Chapter 520: The Witch Trials

Meanwhile, on the Sky City.

[System Alert: Player Hearts is logged into the game.

[Player Hearts gains in-game status (Sons of the Virgin)]

Sleeping on the couch, Hearts logged into the game and slowly opened his eyes, his pupils contracting for a moment at the sight of the familiar burgundy flannel draped tent in front of him, almost as if he were an irritated animal who instantly pulled out a weapon - a playing card - and slashed it.

The draped tent is cut to pieces by the sharp edges of the playing cards, falling like a shower of blood, and across the table is an ambiguously interlocking pair of playing cards, the lower one being the Hearts Q - which stands for Hearts.

The playing card on top usually represents the person who came to spend the night last night.

Hearts calmed down after reading the instructions, he got up and walked forward, slowly stroking the Hearts playing card on the table with two fingers before dropping his eyes and giving a lazy chuckle.

"So it's this game map."

Reality, Heresy Authority 3 innings, 2pm.

A helicopter landed stealthily at the top of the Third Bureau, and a group of men in black bodyguard uniforms emerged from it with briefcases. As soon as they landed from the top of the third floor, they were surrounded by members of the Heretic's Bureau with their guns raised.

The Three Bureaus were first built on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but when the island sank, the current head of the Three Bureaus, Georgia, rebuilt and enlarged them from her own pocket on a different coast nearer to the island.

The Three Bureaus are now more heavily guarded and house a very large number of dangerous heretics, whose main responsibility is to guard the heretics that have been taken in and to lease some of the safer heretics to the countries that have already decided how to take them in.

The group of men at the head of the black bouncer uniforms held up their hands in a gesture of surrender, signalling that they were not in danger, carefully presented a reservation ticket and cautiously said in English, "Hello, we have a previous reservation to rent the Heretic and have already paid a deposit."

The member of the Heretic Authority took one look at the reservation ticket in his hand, slowly lowered his gun and cocked his head to indicate that he should come after him.

The group took a long breath and followed the Heretics Authority men all the way down to the reception room on the ground floor.

A member of the Heretics Authority team knocked on the door of the captain's office and a serious, dignified male voice came from inside and said softly but politely, "Come in."

The man with the reservation ticket had only just pushed the door open and entered.

He took a deep breath when he saw Georgia sitting in her desk chair and turning to look at him - no matter how many times he saw this man, he was still shocked by his overly striking appearance, especially in such a solemn and institutional place, where the overly dark tones did not match this man's appearance.

"Greetings, Captain Georgia." The man bowed respectfully to Georgia and sat down across from her as he pulled out his reservation ticket and pushed it over, "We're here to pick up a previously reserved low risk heretic, the Seven Star Eel."

Georgia swept her eyes down at the reservation ticket he pushed over to her and made no move, instead folding her hands together in front of her, "I need to examine your rental qualifications again."

The man instantly became anxious and his words came out with an accent, "Why do we still have to inspect? We've already had three rounds of inspection before, and we've passed all the tests!"

Looking at Georgia's calm and unmoved face, the man seemed to calm down too, realising that such a hasty attitude was unlikely to convince the discreet head of the Third Bureau.

" Captain Georgia, the water within our country is really very polluted and has reached the point where boiling it again for consumption after multiple purifications can affect everyone, you see."

With that, the man eagerly took out his mobile phone and played a news video to Georgia.

"...... The water pollution in the country is getting worse and worse, this year there have been twenty-three babies and children in a row who have been sick and died from drinking unpurified water, and people are sitting in front of the government every day in a sit-in protest, hoping that the government can offer a solution."

"Hospitals, catering, have almost all come to a standstill because of the water pollution, suicide and death rates are climbing higher every day, the damage caused by the water pollution is like an invisible disease epidemic among the population, and the people, with no recourse, have started to turn to the major sects and the rise of ecclesiastical power."

"People started praying to God to solve the water pollution problem, but we all knew it was impossible ......"

No sooner had the presenter finished these words than someone in the background hissed manically, "Who says it's impossible! God must be able to work it out!"

"Won't God fix it for you to fix it for us!"

