Aleris

Angelus Psalm: Part I




Some years ago in the Temple of Life Angelus had thrown himself down upon his knees, renouncing his father's name and severed himself from his bond of marriage. She believed he lost his faith that day.

All her elder children had.

Verial, was her agnostic child. Maiwen, oh what can be said for her. She had been raised by her guardian with every material luxury. Made a Queen. But a faithless Queen. Sorvynia believed Maiwen to own a faulty moral compass that steered her in a crooked line. As a mother she soaked the blame for that. And as much as Maiwen had been the distant daughter, her second born son Angelus had put as much between himself and everyone else after the Oneiroan War. The land of his birth. Years would pass between the times Angelus, like some stranger wanderer would overshadow her door with the rising arch of his plated ivory wings. Some years ago, that fateful day in the Temple of Life, she had seen the last of her Angelus.

She would of cursed his father if she thought it to offer her a shred of comfort.

Word came the storming morning she had met with Maxim on the crossroads bridge just outside of the DeepSigner Villa. She was walking back to it in the falling rain, barefoot on the damp ground when she was approached head on by a lone, travel-worn individual. Though the weather was cool and gray, the hand that outstretched from a soaked sleeve was pale, nails long and pearl white like talons. She stopped stone still with a questioning gaze, absorbing the cold sensation of it. A cold she was familiar with. A cold she knew in dreams. It wasn't human. She was presented with a scroll, bound in oilskin to protect its otherworldly content. A gust of wind tore back the hood of the message-bearer and the Angel gasped as she drew the parcel against herself at the sight before her.

"You are far from where you belong" the Angel accused, near voiceless as her lips trembled. She glanced down to what she had been given, steadying herself against the breeze that taunted at her dark wings as it tugged them up from her back.

The face of the message-bearer was placid and void of living color. For all sakes and purposes it could be believed the creature was female, for all her feminine features, though they were hidden beneath soaked and travel-worn garb. She was not human, but human-like.

Verial had met her once...

and Sorvynia knew her for what she was, more than who she was, which was more the pertinent.

She was not a ghost...
She was not truly dead...but once was. She was Nameless. And perhaps what she is, is best described as a remnant. A lingering, akashic-like fragment of a consciousness that is undying, embodies, yet does not truly live.

Her complexion was as translucent as the alabaster-like masonry of Oneiroan temples. Her hair was long and cascading like a pristine waterfall and pure as a full moon on a crystal clear night. Her eyes, if she possessed any at all, were bound- blinded behind tattered white grave bandages wrapped around her head like a blindfold. Her voice was reticent against the rude roll of distant thunder.

"So are you, Dreamer. And it is more truer to say there is no definitive of where we belong. There is only where we exist. Which is both far and near at once."

To that the Angel might of laughed for reason of displaced appreciation for such profundity, but she could not muster the will as her fingers burned with a fear for what she held.

"Why do -you- come to me?"

"Why not?" Nameless answered with a quiet apathy and a blinded gaze.

Silence.

Angelus Psalm: Part I (continued)


I was left in Silence.


I had no answer that the Nameless one could not profoundly riposte. Even the immortal servants of Gods must humble themselves to the lesser of Higher beings. I continued to the home still shared between Bansca and I. It felt as if hours had passed in the time it took for me to clear my path through the fields between the crossroads bridge and the farm stead. Night had fallen and with it the chains of my wings were tugged by the ebb and flow gravity of abyssal tides. I stood at the door, feeling the inviting warmth of the hearth just beyond awaiting my attentions. There were people awaiting the word I held in my hands...for which I had yet to even read. But I knew in my heart, the words of the Nameless one were a vague hint.

I didn't walk in. Instead, I sank.

There are places deep within the mind that are left scared by one's nightmares. The dreams that you awaken from feeling frozen with a racing heart that you feel would leap from your chest if it were not bound safe beneath its corporal aegis. Likewise, there are places deep within Oneiro, that are fissured with black scars. Places that quake with groaning memory of the One War. Tormented with a lingering presence haunted with guilt and regret that consumes everything. Such places are unsound, mostly barren and believed uninhabitable by most. Or at least what most would perceive to be, they who are of a sound mind.

For many years after the One War, I wondered in the the deeper places of my mind, where my own groaning memories linger with haunting guilt and regret, if in escaping our once beloved Oneiro, if we ever really escaped. My answer came to me that day standing just beyond that crossroads bridge. It was placed in my hands by One who is both blind and Nameless, but speaks the knowledge of undying consciousness. Something that is beyond even my own antiquity.

My answer, was....no.

I knew in my soul, it was not meant that I should leave Oneiro. None of us should have, at least not me and my offspring. The One War took a part of us and since then we have done what we could to take it back, to replace it, to move on. To not be victims. But, it still yet takes a part of us. In the different ways people and circumstances touch our lives. In both the waking and the sleeping dream, where we find our truer selves.

When Selune died she left me with her power knowing I would not forsake what I was to invoke and wield it. Blessings are somewhat curses. I often reckoned my womb-mother a pagan whore to have given me over to another god. But I understand now, what I did not in my youth. My womb-mother's blood teems true and scalding through my veins. I also wonder though, if she ever gave thought of what would become of me. If she could of foreseen the strange and conflicted creature she created in the pride and passion of purloined love. If she could of foreseen the diluted offspring of my own womb in the half-blood of my pale blue eyes.

And in all my wondering I can answer my own questions, for have I not committed similar if not the very same acts?

My answer, is....yes.

So it is now that I grieve anew for my Angel, my bastard son. My accursed wondering of what has become of my Psalm has been dispelled, though now it leaves me feeling a heavy emptiness for it. I wanted my son back. I wanted my Psalm here where he belonged. I wanted him to realize his child needed him. I wanted him to take Aursra back, for I knew that he had loved her fiercely. But in my wanting I felt childish, for seldom had our stories ever end in ideal ways. I've always felt it foolish to even entertain such fantasies. So it is now that I contemplate invoking the power that is mine and risk an ascension that might destroy some things for the sake of others.

Would He forgive me if I did...

The signature of Psalm's spirit lingers in the parchment which feels more tangible than the scroll itself. With it I could tear him through space and time, but I wouldn't even need it to do so.

Would they forgive me if I did....


~Sorvynia Exile