Pati

Patty is a member of Mike’s Nest whose hospitality gives its spiritual practices a domestic, human scale. A water-brother to Jill and Mike, she accepts their offer of a bond described as lifelong and unbreakable; within the Nest, she also helps guide newcomers, cares for children with the aid of her snake Honey Bun, and makes Ben and Jubal feel at home. Her role joins ritual authority to ordinary acts of feeding, bathing, and welcoming.

Identity and Place in the Nest

Patty is known affectionately as Aunt Patty, and the household treats her as both a close relative and a trusted participant in its religious life. She is among those who can recognize a candidate who may need special promotion or training, though Mike remains the one who can be certain of readiness unusually early. Patty’s authority is practical and relational: she explains the community’s customs, attends to its members’ needs, and helps newcomers understand what they are being asked to join.

Her connection to the Nest is expressed through care as much as doctrine. When Ben visits, she shows him the circular Innermost Temple, a nearly empty room centered on a pool where new brothers are received. She offers him the choice of sharing water or simply swimming, and accepts his hesitation without pressure, answering with the Nest’s patient maxim, “Waiting is.” The scene introduces her as a guide who makes room for refusal and readiness rather than demanding immediate conformity.

Water-Brotherhood and Ritual Guidance

Patty’s own bond with Jill and Mike is established through a deliberate sharing-water ceremony. Mike sends a glass of water into the bathroom and back to Jill, who explains to Patty that the act signifies mutual trust, candor, and partnership, and that the bond cannot be broken. Jill also makes clear that Patty need not accept if the ceremony conflicts with her faith. Mike reinforces the seriousness of the invitation and its religious freedom; Patty takes a deep breath and firmly says that she wants it. Jill drinks first, then Mike, and finally Patty receives the glass and the water of life. The ceremony makes her not merely a guest but a permanent partner in their bond.

Patty also helps sustain the Nest’s system of spiritual progression. She explains that members generally enter the Eighth Circle before, sooner or later, moving into the Ninth Circle and the Nest itself. The formal Sharing-Water service, attended by the whole Nest, makes new brothers—usually a couple—part of the community forever. Although Ben already belongs in practice, the Nest has not yet held the service for him, so the household puts other matters aside to welcome him properly. Patty’s account presents ritual not as a bare rule but as a passage that can require patience, study, and the support of others.

She reassures Ben by recalling Sam and Ruth’s unusually rapid progression. Mike offered them water when they had only just entered the Third Circle, and they later became a priest and priestess. Ruth describes the difficulty behind that apparent leap: she studied hard while afraid of being separated from Sam, struggled with the new language and with the changes she felt in herself, and was frightened of merging into the larger group. At the Innermost Temple, the robes were whisked away and the Nest called them into the pool; Ruth says she entered and never wanted to come out. Patty passes on the essential comfort of that experience: Ben belongs because Mike does not make mistakes, and the community will help him learn and welcome him. Her confidence turns an intimidating ceremony into an invitation to trust the people waiting to catch him.

Care, Work, and Family

Patty’s work in the Nest is visible in small, concrete acts. When Jubal arrives, she brings sandwiches, starts his bath, checks the bedroom and bathroom, and offers to find anything else he needs. She identifies herself simply as Patty, and Jubal recognizes her as the woman whose life is recorded in the sequence of tattoos associated with the life of Archangel Foster. Her warmth is not ceremonial distance: she tends to a visitor’s comfort while making herself available for conversation.

She also cares for her babies, Abby and Fatima Michele, with help from Honey Bun, a large boa constrictor. Patty keeps the children in her room so the snake can watch them. Honey Bun alerts her when one needs help or becomes tangled, nudges them back from danger, and recognizes Jubal after he pets her; Patty explains that the snake does not understand when a wet baby needs changing. The affectionate but matter-of-fact arrangement captures the household’s unusual intimacy with animals and its practical response to childcare.

When Jubal later goes to his room, Patty again draws his bath, turns back his bed without touching it, and prepares drinks beside the bed and on the bathtub shelf. She stays to explain the pictures in her tattoos and the sequence in which they should be viewed. Jubal understands that it would hurt her if he ignored them, and responds openly rather than treating her body or her history as an awkward subject. Their exchange shows Patty’s need to have her life’s images seen and acknowledged, while her attentive care gives Jubal a comfortable way to meet that need.

Welcoming Newcomers and Making Community

Patty acts as a bridge between the Nest’s public rituals and its everyday life. During a ceremony in which Jill appears to Ben as Mother Eve in a vision, Patty touches Ben’s shoulder and leads him away so the candidates can continue without interruption. She explains that the longer route gives them time to reach the Temple of the Eighth Circle; barging in would not hurt them, but would disrupt the work of restoring the right mood. Her intervention protects the ceremony while also noticing Ben’s position as an observer who is not yet ready to join it.

Her welcome is notably free of coercion. Ben declines the opportunity to share water in the Innermost Temple, and Patty lets the moment pass. Later, she tells him he belongs and will be helped, but the community’s promise rests on patience and participation rather than force. With Jubal, too, her hospitality begins with ordinary comfort and grows into personal attention. In these scenes, Patty makes the Nest’s claim that members are family credible through service: newcomers are fed, shown around, guided away from interrupting sacred work, and invited to return when they are ready.