Mother Ave, the old-fashioned caretaker of St. Sleeper's Chapel

((A few chapters here first appeared in the CHYOA 10th anniversary story: A Shakeup at St. Sleeper's, but feel free to add to it wherever you'd like))

Far away from the royal capital, rarely thought of by the people in the larger cities, or even by those of its own faith, there lay a quaint chapel, a short hike removed from a tiny city. The diminutive city had once borne a grander name, something from the demon wars when it was still used as a stop for soldiers, but had jokingly come to be referred to as Headrest-- the few townspeople seemed to hold less sway over the naming of their own town than travelers did. The church was named after St. Sleeper, a paladin of great stature who had been a stalwart sponsor of the church.

Only, these days, most assumed that the church was named for the congregation's favorite activity.

Elsewhere in the continent, a new revolution was taking place: a cultural revolution and sexual awakening ripped through Meridan to the west at a sweat-inducing speed, while the town of Missionaire was rumored to be the birthplace of the next hero who would end the second stage of the demon war in humanity's favor. Headrest and St. Sleeper's Chapel were remarkably removed from all of that. Removed from everything, really. Traders didn't come there. Soldiers didn't stop there for long. Pilgrims had no interest in this small church with few stories of saintly valor. It wasn't a place one went to become closer to Geod, their Father. It was a place where old folks went to retire in a place so small that they would be unbothered by ruffians, demon-kind, or even loud noises. A place of peace for those who wanted it and boredom for those who felt stuck in their lives or otherwise didn't trust the roads.

News didn't travel out of Headrest and it didn't tend to come in, either.

Unbothered by the happenings of the rest of the civilized world, Mother Ave closed out another sermon. What a good one it had been! She had twenty whole congregation members today and only half of them were asleep. That was counting Italiette, the dear lady painting the chapel (awake) and Eva, her sister (asleep), of course, but still, it was the most people she'd seen in attendance for the year.

Although Ave was described as a Mother, that was really just because this place still technically held an order of nuns... even if that only amounted to herself and her younger sister. Her appearance was a bit motherly, as she began the trek down past forty, with platinum blonde hair in a no-nonsense back-bun that was beginning to fade just a bit. She had an eye-catching face, with an angelic smile and vivid hazel eyes, nearly orange apart from brown, but the bachelors of the village had learned long ago to consider her "off-the-table," so to speak. The nuns in Geod's church typically swore a voluntary oath of chastity, chastity-belt and all, and no one was a more devoted nun than Mother Ave. She kept the church and, seemingly, did little else with her spare time, apart from gardening, baking, knitting, and other activities that had been too old for her at twenty when she took over, but felt just about right at her current age.

But outsiders tended to try their hand at her. They did have their reason: her robes concealed the kind of body that, if perhaps a bit chubby due to a sedentary lifestyle and a pronounced sweet-tooth, still sported the sort of generous bosom and buttocks that the church's habits had a hard time hiding. At one point, it was quite clear that the church owed much of its traffic to such travelers. Now, there were none such to see her-- the business had moved elsewhere.

"I thank you all again for being here in the light of Geod for another blessed Sunday. Think well on today's lesson: we must take to heart the words of the late Saint Sleeper, who preached the importance of opening ourselves up to new experiences. Even should you feel weary, you are never too old to heed Geod's call to a new journey. The honorable saint was a man of forty when he first took sword in hand to battle the devil-spawn, you recall! I myself am experimenting with a new candied apple recipe using syrup from the abandoned witch orchard, tee hee! How frightful! I'll be by the town later to deliver samples to your houses. Take care, my children."

The members of the congregation who were not asleep thanked her and left for the day, as long as they were awake to do so. One of the newly awoken thanked her for a good snooze instead. "Oh Gilbert. What are we going to do with you?" she chastised him, chuckling with no hint of ever intending to actually stop him in her words. It was fine if he slept. He just looked so gosh-darn peaceful when he was sleeping!

There was one person Ave did not like to see sleeping: her sister. When the others were all cleared out, apart from the painter and her sister, she grabbed Eva by the shoulders and began to shake her lightly. "Eva! You're setting a terrible example, sleeping in church! You're drooling!" she did her best to scold with a meek voice that couldn't scold a fruit fly.

"Uuuugh... Did we get any tithes or offerings today?"

"We did! A generous blessing of thirty gold coins. I know how much you adore money-- if only you'd be awake, you would have heard it clink into the offering plate. I know that's your favorite noise."

