His spidery hands were gripping the edge, His nose and wisps of beard projecting over them. “Get another one.” God stared at His sole priest from His place on the shelf up by the low ceiling. “I only have one blanket,” Yasnic told God. It was only a season since Yasnic had sacrificed a good shirt to God, but the diminished state of the faith – meaning Yasnic – tended to mean anything God got His hands on didn’t last. “It’s only the beginning of winter, and it’s so cold.” Also, he’d just given thanks to God that he had less God in his life, and God, the recipient of those thanks, was right there and staring at him accusingly.

And so, obscurely, it felt as though a swathe of his memories was locked away by the new ordnances. How often had they had meat, back when he’d been a boy learning at Kosha’s knee? What was seven into twelve or twelve into seven or however it might work? His mathematics weren’t good enough to work it out. He had to start thinking in terms of a seven-day week, except then he couldn’t look back on the way things had been and quantify the time properly. The School of Correct Exchange was levying fines and making arrests for people using the old calendar, he’d heard. Back when Ilmar had been a more tolerant place, and old Kosha and Yasnic and God had lived in three rooms above a tanner’s and had meat at least once a twelveday. He gave thanks, his knee-jerk reaction ingrained from long years of good upbringing from Kosha, the previous priest of God. Sometimes Yasnic could do with a little less God in his life, and here he was this morning, and God was smaller by at least a quarter.

He had shrunk since the night before, and perhaps that, too, was a blessing. “It’s so cold.” The divine presence was curled up on His shelf like an emaciated cat, and about the same size.

City of last chances tchaikovsky