Laila Kennedy
July 29, 2015 6:25 PM
Catholic guilt, it's a thing. by Laila Kennedy
Laila sat at her desk staring miserably at the piece of paper in front of her, pen in hand. When her mother had allowed her to go to Sonora, it had been on the promise that she would be attending church every Sunday, a promise that the school representative had assured them he would try his hardest to help fulfill. However, over the past few weeks as the term was drawing to a close, things had gotten absurdly busy and Laila had not been able to attend church regularly either because she had slept through the morning from staying up late the night before studying by wand light in her bed, or because a professor had been unable to take her.Laila had tried her hardest to make up for those missed days by praying extensively and meeting with a portrait of St. Paschal Baylon who though helped guide the day’s reflection and readings (which she received out of a little white book her mother had given her before she left) generally berated her for skipping Eucharist. The first time Laila had missed Mass she had nearly had a meltdown. It had taken a trip to the hospital wing and a calming draught administered by Medic Eir to get Laila to start breathing regularly again and she had then gone to confession the next Sunday where she told the bemused priest how wrongly she had behaved.
After that first time and the pardoning, Laila had started to feel less bad about what she’d done. And soon she was starting to feel kind of…thrilled, when she missed church. It was a sort of game when she had to stay at school, to see whether or not she could get away with it. But, soon, however, the guilt started catching up with her and Catholic guilt, Laila was slowly starting to realize, was a Thing with a capital T.
Almost every little thing that happened caused her to question herself—if a teacher called on her in class for example, she went over all the things she possibly could have done to get in trouble (only to be asked the differences between doxies and bow truckles). She had even started lying by omission to her mother in her letters home (letters which Kaili Reinhardt had been so kind as to offer to deliver). It hadn’t ever really matter before because Laila’s mother had never directly asked her a question that Laila’d needed to lie in response to as her frequent vague descriptions of the church and mass in Arizona usually made it seem as though Laila was always in attendance.
However, as she looked at the bold-faced lie she had scribbled on the page in front of her, she was overcome with a wave of guilt and shame. She had never lied to her mother before, never. Even when she and Gabriel had been playing ball in the house after being asked not to and they’d knocked over a side table which had caused their mom’s favorite ring to be dropped down a radiator vent and for some reason or another even though she and Gabriel saw the ring fall down the vent, it had come levitating right out again (later Laila realized that was an instance of accidental magic) and everything was fine she had still told her mom what had happened.
Hanging her head, Laila closed up and sealed the letter, crossing herself and saying a little prayer of forgiveness before going to find one of the Reinhardts to help her send the treacherous document that reassured her mother that yes, every Sunday she was attending church.
OOC: Mention of professors/medic approved by their authors.
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Catholic guilt, it's a thing.
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