30 April 2012
“Why did you weep?”
He stood in the frame of the black archway, which loomed like one of the extending shadows clustered beneath the thick trees of the wood. The pearlesque glow of my skin, hair, and velvety wings washed over him like moonlight, illuminating his features with a soft gentility which almost made him look as though he too was an angel.
“Please tell me why,” his voice, quietly pleading, like a child’s. “The rains of Heaven have never reached me, though I have longed for but a single drop of their refreshing cool. But your tears—they reached me. They poured over me like cool kisses, soothing the wounds and warming the heart of a lover. They touched only me, leaving the rest tormented with fire and vain jealousy. Tell me—please—why did your tears touch me?”
“Because I wanted them to,” I admit in hardly a whisper. My heart lurches, pounding with resonating warning and yet a passion which has ever been foreign to me and now excites me to no end, urging me to draw closer and revel in its flame.cool kisses, soothing the wounds and warming the heart of a lover. They touched only me, leaving the rest tormented with fire and vain jealousy. Tell me—please—why did your tears touch me?”
“Because I wanted them to,” I admit in hardly a whisper. My heart lurches, pounding with resonating warning and yet a passion which has ever been foreign to me and now excites me to no end, urging me to draw closer and revel in its flame.
“I wept,” I continue, voice and heart swelling, “because you were so beautiful and quiet and sad, and it seemed such a sad thing that you should be sworn to such an eternity...”
The long black feathers of his folded wings flex gently, and his raven eyes watch me with soft pensiveness. Before, in the fires of his abode, I had seen their tinged, frayed edges. They looked as delicate as a new child’s skin, yet I knew they could not burn. Not as my wings could, until they were transformed to the same, black cinders as his...
“Come closer. Please.”
Again, my heart twists two entirely different directions. Flee, urges one. Run to him, whispers the other. It is not his fault. It is unfair that something so beautiful and tame should not be given a choice but must be sworn to everlasting damnation.
But he was given a choice. He made that choice before the beginning of time. And he is only that—tamed. But not tame. Not ever. His choice damned him to that fate the moment he stepped away from the Light to follow the tainted light of another. When that light fell, so did its followers. So did he. He made his choice long ago...
“Please...if I could but feel the cool touch of so lovely and pure a maiden, just once in my lonely existence. There is no love down there. But though countless ages have passed, I recognized Heaven’s love in your tears. Please. Let me feel that touch once more...”
How innocent, like a child’s tongue. I know its words are false. I know that no matter how sincere he might try to be—and perhaps he really does want to feel that Light again, perhaps he even wished to serve it again—he could not help but fall back into the darkness he hailed from. If I follow, the purity he so admires will be marred and eventually extinguished.
Is not my purity greater than his darkness? Perhaps I can outshine his darknessdispel the shadows of his heart...
But we are too greatly equals; darkness and light can only create shadow.
Yet, I do not want to believe this. I want to believe that I, insignificant creature that I am, can change the world. And perhaps I can. But the world of men, though scarred, can heal. It is a place of hope. No hope has ever existed in his world...
Still, I creep forward, wanting to be that hope, wanting to weep again for the beauty which has never touched Heaven’s borders...
...not since before time began.
I stand before him. He is just as beautiful and gentle so close. My heart cries for the mingled emptiness and a longing for that emptiness to be filled with something—anything—glittering quietly in his eyes.
He holds out his hand.
No...
The dying whisper of my mind’s last attempt to stop what will already be.
I take his hand. A fire surges through my fingertips and into every fiber of my being, down into the pit of my palpitating heart. I am warmed with a cozy contentment I have never known, and with something else—that strange passion which I finally recognize as desire.
His eyes locked securely on mine, unblinking, reassuring, his warm touch leads me into the innermost depths of the dark wood.
This Is Really Long But Please Read • Opuss № I