Page 756 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"When she hit Miro like that, it was ..."
To her surprise, Quara found herself weeping, clinging to her older sister. Am I still a child, then, after all? Yes, I am, we all are, and Ela is still the only one who knows how to comfort us. "Ela, was Quim the only one who held us together? Aren't we a family anymore, now that he's gone?"
"I don't know," said Ela.
"What can we do?"
In answer, Ela took her hand and led her out of the house. Quara asked where they were going, but Ela wouldn't answer, just held her hand and led her along. Quara went willingly-- she had no good idea of what to do, and it felt safe somehow, just to follow Ela. At first she thought Ela was looking for Mother, but no-- she didn't head for the lab or any other likely place. Where they ended up surprised her even more.
They stood before the shrine that the people of Lusitania had erected in the middle of the town. The shrine to Gusto and Cida, their grandparents, the xenobiologists who had first discovered a way to contain the descolada virus and thus saved the human colony on Lusitania. Even as they found the drugs that would stop the descolada from killing people, they themselves had died, too far gone with the infection for their own drug to save them.
The people adored them, built this shrine, called them Os Venerados even before the church beatified them. And now that they were only one step away from canonization as saints, it was permitted to pray to them.
To Quara's surprise, that was why Ela had come here. She knelt before the shrine, and even though Quara really wasn't much of a believer, she knelt beside her sister.
"Grandfather, Grandmother, pray to God for us. Pray for the soul of our brother Estevao. Pray for all our souls. Pray to Christ to forgive us."
That was a prayer in which Quara could join with her whole heart.
"Protect your daughter, our mother, protect her from... from her grief and anger and make her know that we love her and that you love her and that... God loves her, if he does-- oh, please, tell God to love her and don't let her do anything crazy."
Quara had never heard anyone pray like this. It was always memorized prayers, or written-down prayers. Not this gush of words. But then, Os Venerados were not like any other saints or blessed ones. They were Grandmother and Grandfather, even though we never met them in our lives.
"Tell God that we've had enough of this," said Ela. "We have to find a way out of all this. Piggies killing humans. This fleet that's coming to destroy us. The descolada trying to wipe everything out.