Lover of Perdition
I have sinned, O God.
I have sinned, and so I repent.
Yet for me, there can be no redemption. No forgiveness can come.
There is only to wait, and then to fall.
"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 ever 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.
"I wept," I continued, 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 flexed gently, and his raven eyes watched 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 twisted two entirely different directions. Flee, urged one. Run to him, whispered 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 sword 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 as well 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 knew its words were false. I knew that no matter how sincere he might try to be—and perhaps he really did want to feel that Light again, perhaps he even wished to serve it again—he could not end up falling back into the darkness he hailed from. If I followed, the purity he so admired would be marred and eventually extinguished.
Is not my purity greater than his darkness? Perhaps I can outshine his darkness, dispel the shadows of his heart...
But we were 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 ever 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.
I have sinned, O God.
I have sinned, and so I repent.
Yet for me, there can be no redemption. No forgiveness can come. I have loved a son of perdition. Never was a means of salvation created for me, as for man. As one of God's chief representatives and highest servants, I can only maintain His grace or else fall.
There is no redemption for one who has ever seen God, basked in His glory, known good and evil in the flesh and known the powers and consequences of both. There is no excuse, no need for such a plan of salvation for my kind such as God granted for man.
Ignorance truly is bliss.
It would be for me, as for man. But I am not ignorant and never was.
I have loved a son of perdition.
So now, there is but one thing which can lie in my power; and after that, nothing remains for me.
There is only to wait, and then to fall.