Socheniel has often reminded me what gentleness is. That strength does not have to be abusive. That power does not have to crush. His blight-stained hands are soft. Just simply sitting beside him is a comfort.
I keep forgetting just what Socheniel is.
I have seen him in the robes of his office. I have watched his wings become grander and blacker* over time as he was swept up in the embrace of a different aspect of his divinity. I have seen the war-scythe he wields, and have tasted the scent of destruction in his wake. The flame above his brow is always there, even when he tries to shield me from it. He is truly a servant of that one god that I am still hostile towards. But I am not afraid of him.
I should be.
Sometime in the past few months, Socheniel progressed past the recovering broken angel that I knew into something terrible and awesome. He tries to hide it from me when me meet. But there are so many cracks in the aspect he wears as a mask. So many glimmers of a devouring glory.
I asked him why does he still come to me. I am apostate to his god, after all. Unclean. Defiled. Blasphemous. I am forever barred from his heaven, and I have no intention of trying to wiggle my way back in. He has been restored to the bosom of his divinity. Why does he still rub shoulders with this fallen thing that I am?
“You are loved.”
He said it so matter-of-fact, I thought he was bullshitting me. Except Socheniel couldn’t lie even if his existence depended on it. Be humorous, yes. Speak an untruth? Never.
I asked him who was I loved by. He looked at me as if I had asked to fuck him. “You are loved.” He did not expound on who or what loved me. Those three words were the totality of his answer. It contained everything I needed to know.
I understood nothing.
When I don’t look at Socheniel directly, when I don’t use my ‘eyes’, I unsee something horrific and fear-inducing. Most depictions of angels show eyes on the feathers of their multiple pairs of wings. He has no eyes. They were taken from him when he was banished. They will never come back.
I have seen what Socheniel tries to hide from me.
He has mouths where his eyes should be.
Little tiny mouths with rings and rings of shark-like teeth. His feathers are covered with the multi-dimensional openings as well. The cracks in his arms and hands are tightlipped mouths. Socheniel the Blightbringer is a devouring angel. To be embraced by him is to be kissed by all of those mouths at once.
I am not afraid.
I am confused.
His brethren have made it clear that they consider me to be a stain on the perfection of creation. One more example of why humanity should be removed from all records of creation. I still remember so damn clearly that day when the beautiful and lovely angels successfully intimidated me from entering the presence of Jesus Christ. They made it clear that if I had accepted the outstretched hand, they would kill me on the spot and dismember my soul such that I would never be found.
And now here is a terrible and fearsome angel, draping his wing over me in a sign of comfort and affection. Holding my hand because my confusion disturbs him and he wants to console me. Telling me that I am spared from all he could do to me… because I am loved.
“Your god wants nothing to do with me, Socheniel. One day, your favor for me will be overruled. Give me a head start if you can. I know I can’t beat you in a standing fight.”
His face expressed confusion as the flame over his brow flamed into visual sight for a brief moment. I braced myself for an attack I knew I could not repel. “But… you are loved.”
“By who, Socheniel. I need to hear it plainly. No riddles.”
Socheniel wrapped his other wings around me as he pulled me into a tight embrace. I was held firmly by wings and the animate blight that was his robes. Every inch of my exposed skin was next to a closed mouth.
He tilted his head so that his closed eyes were next to an ear. “I’ll try.”, were the last words I heard clearly.
The thousands of devouring mouths that covered Socheniel the Blightbringer opened, and in gently spoke in careful whispers and hushed tones.
I remember hearing the howling of hurricanes and tornadoes. The screaming of air moving past an unyielding object at unfathomable speeds. But under the shrieking was whispers. The sound of a feather falling past your ear. The lazy waving of a leaf in a fading breeze. The swish of cotton on a hardwood floor. And under that, just at the edge of my hearing, were pure tones uttering languages that I could not identify.
Somehow, I was able to grab a mental hold on those barely audible tones, but all I could actually hear of them were a set of repeating vowels that superimposed on each other, chased each other, wove with each other, and were almost indistinguishable from each other.
“Aaaaaa” “Eeeeee”
The consonants, stops, and clicks in between were lost to the howling and the shrieking.
And then the howling started shaking my bones into flame. The fire over his brow flared again. But instead of remaining over the head of the angel, it flowed down his face and poured over me.
Everything became flame and light and then dark and nothing.