It might sound like Ave was mocking her sister, but she was actually being accurate: that really was Eva's favorite noise.

"Thirty? Oh wow! I can't believe I slept through all that! It must have sounded as though the church-bell was tolling out of hour!" her sister gasped.

It might sound like Eva was mocking her sister, but... okay, yes, she was.

Sister Eva, in her late twenties, was often mistaken for Ave's daughter rather than her biological sister. Her elf-like blond hair was not nearly so faded as her sister's, kept fashionably longer cut, and rarely sported the habit's hood she was supposed to wear, allowing everyone to see the scandalous full neck of her wimple. She shared her sister's face, if a more skeptical, narrow-eyed version of it. She did not share her sister's body, due to an intense desire to stay marketable, should she ever strike a vein of good luck and find a rich merchant visiting town, or perhaps one of those heroic adventurers one heard so much about.

For you see, Eva loved money. The gleam of gold. The sound of the coins clicking together. The exciting gaining of it. The eventual spending of it. The sinful gambling of it! She loved all of these things, but she also loved her sister, and she was determined to one day find some way to turn the sleepy chapel of St. Sleeper into a money-making enterprise like so many other churches tended to be, if only privately. For her sister's benefit too, of course. It had been such a shame to see her sister waste all of her marriageable years in a place like this, preaching to ten-to-twenty people and knitting in her spare time. If it weren't for her well-hidden care for Ave, she'd have traded her habit to run off with the highest-bidding man a long time ago.

"Tee hee, nothing so loud as all that. But I do think you would have enjoyed it," Ave chuckled, relishing in her sister's hyperbolic praise and missing the sarcasm of it. "Well, there's plenty to do around the church. Let's get to sweeping! Once the whole place is slept, I'll allow you to try the first batch of my very yummy new candied apple recipe."

"You could at least sell the apples instead of giving them away, couldn't you?" Eva groaned, slumping her shoulders as she rose to grab a broom. She hated cleaning the church. She didn't much care for sweets, either, though she'd eat one just to humor her older sister. There was nothing in today's proceedings to excite her. Plus, there were other worries on her mind-- ones that sleep allowed her a blessed reprieve from worrying over. "Sis, you know this place is becoming a safety hazard, right? If we can't make more than thirty gold a sermon, there's no way I can even repair the roof. Why in Geod's name you hired a painter for it-"

"I didn't hire her! The dear Ms. Italliete is painting pro bono," Ave interjected, wringing her hands. "A-And I'm sure she would tell us if there was any danger of the roof falling in!"

"Theeere's a little danger," the painter called down from her painting rig, switching to a sitting position that hung her legs off the side of her perch. "I'm a painter, not a builder, but..."

"Oh no! We'll have to hire a roof repairman after all. Oh dear..."

"Hire my ass! We don't have any money," Eva reminded her sister, scowling and poking a finger into her sister's chubby cheek. "Can you get one of those to work pro bono too?"

Italliete sighed deeply, turning her head away to eject herself from the conversation. These two sisters were in such dire straights, trying to keep this church going, that she'd helped out of the goodness of her heart. With rippling muscles, ebony-dark skin, a dread-locked ponytail, and usually dressed in nothing more than a white tank top and paint-stained brown overalls, unhooked at the shoulders, the woman would stand out anywhere in the town. She was clearly a foreigner. Still, she had been welcomed here once her duty as a guardian in Meridan had ended. She'd butted heads with management when they'd begun to grow more and more secular and in the end, she'd thrown away her badge in protest-- a dishonorable discharge that she now often regretted. The people here accepted her with open arms, no questions asked. She figured she owed it to them all to at least provide this place a decent church mural-- especially since, whether the town knew it or not, the church was the only attraction this place had. If it closed, she suspected the people living here would either have to seek refuge in the cities or else, may be subject to starvation.

Plus, it wasn't like she wasn't getting anything out of it. She craned her neck a bit more as the sisters forgot about her, getting a better look at Eva's slender figure and the very pronounced swell of Ave's rear end seen from an upward angle. Then she went back to dutifully painting a multitude of angels, all female, in various states of Geodly undress. "I wouldn't worry about it. Like I said, just a little danger. Nothing you can do without the repairman and the money anyway, right? Geod will provide."

"He shall. He always shall," Ave agreed, beaming up at her guardian angel, the dear woman who'd agreed to paint her church for free. Truly, Geod did provide.