A Helping Hand

New York City was one of those places that even Elia had heard of. Not much, not before her current assignment, but it had been prominent enough before the Divine Appalachian Nation had declared independence that it was something she had heard of. After her assignment, Minister Ford would pass along bits of news to prepare her for the world outside. It had helped, somewhat, but Elia did not think anything could have prepared her entirely.

Cities were strange to her - strange in an uncomfortable way, with too many people and too many tall buildings. Eden's Glory was a vast city by Appalachian standards, home to over a hundred thousand people. The concept of cities rising into the millions had been unfathomable. Millennium City had been a shock, in that regard; New York was another. Elia didn't know if she would ever become accustomed to it.

Given how many of Minister Ford's list of recent occurrences had been in New York, however, the Clergy thought it was a good idea for Elia to become at least passingly familiar with the place. She had proceeded with caution along the streets, and it was no real surprise that in the mazes of tall buildings, she gravitated towards something somewhat familiar. The Seraphic Church had no presence here, of course, but there were other churches - cousins of the Seraphic Church, in some sense. It was the traditions of other faiths that had led them to the Truth, after all.

It seemed that good works continued even outside of the Divine Appalachian Nation's borders, and Elia watched the line of the hungry diminish as they were fed and sent on their way. She waited, letting them take precedence, as she had no desire to interrupt. Only when things slow did she move forward, towards the doors of the church. A pause halted her steps and a quick glance to one side, her hand upon the haft of her spear as something caught in the side of her vision - a shining ball, metallic. It fell into a garbage receptacle, unwanted, and Elia forced herself to relax somewhat - though there was still tension in her posture. She'd not heard anyone who could have thrown it, after all - but when she turned, there was a man there nonetheless, standing idly, checking his watch, as if moving silently enough not to be heard by one who was trained to fight devils was some small feat.

She did not know what to make of that.

No different than so many people in the city, the man was absorbed in technology, one of the miniature cordless computer-phones that almost everyone in these cities seemed to have. The Divine Appalachian Nation wasn't anti-technology, but they'd been apart from others for long enough that their technology had developed differently, at the very least - and most of it was in the hands of the Church. Elia had queried Minister Ford about the ubiquitous handheld devices at one point, but he had explained that with the spread out nature of the Divine Appalachian Nation and the mountains getting in the way of everything, that sort of line-free communication just wasn't practical.

That, and it would be harder and harder for the Church to keep track of what was happening. Too much outside influence wasn't good for people. They'd built up their home to where they wanted it to be, and the outside world didn't factor in too much for most people. Being the one designated to go out and analyze everything beyond the borders, Elia couldn't help but agree. It was overwhelming, really - but the Clergy needed to know, and this was her appointed task. She would not fail.

Still, it was no surprise that she gravitated towards a church, even if it wasn't her Church. The man inquired after her presence, his tone light but his expression grave. He was someone used to taking care with how he spoke and not just what he said, then. The Church trained its clergy and its elite in the same methods, naturally, but Elia wondered who it had been who had taught him, or why, or for what purpose.

"No thank you, sir," Elia responded, deciding to accept the words at face value. "It isn't my Church, but it's good to know God's trying." Her head shifted a little, inquisitive, unhindered. Elia was no clergyman, but she had been raised in the Church since she was a small child. "Do y'all need something? If you're worried about going in, I can help you take the first steps."

Elia gave the man a nod as he declined. She wasn't one of the clergy, after all - and besides, a man who showed up at a church to help them with the dishes probably didn't need a whole lot of saving. The Seraphic Church wasn't too big on ceremony - with most of the Divine Appalachian Nation's population scattered to one holler or another and many of them working long days to get by, it was generally understood that as long as you did your best by faith and God, He didn't need you to show up three times a week to tell Him about it.

She quickened to a smile at his words, a brief flash of something inspired. "Finally." The word seemed more to herself than to her companion, but there was a sense of relief in it nonetheless. "Dishes I can understand." Not like the bustle of the city, where everything seemed to be moving too fast and men walked around talking to other men through the sky.

Elia stepped back as well, letting the people exit the church and staying out of their way, shrugging her shoulders at his inquiry - a slight gesture, moderated to accommodate the presence of the sword and shield beneath her cloak. "I just wanted to get an idea about the city," she offered as an answer. "Truth be told, it's a bit overwhelmin'. I don't think there's half this many people in the whole of- of where I'm from. Wouldn't mind just stepping inside a bit to sort things out, especially if I can help them out while I do it."

Noctua. It wasn't something that would have been a common name where Elia was from, but all regions had their differences. She accepted his hand without hesitation, her grasp firm - secure in herself, without any need to be overbearing. "Elia. Pleased to meet you as well." She considered his words, and the understanding in his voice. "Are y'all not from here as well?" Ordinarily, she would follow that with an inquiry of where he'd come from, but that might not be a talk Elia wanted to get into just yet. "What made you decide to move to New York?" A good enough followup, for the time being.

