A/N: Another chapter down, so another posted. This story is pouring out of me. I think it has something to do with the fact that I actually wrote down the outline of the entire story first. My usual method is having a rough idea of what the story is going to be about, before I start writing, and then seeing what happens. Probably not the best way of doing it, but anywho.
A person asked if this was all from my personal faith. No. I mean, the premise is biblical, but the rest is purely from my imagination.
Thank you for those who took the time to review, I appreciate every one, and thanks as always to Sam for pre-reading every chapter and holding my hand through all my insecurities. Love you longtime, girlfriend.
The Fallen
Chapter 3.
Condemned to Earth to live thousands of years, while I searched for Isobel's reincarnation near drove me repeatedly mad. I did everything in my power to earn my forgiveness and buy my way back into Heaven and my father's good graces. I joined various priesthoods, devoting my life and bringing millions of humans to Him. I spent hundreds of years preaching, blessing, and casting out evil spirits. Humans came from miles around to hear me speak, seeing in me my inherent beauty as evidence that I was of my father. But it was all to no avail. He remained just as indifferent to me and my pleas as He ever did.
I eventually fell into despair, living in apathy and remaining detached and uncaring. Having lost all hope of finding Isobel, I removed myself from the humans I was condemned to embody; becoming almost savage, and only paying attention enough to make sure I didn't violate my father's trio of laws set down for me.
For too many centuries I lived out the majority of my fifty years as a recluse, but after the second millennia of my existence, I began to hear the whisperings of a prophecy unfolding; that the Messiah had been born. After two thousand years of living in constant sin and immorality, our father stepped in to save His "likeness" from themselves and their own innate inadequacies and predisposition for transgressions.
God in the flesh and earth-bound, as I was.
I saw it as a path for redemption. Surely, if my father was prepared to extend his hand to his favored creation, then it would apply to me, as well. After all, I am in a sense one of his precious "humans".
It goes without saying that I am forbidden to interfere in human history. Michael has halted my actions and forbade me from entering certain cities several times over the course of my four millennia of living. It's a rare occurrence if he does so now, but Jerusalem for the most part was once off limits to me and continued to be for several hundred years after.
Though, with the Messiah alive and walking among us, I naively believed that the rules would be laxed, and I would be allowed near Him.
Michael stopped me at the gates of Damascus, and for the first time in my human existence, he came infinitely close to severing my head from my shoulders with his light-bladed sword.
"You cannot pass, brother!" he warned me, holding his sword to my throat without a sliver of hesitation. The threat of his stance was genuine, letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he would kill me without regard if I remained on my present trajectory.
"Am I the only human forbidden to humble myself before our father in the flesh?" I demanded, impatient and full of indignation.
"You are not a human," he reminded me, his expression scornful.
"I am still His son!" I declared angrily.
"A son who defied Him! You've received your judgement and now you must make peace with it. Find your human seer."
"I have searched for two millennia?" I reminded him, filling with frustration before falling to my knees. "Does she even walk this earth?"
He appeared to take a breath, his stance easing for a fraction. "The beasts are killing her while she's in the womb, or very soon after. Spilling her blood when she's at her most innocent ensures that they will become powerful," he relayed to me, and for the longest moment I could not move, or breathe—or conceive—of what he was speaking. "You revealed her to them, brother, and without you she is vulnerable." There was a burning pity in his eyes, as if he could comprehend my pain, but to me it was a mockery.
"AND YOU ALLOW THIS!?" I roared, pulling myself to my feet where I found the blazing light of his sword directly to my jugular once more.
"You marked her, brother, when you took up this infatuation with her," he spat, his expression twisting in repulsion. "You showed contempt for our father—you questioned Him, and now your human must suffer the consequences of your arrogance."
"Then, what is the point of any of it—if she is slain before I can ever hope to find her?!" I challenged him, my resentment once more supplanting my despair. "I cannot detect her mind. I am blind to her."
"Your charge is to find her. Did you honestly think the beasts would not use it to their advantage? I pity you, brother." He shook his head slowly at me, but his eyes remained steeled to mine, his warning not wavering.
"You should pity me, for I am FORSAKEN!" I seethed before turning my back on him and unleashing my wings in a blistering moment of torment before I prepared to leap in the air.
