Why I love Mariya

[salienne]

The only light, feeble and rarefied, emanated from many candles of varying heights that had been placed on the icons’ altars in prayer and left to stand there burning until they dwindled to lifeless stubs. And there were many old ladies, pudgy babushkas in patterned headscarves—mostly women, a few men, all elderly and wrinkled—moving solemnly between altars like penguins.

That almost pwns my demonic gopher.