the last of the angels
The crystal memorial looked slightly out of place compared to its surroundings. It had only been months since the visitor had last seen it, but already green roots and moss began to grow and crawl along its smooth sides, cradling its back like a pair of motherly arms round a baby's head. Flowers bursted into bloom, adding an almost nostalgic touch to the structure, as if trying almost vainly to force it to adapt. Only the carved words were left untouched, strong and unchanging against the elements and unyielding to the tests of time.
But for how long?
Almost unconsciously, her hand began to trace the carved murals, as she always did, running her eyes through the almost foreign language. It made her wonder, how easily she recalled the forgotten language. The memorial stood not only to let one know of what was eternally wrought into it, but a constant reminder that there was once a world somewhere, a civilization that what the cause of what happened.
Terra.
Her hand retracted to the side of her figure as it traced the last of the runes. Forest green eyes moved from where it rested on the crytal, and moved, along with her golden head, locking itself heavenwards as if she expected an angel to fall.
Angels.
She almost laughed at the irony of all of it. Instead her lips pressed tighter together, hands clenched almost grimly as light raindrops bathed her form in an almost eerie glow. –Since when did it rain in the Outer Continent?—Already there was a little puddle where she stood, encircling the crystal and brushing away any dust or resting waste upon it. Her eyes narrowed lightly together, before she tore them away from the sky, and reread the words over and over again. At each line she had to remember to keep herself together.
But, alas. Even the strongest of hearts could break.
Her clenched fist opened in front of the crystal, and a stream of blue light exploded right onto the smooth surface. There were cracks and black ash where it landed, and she had yet to notice them before sending more, eyes shedding the tears she once promised she'd never let fall, but she couldn't stop them. She spat out words in a language she barely remembered, shouting out all her pain and all her regrets in a way she knew no one else would recognize. Either she'd gone mad, or was going mad, she found, before she could stop, that she drew from inside of herself a power she never knew existed, and threw upon the unbreakable memorial what could have tore the continent to ruins. Then it happened.
The crystal cracked in two. She kept her hand in midair, in the middle of all the destruction, ears full of the pattering of rain and voices she could not remember. She dropped her hand, and her knees gave way, sending up a spatter of rain and tears. Right then, she could swear she heard herself scream. No one would hear. She knew this, but still she screamed, knowing she was the last of everything, last, and alone. Her voice never echoed. Nothing dared to throw it back into the air. Everything received it, almost gratefully, tasting the sorrow and the bitterness and weeping with her in the rain.
As the last of her tears fell, she pulled herself up, raising a hand towards the destruction. As if on rewind, the shattered fragments rose from the ground and returned to their place, the cracks retracted and disappeared. And yet again she looked at the runes as they glared back at her.
In the silence she cursed himself for ever fearing mortality, and cursed herself for refusing it. Who was she to not deserve death? Since his death is was supposedly wrought on her name. It was on times like these that she wished she could spit upon her own grave, allow the water to wash away the rock. Her grave, she knew, would not be wrought on crystal, or in the history as theirs had been; it would be on solid rock.
But any rock would easily wash away. Perhaps her tears could cut away her name, leave her dead, unnamed and forgotten, unforgiven though she be. And again she wondered to herself what part of her mission she'd failed to do.
The angel of destruction had fulfilled what he was there to do. He destroyed what was his homeland, tried to destroy what could have been his second home, tried to destroy whoever he thought may destroy him. In the end he destroyed himself.
The angel of death, indeed, had lived and watched them die, each and everyone of his own friends, watched his canary die in front of his own eyes as he remained ageless. He did not lose his life, but it was his hope that was extinguished, and he wandered now, in goodness knows where, trying to reclaim what had been lost to him.
Who knows what became of him? Mayhaps death found her angel and wrapped him with her arms, granting him a lifeless immortality, lonely though it be. Mayhaps he treads the world with the night at his feet, and traded his daggers for a scythe. She could care less.
So what was she? Was it to be then that she was human, after all? What could explain then, her existence for all these years? After the diminishing of the Black Mages, the Genomes, the angels, she had been left alone. What then did she stay here for? Decades and centuries passed and still she remained, walking the mountains, different as they were and building graves for people she knew once existed. And then she'd go back again, repairing the grave as if she were trying to embrace them forever. Always, though, she found she'd end, and start, right here.
The first grave she'd built, cutting the Crystal away with beams of blue light, lovingly carving their names and setting it firmly into the earth. Right here, under the shade of the Tree of Life.
Ironic, wasn't it? That a grave should stand where life was to begin.
She read and reread the runes, memorizing each detail, though she knew she'd come back again. Treading the hills and the oceans to wherever her heart took her, mending the stones and renaming them though she may remember them no more.
Perhaps then, she was an angel after all.
The last of them all.
In Memory of Angels
Though in the arms of Death,
And swathed in the dark by Destruction,
May in the life ahead of you, or whatever lies beyond mortality,
Give you all you may seek and more.
We, the last who remain,
Ask tenderly to those who may listen,
May we never forget them;
All the places and memories,
All the people who have gone.
And so, we hope, with all that we have left,
May you find Mercy, and Hope, wherever you are.
And may our hopes and dreams follow you and your wings,
To whatever end.
Destruction
Death
Hope