Chapter 48 #2
“Mm,” the angel of beauty continued to moan, and he saw brightness, then felt pleasantness raking its claws up his body.
Death tore out of himself in tight, wet finish.
And Baal and Michael were quick to follow, spilling into both mouths of the angel, then lowering to kiss him everywhere again, praising him, adoring him, the most beautiful angel in Heaven, in all of life, of all creations.
The favorite. Their favorite. The favorite of no one else.
As Lucifer laid with them, eyes on the golden sky, he held the both of them to his chest, running his fingers through their hair once more; eventually, he tried to tilt their tired heads to make them kiss for him. They scowled, refused. But Lucifer maintained a light, sweet smile.
After this — the three returned to the city of angels, where there were preparations to celebrate the birth of a new star somewhere.
Several colorful homes, at either side of the road, were pressed to each other, so close that it could have been that there were merely infinitely long houses trailing in every direction, only occasionally intruded on by amphitheaters, bathhouses, galleries.
Walking far ahead of Baal and Michael on the crowded golden pathway — Lucifer watched plants travel alongside him — migrating fungi, wandering trees that left fruits in their wake.
The beautiful angel plucked one off the ground swiftly, then made his way over with a hum to a certain figure sitting on a stone bench by a plaza.
“Rosier!” Lucifer chirped over the chatter of all the hundred angels bustling about. “Brother, how are you?”
Rosier, an angel of fruit; he was working through a basket of pomegranates when he startled and lifted his head.
His friend, Asmodeus, was asleep with his head draped over one of Rosier’s shoulders.
“Oh. I’m well, I’m well. How are you?” His voice shook, but then he smiled gently, almost shyly, and the tall angel beside him grunted, shifted in his dreaming.
Dropping the fruit into Rosier’s basket, Lucifer smiled. “Well. We always are.” And when the angel of fruit stared up at him with a quietly pensive gaze, Lucifer added, “If you’d let me, I want to deliver fruits with you again.”
At that, Rosier laughed, though softly. “Really? But aren’t you busy? I thought you were going to lead the celebration for the new star with your songs.”
“Mm, but I have to go get my timbrel and….” His voice trailed, and he blinked, trying to remember.
“Pipes,” offered Asmodeus, though his eyes remained shut.
Just as Rosier began demanding to know how long his friend had been pretending to sleep, Lucifer stepped away, turning back to his lovers who hated each other, but he noticed a fountain, and two angels standing before it.
One was dark-haired, his face speckled, his hair enshrouded by veil.
“Excuse me,” Dina was begging. The one before him tilted his head — his almond eyes widened, his feathery hair cascading down his shoulders.
Phanuel. “But I wanted to ask you for forgiveness,” Dina said.
“I realized it. I realized it just recently— I asked God for forgiveness for a pain that I inflicted on you. That is why I never felt forgiven. It was you that I should have asked. It was you who I should have made amends with. Phanuel, I stole your rings— During the war in Heaven, I had your rings. I was a thief.”
The angel of forgiveness stared, and he whispered that he’d forgiven Dina long ago.
“Dina,” Lucifer called, then tried, “What—” The youngest angel twisted around, eyes far too wide, reddened with sadness, knowing.
And before the angel of beauty could speak more, there was the sound of an angel clearing their throat.
Hesitating, Lucifer turned his head another direction, and he saw now Azazel, down the road, where Michael and Baal should have been.
He still carried a hole in his heart and smeared white paint on his face.
‘You never desired to go back,’ Lucifer thought at the Watcher.
‘Nostalgia never made a fool of you, how it did me.’ When he looked to the youngest angel again, his eyes darkening, his brows furrowing, his lips pressing thin — all the angels who’d been crowded around and preparing for the birth of a star faded into the eternal brightness of the new Heaven.
Rosier was gone, as was Asmodeus, and Phanuel disappeared as well.
The plants melted into the glow, then so did the last remnants of a golden street and a fountain and stone bench.
Lucifer laughed — low.
Any second now, Azazel with his bleeding heart and Dina with his frightened face would disappear like all the others. No great bang nor screams of death. Without noise, they’d drown in the light.
But he surrendered: ‘We cannot return.’ His shoulders shook as he continued to giggle, more and more miserably.
‘We cannot return. It can never be like before. It will never be like before.’ He hadn’t even remembered Heaven well enough to recreate it accurately.
He’d missed flying, but he forgot how to do it now.
He hadn’t been an angel for what had felt like, what surely were, lifetimes.
But what was he, if not an angel? Where was he?