[Sodium_noir] Gods of Fire, Saints of Ireland

[Aaron Corrion]

Tom Kaurismaki, Dreamspeaker Mage
At St. Bridget's Church, around 1 in the morning:
  Tom stood outside of St. Bridget's Church, having enjoyed the setting of
the sun on his back as he walked to the church. He was dressed in a dark red
(practically burgundy) dress shirt that looked like some sort of silk blend,
top button unbuttoned, french cuffs and a very widely spread collar. No tie
adorned his neck, and his pants were a very, very dark reddish brown,
practically black. Army boots peeked out from under his long pant legs,
easily mistaken for dress shoes. A slightly overweight, light brown ferret
perched on his left shoulder, sniffing at the air as it surveyed the world;
it'd be easy to imagine the creature was thinking that Tom should wrap up
his thinking and get on with whatever he intended to do, already. Every now
and then, a scrap of paper would drift by on the street, or a dog's bark
would resound, propelled by wind; the ferret would start, sometimes scamper
to his other shoulder, but remained, remarkably, on Tom's shoulders.
 It'd been a couple months since he arrived in Gotham, the city, and finally
Tom felt 'settled' enough (settled being as relative a term as a term can be
with someone like Tom) to arrive in the 'other' Gotham.

It had been both easy and difficult to lay low; easy because he was a very,
very small fish, but hard because Gotham was a very, very big pond for such
a small fish. Every time he addled this months landlord's mind, paying for a
home for a month with money that didn't exist, he was always worried someone
would feel it; every time he'd get up on stage at a jazz joint and just
free-word associate in time to some crazy drummer, he was worried he'd be
dragged off the stage and browbeaten for what he was. But after a while, he
adjusted, and the paranoia went away, as it always does. And, when he
finally began to feel comfortable, he decided he would head the problem off.

 He had, of course, felt the pull from the Temple of Five Dragons; what
Awakened being wouldn't? But the downside to being a creature of cautious
instinct is that you are irrevocably a creature of cautious instinct. He
knew it felt like warmth, and serenity, and understanding, but it also felt
like a trap. If a person on the street offered Tom a free sandwich, he
wouldn't have taken that, either, unless it was the difference between
starving and living.
 And that is how, late that night, Tom found himself standing outside of St.
Bridget's. As opposed to the temple, the church gave off no obvious vibes to
him except for perhaps a sense of desperately weary hope, and that was
something Tom had some shred of familiarity with.
 Maybe it was because Brigid and Loki were both deities of fire; you don't
travel with a scholarly theologist biker for any amount of time without
picking up tidbits like this. Maybe it was because his parents had always
been Catholic. Maybe it was just a coincidence- Tom wasn't one to overlook
the power of sheer, random chance. In the long run, the reasons probably
didn't really matter; he KNEW he'd seen something that looked suspisciously
like an angel watching the church, once, during his first days of exporing
Gotham; it was way up in the sky, bathed in a sunbeam and wrapped in clouds,
and it probably wasn't literally an angel, but it WAS a spirit, and it WAS
studying the church, and Tom simply could not help but want to know why.

Tom entered the church through the front doors and began walking down the
aisle towards the altar, swinging his head left and right, taking in the
sight of the place; he hadn't been in a church in years; the place
practically reeked of nostalgia.
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