Fallen - 2. The Fall

Veritas

And thus began my time on Earth.

I hit the surface at a speed that would have torn a human to pieces, but I don’t remember any pain; only numbness.

I must have stayed in that small crater I’d formed for hours. Luckily, I fell in a well forested area, far enough away from any roads or towns that might attract mortal attention. It left me plenty of privacy to stew in my misery over the loss of my home. At that moment, I wished more then anything that I could die, rather then live forever in this exile.

I was forced to move when dusk came, having regained enough sense to notice movement in the area. I stood shakily, my body sore from a combination of crashing to the ground from thousands of feet in the sky, and from remaining generally unmoving for hours on end, and move slowly behind a group of trees that acted as a veil between me and the shallow crevasse. I had settled against one of the trees that made up the screen, when the source of the movement, two boys, burst into small clearing, falling into a giggling, wrestling heap onto the ground.

Something inside of me ached when I saw the two together, but I quickly shoved the thought from my mind. The man I ached for didn’t even deserve my resentment, and the Lord had made it clear that what I had been doing was wrong. Yet, despite all that, I couldn’t fight the pangs of jealousy directed at the youths.

By the time the two were about to leave, their purposes for coming this far into the solitude of the woods met, I was lost in the build up of jealousy. I didn’t notice when they found the unnatural crater, or even when they swept around the clearing looking for the source of it until the light from a lantern illuminated my face.

The smaller of the two gasped in shock to see a body this far in the woods covered in grime and bruises. He approached quickly, failing to notice my wings in his rush to make sure I was alive.

“Are you alright?” He asked quickly, but softly, his hands going over the light bruising on my face and chest to make sure there wasn’t any hidden bleeding. It was his partner, who had stayed back cautiously, who noticed my wings first. He looked a bit dumbfounded at first, but pulled his lover away as though I were a threat.

“What are you?” he demanded, holding the lantern out to show the smaller youth what he had missed.

In all honesty, had I more energy at the time, I might have been a threat. I had decades of betrayal to fuel my actions, and a grudge towards human men, so to kill them both on the spot would not have been too far from my thoughts. Fortunately for them, it is not in my nature to kill and I was exhausted from the events of the day.

I stared up at the youth for daring to question me, not having the strength to run him through with the wings he so feared, but stoped short when I realized I myself didn't know the answer to such a simple question. I could no longer call myself an Angel, could I? And I would cut my wings off before I called myself anything as degrading as a human.

Where did that leave me?

I passed out before I could even pose a threat to them, or find an answer for myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I woke up again some time after dawn, though in a barn, and not the woods. Clearly, the two had moved me while I was unconscious, though it didn’t make much difference to me. They were still human, and they still had something I couldn’t.

I strode from the building, my bruises and injuries long healed by now, into the pale light and pushed off from the ground, fighting the urge to track the boys down and kill them for the simple fact that they where happy. That fact alone was enough for my hatred to stretch towards them, the urge to make them as miserable as I was, lonely on this hunk of rock, so far away from where I belonged.

I charged the Heavens once, testing with some sort of twisted hope that I could pierce through, but was rebounded to the ground forcefully. I spun in anger towards the building nearest to me and it erupted in a sea of fire, reflecting the hurt that stained the moisture on my face. Animals cried as they're home quickly disolved to a firey mass, but unfortunately, the smoke, fire and cries awoke the townsfolk from their sleep. They filtered out of their houses, staring wide-eyed at the barn, or inferno, as it might be appropriate to call.

A pair of familiar eyes caught mine from the nearest house, which I assumed to be the owners of the barn. I turned from them and accended on the warm air, though the mournful eyes of a boy who had willingly helped someone and suffered from it followed me as I vanished over the trees.

That was the last I stayed in a human environment for more then an hour or two. I stuck to the forests religiously; staying deeper then any normal humans would go just for the sole purpose of avoiding the deceiving faces of man. And when they started to cut down the forests that I stayed in, I retreated even farther, hiding in the trees themselves at times to avoid humans.

I stayed that way for a few hundred years, semi-unaware to the drastic changes in the time and people.

TBC~