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The students - or most of them, anyway, nobody quite cared what Layfield and Jonna did - huddled outside by the road, engaged in a minor debate on which direction was better.
"We didn't pass nothing on the way here," Katia protested, looking warily back the way they'd come as if a town was going to appear out of the slight fog rolling in, waving at them - hi! anybody order a nice safe place to wait while your bus sorts itself out?
"Well - we don't know how far ahead the next town might be," Chae-Won started uneasily. "I know, we might end up walking all the way back to school, but what if the next town is the same distance away, or further?" She extracted a pack of gum from her bag, popping a piece into her mouth and taking her anxieties out on it.
"Sullivan's coming, we need to make a decision or we'll be stuck here forever." Mattie reached over and plucked the opened packet of gum from Chae-Won's hands. "Katie, tails; Chae-Won, heads," he instructed the confection, then flicked it upwards in one fluid move. It landed in his palm, its list of chemicals smiling up at Mattie - tails. "Forward it is." He took a piece of gum for himself, then stuffed the rest back into Chae-Won's bag. "Let's go, we don't want to be stuck out here for too long."
"We've decided, we're going that way, sir." Mattie pointed down the road as Sullivan approached them. "Are all of us going?"
But Katia had already started moving. With one last nervous look at Whitworth, Tim, and Jonna, Chae-Won followed, Julian by her side. Mattie allowed Sullivan a slightly exasperated expression - you know how kids are - and joined the back of the group, walking into the unknowable nothing.
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Though the churchgoers began to leave, Cecilia remained where she was, standing at the altar, smiling benevolently down at the rest of the congregation like the angel they probably thought she was. Forget angels, her position as High Priestess and Druid probably set her on a technically higher level than any flying cherub.
Once the last of the congregation filed out of the heavy oak doors, though, her smile dropped off her face as though it was a weight she'd just been allowed to put down. Despite the message brought this week, and the extra worshippers it probably promised, it meant work. Work for Cecilia, for the Church, for all of them. One useful person meant next to nothing if they had to work on assimilating a bunch of new people - especially if they were reluctant to, ah, convert, although if any of them made worthy sacrifices Cecilia might have been persuaded to change her opinion.
"You," she said, her voice ringing off the walls, crooking a finger at the oracle girl. "See if you can read anything else from this. Otherwise, help them to clean it up, I want the altar absolutely spotless." Having said her piece, she turned and left, her long robes swishing on the marble floors.