How Far I've Fallen - 2. Reawakening

It doesn’t take me long once I make up my mind. Like others, I suppose, I am my own worst enemy. I often refuse to see what is right in front of me. This is a flaw of human beings, but as I must remind myself periodically, I am not a human being. I am born as a human, yes, but eventually, I figure out who I really am. Typically it happens in adolescence. As if this time in the life cycle isn’t chaotic enough, I am destined to discover that I am of the perpetually reborn. One whose destiny is tied to the fate of three others and so long as one of them is alive, the others will continue.

When the time comes, however, when my eyes are opened after many years, I am ready for the revelation. Not once have I questioned my own sanity. I know instinctively that the history that rushes into my mind is a truth I cannot deny. And so it was, when Luka used my real name, there on the floor, lying beside each other, that my essence was poured back into me, like some giant pitcher of memories was being poured into my soul. This experience, of which I have now relived countless times, has never felt like an outside experience; never from an alien place. It’s more like a barrier that was always there was removed, so I can now see what lies behind. The dam breaks, and that, which was held back for so long, is now rushing into every part of my conscious awareness.

It’s not easy. This transition that happens does so in a way that brings with it the knowledge of responsibility. The weight of my history is heavy, and often the burden that the memories bring back to my understanding, is overwhelming for me. I can hide for a time, but always, like now, it becomes impossible to ignore the call of my kin and the necessity to see the souls that I have known through time.

Outwardly, like me, their appearance will change, as they too will cycle through lives as we move from age to age. They too will discover in their adolescence exactly who they are, and they too will know the truth of the knowledge that rushes in. In time, we all feel compelled to seek each other out. If we discover that our brother is still a child we will not interfere, we will let them live in the bliss of ignorance that comes with childhood. On the inside, however, they are as recognizable to me as the day we descended from the realm ruled by our Father.

I do not know what compels us to find one another, but the need is strong. I do not know even how we find each other, but I am guided, and whether this guidance comes from the Almighty, or if like a goose on migration or a salmon finding it’s home stream, I use the forces of nature to guide me home, the end result is the same. We know when we look upon the other. The recognition is neither questioned nor surprising as we also carry the knowledge that the one we seek knows we approach.

The reunion is simple, but joyous, words are not often needed and indeed we will soon begin to communicate without words, as speech is limited in the information it can convey and thoughts are easier and more honest. Much can be communicated in a millisecond when a thought is shared. I can describe it as a cascade that is framed by fear or anticipation or any other feeling or hesitation that may accompany a thought. I find myself sad at times, thinking about the loss, which is experienced every day by humans communicating verbally, but then they are progressing. The evolution of the human species is moving forward, as it should according to grand scheme of our Father. Each generation builds on the next, and yet, there are exceptions, or maybe they aren’t exceptions so much as they are blips in the evolutionary framework working themselves out. Be it the introduction of a new genetic deficit or characteristic that appears from the recesses of the human genome, or an evil that is difficult to comprehend, like genocidal acts or the mass killings that currently plague certain parts of the world, they seem to push the human psyche further up the evolutionary ladder.

I do not pretend to know what the Omega’s plan is. This degree of hubris is left to the delusions of a scant few lunatics on the Earth making life difficult for the rest of humanity, be it in advocating for the destruction of people due to who they choose to love or the destruction of a race or nation on something as inconsequential as the colour of ones skin or the way they choose to worship their Maker which, most offensively, is often justified by invoking the very name of `said Maker. I have often pondered how people could possibly believe that their Creator could give a shit about gender or whom people should choose to love, or how chaste the be. Granted cruelty is frowned upon by my species as well as the human race in general, but it is not without acknowledgement that we all have a responsibility to the others with whom we share this realm. But to think that the Creator spends Its time considering or weighing the acts of a human in its earthly existence is to consider this time and place as important as the next, and herein lies a delusion born of arrogance. A being that is all things cares very little of the distinction between man and woman, but in the minds of a species, and indeed a world of species, that is based on this distinction, it seems natural for them to attempt to arrange a hierarchy of status. It begs the question, however, of whether this arrangement lends itself to ever getting to a place of true equality. Where the male in this society feels like they are exactly the same as the female, where the necessity and righteousness of coming to a conclusion of one being in two halves is actually recognized, and that this distinction is not about the parts of the anatomy that people perceive to fit or not fit together. Suggesting that one being entering another is based on anything other but desire and affection, is ludicrous. Indeed the species must internalize the notion of propagation, but this only goes so far. All species on the Earth, with one exception, reach a point of balance within the environment in which it exists, and when it reaches this ideal, the idea of propagation becomes unnecessary for the whole. Instead it relies on the few to continuing the population for the many. So the idea that two beings of the same gender should not enjoy each other physically or otherwise is illogical nonsense.