This is when Michael laid his hand on my shoulder, forcefully turning me to face him. His eyes this time were instilled with compassion. As compassionate as he is capable of being, at least. "Go to Jericho and seek out The Baptist. Be reborn through water, brother. It will anoint and strengthen you."
I found this wiled-eyed Judean two days later, preaching on the Jordan riverbed, north of the Dead Sea, to three dozen men and women. He stood waist-high in the muddy water, wearing a filthy camel's-hair garment, and gesturing wildly to the heavens before back to his captive audience. This was when his eyes met mine—hidden partially as they were by my sackcloth cloak that I had draped over my head.
He knew instantly who and what I am.
"Bar 'elaha!" he exclaimed in Aramaic [son of God] and something which made me instantly scoff with bitterness. Then pulling himself from the water before me he dropped to his knees and grabbed my sandaled feet.
"Rise, brother," I murmured to him in the same Semitic language, almost dragging him to his feet impatiently when he continued to prostrate himself before me; while all three dozen humans around me began to follow suit.
"Malak?" he asked me discreetly, after he'd pulled himself shakily to his feet.
Malak [angel], and in response I only nodded once. It was a half-truth.
"Malak," he repeated in reverence, bowing once more before I gripped his shoulder, preventing him from continuing.
"Baptize me," I instructed him.
He only gazed at me, his eyes widening, and what was evident without the need to read his mind was that he didn't understand.
"You baptized The Messiah, did you not?" I snapped in frustration.
"Yeshua M'sheekha [Jesus the Messiah]." He nodded with passion, before going off into a tangent of prayers and praise while swapping back and forth from Hebrew to Aramaic in his zeal.
"In the name of Elohim..." I muttered half beneath my breath before abandoning my current course and silently compelling him.
Without another word spoken, he took me by the elbow and guided me toward the edge of the river. I discarded my outer garments and removed my sandals before stepping into the clay-laden water.
It was sanctified, and the instant my foot broke the surface an energy so divine, so hallowed, immediately burned through my entire body of skin; instantly tearing my wings from each shoulder blade, painlessly.
Light filled and flooded all seven of my senses rendering me for several human seconds in a state of shock, before I collapsed in complete release into the water. It was the first time in the two thousand years that I'd been imprisoned on Earth that I'd felt the very grace and forgiveness of my father.
The Baptist blessed me, pushing me back into the holy water with an almost comical shock besetting his face. I sobbed openly, beseeching both his and my father's forgiveness before I silently thanked him and rapidly propelled myself into the air. I was so overwhelmed with emotion, I needed to escape. Not to mention, I allowed too many humans to witness the truth about me. In doing so I broke the second of my father's rules set down for me. But since the Baptist already knew what I was before my wings were revealed, I didn't harbor too much concern that Michael would come hunting for me. Especially, considering it was he himself who'd set me after the Baptist in the first place.
Though, it wouldn't be the first time that my brother said one thing and did another...
A month later night became day and the entire earth shook to its foundations, cracking and crumbling homes and temples from The Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee, and The Great Sea to the west. A phenomena which was followed by a pulse of great despair that swept over the lands, and bringing me to my hands and knees.
My father in the flesh had fulfilled the prophecies of the second Passover. He had become the sacrifice, the lamb, so that through Him His children might have everlasting life.
Except for me.
He'd sacrificed himself for the love of His flock; something I'm condemned to do for Isobel.
If I could ever find her.
The baptism greatly empowered me. My mind and senses after, and to this day, were so enhanced and heightened; to the point that I could read the thoughts of the demons as well as the ability to scan through hundreds of human minds per second. It greatly assisted in my search for Isobel. I searched day and night for any detection, any whisper of her; of her in infant form, of her name—no matter how implausible that was—and of any blind spots in my radar that her silent mind might create.
Every time my search ended, it ended in futility. The demons were indeed killing her almost the moment she was born, when she was at her most innocent. It was on every one of the fiends' minds: the blessed human who had no guardian. It caused me to repeatedly question the point of my living fifty human years when she could not live one. Yet, I completed life after life, each one bleeding ceaselessly into the next, for absolutely nothing.
Nothing; not for another two thousand years.
A/N: Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment, critique, ask questions, flame, etc. Whatever's your poison. I do edit anonymous reviews to add my reply. Not always. Sometimes.
MWAH xoxo