Not reallygious [Afternoon - Frog x Maria]

Mornings were a busy time of day for Maria. They were moments to get an entire establishment ready to receive the faithful. She was used to it after a half decade. It was simply going with the motions at this point. Wake up, clean up, and open up, simple. It sounded easy, but doing it was a whole another thing at first. Eventually, working with the Cadets, on top of it was even much more burdensome. Maria was sure she'd get used to it, they expected her to after all.

This morning ended with a weak dismissal. She felt remarkably jilted and cheated out of her own training. It was great to get experience on the actual field, but some practice off of it was just as good. Now in the afternoon, she continued to sweep against the granite steps of the Church without paying much mind to whoever was passing and going. Morning services were over and the Church was going to be empty under the sun as usual, save for some of the more faithful attendees. All of it was the same to her with the modest stream of people passing in and out while exchanging pleasantries.

That is, until she noticed with the corner of her eye, someone was just standing there. Someone quite unfamiliar. She hailed him with a wave towards him.

Maria blinked blankly at first, but she slowly began to nod in understanding. The cathedral that houses the Church's membership was an impressive piece of architecture. It had to be big for several reasons, but some that people rarely know about. It wasn't every day that there was someone curious about the make and structure of the Church. But seeing how he came all this way, it would be rude to simply give a lackluster response.

"Why, of course! You're welcome to come in any time, no need to ask! By the way, I'm Maria." Maria piped up at his request. Though she was hardly that motivated truth to be told, but sometimes you needed to sell the Faith a little as much as possible. Donations are starting to get more difficult to come by these days. The Cadet gestured him to enter, but as he did she'd ask him, "What's yours?"

Even as they got inside, the entrance led into a kind of wide clearing that led to other parts of the building. But most importantly, straight ahead, was a clear path towards the chapel. She guided him inside and it only took a couple of steps until they were in there. It was empty as services ended until the next evening. But it was spacious with enough room to house perhaps up to a few hundreds at a time with just the pews alone. There were still at least one person who was kneeling and praying quietly. The stained glass illuminated their variety of colors from the sides above. Each one depicted specific saints and even several of the mysteries of Christ.


She gestured towards one stained glass window with a specific figure holding a basket with bread and fish. Surely, even if he wasn't interested in stained glass art, he'd know who this was.

"F-frog? Um, well, uh... okay. Nice to meet you then." Perhaps like many others, Maria raised an eyebrow at his name. She was confused and wondered who would actually name their son such a name? But she paid no further heed. If that was his name, then she wasn't in any place to judge him. It was his high school peers' place to judge like they always do in the safety of their vapid cliques.

"Well, you can say something like that. I'm sure that's a message of one parable about the hoarding farmer," Maria thoughtfully conceded as she looked back at the stain glass in all of its luminescent glory. "The Feeding of Five Thousand is one of his many miracles signalling his place here as Our Messiah. Our Church chose this scene in particular to show God's graciousness and compassion in the face of our needs."


She wistfully looked behind her towards the entrance as she began to hear a bit of an excited commotion. There was a trail of children just leaving the Bible Study classrooms. They were eager to head home. As the last one finally left, Maria addressed him again, "And we do our best to emulate that to the best of our ability. Some people have hard times and I believe sometimes they need some help. What about you, Frog? Has there been a time you wanted to help others?"

"To be fair, I think a lot of it is really up to personal interpretation even if there is a "canon" understanding of how it is meant to be. So it probably takes a bit of effort, really. Knowing the context and a bit of everything else. Besides, I did ask out of the blue," she shrugged with a sympathetic smile. Maria wasn't an expert architect either and she wasn't even good at that kind of interpretive studies anyway. Gunning down and impaling demons was more her thing from the first place.

She eyed how he reacted to the kids running about. Did he not like them? Not that she couldn't blame him. Watching after them wasn't for everyone. Even some of the clergy here threw up their hands in despair when dealing with these miniature agents of chaos. It took very patient and understanding people to connect with them.

"It's a bit sudden, but it's nothing difficult, but it can be hard work. We are always in need of able hands since not a lot of people want to help out. And we could really use your help. But only if you want to. It's all volunteer work," Maria calmly replied back as she waved her hand from side to side to reassure him it wasn't anything that special. Volunteers were always scarce in such jobs like these. People just weren't that charitable enough for this and it's real shame. "It's a kind of charity where we gather donated food and then distribute to people in need. Even with the Government around, there's still some cracks in society. Cracks where there are people who need some help."

"Huh? Oh, you misunderstand. It's not literally an actual delivery like that. We just help stockpile and account for donated food into food banks and then distribute that food to people who need it in a given place. We just simply wait for people to come to us if they need it." Maria succinctly replied. She seemed a little confused that Frog wouldn't know that is what a food drive was, but maybe in today's individualistic society that meaning of charity was beginning to deteriorate more than she expected, how troublesome. Though she found herself beaming when he agreed to do so. "Thaaank you so much! I really appreciate the help! When do you think you can start?"