The presenter was soon beaten and dragged off the stage in the midst of the chaos, and the video screen went black to that point.

Georgia's eyes twitched very lightly, but he remained silent.

The man began to exhort bitterly, " Captain Georgia, I believe you have read the report on our water contamination, it has reached a point where the mortality rate due to the spread of an orange medium risk heresy is, according to the Joint International Regulations of the Heresy Authority, if you have a heresy that can solve this crisis at this time, it is mandatory to lease it to us! "

"This is to save all the innocent people of this country!"

Georgia finally spoke up, his eyes giving a cool glance to the ecclesiastical accessories on the man's sleeve: "But we generally only lease to government departments, not to the Holy See."

"But you see the situation in the country now." The man sighed with regret, "People don't trust the government, only the Holy See, and in this case the government is interested in bringing the Holy See under its jurisdiction."

The man smiled slightly haughtily and smugly, "- the Holy See would not have been able to get the Authority's appointment tickets without the help of the government, and you can now fully consider the Holy See as our government department, with our high level of popular support and appeal."

Georgia still hasn't moved.

The man's patience seemed to be running dry, but he didn't dare to make a fuss, instead he glanced carefully at Georgia and slowly pushed a cheque for a large sum across the table, speaking deliberately, "If you think it's a question of the deposit, we can discuss it again."

--that's blatant bribery.

Georgia lifted her eyes and gave the other man a cold look, "You think I'm short of money?"

The man instantly knew he had hit a nerve and quickly took the cheque back, he smiled awkwardly, "Naturally not, I have heard something of your status, how could you be short of money?"

"You are the heir to the Kingdom of Gold." The man smiled a flattering smile.

He was probably kicked in the head by a donkey when he came up with the idea of bribing Georgia with money, which no one in the world is short of.

Georgia But the Grand Prince of the [Land of Gold], with uncountable amounts of gold in his hands, has not even asked the General Administration to pay a single penny for the reconstruction of a third bureau, which is bigger than a sea island, running up to now, so how could he accept a bribe as small as his fingernail cap.

"No need to mention that title again, I'm just a civilian now too." Georgia's tone was unusual, "I have died a kingdom."

The man nodded and grunted, "Yes, yes."

The kingdom did die, and the gold was indeed inherited by Georgia.

"Is it true that you can't lend it to us?" In Georgia's silence, the man asked again, undeterred, the eagerness in his eyes almost spilling out, "We'll return the water immediately after we deal with the contamination, and now I'm at a standstill here with you, I could sit here and keep expressing my sincerity in order to pass your test, I could spend ten years expressing our sincerity, but there are children in my kingdom every hour of every day are dying because they are drinking polluted water!"

"You don't want these children to be like you once were, watching helplessly as your people perish and your country dies, do you?"

Georgia finally moved, he looked up at the man, got up and said, "Show me the application for the lease again."

The man took a long breath, he handed over the document with trepidation, and after Georgia had carefully looked it over again, he looked up: "It does meet the requirements of the lease."

"Come with me."

Following Georgia's lead, Georgia walks briskly ahead, explaining in a calm tone as she goes: "The seven-star eel is a low-risk heretic we have recently taken in, not very dangerous, easy to take in, and we have recently discovered that it dissolves many pollutants in the water and has a peculiar effect on purifying it. "

"Once that report was arrived at, I sent reports to areas of the world where water pollution was so severe that it exceeded the danger of low-risk heresies, indicating that heresies could be leased to help solve the water pollution problem."

Georgia looked back at the man, "This is the Seven Star Eel."

In front of the man, two eels coiled up and slumbering in two separate tanks, he tried his best to control his greedy eyes with an ecstatic expression, "This is the low risk heretical seven star eel that will solve the water pollution, isn't it?"

"Yes." Georgia nodded, and soon his tone was serious, "But no matter how low risk it is, it is still heresy."

"The seven-star eel has no other hazards; its only heretical hazard comes from reproduction, which is an exceptionally fast breeding heresy; if the females and males are placed in a tank, in just one night the whole tank will be filled with their offspring."

"That's why we only lease separate, male bodies only, in case something goes wrong."

