Name: "Father August Earnshaw"; but we will call him the priest.
Age: 454
Gender: Male
Appearance: The priest appears to be an East Asian man of about thirty. He is invariably dressed in the dark robes of his profession. He has long neat hair that reaches the middle of his back. He has gray eyes and a stoic, inscrutable countenance worn down into the planes of his youthful face.
Personality: A priest is a man of faith, but the priest is not a man.
History: In the library there is a book called Journey to the West. This is not that book.
Activity: There is what looks to be an old man who lives across from the priest's church. The old man has no profession. He once kept horses but has since sold the majority of his land. On his remaining acre he has a cabin pressed up to the public road and a dust-gray mare in a wire pen. Every morning the old man wakes before sunrise, readies a pitcher of chrysanthemum tea, and adjourns to the porch of his cabin, where he sits in his adirondack rocker and watches the entryway to the church. He watches the residents of the unincorporated community of Historic Idle appear on the flat horizon, walk up the public road, and either enter or pass the church. He watches as those who enter exit anywhere from a few minutes to an hour later. It is never any longer because there is never a Catholic mass. No choirs sing and the bell never tolls. Occasionally, after one of the residents has left, the priest exits the church shortly afterward with a cowhide case in one hand. When this happens, the old man watches the priest walk past him up the public road until he disappears on the horizon. Without fail the old man always calls out to the priest. Without fail the priest never answers.
If the priest leaves for the day he eventually returns, because he lives in the attic of his church. Sometimes he returns within a short hour; sometimes he does not return until long after nightfall. Occasionally he is lightly bandaged, but he is never badly wounded and never openly bleeding. The old man always waits to see the priest close the door of his church behind himself before he folds the blanket spread across his lap, picks up his empty pitcher, and retires for the night.
Other: A cat has nine lives, but a cicada has ten.
