Servitude

 

           

                Life is just a series of trade offs. You get this wonderful new promotion at work, but find that you’re spending less and less time with your family, or the college you been applying to every semester finally takes you in, but the cost of tuition means you’ll be living on ramen noodles for the rest of your life.

                Oh, then there’s my own personal favorite one, fall in love, get kicked out of heaven.

                I wonder if He knew it would happen. Sometimes I think He did, He must have.  It is said that humans are His favorite creatures, rightly so I imagine, after all, they were created in His image.  But us? We weren’t weighted down by such goals and ideas. If humans were molded after Himself, then we, all our ranks, were created in the image of what He hoped humans could someday become. In it isn’t pride when I say we were all beautiful, it’s just…well, it’s just the truth.  That’s why I have doubts, that’s why the questions continue to skim across the surface of my mind.  Did He meant for it to happen? Or was He just foolish in thinking it would not?

                I truly hope that it’s one or the other. For to create something that burned brighter than the sun and was more beautiful than the first snow of the year, to do that, and expect for none of us to fall in love… that would be incredibly cruel.  A cruelty I shudder to believe exists within the creator of all.

                It’s odd don’t you think? Here I sit, telling my story of love, and yet, I haven’t even gotten to the one that seized my heart and claimed it as his own. Old habits die hard I guess, if they die at all. Before my love, I knew no other but Him. Before I laid with my love, I knelt by God’s side. Before I felt the waves of melted joy rush through my body at the soft, tempting touch of my other’s hand, I felt the hand of God, cradling me, his warm fingers running down my back, planting the seeds from which wings would spring forth. Just like I’m tied to my love, I’m chained to my creator.  

                I wish I had the strength to break those bonds, but I am afraid that I never was very strong.

                My love would have disagreed. ‘You have more strength than any of the Powers combined. You hold the fire of purity within you.  There are not many that could. And less that would do so willingly, even to serve him.‘ He would have said.

                His voice still runs through me at every occasion, making me long for him. One of God’s punishment I wonder? Or just a fallible of a human body?

                It was his voice that first drew me to him. If I held the fire of purity in me, delicately put there by the Creator, then his fire dwelled in his tongue and seemed to spread forth when he spoke. When he moved through the halls of God and to the throne room, all around him stopped. When he spoke, all were silenced, even the cherub’s trumpets seized to play. True to his name he shone like none of us could, his footsteps driving  darkness away, sending them scurrying away from his presence.

                The first time I heard him talk was the first time I heard any other voice but my creator’s. Imagine! To live in perfect bliss with the knowledge that everything that is important, that is good, that is, that is, that is RIGHT is only a few steps away, and then, then to have that knowledge completely eviscerated by a single voice.

                “Mankind will never be ready for the gift you present them my lord”. Those words will always be branded into my head. The sound of his voice was like rain falling into an empty street.

                Those are also the words that started the war. That shook the perfect world we had all been accustomed to existing within. Sides were quickly taken, some enraged with what Lucifer had dared to say, while others heard truth in his words and would follow him in whatever he chose to do.

                And me? The war was of no matter for me.  I would hear the screams, screams that even in death were beautiful, as the creator had deemed them to be, and not care. I would witness great clashes in the sky above me, flurry of wings and steel that saw no clear victor and not blink.  I was in a daze. It wasn’t so much that the world around me was being destroyed, but more so that I could be aware of it if I wanted too.

                And it was Lucifer that sparked such thing within me. So naturally I sought him out.  I’d planned to kill him.  I remember the weight of the spear feeling strange in my hands, out of place. But I also remember feeling this burning thing inside of me, I was feeling anger for the first time. Back then, I believed I was angry that the third closest to the creator had chosen to turn his back on him, but now I can see it for what it truly was. Desire.

