The Fall
Glory, glory, glory...
These days, when he has to be among them, they are happy days, though he cannot feel happiness. His hand spreads the ashes; he puts a finger to his mouth to taste it. Blood and bone and ground flesh. He smiles. The muscles of his face stretch . He’s sure he can feel the warrior beside him – a soldier – shudder. Blood coats him; as well it should, so close after the battle. He approves of that. There is smoke on the air, rising black and gray and the vermillion of burning cities behind him.
The conquerors march and the apostates – they are; they always were – clutch each other. Only women and virgins at that: the men and the boys were slayed, as were the old women and the pregnant women. He nods as he watches them walk, crawl, chained to each other and naked, wounded and bleeding and covered in soot. Their fear and hatred wash over him, a steady, relentless sea, crash over him and make him drunk with the weight of it. He shakes his head to clear it and stills the swaying he can feel vibrating in the marrow of his bones.
The conquerors march, singing hosannas, and he hums along deep in his throat.
He wipes a hand across his forehead and watches the man beside him – their leader – watch the slaves.
“You have done well,” he says, crouching low. The black robes bunch around his knees – they were white when the day started, but no longer. Traces symbols in the cinders. His hands come out black, as they should. Good.
The soldier beside him sighs, and he rises before the man can touch his shoulder. The soldier will not remember his event; no one will believe his stories, the rare night when he does. A few years from now, another tribe will rise and depose the soldier’s own.
The women march, and the soldier returns to watching them. The angel can feel his excitement growing, one he himself cannot feel. He is still an angel – of course, he was not a ‘he’, then – and used to the sight of corpses. Some cleaved in two, the broken mess that was the skull of infants. The intestines of pregnant women, curling slick and brown. Mingling with the red contents of her womb.
These things were his dominion, his God’s Will. He was nothing, nothing at all, but a weapon and an instrument in His hands. He walked among the ruins of their homes and their tribes, the broken shards of pottery. Crushed the tattered dolls under his heel.
He looks, once again, at the line of marching women, their wails and tears sweet as frankincense, as honey.
Green eyes wreathed in black, in ashes. He can see a soldier, some warrior’s hand, fall on a shoulder, clasp it hard enough to bruise. He smiles at the scent and glory of her pain, the apostate, when the warrior drags her out of the line, out of her hold to her mother’s legs, somewhere else. This child of six or nine, he does not know.
Those eyes, they turn up. They look at him. It lasts for a second.
In a daydream, he wonders.
And that is how he falls.
