Even the Lilies...

The saint felt a disturbance and looked down at her alter to see a man weeping.

     His hair was long and windswept and greasy.  His face pockmarked and dirty.  His clothes were black faded to dull gray, caked in splatters of crusted mud.  Brown stains that looked like dried blood and others of mustard and olive - probably vomit - had streaked their way down his shirt as though in uneven pinstripes.  Hands lined with dirt clasped one another, long uneven yellow nails digging into the backs of them.  His shoes were tattered, once perhaps maroon, the soles coming off from the toes to the arches against the floor as the man flexed his feet.

     His soul, though... that was pure white.

     Why he wept, the saint did not know.  That was the business of the Almighty.

     Even so, the man had peaked the saint's interest.  It had been a long time since she had performed a miracle.  The time was ripe.  She bent an ear to make sense of the sounds that came softly off the man's lips.

     But all he had to say offered her no chance to use her magic - there would be no miracle today.  The miracle had already happened; for the only words she heard come out of the man's mouth were those of gratitude.

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