                I found him easily enough. Of all places he shone the brightest in the battlefield. Where others fought one against one, most hesitant in their battles (for it is one thing to believe in a cause, it is something quite different to kill a brother or sister for it) he took down as many of the opposition as he could, tearing wings, driving his sword into them, or burning them with his voice, a voice that no longer spoke for God, only for himself.

                My spear caught him on his side, going neatly in between two ribs, bringing him down to the ground, with me in pursuit. I was prepared to finish what I had started when I looked down at him. Even on the ground, with blood staining his dark wings and cuts going across his body, he was beautiful. Instead of driving the spear even further, I carefully removed it and placed my hand over the wound.

                The purity I held in me slowly seeped out of me and into the wound, closing and healing him.  If I close my eyes, I can feel his wings against my face again. The way they would slowly beat, as if in rhythm with his heart.  They enveloped me, brushing my face, his feathers feeling like all of him did, hard and hot, metallic and yet alive. I stared into his face and moved locks of white hair from his forehead.

                And I fell in love. 

                The war raged on, and so did our newfound hunger for each other. We would meet whenever we had the chance, and when those great wings of his closed around me like a curtain, I could make myself believe that we were hidden from sight.

                We weren’t of course. After the war ended, and…and Lucifer was punished, I was called into the great hall. I tried to go towards the throne, to my rightful place, but he wouldn’t allow it. Instead he had me stand motionless in the center of the room, surrounded by the eyes of my brothers and sisters, some still carrying their scars from the war.  He could have healed them all in an instant, but I think, I think he wanted me to see them as they were.

                You love him.

                This was the voice that had made waterfalls spring forth and carved mountains with just a whisper, and it was directed fully at me.

                I didn’t try to deny it, I didn’t try to make an excuse. I simply nodded. 

                Then join him if you’ll like.

                The Powers grabbed me then, each of them holding to an arm. Powers, the guard dogs of God, angels created for war and violence, to watch over the souls making their journey into our world, while keeping away those souls that tried to force their way in.

                I felt another set of hands on my wings, touching them, running their fingers along the edges of my feathers. The intrusion, the shock of being touched as only two others had before, brought me to tears.

                Maybe that’s what they wanted, that I would cry, that I would run out of tears. And they did their job well.  By the time they ripped my wings, like a tree being uprooted, I had no tears left.

                No longer are you one of us. When you repent, you will be, but for now, you are just human.

                That’s all he said, before he cast me out, to become another of the falling stars descending down from Heaven the day after the war. He made me less, made me just human, in the hopes I think, that someday I will become more than human again. To rise back into his good grace and be by his side.

                I know, I know. You don’t believe me. You just think I’m some poor homeless person, perhaps suffering from dementia after years of drinking. That I came into this church just to get out of the cold.

                I don’t need you to believe Father. I just needed you to listen, to be their ears.  Here, in this place built for Him, my voice is louder. But the creator is not the only one that listens, churches are also the ears of below. For both sides have much interest in the pains of mankind, in the pains that people come here to confess.

                I saw him after I was cast out, have I told you that? I saw Lucifer, my love. He offered me passage into his new realm, where he was king, where I could kneel by his side if I so desired, sit by his throne.

                And…and the truth is..I want to. But I’m scared. Scared of what I saw, in there, in him, and in me.  See, I told you I’m not very strong.

                So I walk this world of humans, knowing I’m being watched. Too scared to go down to Hell, to prideful to go back up to Heaven.

Reviews

[Susan M]

Technical stuff:

"you been " in the second line should read "you've been" or "you have been"
" It is said that humans are His favorite creatures, rightly so I imagine, after all, they were created in His image." - This is a run-on sentence. There are at least three actual sentences in there. Two if you use a semi-colon. (Oh, how I love semi-colons!)
"before I laid with my love" - should be "lay"
"the cherub's trumpets seized to play" - ceased, not siezed


Props:

"I felt the waves of melted joy rush through my body" - I really like this line! I actually really like that whole paragraph.

*sighs* What a beautiful story! I have always loved the Lucifer myth and this is a sweet addition to it!