Cedar Sweep like carillon bells, the house of Augustus rings

Gods. Plural.

Passerine licked her whiskers again, the motion akin to the movement of a hand over a chin in thought.

Not the one I know. The one hissed in whispers, the one who demanded absolute faith and punished wrongdoers with an increasingly cruel series of punishments.

Again, her tongue across her whiskers.

Religious, in my own way. You? Her religious tendencies were cursing the god who created her for most of her life. The woman might know kind gods, but Passerine only knew the cruel hands of the only.