The man's greedy eyes cooled for a moment, and he paused for a moment before asking carefully, "Can't you rent the mother?"

"I can't." Georgia refused without hesitation, "The seven-star eel can only be dissolved if it is trapped in the internal cavity of the human body, and while the liquid after dissolution will not be overly harmful, it will cause some mutation."

"Although it is unclear why and there is a certain gender orientation to the dissolution of the seven-star eel, with male bodied eels only dissolving by the male internal cavity and female bodied eels only dissolving by the female internal cavity."

The man looked at the eel's mouth and his scalp tingled a little: "The internal male cavity?!"

Georgia, with a light glance above and below him, spoke in an unusual manner, "Women are more soluble in saliva, but men are more soluble in intestinal fluids."

"?!" The man laughed twice in embarrassment and subconsciously clenched his hips, " Captain Georgia, don't you feel terrible when you talk about this?"

"Terrible?" Georgia shifted his eyes back to the eel in the observation cabinet as he gazed deeply into it and whispered in a daze, "If it only takes this far to save my home town, then what's so terrible about it?"

Soon Georgia regained her composure: "The male seven-star eels cannot reproduce on their own, so the lease is safe and you don't have to think too much about it."

"But one eel and the purification rate is too slow." The man stared straight at the female eel in the observation cabinet, "Can't you lend us the female one along?"

"No." Georgia coldly refused, "The female eel is unstable at the moment and we have observed her breeding before and found a clear tendency to overbreed - she has recently bred all females and hardly any males, and at first glance is about to expand her breeding. "

The man's eyes lit up, "All female bodies?"

--wouldn't that be enough to dissolve with just women.

"So the mothership is not leased." Georgia simply gave the resolution and he looked over at the men, "Come over for the leasing process."

"Oh, yes, okay." The man almost tore his gaze fondly away from the female eel, " Captain Georgia, you asked me to make a phone call to inform the country first and tell them that only one eel had been borrowed so we could prioritise the area for use."

It was a perfectly reasonable request, and Georgia nodded, "Go ahead."

Georgia went back to her office and the man went to the helicopter parking pad on the top floor of the Heretics Bureau to make a phone call.

In the office, Georgia dragged his jaw as if frozen in thought as he looked at the water contamination information handed to him by the man, the team member next to him saw him like this and asked, "Captain, are you still unsure? There's nothing wrong with his procedures."

"And it's only a low-risk heretic, ah."

Georgia frowned, "I know."

"I just thought ......"

The team member curiously pursued the question, "Think what?"

"Some coincidence." Georgia looked to the man's profile, his brow furrowing, "One foot this country has a serious water pollution outbreak and the next we're taking in low risk cultists who just happen to be available for lease to solve their water pollution problems."

"It's like ......"

There is something unseen that is setting them up.

Up on the top floor, the man's face quickly contorted in excitement the moment he made the call after getting back inside the helicopter away from the Heretic Authority crew: the

"Hey, I saw the seven-star eel."

"Is this stuff really like you guys say, when dissolved the bones are stripped out and can be used to forge weapons like a metal mineral?"

"The Holy See needs weapons, the great minerals are held, and if the Seven Star Eel could come into our hands, it would be an inexhaustible mineral, something we could use to arm the Holy See from top to bottom."

"...... Money is not a problem, we have the backing of the big plutocrats ......"

"But the only problem is this." The man abruptly lowered his voice as he gave a sinister glance at the Third Council, "The head of the Third Council will only lend me male bodies, and without a female there is no way to reproduce."

The Bishop's hoarse laugh came over the phone, " Father Quan Zhendong, don't worry about that, God will bless you."

The man's eyes shot up, "What do I have to do?"

"We have been gifted with some of the gods, and the strange props that have been offered to us are comparable to heretics." The bishop laughed twice more hoarsely, "which facilitated our theft."

The man frowned, "But the Third Bureau has a tight grip, and I'll be shot down immediately if the Matrix is missing."

"No, we're not stealing the Matrix." The Bishop gave a low laugh, "Have you forgotten what the man in charge said? He said that females reproduce quickly and that the next generation born are females."