Who am I to judge the human species? What grants me this power? What gives me the right to decide what is nonsense and what is righteous? God does. For it is my Father and Mother, the Alpha and the Omega, both sides of the same coin, that grant me with the power to judge. It doesn’t mean I have to like it of course. My task is to simply accept that it is what is. But, like all beings, I too am flawed. I too seek out the way to shirk my responsibility and run away from the reality of my own existence. It is my quest to discover a way for me to leave this behind, and in doing so reject my own creator. And this really is at the heart of my escape that I have spent years in the perfection of, be that in the despair of heroin addiction or the pleasure of spreading my seed so the world can see. This is my “fuck you” to my single parent upbringing, while at the same time accepting the gifts bestowed upon me by my creator. What a hypocrite I am, and in this I have a lot of company.

So it comes to pass that when my hypocrisy is pointed out that I begin again my search for the others of my kind. If I thought about it enough I could pinpoint at this very moment the locations of my three brothers around the world. The family connection is unmistakable. It’s embedded in my psyche and at times, when the itch is at its greatest it claws at my brain hoping to get out. It’s a second skin of sorts, except it’s the inner skin and I feel it shiver in anticipation at the thought of meeting another immortal. The ones I have met countless times before. The ones that remind me that I am but a reckless child, who goes off and throws a tantrum every few hundred years, and who sulks in his isolation for fear of living up to his potential.

Come to me.

I collapsed immediately and felt the tears bursting through my eyes. The voice was so powerful I vomited on the floor between my hands. Every crevice inside me was filled with His power. I collapsed in a heap on the floor and curled in a ball attempting to stop the vibration of my cells. I have not heard this voice for millennia. At times I thought I would never hear it again, but as it reverberated through my hollow bones, it filled me with love for the being that created me. How could I doubt? How could I be so flawed that I forgot the connection to my Father. How could I be so stupid as to throw away the gift that was granted to me, and waste my time on the escapes of the human lifestyle? I had forgotten my purpose.

There was a demand, an urgency that forced its way into my consciousness and I swallowed the feeling that my stomach would once again revolt against the onslaught of the voice that filled every space within each of the cells that made up my form.

Yes Father, I replied on instinct, and immediately searched for the three of my kin that would be looking to answer this call as I was. They were there of coarse; distant points of light, making up a constellation that few would see. There are those that believe in our presence, those that sense who we are, that know when we enter a room full of people that the shift that occurs is due to the presence of something greater than what used to be in the room. They are in tune it seems with this difference and some even readily identify us. Not as angels, not as the fallen, nor even as godly creations as their knowing is most often couched in intense fear of this understanding, but of difference, and sometimes they go so far as to connect with the idea that we are not human, but this is rare.

“Who are you?”

I looked at her puzzled as to why she would ask me such a question. “This is rather a forward question from someone whom I have not been introduced to.”

“You need no introduction death walker,” she said in a voice so confident of the knowledge of her truth that it literally forced me to take a step back.

“What did you call me?” It was asked not because I did not hear what she claimed of me, but that I was stunned that she knew. Who would have knowledge of what I was? It was impossible to sort out and I felt myself becoming angry. I rushed toward her and seized upon her throat to demand the answers I sought, but in my haste I utterly forewent the withholding of my own speed and strength and this was enough to crush the life from her. She stared at me as her last breath left her body, and it angered me even more that I failed to glean any information from the human that knew me, but whose precious life I had just taken in a moment of fear. She slumped in my grasp and as the guilt of what happened began to wash over me, I saw, as I do, her soul leave her body. I dropped the shell I was holding and cradled the soul that left the husk it knew for many years.

There is no malice in death. The soul was not afraid of me. It did not resent me for ending it’s physical form, and truth be told, I have killed thousands, and have felt very little for the lives of those I have dispatched. I care for their souls, however, and I rejoice in the knowledge that they will meet their maker, but I will also feel the more mortal shame of knowing that I prematurely ended a being’s existence on the earthly plain and that I doom the soul to repeat a life most likely before being granted final admittance into the realm that our Father has created to house the souls of the generations previous. The shell is unimportant. It acts as a vessel, and some treat that vessel through their life with care and others do not, but it makes no difference in the end. We do not feel remorse for the chrysalis that the butterfly breaks to make its dramatic entry into the world, and so too, we do not need to mourn for the human form, it is but the casing, which holds the treasure.

