"Good night, Janet."

And Flora goes to bed.

Denice reads, and eventually sleeps.

Flora inquires about lunch at ten again the next day. It's soup and salad; the salad can be eaten according to the "drinking/shoveling" protocol. "Services are tonight at eight," she says. "You can skip them entirely, but if you want to see and not to be out in the pews, you can go up in the rafters. There's a ladder that I can fold down for you."

She does want to see. She'll probably be okay being with everybody as long as they're not moving around very much.

"They mill around before and after the service itself. I can have the ladder down the whole time, but there's some risk another child will decide to climb up there too."

That'll be fine, she won't mind if another kid comes up.

"Okay then." Flora goes and folds down the ladder and bustles around preparing for services; she sets up candles and matchbooks in the red section, and places tiny watering cans in the plant section, and drills several holes in the not-yet-feathered part of the monochrome section, and puts little bottles of glue in the seashell section.

Dinner is Chinese delivery; she gets orange chicken and eggrolls and hot and sour soup for herself and Denice.

People start arriving for the service a bit early.

There's really no way to eat the Chinese food without making a mess of her face; people have already started arriving by the time she gets back from washing up. She hovers in the doorway for a few moments before deciding to go for the ladder anyway.

People look at her, and a couple try to say hi, but nobody pushes it when she heads up to the rafters.

The rafters are wide enough to comfortably sit on and offer an adequate view of parishoners sorting themselves into pew sections by color scheme; a couple girls change scheme when they come in so they can sit with their families and friends and still match. Not everybody there is a magical girl - more like a quarter or perhaps a third, which is still massive overrepresentation.

Flora's at the door greeting everyone as they come in; if Denice listens closely she can hear her deflecting questions about the girl in the rafters with "she's new and shy". There's a choir; they assemble in a separate section behind the lectern in the front.

She says hi back, but, yeah, doesn't slow down to talk. She gets settled, and tries to keep an eye on who's paying attention to her and what their reactions are.

The Glories and Parisis are both there and wave at her!

Well now she's a little tempted to go back down. She waves back, and more perfunctorily at the Parisis.

If they notice, they don't make an issue of it.

When the people coming in at the door slow down, Flora makes her way up to the lectern and lifts her arms; everybody quiets down except for a babbling one year old who wants everyone to know that ba ba ba ba. Flora signals the choir, and they sing a Thaumatologist hymn about beautiful things.

A definite improvement over her previous experiences of religion.

When the song is over the choir sits - they have chairs in their little section - and Flora delivers a sermon that may have been inspired by Denice's presence, though she doesn't directly refer to her at all; it's about intracommunity support and God choosing people for reasons. This is accompanied by pretty illusory colors in the air that she uses like gestures more than like illustrations. Then she and the choir lead the congregation in another song out of the songbook. Flora is also using magic to enhance the music.

Well, on one hand it's not great that they needed to be told but on the other it's good that Flora told 'em. She'll definitely be careful about who she trusts.

There are two congregation songs, and then Flora directs people to make pew offerings. Some people water the tiny plants with the tiny watering cans. Some people have seashells and glue them next to the existing seashells, or pick up seashells that have fallen off and put them back on. The fire section people light their candles and add bits of embroidery to the drapes over the pews. And people with feathers in the white-grey-black spectrum pluck them and stick them in the holes Flora drilled in the pew earlier.

Neat.

The choir sings again, though most of the singing for this one is done by a soloist. Flora leads everyone in a standard prayer for well-being with customized subjects - people in the community who are having a hard time "and those whose needs are hidden from us, but not from you, God, we ask your help for these as well". There is a third choir song, well-known enough that some of the congregation sings softly along. Then Flora announces the week's schedule of church-affiliated events (somebody's daughter has just been chosen by God and there's a ceremony about that Wednesday afternoon; the space is being rented out for secular purposes on Tuesday morning, all day Thursday, and Friday afternoon; youth group is cancelled this week because Danielle is sick; the annual trip to the Museum of Magical History is coming up so if you want a seat on the bus you'd better sign up, a parishoner's uncle has been killed in action overseas and if people would care to pray about that his nephew here would appreciate it; the new missionary training cohort should meet at church on Wednesday evening).

Community events are new. She kind of wants to go to the museum, maybe.

People start filing out, or collecting snacks in the kitchen and eating them and then filing out, and Flora bids everybody goodbye and hugs a lot of them, and murmurs to the Glories, who don't leave.

She lurks overhead until the crowd has thinned out enough to not be overwhelming, and then goes to join the Glories.

"Hello, Janet," says Julie. "Flora says you think you might like to visit us for a few weeks and see how that works out?"

Yeah, she does.