<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/53/Onnecamug3.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 3rd, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Dinner Time<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Agatha's House<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Elisabeth, Agatha, Christian<br/><hr/><br/><br/>Onneca quietly took Christian's hand on one side, and Agatha's on the other as she sat down at the table. Like many devout Catholics, she could sense God. That was the name for the joy that sometimes swelled into her heart such that her breath might come out in a shudder of ecstasy, and it was the name for the duty she felt as a responsible woman to do what was right. She could feel the Lord with them there, on that night, and not only in herself but in everyone. She took a breath of dinner and the friends who had helped make it, gave Agatha's hand the lightest of squeezes, and everything was perfect. Onneca knew everything that she was thankful for.<br/><br/>"Bless us, oh Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord..." she intoned with unapologetic Spanish inflection. It was Catholic grace, and quite standard, up until it swerved into Irish territory. "...may the longtime sun shine upon us, and all love surround us, and the sweet light within us guide us on our way." It was not something recited except in the most Irish of churches, for it represented the most hated of all America's hated inferior white races, the unhirable Irish. But Onneca loved Aggy, and every part of her, and so she had learned it in her most perfect unbroken English. "Amen."<br/><br/>Her hands moved away to perform the motion of the cross, from brow to navel, and to each shoulder in turn. There had been a time, here in Gomorra, where Onneca had been to church every service. She had believed that she need only endure the scorn, and be present and proper several times each week, and she would grow on the old women there like moss on a tree. But each time she had opened her mouth to join in the psalms, the people around her had gone silent and made her foreigner's voice embarrassingly disjointed from the unity of the congregation. Only a few times did anyone ever speak to her after the service, and only out of pity. And the crowds, the crowds were consistently too much to handle. She was always nervous, and sweating, and trembling in her seat like a drug addict. So she had cut back to once a week at first, and then it was every other week. It was when she went missing that the old women really began to gossip, more than if she'd never gone at all. She had stopped going to church, but she had never stopped giving.<br/><br/>She gave a dimpled smile to Aggy, and then to Christian and Elisabeth. It wasn't often that Onneca had a sit-down dinner, and she was positively glowing for the opportunity.