﷽

Fischadler felt well enough, at last, to attend the blessing of the new statue in the courtyard of his employer. This was treated as a hopeful sign by everyone who preferred health to accountability, and so a small crowd gathered with tea, donor smiles, polished shoes, and the relieved expression of people who believed a man recovering in public was the same thing as full repair & accountability.

The crisis was averted.  All had returned to better than average condition for the only human organization in the entire United Kittydom

The new statue stood at the only formal entrance to the site mosque: a needle, enormous and shining, its golden body rising like a minaret designed by an accountant. The eye of it was wide enough for a whole American family to pass through, side by side,

(which everyone admired as a miracle of engineering.)

A plaque beneath it read: For Access, Excellence, and Sacred Tradition. Someone had paid extra for the word sacred. 

Paid for, in part,  by the Salafi JEDI:

(Jinn Elimination Defense Initiative)

Fischadler stood before it in respectable clothing, hands folded, looking thinner, softer, almost safe again. He smiled when the donors smiled. He bowed his head when the blessing began.

Behind him, the working cats watched from the cracked path, each carrying a stack of cheap Qur’ans, prayer rugs, intake forms, unpaid invoices, and the names of students who had entered through side doors of the repurposed barn because the formal entrance had never been built for them except for those who stood rigid with proper human pedigrees.

When the prayer ended, a she-camel from Alaraf’s transport office was escorted in formal parade by men in beautiful scholarly robes through the eye of the needle without difficulty, as the finely bred animal paused inside the mosque gate, and turned to stare at Fischadler with the serene contempt of livestock appointed by God as procedural counsel.

Chaplain Zahir, who was merely visiting as a guest lecturer, whispered to Pir Nigel Viking, Poet of Alaraf beside him,

[who was presently trying very hard to appear fully soulless & human failing slightly as his long lynxy ears cramped inside his turban creating little sprays of fur  through the folds and his long, square beard still holding his very modest tabby stripes.]

“Mash’Allah. They made the impossible easier than repentance.”

As they both stared with incredulous awe at the audacity of it all.