005

   Flor stood silently in the the vast, empty nave, waiting to hear a saving sound in the unbearable silence. "Speak to me, Father," she whispered. The vaulted stone space was completely still, save for the flowing red curtains which hung behind the pulpit, from the towering baroque apse. She cast her eyes up the gilded wall to the image of Christ, and studied his eyes. They were sad eyes, reflective but deep as if filled with water, and laden with the ponderous burden of responsibility. She would never have thought it before, but how like her own struggle seemed el Salvador's now. How familiar his heavy load was to her woeful mind. She prayed.
   "Padre Celestial, Dios, dame fuerzas, por favor," she began in Spanish, as her mother had so many times in her childhood. Unable to remember enough of her mother's language, she carried on mostly in her father's and her country's language, as she always did: "There is so much pain, Padre. It feels like fire - fire in my lungs. Mi viaje ... my journey is not complete. I have not found the truth. I have not awoken the people, as you have asked me. Please, Dios. Give to me the will to do what I must, before the sickness sends me to you, my work unfinished."
   The twitter of a sparrow on the windowsill was the only reply she would hear in the tacit old cathedral. A gentle draft from somewhere swayed the red curtains above the dais where she half-knelt, half-lay. As the bells a hundred feet above rang for evening mass, a violent cough seized her, and she remained on the granite steps for several minutes, hacking and gasping vigorously. As she pulled the hankerchief from her face, she thought she observed in the delicate droplets of blood the shape of a cross, and looked once again at Christ. 
   "Gracias, Dios mio," she whispered.