The Fall #5
The silence once they left was… loud. Gusion cleared his throat. “Remember, Raph, that the Father made all his creatures to evolve. Humans evolved from monkeys. Complex creatures evolved from sludge. Why would angels not also be created to evolve?”
I felt the tug of Lucifer’s call, and Gusion’s words echoed around my mind as I appeared into the home of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and once again came face to face with the beginning of my downfall. Those violet eyes still saw too much.
They looked me over, and then the big Horseman swallowed hard, his eyes snagging on the pink-tips of my wings. “He can stay. However long he needs.”
Like that, I had refuge in the home of the instruments of the Apocalypse. If this was a plan the Father had devised, he had a hell of a sense of humor.
They mainly left me alone.
I’d moped around the room they’d assigned me for a few days, but I was eventually discovered by the tiny human girl.
Cara. We’d met earlier, and she’d tried to say my name, and it came out as Raffle.
It had made me smile, the first mirth I’d felt…
in forever. When her brother tried to correct her, I’d told them that the name was fine.
Raphael was kind of hard. A lot of syllables.
Now she barged into the room where I was staying too quickly for me to hide my wings.
She looked at my wings, at my expression, and frowned. She couldn’t understand the magnitude of the color, or even what I really was, but I saw the moment she decided not to care.
“Your wings are nice. They look like Madoc’s, ‘cept his are blue.”
“Thank you,” I told her politely.
“I’m having tea. Would you like to join?” Not waiting for my answer, she grabbed my hand, pulling me from the bed and out into the hall. “It’s in the backyard,” she told me, even though I’d never agreed to tea. Still, my feet followed her of their own accord.
She led me down the stairs, past the man who was her father. “We are having a tea party,” she told him, and he stared at me wide eyed.
I shrugged. I could ponder the demise of my immortal soul later, I guess. Tea sounded good.
Except I quickly found that the tea wasn’t real as I sat on a small plastic chair that was barely holding my weight.
The cups weren’t real either. Cara lifted the teacup to her mouth, pretending to drink even though there was nothing in there. “Mmm, delicious.” She frowned. “Are you going to drink yours too?”
Blinking rapidly, I lifted the cup to my lips, before placing it back on the plastic saucer.
She frowned at me again. “You have to say the ‘mmm’ noise, like it’s delicious,” she told me softly, although there was no judgement in her tone.
She had such a sweet soul, I could sense it burning brightly from her chest.
I lifted the tea cup back to my mouth. “Mmm,” I said dutifully, and she smiled so brightly, I couldn’t help but smile back.
She topped up my imaginary tea, and I took another fake sip.
She handed me a small plastic doll with wide dark eyes that was honestly a little terrifying.
Its eyelids seemed to close despite it being inanimate.
I tucked it into the crook of my arm mostly so I didn’t have to look at it anymore.
Taking another fake sip, I listened to the little girl play pretend.
We talked about the weather, and that she was going to the wedding of someone named Carli and she was going to be a beautiful bride except she liked a boy named Faizan who picked his nose and ate it and she thought Carli could do better.
She talked about their neighbor, Susan, who didn’t like dogs or kids or people, and I nodded along solemnly.
She didn’t seem to need further interaction from me other than sipping my non-existent tea occasionally and rock my inanimate child even more infrequently.
She moved on to talking about someone called Trigger, who she was going to marry when she was older, or maybe the boy in her class called Alexei, who didn’t pick his nose.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Raffle?”
My wings flared slightly, and I straightened my spine. “Uh, no, little one. No girlfriend. I’m not really allowed to have a girlfriend.”
The tiny child let out an outraged gasp on my behalf. “Why? Sera has five boyfriends. Why can’t you have one girlfriend? You’re handsome like the man on the billboard near my old school. You could have a girlfriend if you wanted one.”
She made it sound so simple. “I will keep that in mind.”
“You should. You could give each other hugs, and she could tell you you’re handsome and you could buy her ice cream.”
