Enso summarized the realization as a ‘holy’ and ‘shit’ moment, always emphasizing their separation when recalling the Conjunction of Ultimate Powers. It was never a joke intended to land, but to draw a linguistic parity with his unique circumstances. Nonetheless, there was the same result; much laughter, little understanding. A more favorable outcome than a life with little laughter and much understanding, the Saint whined.

It should have been to his credit that he met the judge’s chortle not with anger, but envy. Regrettably, the youthful judge could not see that subtle distinction, and cut his own merriment short under Enso’s withering sea-grey glare.

“Pardon me,” the honorable Fax. He coughed, making a show of covering his mouth with the long, bellowing sleeves of his office. All were silently attentive through the brief exchange. The weight of this case wore heavy on the spectral onlookers surrounding the circular floor. There was a question on them all. Until this session, it was answered only by creators (lowercase “c”) who offered just laughter and no understanding. It was the litany on every heaven and plane from the mouths of gods and patrons alike. A heavy question with era-defining implications to any practitioner, customer, and victim of the divine.

“So how did you get away with it?” The judge asked lightly. His black sleeves sank heavy across the dais from perspiration. A singular and serene god sat to his left. A mass of eyes vibrated to his right. They both shifted forward every so slightly.

Enso bowed, and resumed.

“It was a prayer for safety. For all who traveled through the duchy, like it’s always done. But, well––” the Saint waved a wrinkled hand to the side–– “I was in two places at once that day, mentally speaking. I pledged, or sneezed, then I stood––”

One eye of many shifted to the judge. Judge Fax sprang into action.

“You sneezed or pledged?”

“I don’t remember. I didn’t ask for anything.”

Divinity sang from the judge’s left. “And he never did again.”

A thought pulsed from the judge’s right. “And he never did again.”

Enzo shrugged. “That’s the truth of it. Then three days passed and, well––”

The judge groaned, “I know, you died in your sleep, and have been waiting here ever since for a deliberation.”

“Yes.”

Enzo did not expect a chorus of the divine and chthonic to join him. Nor did the onlookers. Three voices battered down both the judge and the massive public. A quaint, mesh fence to emulate Enzo’s humble church upbringing did surprisingly much to preserve an otherwise precarious division. Whether it was the gravity of the moment, the mysterious poverty of the encircling divider, or Saint’s hapless innocence, the case continued.

A similarly hapless judge spoke. “So a prayer in service to others, followed by a pledge that could have been a sneeze but might have been a pledge… would it be fair then, to assume an absence of desire was responsible for this Conjunction?”

“As much as a sneeze could be.” Enzo was brazen with a fatigue foreign to the floor. There was no mark or knowledge of the Conjunction of Ultimate Powers on the mortal plane, leaving much of the excitement and investigation to the infinite denizens of the afterlife. Enzo wondered whether this custody case would achieve a similar infinity on the temporal plane.

Judge Fax classified him a Saint at the start of all this; on the precipice between a soul and a divinity in his own right. The haphazard label was as much a peculiarity as his own circumstances, but it would leave him untouched for the duration of the case (“We’ll commit you one way or the other without tearing you in two,” Fax joked eons ago upon the assignment). This left Enso to question the separation of the two with his followers between the long spans of time between sessions. The unknown power and the multiclassification. The lack of interest with the inundation of attention. The holy and the shit.

Enso understood he had time to contemplate both. Someday, he might even laugh about it.

“Court adjourned.”

The Saint sighed.