Day Two - Worship
He wasn't religious but he knew faith. Jellal understood higher power. There could be no other explanation for why he was – at the very least – still alive. By all rights he should be dead many times over. Doors had been slamming in his face for most of his life but through a crack in one window, he'd seen beams of light too heavenly to ignore. She welcomed him with an honesty and fullness he didn't think he deserved.
His many layers of dead skin and scales were sliced through and sloughed off. The process hurt but she never let him go. The gentleness with which she handled him amazed him every second of every day. Erza knew every inch of him and he no longer felt ashamed by the shadows. Her light was too bright.
In turn, he absorbed her sadness with ease. He'd gladly take her tears into himself. Purifying Erza's sorrow came as natural to him as the way she took his hand at the first gathering of clouds.
Jellal never felt closer to glory than when they lay tangled together. He didn't fuck her, or have sex with her, or even make love. Jellal worshipped her. Every gasp. Every whisper of his name. Every drop of sweat. Every painful dig of her fingernails into his shoulders. These were as holy as the sliding notes of a hymn. When he whispered her name into the inner swell of her thigh it was nothing short of a prayer. He took her flesh into his mouth as communion and she took him into her body as tithe.
Perhaps it was a sin to equate Erza to a carnal goddess. If he called himself her devotee would it be blasphemous? Jellal didn't think so but every morning on his way into town he visited Kardia Cathedral to light a votive just in case.