A/N: Please take a minute to have a look at this: lunissa. deviantart. com/ gallery/#/d4i6lmn
Thank you.
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Chapter Five
Break
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Caphriel felt like he was slowly going insane.
No wonder, really. He slept three hours a night, on average, ate just enough to keep his human body from outright collapsing. Force of will was what truly kept him going, nothing else.
The question was: kept him going, why? From a sense of duty? For love of God's grand, great, wonderful Creation?
Please.
Caphriel had once loved looking at the sky. The sun, the moon, the stars. Their steady, regular motions, predictable at every step, had never failed to give him a feeling of security, of certainty that at least one thing in this beautifully infuriating world could be counted on to always be the same.
But that had been before... before. Whenever he gazed up there now, he could only think and fantasise about how splendid it would be if they were to all come tumbling down, the sun, the moon, the stars, all forsaking Heaven to come and play in his Hell. Sackcloth of hair, but of course!
Snapping out of this ever more frequent delirium would be like having his throbbing head shoved in a bucket of ice water. The dazed, freezing numbness was always nice, but all too soon, sensation would come rushing back, and he'd find himself right amongst the humans again, the humans and their lives.
The humans. Hateful creatures, every single one of them. Their lives, their short little lives, so meaningless, so pointless, revolving only around themselves, their worthless possessions, their petty ambitions, their skin-deep emotions.
Lucky bastards.
But why couldn't he stop helping them? Why did he still bother? Why did he still care, when no-one cared for him? Why didn't Upstairs call him back, let him rest, send a replacement down here? Let someone else bear the burden of over six billion souls for a change! Why couldn't he have a little peace, after nearly seven thousand years? Hadn't he done enough already?
Or, what it all boiled down to: why could he not forget? Why must the same scene always be playing in his head, worse than ever when he could no longer keep himself awake? Why could he not let go?
Whenever it all became more than he could bear, whenever he simply couldn't take his life anymore, he would do the very opposite of letting go. He'd run, run from wherever he was in the world back to the one place that could be said to offer him shelter from it: the bookshop. He found himself gravitating there more and more often, staying there for longer and longer at a time.
Pathetic weakling.
What had become of his fine, angelic resolutions? He still hadn't been able to say goodbye to that blasted walking stick, kept it near him at all times, laid it beside him when he slept. All the scorch marks had been carefully removed from it, long ago. It was the dearest thing in the world to him now.
It was absolutely sickening. What, what was he turning into? What kind of angel was he? Why couldn't he do his job like he always had? Was his self-respect completely gone? Three fucking quarters of a millennium, and instead of getting better, he was becoming more and more incapable of functioning, of living, because of the gaping emptiness inside him.
Wretch. Miserable wretch. Was he, then, so debased that he truly could not exist without the very antithesis of himself moving around in the world, that he could not exist without...
...without...
Zirah.
His name, Zirah's name, was written in living ink all over the walls of the bookshop's little upstairs bathroom. All over the floor and ceiling, too. It had taken Caphriel hours, his hands and neck had screamed for mercy, but it had been highly therapeutic, all the same. An unfading testament of unfading adoration.
God.
When he'd finished, he'd staggered out of there, dizzy and drained, dropped onto the little bed like a stone, and slept for three whole days to recuperate. Dreamlessly, for once. That alone would have made it all worthwhile.
When he'd finally woken up, starving, and remembered his handiwork, he'd run outside, in the middle of the night, dashed into the nearest alley, and been very sick behind the dustbins. What had he been thinking? Had he lost his mind? Well, seven days without sleep could do strange things to a person.
He hadn't set foot in that bathroom since. But, looking back on it, he felt no regrets for what he'd done there. It had felt so right, as though it actually meant something, had made a difference, somehow.
Zirah...
Once, in America, only a few decades ago, he'd jerked out of uneasy slumber, dream still pulsing before his open eyes, had rushed out onto the balcony of the sleazy motel room before he knew what he was doing, and screamed out, "I love you, Zirah, I love you!"
When the other guests, rightfully furious at him, had thrown open their windows and demanded to know what in Hell was wrong with him, he'd broken into hysterical laughter. He'd been kicked out less than fifteen minutes later.
Now, sitting on the old leather sofa in the - to his lasting shame - perfectly preserved bookshop, the walking stick resting across his knees, Caphriel knew two things with absolute certainty.
One. The string that was - barely - holding him together was being eaten through, fiber by fiber.
Two. As long as it still lasted, he would continue to do his job, faithfully, resentfully, to the best of his ability. And when he could stand it no longer, and he knew that day would come, then the world could go hang. He would.
Zirah...
And Caphriel burst into tears.