Prayers Answered Or Unanswered

We have quoted Dominic Flandry's prayer to St. Kossara before but this time the context is different.

Flandry to his murdered fiancee as she lies in state in the Cathedral of St. Clement in Zorkagrad on Dennitza:

"He stooped closer. You believed you would know, Kossara. If you do, won't you help me believe too - believe that you still are?

"His sole answer was the priest's voice rising and falling through archaic words."

-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XVIII, p. 577.

He does receive an answer: the priest's voice - but that does not affirm Kossara's survival.

Father Tomilav to Holy Andrei/St. Andrew:

"'Holy Andrei, grant me a sign.'

"The crude wooden image stirred. Lips curved in a smile, hand reached out in the gesture of benediction."

-The Merman's Children, Book Three, V, pp. 149-150.

The author of a fantasy novel is empowered to animate an icon. But when Tomilav asks Andrei to confirm that his daughter, Nada, is in Heaven:

"The carving never stirred." (p. 150)

This experience of Tomilav's is more akin to Flandry's.