"We just need to get the two eels to breed a bit quickly and then steal the female that the mother gave birth to, plus the male we leased to-"

The bishop sighed contentedly, "God loves the world, the Holy See is great."

Quan Zhendong also laughed out loud as he looked over at the Bureau for the Treatment of Heretics, a ghostly light in his eyes: "God loves the world, the Holy See is great."

3am.

Quan Zhendong almost jogged up to the helicopter and looked in a frenzied tone at the two eels entwined in the tank, "Got it, Bishop!"

"Well done." The Bishop laughed pleasantly over the line, he seemed to be clinking glasses with someone, there was a crisp clinking of glasses over the phone and his tone became drunken, "Send the eels back and come and relax on the sub island."

"You're on a sub island?!" Quan Zhendong was not happy to hear that name, instead he was shocked, "Are you crazy! Have you forgotten what happened to those people on the main island!"

"The original island of Sky City has been taken over by the Empress and everyone on it is his slave and lackey!"

"Sooner or later, he'll find out about this island you've built behind the Queen's back! He will torture you to death! How dare you go up there!"

There was a moment of silence on the bishop's side and became breathing heavily, "You're right, I'm just too happy today to think that the Queen seems to be busy with other things lately and hasn't even toured the island ......"

"I'll get off the island right away!"

"Don't ever go up to the Sky City Sub-Island again!" Quan Zhendong transgressed, warning the bishop viciously, "if you don't want our great ecclesiastical work to be messed up by this madman, the Queen, when you are discovered!"

After hanging up the phone, Quan Zhendong's excitement at having stolen the Seven Star Eel had completely disappeared, and he leaned back in the helicopter seat in a cold sweat with his eyes closed, taking a long time before he dared to open his phone and flick through the photos on it.

There is a special one, called the Queen's Album, which Quan Zhendong almost clicked on with shaking hands.

The first one in the album is of a very beautiful boy, looking only 13 or 14 years old, with extremely moving purple eyes, just looking coldly and lazily at the person who is taking his picture.

Quan Zhendong, unable to control the fascination in his eyes and the fear he felt for this man from the bottom of his heart, half-closed his eyes, placed the picture of his phone on his chest and murmured in a daze.

"...... Queen."

Every man who has met the Queen should have the same attitude towards her.

Twenty-five years ago, a world-renowned dancer emerged in their country, best known for her opera Salome, and countless people fell in love with her exquisite dance moves, while she was only nineteen years old, a very young dancer with a promising future to tell.

She had a good home environment with loving parents and a harmonious family. She was raised to be kind and naive and soon had her own dance studio and at the height of her reputation, her first national tour was actually a benefit performance, donating all the proceeds to organisations and churches in need.

Coupled with the fact that she had a devout faith, everyone has called her the Holy Virgin ever since.

The Virgin, who is said to be of some foreign origin, is very beautiful, with purple eyes that sparkle like jewels, and although she dances a somewhat sinister, witch-like role in Salome, she does behave like an older girl of 19 when she holds up the flowers given to her on stage after each performance and smiles shyly.

This contrast made everyone love her, praising her for her dedication and her beauty.

But during a charity tour, something happened to the Virgin, she was forced by a priest, but this priest forced himself to testify that it was the Virgin who was having a love affair with him and gave a series of proofs - such as the picture of the Virgin looking at him on stage and smiling, the picture of the Virgin smiling and shaking his hand.

These pictures of the Virgin looking at him are so imploring that the Virgin is at a loss for words - she looks at anyone.

But the majestic status of the priest and the veneration of priests in the country turned these puffs into hard evidence, while the priest also affectionately said that he had given up his priesthood for the Virgin, saying that he would give up his faith to be with her forever - priests, like nuns, are dedicated to God with all they have and are not allowed to marry.

This sparked a national outpouring of emotion, and everyone wanted the Virgin and the priest to be together.

But the Virgin refused.

Although she too was a devout believer, she did not want to marry a priest.

Soon the controversy surrounding her grew, reaching its peak when she was discovered to be pregnant.

It is an original sin in their kingdom that those who believe in the Holy See are not allowed to put to death beings that have not yet been born - the Holy Virgin eventually chose to give birth to the child.

