I don't know when I began to stare off into space but at least it's better than feeling guilty every time the Preacher mentions The Worm. Sure, earlier he did say it was perfectly normal to have doubts because each time you doubt the resolution just makes your belief stronger. The thing is it's the total opposite for me. If I start to doubt one thing I then start to doubt another until I feel like pulling my hair out. It's just a lot easier to try and make myself trust The Worm but then whenever someone brings it up, especially the Preacher, it just makes my stomach feel a lot queasier than broccoli soup does.

I think I started to find the ceiling fascinating when the Preacher started to talk about how The Worm has blessed us in how we harvest plants and animals as well as its direct role in mulch creation. I know I said it was interesting earlier but I find thinks really boring the second time like how I can never read the same book twice unless I absolutely love it. I'm sure I would have continued to stare at the ceiling all day if not disturbed but I guess I'll never know since Sylvia secretly switched seats with Cynthia to nudge me in my shoulder to get my attention. At first I thought I must have been caught daydreaming for Sylvia to be so daring as to switch seats but when she started to ask me how being MOM is I just took it as another sign from the world launching my expectations of reality into a Russian roulette of retribution. What I said probably doesn't make any sense but it sounds cool and that's good enough for me.

"Preacher work is so strange." Sylvia answers to her rebounded inquisition. "Most of the time we work night shifts and we have to transport things to places in the dark so I have no idea where we are. The items we transport also make weird sounds kind of like the birds and squirrels but stranger."

"You must have been at the farm then!" Naomi whispers from the pew ahead of us and Evadine nods as if in confirmation. "Whenever we harvest the animals, the next day The Worm makes them appear again suddenly. No matter how many we harvest they always seem to come back. It's like we put them to sleep and send them off somewhere and the next day they suddenly reappear but only slightly smaller."

"Do you think that's it?" Sylvia asks me to which I shrug my shoulders. I've only worked at the farm once and if Naomi and Evadine don't know then I definitely won't.

"It must be!" Evadine nods without turning her head trying to multitask. "The Worm must make them younger or something when we put them to sleep."

"Well that's the only logical explanation so that must be it." Sylvia agrees waiting for Naomi to focus back on the service before continuing. "Other than the frequent night shifts there are two places which I find rather weird. The ark is one of them and the tomb is another."

"What's the ark and the tomb?" I say instinctively even though I've already dismissed that conversation. Something about what Evadine just said is making things slowly fall into place. Animals are taken away and come back younger. Is that where the smart guy is? Did The Worm take him somewhere to make him younger, and if so, why?

"The ark always has strange noises just like when we deliver the animals to the farm. Oh! So that must be where the animals are harvested and The Worm makes them younger." Sylvia continues and I try my best to stay focused on her conversation. "The tomb is the other, or should I now say only, place which I haven't figured out yet. For some reason I can never leave the tomb without a pile of tissues and my throat feeling like a desert."

"How come?"

Sylvia shrugs. "Beats me. I just press a button on the inside of the tomb and a whirring sound happens. The room has no light source but even without seeing what's inside I can tell when the whirring starts the air gets thicker as if it's getting saturated by dust kind of like when you haven't cleaned under your bed for a while."

Sylvia grins at me and I can't help but grin back knowing that I'm more familiar with that type of situation than I'd like to be.

"The Preacher then disappears for a few hours and when he returns I have to press a similar button in the ark and that's when I hear the strange sounds which we now know to be farm animals. It may just be me but with all the research I conducted I never expected to be working with ani-"

Suddenly the Preacher claps his hands again to gain everyone's attention and Sylvia switches back to her seat at a speed in which would compare Bolt to a tortoise. I can't help but smirk at how angelic Sylvia now seems. I don't know why exactly but knowing how Sylvia really is in contrast to how other perceive her just seems so interesting. Now that I think about, almost everybody has a secret backstory hidden behind the iron curtain of the 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy, which I know all too well due to the generosity of a few unnamed individuals, but as I sneak a glance to the right the person I really wonder what mysteries Sebastian has buried underneath his ador- *ahem* acquiescent exterior.

"The clock has chimed once past noon so we shall now take a short interval for lunch." The Preacher says and Sylvia starts to shuffle on her seat. "My lovely assistant will hand out the lunch trays so please be patient knowing that good things happen to those who wait. The desserts are stored in a different location so why not discuss how The Worm improves your workplace while I get the cupuaçu?"

The Preacher bows his head once and we all stand in tradition. "Thank you for your service." We then wait for him to leave the room before moving from our position to collect our foiled packages from Sylvia.

I've witnessed, or have secondary evidence that The Worm actively participates in the production of our food yet the message the mayor wrote creates a knot in my stomach preventing me from fully indulging into The Worm's grace. I haven't eaten since breakfast and I'm sure I won't lose that many nutrients if I somehow forget to eat lunch, I could just blame it on my stomach ache but then Officer Penny probably wouldn't let me work tomorrow.

