Secular Haze

Chapter One

November 2012

Ciri shot awake from her bed with a loud yelp, nearly taking the shelve above her headboard with her. The dream was always the same and came to her at the worst of times - it was a reminder of the curse that plagued her life and dominated all its aspects, and filled her days with fear, bitterness, and sorrow. The dream had only become more frequent since her transfer to the Swedish Headquarters of the church.

Cirice Morolf had spent most of her life living in fear since she was a teenager, suffering from the effects of the curse from a damned bloodline. Ciri's knew very little about the curse that plagued her - only its dire symptoms. Her mother and sister had referred to it as their poison against men, for any man who dared to get close to them was doomed. It had led to a series of tragedies of their family line, including Ciri's father, and she was the last surviving member of its curse.

Let it die with me, she often thought to herself, especially as she sat wide awake after the dream. Let it die in this place.

Ciri had spent a significant amount of her life within the church from the time she was 9, when she and her sister had been abandoned on its doorstep. She had spent the past 21 years there, growing into the woman she was now. She was tall and built strong, with a lovely face that was dominated by bright green eyes. Her dark hair was seldom removed from her uniforms, unless on special occasions. Most of the Sisters of the abbey knew her to be strict, cold, and . . . unsettling, at times. There was only one person who took Ciri as she was. It was the person who had shot awake as soon as Ciri had.

"Shit!" Lena, who shared the same room as Ciri and who was considered her close friend, nearly fell from her bed. Lena's messy red hair was sticking in all directions as she looked over at Ciri. "Again? This again?"

"Sorry, Lena." Ciri rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the dream fading to the back of her mind as it always did. She lowered one hand to the medallion around her neck as she pulled herself from her bed. "We needed to get up anyways."

"I could've gotten five more minutes." Lena scowled, mumbling to herself as she began to collect her uniform for the day. "When Sister Imperator told me I was getting a roommate, I wasn't expecting one that screams in her sleep."

"I have to keep you on your toes, don't I?" Ciri flashed Lena a smile before dipping into their shared bathroom, still messy from the previous night on the town.

"If that's what you want to call it." Ciri began taming her hair back into a low ponytail, watching Lena move about the room. "Was it the same thing?"

"It was. I can never seem to remember it when I wake up," she responded, "I know it has something to do with me. I'm only trying to figure out how it does."

The only thing she could recognize from her dreams was the man and the same medallion that she wore around her neck at all times – the symbol of her family, as her mother used to say. In reality, Ciri saw it more as a curse than a piece of old jewelry.

Ciri stared at her reflection in the mirror, unsettled by her own eyes – the ones she had inherited from her mother, and her mother's mother, and so on. When she turned her head to the side, she saw the gold flakes within her irises, glinting under the bulb in the bathroom.

"It'll come to you soon, probably." Lena stepped behind Ciri in the bathroom, fixing her own curly mass of hair. "What's on your list of tasks for the day?"

"The same as usual," Ciri said, "Breakfast, class, lunch, afternoon mass, library, dinner, sleep."

"I heard Secondo's leading his first mass this afternoon. I've heard rumors that we're announcing him as the next Papa in December." Ciri tried not to partake in the rumors of the abbey, mostly because she hadn't been there long enough. While most of them were interesting to listen to and verged on humorous, she didn't dare talk of them to anyone. Not even to Lena or her other dear friend, Copia.