Chapter N.VIII

Trying to step as slowly as possible on the red carpet spread between the rows of benches, the girl considered to herself that, translated into plain language, the words of the vicar meant, that he was unable to give Delia advice on how to deal with her situation with ajussi Jo. She regretted that she had not spoken directly to the face of the clergyman a quote from a book that she once read with her adult friend. Although it could be called reading with a big stretch, for the girl just sat there listening to ajussi Jo read aloud to his young listener. Specifically, the quote that Delia considered appropriate in this situation was that a certain sage and doctor asked Lord God to destroy the human race, so that he would create more perfect people, but Lord God replied that although he sympathized with the sage, he could not fulfill his request.

It is possible that in fact the dialogue had a completely different meaning, but the girl could not know this, if only because the contents of this book, ajussi Jo had to translate right on the go, for it was written in the German, of which Delia's knowledge was very superficial, to say the least. If the girl could find this book in her own language, then she would doubtless have checked with her and told the vicar exactly what was said in the original, but to her greatest regret, she was prevented from finding an English translation of this book as her parents (who seemed to hate everything about ajussi Jo), and the fact that she could not know the exact name - it was difficult for Delia to remember and pronounce the German words, and a approximate translation of "Is Not An Easy, Being A God" would likely do nothing for bored bookstore vendors.

Therefore, Delia silently walked to the exit, bowing her head. She didn't quote yet because when ajussi Jo finished reading this book, he forbade the girl to quote her right and left. As she thought, the point was that the Lord God described on her pages, was not a gray-haired old person who sat on a cloud and gave orders to angels, but on the contrary, a brave young knight who rode a horse and participated in the squabbles of some medieval town. What's the harm, Delia thought, presenting Lord God as a tough guy?

She remembered how the book described that this Lord God, who, under the guise of a mere mortal, tried to make this world better than it really is, in his travels he fell in love with a woman, but when she was vilely killed, he became furious and made something like Armageddon, only he was wield not some ridiculous fire balls, but a very real knightly sword made of steel, with which he cut his way through the retinue of the treacherous king, and, reaching the last, ended the end of his tyranny. It all ended with the fact that after this event, God himself was taken away by any once of his friends, with whom, walking through the gardens of Eden, he ate strawberries and jokingly frightened those around him with his palms, which were stained with its juice.

But since ajussi Jo said, that other adults will not appreciate such an interpretation of the Lord God out of the mouths of baby girl, then Delia could only held her tongue and just quietly leave the church, having received from the lips of the vicar an answer that explains nothing how her to deal with the situation, when her parents plotted and kept her friend's true fate from her.

⁂

The memory of the dialogue with the vicar drove Delia into a state close to despair. She took a deep breath, and, straightening her shoulders stiff from the cold, she ran her hand along the cold surface of the window sill. The moon had long been hidden by clouds, and the dampness of the coming  bad weather was felt in the night air. The suspicion crept into the girl’s head that it could rain at any moment and she risks getting wet under its jets, but she continued to sit still, throwing a sidelong glance into her room - what if the door opens and her mother or father comes in?

But, much to Delia's happiness, none of her parents entered her bedroom. It was to her liking - now, more than ever, the girl didn't want their presence, for she felt an urgent need to forget them and remember her life up to the today's moment. Calming down, Delia turned her head to the sky and, closing her eyes for a few seconds, tried to put all thoughts of the present out of her mind, so that they do not interfere with focusing on images from the happy moments of her past together with ajussi Jo.

She did not risk getting tired of the painstaking sorting out of her reminiscences and fall into the sleep, because the cold wind blowing from the direction of the forest just did not give her such an opportunity. Unlike New York, where Delia had previously lived with her parents, in Portland there was no need to question the existence of nature around, as often happened to the girl on the streets of the metropolis filled with cars, where any blade of grass, timidly growing in the cracks of the asphalt, seemed to be a symbol of the green world and at the same time the personification of wildlife rolled into one.

⁂

Images from her and Jordan's very last pastime resurfaced in Delia's mind. It could never be called the date, for in the first place, Delia was too young for that, and secondly, if a date is usually a meeting in private, then this event took place in the company of Jordan's close friend, whom the girl respected in absentia, but never seen before. In her own imagination, the world around Delia was come back through time.

She herself was not in those events - not in the sense that she was not there physically. On the contrary, Delia was directly involved in those incidents. The thing was that her own visual image was missing in the memories, for such a human has not yet been born who could see himself from the outside, without losing the ability to navigate the world around him and evaluate what is happening from the point of view of the first person.