In this situation, the will to urge the Virgin and the priest to be together grew stronger and stronger, to the point that if the Virgin did not marry the priest, she would be doing a disservice to the child in her womb, not giving it a father and not knowing what was right and wrong - you too will give birth to the child, you too are in love with the priest, you too believe in the Holy See.

So why don't you want to marry a priest?

He's done so much for you.

If I wanted to, I would marry a priest - many girls of the faith persuade the Virgin in this way.

But the Virgin just wouldn't have it, and just as the situation was about to intensify to an irreversible level, a heroic bishop appeared.

This bishop, also a man of the Holy See, who was of a higher order and of purer status than the priest, fell in love with the Virgin at first sight and did not give a damn about the child in her womb - he was willing to quit the Holy See and marry the Virgin.

This bishop made a bold declaration of love to the Virgin in front of everyone, saying, "I was fascinated by you when I saw you at the age of fourteen when you first stepped on stage as Salome, but I knew that your heart and mine were to be dedicated to God, so I never bothered you.

But now, I think I can bother you, will you stay with me?

The whole country was in an uproar, and the Virgin finally relented; she married this bishop and moved abroad under his protection and lived a very happy life for a while, no longer disturbed by gossip.

The Bishop seems to have really loved the Virgin, and his house is full of pictures of the Virgin as a teenager when she first appeared on stage, and every one of her early appearances has been reproduced on video, which he often admires to the point of fascination.

"You're so beautiful." The Bishop exclaimed, "I'm so sorry I didn't meet you when you were fourteen, I would have courted you like crazy then."

"It's a shame you were eighteen when I first saw you on tour."

The Virgin felt an eerie strangeness inside her as she looked at her too-young self in the Bishop's obsessed photograph, but the man's heartfelt affection made her drop her guard.

"Would you like my child?" The Virgin asked.

"Of course, she will come out as beautiful as you." The bishop said humorously, "What reason would I have not to like her?"

The Virgin looked at the many girl paraphernalia stacked in the infant's room and she hesitantly inquired, "You seem to like girls?"

"Yes." The Bishop smiled gently, "A girl as beautiful as you were at fourteen."

"What if the child ......" the Virgin looked up at the Bishop, "is a boy?"

The bishop was quiet for a moment, the expression on his face faded, but soon he raised a smile again, "No, it will be a girl, I expect it to be a girl."

The Virgin paused for a moment, "You can get your gender checked."

"No, I will not disturb her descent with any measure." The Bishop tenderly held the Virgin's shoulders as he looked to her belly, patting it gently and murmuring, "Have you forgotten? In our doctrine, it is great discourtesy and disrespect to casually test a child that has not yet been born, and that is something that will disturb their coming."

"They'll fly away from my hands like angels."

The days passed and the baby was born.

It's a boy.

The Virgin will never forget the look of disappointment on the man's face when he saw that the child was a boy - as if the long-awaited gift had been opened with great anticipation and the moment it was found not to be what he wanted.

It's like waiting for a long-awaited delicious fruit, only to find out it's plastic the second before it's about to ripen in your mouth.

"I'll take the child. " said the Bishop coldly, "You will stay here."

The Holy Virgin looked at the man incredulously, "Where are you taking him?!"

"The Island in the Sky." The Bishop looked to the Holy Virgin as he explained carelessly, "A Holy Land built by the Holy See, just right for a newly born child like him to go up and be taught by the Lord - there will be priests up there who like the boy and they will teach him well."

The Virgin stared dead at the Bishop, "What is that place?"

The Bishop looked to the Holy Virgin, at her wretched hair, her no longer green and seductive face, her eyes that had become sharp and determined, and could not help but sigh regretfully, "You are no longer the maiden I once loved, I can choose to let go, and you can go up there if you wish."

"And yes, you have given your best years to me." The bishop smiled again, "Next, you can return to the island and rededicate your body to God, and to the rest of the Order."

"There are still a lot of people who like you."

The City in the Sky.

Before setting foot on this island, probably no one could have imagined that there was such filth in the sky above.

