Persecution

Chloe shook her head. "No, holy water can straight up burn through them like acid." She remembered Pandora talking about it, how she showed the girls what that stuff could do. "There are others that can get burned, like third degree going to the hospital burned, if you poke them with a crucifix or toss a Bible at them. But they can still read the Bible on an ebook, actually. Same with the Qur'an."

She realized that she was rambling. "Um, anyway, it's definitely not just a mental thing for some of them. And it can be, you know, kinda hard not to interpret that as a sign of... something really negative."

The younger demon had her eye on one of the Bibles in front of her. She picked it up and set it in her lap, just to make sure that she could. She hadn't touched one since she became Pandora's.

Chloe let out a long sigh.

"It's fine. You're just... probably about as disturbed by the implications of it as I am. But, uh... I feel like there's some stuff to unpack, here." She wasn't even sure where to start with this - and she was a little bit frustrated. She had expected the risen demon to at least have a passing familiarity with demon issues, and now she felt like she had to break things down Barney style for him.

"Well, to start, the stuff I was talking about can happen to children who are too young to even know what Christianity is. So it's, ah, definitely not about hating God. And ah, praying isn't something a lot of them will, um... ever want to do." If God was responsible for all of this, though, it would make Him seem pretty hateful - and she knew that would really clash with the idea a lot of religious Christians were supposed to have, that God is literally love itself. She tried to think of something that would make this less horrifying for him.

"I know that certain rituals, like the ones that go into blessing holy water, can be, um, similar to magic rituals in a way. So maybe it's just some kind of impartial magic force that's hurting people? Instead of it being God?" As far as Chloe was concerned, this was a cop-out. She had been hoping Luco could give her something better. At the very least they would be able to talk this possibility over now.