This is my present to my readers who pay attention to when I post something new. I'm mostly out of commission due to my computer dying, but I will try to throw some of this up weekly through borrowed devices. I am actually writing it out by hand first. Fun, right? I promised and so I deliver: Supernatural awesomeness with a dash of Destiel. Enjoy.
RUNES UPON THE TREE
Prologue: The Hanging
See the man
Upon the hawthorn tree.
"Oh… oh no-" The child raised his hands to his face, tears welling in clear blue eyes like a wave in the ocean. "No…"
He had no home, nor lady-love,
His only kin was me.
"Cas-" his brother's hands were on his shoulders, holding him back as he struggled to run across the ash-strewn field. "Castiel!"
The child wailed, hands still soft with toddler roundness reaching towards the figure that dangled from the ancient branches, as though the dead limbs had brought forth fruit out of season. "Gabe-" he cried in lisping Enochian, "Gabe!"
No glory for the hanged man,
His is a silent sleep,
For if he hangs upon the tree,
His sin was surely deep.
Michael wrapped his arms around his smallest sibling and bowed his head. Crystal tears fell, shimmering, onto dark curls. He did not speak, nor did any of his siblings, gathered at the edge of that scorched earth. They all knew what Castiel was still too young to understand.
They had lost. And now they would die.
From Naeomi's lips rose a haunting funeral song, a shard of history long-forgotten, and now revived for the sake of the laughing brother whose body hung from the enormous tree in an empty field.
"Look, see the man
Upon the hawthorn tree.
He had no home, nor lady-love,
His only kin was me.
His only wrong was foolishness,
A soul of light was he,
Yet here we are,
And there he is,
Upon the hawthorn tree.
I dare not plead
To take him down,
My silence I will keep.
Lest punishment,
Like unto his,
Upon myself I reap.
No glory for the hanged man,
His is a silent sleep,
For if he hangs upon the tree,
His sin is surely deep."
Her voice faded, and they stood in silence. None there dared speak.
Their world was ending.
What words could possibly ease the pain of that?