The man, who had re-donned his bishop's uniform, introduced himself in an unusual tone to the Virgin who had ascended to the Sky City, and he smiled, "Amazing, isn't it? There are actually magical islands in this world that hover over the sea."

"We bought it from a mysterious gentleman who had a lot of these magical things on hand, but the prices can be outrageous - like this island that cannot be easily scouted and cannot be boarded without a referral."

The Bishop smiled a little, "The Sky City is a membership system and you can't come up easily without an introduction from a senior member of the Order."

"Those who can come here are those who have a devout faith, or can offer some help to our devout faith."

The Virgin looked at the many faces of the great figures of other countries she had seen on television who had just walked past her, all looking well dressed and surrounded by at least two or three men and women in ecclesiastical garb who looked as if they were talking about something.

"They don't have enough status to be on the outer perimeter of the island." The bishop said gently, "The inner perimeter of the island is only accessible to the really big people."

"The inner circle?" She inquired softly.

The Bishop smiled, "To enter the inner circle of the Sky City you need a higher level card, a referral from a member of the Order alone will not do."

"What business card?" She instinctively felt bad.

The card was spat out slowly and methodically from the Bishop's mouth, giving her a very creepy feeling.

The Bishop looked at her with a smile as he reached out and stroked the Virgin's long hair compassionately, "The link between the interests of those who enter the inner circle must be particularly strong, otherwise we risk betraying each other."

"So in order to bring everyone together as one and to be closely bound together for the greatness of the Holy See, we have made a very special kind of card."

"-that's the man."

"We would bring the one we were closest to as a business card to the island and then exchange them with each other, giving each other the feeling that we had had, so that we would feel like brothers and we would never betray each other again."

The Bishop caressed the Virgin's completely blank face as he gave a low laugh, "I once loved you too much to use you as a calling card."

"But now you can be."

"Of course you can refuse, the Lord is merciful and will give everyone the right to refuse." The bishop smiled, "Then I'll just change my card, the boy can be considered close to me, I don't like boys, but many priests do, and there are quite a few little boys on this island."

"Only neither is as pretty as your boy, and I'm sure no one would refuse to use him as a business card."

"And your choice?" As if reading something in the Holy Virgin's eyes, the Bishop laughed softly in a daze, "Still, I would advise you not to think of rebelling, the Inquisitorial Court has a global reach."

"I could easily have you executed on this island and no one would ever find out, and when that happens, the custody of your child would still be in my hands and he could still be my calling card."

"It's just that I don't like to force before I give you that option, just like when I liked the fact that you chose to marry me yourself, but that doesn't mean I don't have the right to do it the hard way."

"By the way." The Bishop smiled up, "The boy's biological father is also on this island right now, staying with some business card."

The Virgin remained still for a long time, she looked at the island, which was suspended in the sky, and closed her eyes.

The boy grew up day by day, and spent many years alone in a large villa on an isolated island, which he was not allowed to leave, his father being a bishop and his mother a holy woman, and by rights he should have been a devout believer, but he detested the Papacy with a passion.

An unspoken, instinctive disgust.

His father was very indifferent to him, to the point where he felt his father would one day even kill him for accidentally cutting an extra rose that he liked last night.

But his mother was very good to him.

His mother was the most beautiful and best human being in the world, although often away from home and unable to spend time with him - one of the few drawbacks.

But she was very gentle, she would hug him and talk a lot about the outside world and stories, so he magnanimously chose to forgive her for this shortcoming!

Although his mother was clearly a holy woman, she never told him stories from the sect.

"Why?" He inquired suspiciously.

She paused, "I would prefer that you believe in what you believe in, not what others believe in."

"And what should I believe in?" He asked seriously.

She looked at him with complicated eyes, then smiled, "Love, respect, kindness."

"What is the use of having faith in these things?" He inquired, puzzled.

"Belief in these things used to make me miserable, I suffered constantly, and then I realized I was one of the few people in the world who believed in these things, most people would just use them as reasons and excuses to hurt others." She paused and then smiled again with relief, her purple eyes shining brightly at him, "But belief in these things has given me you."

"You are the best thing my faith has ever brought me."

His mother was a dancer and did the very beautiful Dance of the Sevenfold Veil, in his eyes the most beautiful dance in the world, and of course, she still goes out dancing.

