I glimpse the crescent in my hand. “Were you just planning on going hungry?”
“We have flour and an oven at home. Maybe no chef, but you’re nearly okay at cooking.” She rests her face on her hand. “You know you’re free to enjoy these foods I can’t have.”
“Food is more tolerable when it’s shared with you.”
She lets me receive a small smile. “...If you do make this choice, you will have to stand by it harder than you expect.”
“What do you mean?”
For the first time ever, Vincenza looks embarrassed. “I didn’t realize that pizza had cheese.”
“H-how?”
“Popcorn has fake butter. Ice cream is hydrogenated soy oil… I thought… Nothing about pizza looks natural; I had no reason to believe they coaxed real cheese into looking likethat.“ She snickers. “And, of course, sometimes it really is fake. It’s hard to find out when it is given how much shame they tend to have over it. The consequences of accidentally eating a lot of… It’s not fun.”
“Oh. Uh, I’ll make you deal with that for me.”
“I’ll try my best for you, Kate.” Her eyes burrow into the table. “I still miss milk chocolate. Never had a tongue for the other flavors.”
I exaggerate a noise of disgust.
She half-heartedly defends, “it mattered a lot to me. Nascia hid bars around so she could act clever and hand me something whenever a spell left me in a poor state, and it sometimes worked… I found one once—nearly a year ago. It was so painful, and I couldn’t find any comfort in…”
I reach to squeeze her hand, keeping the act tucked between our thighs and hidden from scrying eyes. “Would it have hurt anyone if you just had it?”
“Yes. Me.” She pulls my hand to her mouth and leaves a dainty kiss. “We never went vegan because cigarettes weren’t. Rat testing. We had complex excuses, moral pandering to justify ourselves, but that was always the reason. I can’t change the choice we made, but I won’t stop adhering to what we should’ve done.”
I look at her, back onto the verge of tears while waiting for a loaf of bread. All because she can’t have milk. Because decades of excuses left her heartbroken.
Bored customers queue for their loafs, wholly unamused by the vacantly poppy music echoing.
What a wholly unimpressive world.
“Do… you ever wonder whythisis the world the Ring planned? I don’t want to doubt it, not when it seems to have given me the most perfect life I could ask for, but I can’t tell what about these moments is supposed to be divine. This all feels so mundane.”
Vincenza whispers, “only the conservative sects believe in the Ring’s perfect planning. I tried to—it never makes the world shine brighter to believe that it’s the best we could’ve had. The one matron I ever met of a liberal sect told me, ‘the Great Ring brings gifts, because the world brings tragedies.’”
“But the Ring is infinite? Why would it let through any tragedy?”
“She told me that the Ring could only choose the best of possible worlds, and a world without tragedy is impossible.” Vincenza sneers, “she just didn’t want to compromise any part of her beliefs with reality. It’s wholly fine to worship something that isn’t omnipotent or perfect or infinite, Kate. Worship makes us whole—it makes us moral. Gives us gifts, even. Ifthe Ring was perfect, but worshipping it made us worse, then it wouldn’t be worthy of that worship.”
Makes us whole. Makes us moral. Gives us gifts.
Her words feel enchanting, enticing, but they’re flawed. It’s because worship’s inability to make us whole or give gifts that I need the Ring to be perfect. Prayer never gave me more clarity or rewards, but it has to be right to pray, so the Ring needs another reason to be worshipped.
I’m not going to say any of that to her. She gave me all I could ask for, an excuse to think.
“Thanks for talking to me, Vincenza. It helps to have your perspective, and I’m sorry about how much pain asking for it caused.”
“It’s only painful now. These conversations linger in my head, and I like them being there.”
“I like having you inside me too.”
She sternly glares at me. “Is this the moment you felt appropriate for a joke?”
I shrivel and cower. “Sorry.”
“You’re too sweet of a thing.” She embraces me and laughs.