Someone was holding me, rocking me gently and humming a multi toned tune. The harmonies were pleasing and comforting. Like a thousand angels humming a lullaby.
A thousand angels? Or a thousand mouths?
I opened my eyes to see Socheniel was holding me in his lap. His size was such that my adult body was a child to him. All his eyes were closed and he was trying to appear like the blight-robed angel I was used to seeing.
“I’m sorry. I tried to tell you, but it was too much for you. You didn’t get to hear all of it.”
“You… You never repeated yourself?” His embrace was far too comfortable to complain about.
He shook his head.
“It’s alright. You tried. I appreciate that. I guess I’m not ready to understand who could love me like that.” I was exhausted. The angel’s grasp on me was soothing. I struggled to remain awake.
“Why do you always prepare for conflict?” His turn to be confused, I suppose.
“Because I always wind up in the middle of some shit. I’m always on the boundary edge, always not good enough to be included when I am no longer required. No matter how often I am told I am accepted, I always wind up being someone’s scapegoat and driven back into the wilderness.” That wasn’t what I wanted to say. My emotional shields are useless in the angel’s arms.
“But you are loved.”
“Oh you silly angel. Humans can’t grok love the way angels do. Just because one person… entity… loves me in the way that you can’t explain to me, doesn’t mean others do. It’s the Cave and the Cathedral again. Go ask Lord Asmodel. He knows what I’m trying to explain. Human love is finite, greedy, and blinding.”
“You are lying to yourself. Because you do not think you are worthy of being loved.” I tried to squirm out of the angel’s embrace, and away from this conversation. But his grip was absolute without causing pain. “Others have lied to you and you still believe that lie to be the truth. Who has been to you as [Brother Superior] was to me?” Unbidden sobs stopped me from trying to escape the topic.
“Fucking bastard.”
“You use expletives as a shield. It is ineffective against the truth.”
I wanted to laugh and give him stinkeye for his accuracy. “Define love, you bastard. English is a piss-poor language to have this conversation in.”
“Agreed.” He did not press any further and I tried to hide in the silence. His grip never relented. The angel is very strong and very powerful. I was barely anything more than a fleshy poppet in his arms. I have never felt safer even as I felt completely exposed.
“Okay.”, I sighed. “Maybe I am loved more than I can accept. And maybe there are those that count me among their number even though I don’t fit. And maybe there are some that are teaching me what unconditional love really is. But they aren’t here. And my experience with gods has taught me that none are trustworthy. All have an agenda. Sometimes it works well for me. Sometimes that agenda demands my complete destruction. Your god, Sochen-iel, is one that demands my complete obedience, yielding, and absolute loyalty above all others, even myself or those that I love. Your god, and the majority of his angels that I have encountered, seek my destruction because I will not yield. This is why I ask you why you haven’t turned on me yet. Experience has taught me that this too, will happen.”
The angel was silent for a long and uncomfortable time. “But you are loved.”
He looked on in more confusion as my tears negated the brightness of my laughter. The flame flared again. I turned away from the painful brightness fearing another searing. The light faded. I looked back on his face. It was glowing.
“Who is the god that you say desires your destruction for your lack of fealty?” Even though I did not answer him, his question reminded me of a Christian Bible verse. It tiptoed too close to a pet conspiracy theory that I was not ready to discuss with anyone, much less an angel of all creatures.
“I gotta go, Socheniel. Let me go.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“No shit, Captain Obvious. You know damn well who I am apostate from, and surely you know of all the shit I went through before and after my apostasy. You have no fucking idea how much cognitive dissonance I experience every time we meet, because your behavior goes against so much of what I have been taught and have learned to expect from prior experience.” He released me and I slid down to stand on my own two feet. “I… want to believe… but… ” I turned my head and started walking away from the giant angel.
“I have shit to start in the Waking. And decisions about which of my aspects I’m going to cut loose. And questions about what my nature is and if that is truly what I am or if I was trained far better than I am willing to accept. And a distraction in the form of a green stone that has no tangible form.”
I did not see him, but I could feel him smiling. “If I could be of help about that stone…”
Without turning around, I flipped him off. “Don’t you fucking start with that shit! I have enough on my hands about you and Mother Mary! Fuck!” As I brought my hand down, I sliced a gash in the fabric of the dream. Slipping through it, I left the angel and dreaming behind.