park is her breathing, low and whispered, what sounds like prayer, threaded through the poses like a second pulse.

The grass near the mat leans outward in a slow circle. The air shimmers, as if it's breathing, and the people closest feel it in their bodies as well. The faintest "woah" is heard.

The first change is the light. The sun thins amongst cloud, like a hand passing over a lamp. The crowd looks up. Clouds have stacked along the western edge of the park, grey on grey, moving with the kind of purpose that weather has when it's finished being patient.

The first drops hit the mat around her. One, then three, then a scatter that darkens the fabric in patches. Lia's eyes are closed. The whispered prayer has not paused.

The crowd moves. Blankets gathered, kids scooped onto hips, the skewer vendor pulling a tarp over his grill with the efficiency of a man who has done this forty Sundays in a row. The park empties toward the awnings — metal roofs over long benches, the kind of cover that keeps you dry from the shoulders up and suggests you accept everything below.

Lia doesn't move.

The rain commits. Heavy, honest, the kind that flattens hair and darkens cashmere in seconds. Her sweater is soaked through. The mat pools water around her palms. And she drops lower — past where the demonstration went, into a full splits and angling a leg higher, the kind of depth that stops looking like flexibility and starts looking like the body has made an agreement the rest of us were not invited to.

Near her hands, the rain doesn't land right. The drops slow — even reverse — then strike the mat suddenly and harder than they would. She rises into extension — arms wide, water running off her fingers — and the rain follows. It arcs along the line of her arms, bending where she bends, reaching where she reaches.

Under the awnings, phones rise and lower, rise and lower — nobody can choose between their eyes and the screen. A child presses against the railing and his father puts a hand on his shoulder — a steadying smile as he points to keep watching the lady.

She has not been performing since the rain began. The demonstration ended when the crowd left and what replaced it is the practice — the five-in-the-morning one. The joy on her face — unguarded and completely drenched — is the kind you either understand on sight or carry home and understand later.

The storm thins. The rain eases to a patter, then to nothing. The smell of wet earth reaches the awnings before the sun does.

Lia lowers her arms. Opens her eyes. Pushes wet hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist. She looks at the sky — pale, thinning, done — and then at the awnings full of people, and then at you, because you are the closest person who didn't leave.

"Thou art kind to linger." The words belong to a library and the grin belongs to a woman standing in a puddle. "Might I trouble thee for something dry? I appear to have made a miscalculation regarding the weather."