She would dress up extra special and then stand in a field of flowers outside the villa on a sunny afternoon and smile at him and wave, her purple eyes filled with a gentle glow, "I'm going dancing!"

She said that.

So he leaned over the balcony and responded to her loudly, "I'll wait for you to come back!"

She would usually come home late, late, with his obnoxious bishop father, with her clothes in tatters, and then she would go to her room by herself, change out of her tattered clothes, take a very long bath, and walk up to him, still smiling, and hug him, "We're done dancing for the day."

Sometimes he would find bruises and cuts on her body and he would lean over her shoulder and ask in a very small voice, "Dancing is so hard, can you not go out and dance?"

She was quiet for a long time and then replied to him with a smile, "No, mum has to work too, how can I earn money if I don't dance?"

He said, "Then I'll dance."

"I've watched your tapes many times." He looked at her and said seriously, "I know how to dance too, I'll go for you!"

"You're too young." She couldn't help herself, "You can't dance, I was twelve when I first went on stage, how old are you?"

Twelve years old - he made a mental note of that age.

When he gets to that age, he can help her dance and she won't have to work so hard.

As the days continued to pass, he began to sneak around while she was out dancing, wearing her women's clothes and drawing the makeup she had painted, then imitating her dance moves and mimicking her expressions to the tape.

He is slowly growing up and he is becoming more and more beautiful.

The way she looked at him began to become disoriented and flustered, and she would say to him in a great hurry, "Go outside and have a roll in the flower field!"

"Wipe your face dirty!"

"Don't you play with flowers! You become a boy! Don't play with those things!"

When, at the age of eleven, he put a flower mischievously on his head, twirled it around in front of her, cocked his head and asked her if it looked good, she looked at him for the first time with such horror that she burst into hysterics: the

"Didn't I tell you no such girly stuff!"

"You're a boy, not a girl!!!"

He was so stilled by the yell that the flower on his head fell and shattered into a shower of petals.

"I'm sorry ......" she slowly sat down in a crouch, she covered her eyes that were watering and apologized very softly, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you, I was just Buming White, after talking to you so many times, you why do you still always like to play with these girly things."

"You're obviously a boy ......," she said as she slowly lowered her own hands covering her eyes and looked up at him with teary eyes.

"But I don't like being a boy." He pursed his lips and looked at her stubbornly, "I hate those boys, they're all bad for you."

-- both his Episcopal father and those who had come to the church had treated her with such petulant arrogance, with that knowing smile as their eyes swept over her, almost as if they were looking at something inferior.

He was sick of the way these people looked at her.

She is obviously the best person in the world and can dance the best dance in the world, these men are the trash that deserve that look.

"I want to be just like you, I don't want to be just like them."

Tears slowly fell from her eyes, then she smiled again, sniffled, then held out her finger, "It's my fault, I was wrong to think that you could do what you wanted to do - just make a pact with me about one thing."

He asked, "What is it?"

She said in a very soft voice, "Don't pretend to be a girl when your father is home."

He immediately nodded his head in agreement.

On his twelfth birthday, after establishing with her that his silly bishop father had gone to some place called Sky City and would definitely not be returning that day, he excitedly said to her, "Can I dance for you!"

"I've totally learned! I'll dance for you!"

"That good, huh?" She clapped her hands with a smile, "Yeah, I'll wait and see then."

He changed completely into the dance costume of her youth, took her make-up seriously, put on a sevenfold sarong and imitated her dance in front of her as she had done on the tape.

"Do I look good?" He asked her as he spun around, smiling, his purple eyes bright and excited, "Did I learn to look like that!"

"Very much so." She looked at him, a very light layer of tears in her eyes, and smiled and complimented, "You look good."

"You're even better looking than I was back then."

"I thought so." A deep, quiet, vaguely heated male voice suddenly appeared, and his bishop father, who would never have returned, stood by the door, staring at him with a creepy, smiling gaze and a grin, "It's quite beautiful."

"Twelve years old and as beautiful as I ever imagined."

For the first time since he was born until now, he saw such a desperate expression on her face.