My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the brightness.
We’ve emerged into a sort of stone grotto, or a cave, small and cramped - roughly thirty feet across in all directions. About ten feet ahead of us, deeper into the cave, sits a magnificent painted statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue is a bit larger than life-sized - maybe one and half times the size of a regular woman, and she seems too large, too glorious, for the tight squeeze of the cave. She stands in black robes with her hands upraised in prayer, and her eyes look heavenwards, an expression of the deepest, most desolate despair and anguish engraved on her face. Tears fashioned from gleaming white pearls stream down her cheeks, and seven bright silver swords piece her heart, raw and bleeding and exposed on her chest, a red rose