As Sylvia leads us to thank The Worm for the food I feel the gnawing guilt in my stomach eating away at my appetite even more making the tray in front of me appear even worse than their school counterparts. Lucky for me my appetite isn't that easily quenched and even if The Worm did or didn't create the food we're about to eat it doesn't change the fact that as I pull back the lid it actually looks really good. That being said, my presumption is based on a little bit of smell but mainly perfect vision if I ignore the intense stinging seeping into the depths of my eyeballs as a result of being too careless and allowing a geyser full of steam to smother my face with an amount large enough to hide an entire village in the mist.

The steam eventually dissociates leaving me looking as if I've run a delivery round but in spite of what may be first degree burns, the steam has left me feeling refreshed and what makes it better is that I haven't been blinded or in other words the food still looks great.

I slowly bring my outstretched fingers to the edge of the tray already feeling the emanating heat not only from the food but also the spice pricking my pores. The slight Turkish aroma tingles within my nostrils and my mouth starts to salivate as I pick up the wrapped bundle of the food pyramid. Grasping the shawarma with both hands I instantly regret my decision to stuff half of it in my mouth with blowing it at least once and as my eyes skit from side to side I know that I'll have to endure the pain. Shamefully, I have to admit that if I were in a more private situation I would have spat the shawarma back out, without chewing of course, to eat when it was slightly cooler but the embarrassment of Sebastian watching me do that would be a lot more painful than the slow burning of all my tastebuds as I force myself to swallow the amalgamation of Gehenna down what may be called the orifice of Abaddon.

Turning my head to wipe away the emerging tears with the sleeve of my opposite hand, I sniff, placing down the other half of my shawarma into the almost now ambient tray. Sebastian who is still staring at me like a dog at its owner whilst taking a dump wears a thin smile and knowingly hasn't touched his food yet. I wrinkle my nose not wanting to sniff again and bite my almost feeling less tongue to stop myself from saying a rather snivy comment especially when Sebastian may not even be smiling at me and how being presumptuous about what people do or do not do dragged me exactly into the situation I am in now.

"The food's hot isn't it?" Sebastian asks still holding the thin smile on his lips.

"Yeah." I reply as nonchalantly as possible.

"Do you wanna explore then?" Sebastian continues catching me off guard. "You know like the old days while we wait for the food to cool down."

I open my mouth to politely decline but I've already nodded and before I'm aware of my subconscious decision I'm already following Sebastian through pews of charting classmates into an almost endless corridor. The corridor isn't new territory though. Whenever the Carers brought us to service we always wound up on the rice road, a nickname we coined for the marble corridor but I never had enough time to explore every room but maybe if we're lucky we might come across the ark or even the tomb that Sylvia mentioned.

Following Sebastian now is almost nostalgic and reminds me of the first time we as a group got caught by the Preacher sneaking around. We all thought we were doomed but that day was the start of realizing that he is a pretty cool guy but that was long ago just the same way in which long ago his smile seemed genuine. Back then he let us off but now I doubt that he would be so lenient if we're caught and as if Sebastian read my mind he quickens the pace down the corridor.

Sneaking briskly through the temples halls I recognize previous pieces of adorned artworks from our previous escapades and can almost recognize each distinctive door and the locations to which they lead to. I still remember some of the wacky names we named the doors, some of my favorites include; Narnia, 221B Baker Street and Mushroom Kingdom. My favorite one though was Dumble because the room was full of old antiques and playing make believe in it always somehow needed up as magical adventures. If I remember correctly, Sebastian's favorite door was called Tardis and if I'm still correct that the same door he's leading us through now.

As soon as I walk into the much tidier room than I remember all I can think of is how timeless it is. The bookshelves are stacked so neatly on top of each other that it's difficult even now to know that they consist of many instead of one and the softly woven violet carpet that floods the floor remains as pristine as it does arcane. The lone wooden desk still resides in the western side of the room, the only ornament being a small white vase with a feather sticking out of it. The drawers remain empty yet like the rest of the room show no sign of decay or usage even though I have spent many a moment picking enough loose strands out of the dark hued carpet to sew a completely new one and have misplaced the symmetrically ordered books more times than the amount that occupy the shelves.

Somehow no matter how messed up the room becomes it always returns to its original state and as I run my finger along the assorted spines following a standard pattern of red, brown, red, brown there's one book in the bottom left corner that seems a slightly darker red than the rest.