This, however, is lost on the human species. They are blinded by their own sight, and see little beyond. They judge the too fat, the too skinny, the too tall, the too short, the too dark, and the too light. On and on their judgments condemn these vessels to unspeakable cruelty. Where they should be bowing to the contents within and not let the shell distract them, they choose instead to focus on the pretty or not, the ugly or not. They force their attention to the unimportant, and allow their petty politics and superficial differences to obliterate the knowledge of what they carry. This is the task that I am charged with. This is the reason for my judgment. My task is to carry out the instructions of the Maker, and to put an end to the divisions that seek to destroy the greatest civilization in earth’s history, the human civilization. And make no mistake; it walks on the edge of a knife.

My Father’s call was not far from my consciousness as I reached out again to make contact with the distant point of my kin. Shedding my shirt I opened the large windows of my loft on the Manhattan skyline, and climbed to the rooftop patio that sits seven stories above the city. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning and still this city was noisy and bustling outside my home. I took comfort in this noise, in the darkness of the sky, the crisp air of the autumn season. Soon the leaves would fall from the maples and oaks that lined the streets below, and the hand of the Oak God would unfurl and cast its spell upon the landscape turning it white and soft. I love New York in the winter. The snow settled on top of the responsibility that fell of my shoulders; insulating myself from my calling. But it was always only a temporary reprieve.

The orientation of the surrounding buildings meant I had privacy for the transformation that took hold of my body for the first time in almost three years. If you looked closely you can see the faint scars that run in two vertical lines from inner curve of my shoulder blades next to my spine, to halfway down my back. They have been white for sometime, but this is only because they have not been in use. Their purpose is to encase the wings of my kind, and they fold neatly within a casing inside my physical form. This necessitates a certain stature for all my kin. You will not find one among us that is shorter than 7 feet. Our bones, like the birds that often fly with us when they see us in the sky, are mostly hollow, and our organs are efficient at processing the minerals and vitamins in food quickly. My organs are smaller than most human organs, and this serves the function of accommodating for the large cavity of our wings. I need not eat regularly, but I enjoy the flavour of food as it has evolved in the various tastes of the cultural groups of the world. My favorite is the spice of India. I have lived there many times as a result of my love of the culture and its souls. There is a peace there that I do not find in New York, but that peace is elusive when the burden of my kind weighs so heavily on me, and as a result it taints my love of both the food and the peace. As so I hide, in the noise of this great city that was once so very peaceful itself, when I think back to the trees and the clean ocean and the beaches that lined the shoreline hundreds of years ago in the very spot that now houses the building on which I stand.

I unfurled my aching wings. They trembled with an excitement to take to the sky, and I shook my feathers violently as they moved into place, overlapping each other and settling in the strong wind coming from the north. Like any being with wings, we are never truly satisfied unless we feel the wind ruffling our feathers. We orient into the wind naturally, and in this place we can feel the magnetic energy running in lines through the earth; it is a map of the world that is ingrained in our consciousness. I used this sense to take bearing on the first of my brethren. To the winged, the undulations and calculations of landmasses mean very little other than markers on the path to where we are travelling. I have witnessed the strength of geese moving through the sky for a thousand miles, and have felt their calm, quiet minds, focused solely on reaching their destination. They are blessed with a singularity of purpose that I find compelling. Their souls are at peace with who they are. They are all I strive to be. I once found myself flying with them for nine hours in formation. Like the others I would rotate in line when I was instructed to do so by the leader. A group of thirty or so was migrating together, and they would occasionally call to others in the distance, but would always continue to move forward, and did not stop. I estimate our altitude was nearly 6 kilometers. A single unspoken shift took place, and the leader dropped back, and the others would be one step closer to the lead. I dropped from formation when I came to the head of the flock, as I did not know where they were going, just that they accepted me, knowing my intent was simply to be part of their flock for a little while, and not meaning them any harm. Although we are not the same species, we are alike, and I feel closer to them, then to most humans, save one.

I used the power of my legs to launch myself upward and instantly my wings spread and moved as of their own accord to aid me in gaining altitude. I would fly higher today in search of the current that would take me to where I needed to go with the speed that was necessary. My father had called to my brothers and I, and waiting was not an option. I would be expected to converge on the location of the one that was closest to all of us, and that would mean that my journey would take me north up the Eastern coast of Canada to find the polar jet stream and then off across the Atlantic to London.