Mad Mouse, Wildcat, The Whale, Silent Sparrow, The Phantom, Lost Little B, Young Blood and Goober Deluxe, maintained the prayer circle, around the cone, and The Phantom had even drawn a sky triangle. The Sunshine Children were told by The Sad Priest, never break the God mold, even in this kind of situation, so they listened and didn’t move.
The cone was a reverse cone, a hole in the basement filled with the last water and a place of worship, but now, a place of drowning, the smallest child, Poor Sis, had waded into the cone while pressing a picture of Jesus against her chest and slipped under.
When The Minister of Magic (M.O.M) entered for the fifteen minute worship check, a task she cherished by never missing by a second, the worship averaging sixteen hours a day, she immediately realized Poor Sis had gone missing because her God brain immediately calculated a tighter circumference around the cone, but she had no idea what to do because of The Sad Priest’s teachings, and the delicate nature of the last water.
“Minister,” said Wildcat. “Please instruct.”
They had previously hoped the last water would birth a living organism, anything with lungs, some sign of life, so it wasn’t just them in the beach house with no ocean, no people. The last water had been quickly gathered from the ocean years ago, and now, Poor Sis, not a splash from her.
“Maintaining the worship,” said Goober Deluxe.
“Unless otherwise instructed,” said The Phantom.
The Minister of Magic ran circles around the cone trying to locate an answer inside her God brain while the Sunshine Children, hands still clasped, waited. Young Blood twisted her ankle an inch, and Silent Sparrow gave her a look. Where was The Sad Priest? The last water was never to be entered because the human body, scaled in sin, could disrupt the worship for the new life, he had said, I will know when the time is right, he had said.
“Help her,” said The Whale, keeping his position, but obvious to everyone else, very emotional, which was just like The Whale.
“Maintaining the worship,” said Goober Deluxe again, this time, with tears in his eyes.
The Sad Priest slowly walked into the basement. He chewed something, his lunch, a palm full of nuts, and The Minister of Magic said, what’s wrong with you, and he shrugged, still chewing. He was acting very much like The Sad Priest always did, even in this situation.
Everyone waited for an answer.
But The Sad Priest didn’t respond vocally because he finished eating, some of the nuts mashed and stuck in his back teeth, and walked, kind of glided, into the cone and dove into the silent echo of underwater, where he found the body of his daughter folded, head-to-toes, on the cone’s floor.
“What’s happening?” said The Whale.
“Just wait,” said Lost Little B. “Stop crying all the time.”
“But, I can’t help it, it just comes out.”
“Should we draw more sky triangles?” said Young Blood.
No one responded to Young Blood. No one ever responded to Young Blood.
Lifting her up, Poor Sis and The Sad Priest exited the last water, and The Sunshine Children drew one group sky triangle because Poor Sis’s body was covered in what looked like squirming tails. The Sad Priest carried her to the shore where he breathed his God air into her. Decades later, The Mad Mouse, would tell this story to new Sunshine Children and tell them the air was purple, and very few would believe him.
The Sunshine Children prayed to the squirming tails with Poor Sis coughing, smiling, streams of water pouring off her face, the picture of Jesus somehow wet and flattened transparent into her chest, which made the children, even The Phantom, pray even harder.
Poor Sis laughed with fish swimming from her lungs, she laughed with her siblings, who from that day on, would only be compared to her and what she had done, for Poor Sis was the one to discover life and the one to touch death.