I look towards Sebastian wondering if he's ever noticed the out of place book but he's already fully engrossed in a book called 'Mirror'. I roll my eyes even though Sebastian can't see me. When Sebastian mentioned exploring I thought we might use it as an opportunity to discover another room - I even came up with the name 'Hyrule' in preparation but he just used it as an excuse to read a book. I can't say I'm upset though. Mytopia's library has restrictions on the books you can read depending on your occupation and there aren't many fiction books even though sometime history, or truth, is stranger than fiction. The Tardis, however, doesn't possess such restrictions, it's as if it's in a completely different space/time zone and it has so many different books I've never seen before. Every time I believe I've read every book something new pops up just like the book that's a darker red than the rest.

Pulling the darker to compare with another red book the difference is almost unnoticeable but as I open the pages it's almost a no brainer that the contents are vastly different. The strange thing is though that it's not the words or the story that's different but rather the materials occupying the space in between the covers. Both books have pages but in the slightly darker red one a few pages have distinctive carved out lines in the middle creating the illusion of a small rectangle that could be replaced by something of similar size or even material. Taking another glance at Sebastian I slowly pivot the book away from his potential line of sight knowing that he'd be more than slightly miffed about damaged property especially since it's a book. Although I can share the sentiment, what perplexed me more isn't why the book is damaged but how come it is the only damaged thing in the room.

If I were just flicking through the pages the rectangular incision would look like nothing more than a thin pencil line. The fonts are the same as well as the character sizing but just in the same way the red book distinguished itself ever so slightly from the rest, the pages within the rectangle have a slighter crispier tone to them. Digging my fingernail into the incision, loose pieces of paper fold out of the small crevice leaving a a cavern of hollowed out pages within the darker red book.

Whilst I said the color was the main culprit in differentiating the pages from the book it was tapered within, the texture is the true alienation as it feels completely different from the books pages and even every other piece of paper I have felt before. It is more flexible and less rigid than the normal paper I know and tearing it seems more easy than not yet it has a certain strength to it that you can feel that it will last a lot longer than modern paper and by the looks of it it already has.

The heading 'Dracollavion' is watermarked on all the pages and if that word wasn't confusing enough underneath each heading are written dates with the word 'population' underneath. Beside it is written a constant number with the exception of a single date noted as the "February 14th Massacre" with the number decreasing by 1929, but without understanding what 'population' means I can't understand what the numbers mean either. Even though there are diverse amount of words that mean jack squat to me, on the paper are the same ominous words again. The same words which I never would have expected to hear or see out of my deepest dreams/nightmares. Big brother. Small sister. Revolution.

From out of the corner of my eye I see Sebastian shut the book he was reading making sure to replace it in symmetrical order. Wanting to avoid Sebastian seeing the carved out book I decide to pocket the loose Dracollavion pages before closing the book but as I dig my hand into my pocket I find a slip already in there. Judging from its frayed edges it's been in my pocket for a few days and as I pull it out the crumbling parchment is barely held together by thin, graying fragmented threads. Carefully prying the folds apart, the edges disintegrate into dust with each sudden movement yet the words scrawled across the centre are still legible enough for Sebastian who is now peering over my shoulder to see the resemblance between the words in the Dracollavion and the paper the Mayor gave me through Sebastian.

"Don't trust Small Sister."

(Small Sister insignia)

Craning my neck to look at Sebastian, his usual stoic expression slips a little. Even if he doesn't recognize the words, the insignia sketched underneath is as clear as the timbre of the growing footsteps in the distance. Hearing the familiar footsteps I quickly shut the dark red book making sure to return it into the exact position of retrieval. Normally I would just shove it into any loose crack but I have a feeling that we shouldn't leave any clues of our presence especially since I've decided to borrow some pages which looks like somebody has taken great lengths to keep hidden.
I close my fist anxiety and when I open it again in reflex to the pain my nails cause from digging into my flesh, the only residue of the decomposed paper is a thin layer of white powder along my palm lines. Dusting the powder on my clothes, I make a short nod at Sebastian who returns it before creaking the door open slightly. He signals an all clear and from many hours practise when we were younger we dart out of the room silently making minimal noise against the floor tiles as we half sprint half tiptoe back to the service hall.

Sliding into our pews I stuff the rest of my shawarma into my mouth to control my heavy breathing and Cynthia who is facing us as she chats to her twin creates a small monocle over her right eye with her fingers and I nod in response to her asking if we went exploring. She does the bojio pout but as soon as I open and close my palms together and nod my chin towards Sebastian she gives a curt nod without even breaking the flow of her conversation with Sylvia who is oblivious to our charadersation. (charade + conversation) Sebastian watches us in amusement and I have to control myself not to laugh with food in my mouth as Sebastian folds his arms when Cynthia nods in such a way that basically means she wouldn't expect Sebastian to go anywhere other than the Tardis when exploring.

Within a minute or so of our arrival the Preacher also returns with a bag full of cupuaçu and I have to swallow the rest of my shawarma to hold my breath at how close we could have been caught. Thankfully, from his body language the Preacher doesn't show that anything is amiss and I slowly calm down as Sylvia hands out the fruit for dessert.