My mind instantly flashed to Bray, holding him in my arms and giving him comfort.
At that moment, I’d felt… content. Sad for the man who’d lost everything, but the touch of his flesh to mine had made me feel fulfilled.
The feel of Nora’s body against mine when she kissed me.
I cleared my throat. “What you describe does seem lovely, little one. I shall think about it.”
She nodded, fishing around in a large satin pink purse.
“Okay. That’s good, but now you gotta feed your baby ‘cause it’s hungry.
” She handed me a little bottle that when tipped upside down, the liquid disappeared like magic.
Human ingenuity never ceased to amaze me.
I held the small plastic bottle to the doll’s mouth.
Then she handed me a plastic crown. “Also, here is a tiara. We’re princesses now.
Well, you’re a prince, but I don’t have a crown, so you’ll have to have a tiara instead. ”
I laughed, positioning the tiara on my head. When was the last time I’d laughed like this? “How do I look?”
She smiled at me, her teeth crooked, with a few missing. “So handsome you could have two girlfriends.” She filled up my teacup again. “Now, did you hear what Susan did last week?”
The pink in my wings spread slowly until it covered the lower third of my wings.
Despite being away from Nora and Bray, despite staying with the Horsemen and Serendipity, I was still Falling.
It was a slow, torturous fall, something almost insidious.
I sat around a fire pit with one of the Horsemen, Cain.
He held the infant angel in his arms, and the baby slept quietly, his miniature wings tucked tightly to his back.
When I looked at him, all I could see was the failure of Michael’s plan.
How can saving Serendipity all those years ago have caused me to begin to fall, but Uriel had created an underground cabal of the worst of humanity in an unorthodox human sorting system that somehow led to the suffering of innocents.
And even then he didn’t fall until he laid with Serendipity.
Not the abhorrent nature of his actions, but lying with a Nephilim, though I doubted he knew what she was when he’d done so.
He’d created this small being, and it was considered the abomination, but not Uriel.
How could kissing someone as noble as Nora be considered as heinous as starting a war that led to the subjugation of human women?
“Can you hold Madoc while I go and get another beer?” Cain asked, handing me the baby, just like Cara had done last week.
I took the fragile little life into my hands, and he disappeared into the house before I could protest. I looked down at the baby’s face, his round cheeks and tiny pink lips looked too perfect to be real.
I patted his wings that felt as soft and downy as a baby bird.
Gently so I didn’t wake the infant, I spread his wings wide.
They were just like ours, created by the Father himself.
How could anyone look at this child and think he was an aberration?
A soul deep revelation settled over me. He was beautiful and perfect, and if saving him made me fall, I didn’t care. I had no regrets.
I looked at the sky, and hoped they heard me. “I don’t regret it, you know?” I repeated to the person behind me.
Solomon, the Horseman of Famine, appeared from the darkness. I knew he was there; they didn’t think I was a threat, but still, they protected their heart. Serendipity. The children. This babe.
“Saving Madoc?” he asked softly, sitting in the chair his brother-in-arms just vacated.
I shook my head. “No, saving Serendipity when she was this young. Defying Michael, and by extension the Father, by not eradicating her.”
He sucked in a startled noise and I realized he didn’t know. Had Gusion not told them who they housed? I could have saved them so much heartache. I could have saved Serendipity so much heartache, but instead, I did the bare minimum.
Solomon cleared his throat. “I didn’t know,” he confirmed. “But thank you. I might be biased, but I think you did the right thing.”
Sadness washed over me. An acceptance of my fate.
“As do I, and therein lies the problem, no? The actions of the Fallen make more sense to me than that of my brethren. Uriel was the final nail. An Archangel aiding human suffering. Is that what we are really about? What do we really stand for?” Anger replaced the guilt that ate at me.
Why was I burdened with this turmoil, when Uriel had been righteous until his final moments.
Was this feeling not an admission of wrongdoing?