The rush of people exiting the church seemed to have calmed, and Elia moved to step through the doorway with the unconscious lack of overthinking things that came from living in a place where men held doors for women, elders, and children. She stepped aside on entering, looking around the church and assuming Noctua would enter as well, intent on following him, since he seemed to know where he was going and what to do around here.

The interior of the church seemed nice enough. It wasn't too different from others - an entry area for greeting, leading into the main area. A lot more plush and gilding than would be out in the hollers, but the Divine Seraphic Church in Eden's Glory was a bit more decorative than they were as well. Elia slipped her cloak off, folding it over one arm with the security of being that any sort of attack from the devil's ilk wasn't going to happen within the walls of a church.

"Nice in here. Quiet."

Kitchens were much the same wherever one went, it seemed - especially church kitchens, meant to be a place for many people to work, cooking large meals to feed a congregation or a population. This kitchen in particular was a disaster, but Elia was no stranger to that either. A large man with a beard greeted the two of them, seeming familiar with Noctua. Elia accepted the offered handshake with the same gravity she had offered Noctua himself, and demurred the comment about hero buddies with a polite "We just met. But I'm here to help out if I can." She didn't know much about fourth of July - that seemed quite a way off to be scheduling things, but she supposed some people were busy enough that they needed to schedule that far in advance.

She gave Frank a vague sort of smile as he left to manage the garbage, setting her cloak down on an empty chair and placing her assorted weaponry atop it. This was a church, after all, and she didn't need to be fully armed. Elia rolled her sleeves up, stepping up beside Noctua and picking up a clean dish towel, the message you wash, I'll dry passing unspoken, in the way of so many kitchens. Noctua passed along a cleaned pot, and Elia started rubbing it down, noting that the warmth of the sink water still lingered.

"Y'all got indoor hot water, this won't take long at all." Most places in Eden's Glory had indoor water, but heated water wasn't guaranteed even there, and plenty of places out in the hollers still hauled everything in from a pump. Drying pots didn't take too much mental energy, and Elia was able to pass them off once dry to someone who knew where they belonged, to be put away properly until the next time that they were needed.

"What you said to the gentleman earlier, about folks, ah, 'blowing up New York,' is that something common around here?"

"Hmm." A thoughtful noise, but noncommittal. Elia had a small bit of experience with Millennium City - enough to know that it, like other cities, was overwhelming. There, though, the God-touched were everywhere. A man there had told her they'd created it to be their haven - she didn't like that. She'd said as much. Their gifts were to protect others, not to use for themselves. Things had gotten strange, then, and there hadn't been much of a resolution, but Elia thought about it anyway, drying the pot that was given to her and letting his words murmur through her contemplation.

He didn't talk much, this Noctua. He wasn't prone to speeches - shorter phrases, here and there. Not an orator. Someone, she thought, more used to listening than to speaking. His question about 'action' took her a moment or two to piece together and reflect back to the discussion of city wide destruction. "I have. Not in the city," she answered him. "The Church's presence is strongest there. It keeps the devils out. They pop up now and then out in the hollers. There aren't a lot of S- soldiers of God. We go where we're needed. I've seen... enough."

Elia liked to think she would have been happy never to see it again, but there was a part of her that knew that wasn't entirely true. If she could go the rest of her life without seeing anyone else harmed, that would be something... but everything she had become, everything she had trained to become - that wasn't something she could set aside so easily. There was a feeling that came when she stood before a devil and knew that she was answering God's call, a feeling that she couldn't get anywhere else. It was knowing that she was wanted - that she was there for Him, as He was there for her. That even she, mortal though she was, had something to offer.

That He had seen fit to answer her prayers: Let me serve You.

Elia glanced over at his inquiry, then proceeded to dry the pot he handed her in thoughtful silence. She gave no initial answer, instead choosing to think over what she might say. She had been cautious, so far, about revealing where she had come from. The Divine Appalachian Nation was not interested in attention from outsiders, and Elia did not want to bring the problems of the world outside back to her home and her Church.

This was different than other situations had been, though. This wasn't someone asking too many questions on a busy street. This was a house of God - a slightly different house than Elia was used to, to be certain, but a house of God nonetheless. She knew without questioning it that He would assure her safety here. This man... had been nothing but kind, to her and others. He might not be of her Church, but Elia had a feeling that God was not blind to his existence, either. She set the pot down carefully, folding the dishtowel to find a new dry spot to use.

"I'm from Eden's Glory." Did that mean anything to him? Elia couldn't possibly know. From what little information she had been able to pick up so far, information on the Divine Appalachian Nation varied widely - from sparse to nonexistent. That was the way the Church preferred it, of course, but there were maps, an outline of an area in a different color, a dot or a star just west of the center marked "Eden's Glory" - the capitol city. Possibly something for schoolchildren to memorize and then promptly forget, like the capitols of West Germany and Czechoslovakia and the USSR, none of which apparently existed any more. The informational lack, Elia had learned, was not merely a one-way passage.