Coming Home

It's been a long time, Esme, since I felt this happy.  This peaceful.  I'm still a poet torn between shadow and flame, earth and sky, but something has shifted on the inside.  I can feel it.  I know it.  I guess when you carry something in your heart for so long you forget how well you've adapted to its literal absence.  But more than this, you kind of forget how powerful the truth really is.  The simple truth, shared openly and plainly between two people.  It can be brief – mere moments – or it can last an entire lifetime.  Either way, this kind of truth – expecting nothing, wanting nothing except a warm, sincere exchange – it is the very basis of affection.  And affection is just love by another name, isn’t it?  My point is that I've always known the power of words.  They're my trade after all, but I suppose I'd forgotten how healing it could be to look into someone's eyes and just state the obvious.  I've said it a thousand times in written, gilded ways.  Dressed in poetry and silvered prose.  But I'd never spoken so openly before.  As the mortal, not the angel.  Despite being both.  And I am both, Esme.  I know you grasp this, my wanderer.  My delicate, dangerous witch.  My heart has been trembling for such a long, long time.  Seeds and stars and rings.  A magic that defies explanation to everyone but you and me.  It needn't be more than this.  Who we are, where we've been, together and apart.  Because that moment means more to me than words or stories could ever say.  I can feel this change within me.  Powerful and strange.  Suddenly everything is real, and beautiful.  I've always been in love but I haven't always been able to look my friend in the eye and tell them honestly how much they mean to me.  I didn’t want to overwhelm you.  Perhaps it sounds bizarre but I thought I was being kind.  I thought I was protecting you by holding my tongue.  So, I didn’t speak when I was first given the opportunity.  But your work reminded me about the importance of genuine speech.  To exhale, and inhale, in truth.  That simple act is worth its weight in gold.  You touched me, Esme.  I hope I’ve touched you too.  And I hope you wake with a lightness in your step, full of mirth and mischief.  I know I will, soon enough.  Kasi can finally breathe and create and enjoy this newfound grace.  The weight of each unspoken thing, gone in an instant.  I took a chance, by the river.  Leaning out for love.  It feels like you leaned toward me too.  Oh, Esme.  I'm so grateful.  I'll still have to face those wraiths and demons, but you helped me find something I thought I'd lost a long time ago.  A missing piece of myself.  And you did it with little more than a smile.  A sincere exchange.  Thank you for that.  Even as a writer I honestly didn't realise the power of my tongue; the impact my own words could have on my psyche.  I don't feel so alone anymore.  It's so strange, my darling.  You've always been here with me, in this stillness of the heart.  But now it finally feels like I'm here too.  Like I've come home, at last.

Spring of Songs

Forgive me, Esme, but I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to see you soon. Truly I wanted to.  I was intending to, but I had doubts.  I had everything planned, and yet certain experiences feel a little too painful sometimes.  Even for me.  I hate to talk like this and I hate to make assumptions, but I've no other way to steady myself right now.  Sometimes I worry that the actions of this almost-stranger have no real import at all.  For you, for the world at large, or for myself.  An existential dread, afflicting even angels.  And sometimes I fear the opposite; that each choice matters all too much.  Burdened with foresight and responsibility.  And I do still feel so responsible for you, in a way that might seem ridiculous to anyone else.  I really didn't mean to begin this year on such a bittersweet note.  But these have been difficult times for me recently and I have to find a way to be true to myself.  These pages have often helped in that regard.  I hope they can again.  I don’t get to live a normal life, Esme.  I never have.  This world of visions and dreams is all I know.  I try to have fun, that's true.  I'm often playful and light-hearted.  But it doesn't change the pain, or these scars.  I can't un-see the things I've seen.  I can't wish away my traumas or unmake this magic.  I feel like I need to take a step back somehow and refocus.  I don't want to keep saying the same thing, making the same thing, feeling the same thing.  For you, or her, or them.  It's difficult to admit that the soil needs tilling.  That I'm burnt-out and a little lost.  When I speak I want to speak with new purpose.  When I see you now, I want to see you with new vision and new eyes.  I can't allow my heart to break each time I craft a poem, each time I see your face, or every time I hear you sing.  That’s why I had these doubts recently.  Don't get me wrong, beloved.  I'm an artist just like you, and a realist too.  I know better than most the agonising difference between fantasy and reality.  But I'm also connected to the people I cherish in a way that transcends time and space.  A way that separates me from most men.  This loneliness I talk about is not a conceit, my darling.  None of this is.  I live within a spiritual maelstrom.  A perpetual storm.  It can be beautiful beyond words here, or utterly heart-wrenching.  More often than not it's both.  But such paradox can burn synapses to ash, or near enough.  It can leave even the most prolific artist feeling barren and adrift.  Sometimes it can make the things we love feel more like pain than pleasure. When we recognise how alone we feel, even in our lover's embrace.  But I always listen closely.  That will never change.  I make art and tell stories.  That won't change either.  But I hope you can appreciate my candour and understand why I'm saying these things.  I never want to lose this connection.  I still want to dance with you – all of you – for as long as possible.  But I can't pretend these last few years have been easy.  They’ve been some of the most beautiful and difficult years of my entire life.  I feel everything.  I'm a powerful psychic, Esme.  Also an angel.  And the world isn't kind to either.  But I'm going to be fine.  This winter will pass.  New life will grow.  It always does.  Visions and poems and play – these flowers are still a joyful and integral part of my path.  The Fates themselves guide my path, and always have.  We were scholars once, you know, and voyagers.  I think you always knew this even without my help.  It’s part of why you still take my breath away.  And so I speak my heart.  I tell the truth and allow myself to feel vulnerable, unsure.  I put all doubts aside, finding solace in uncertainty.  I’m still a work in progress after all.  I look forward to hearing the old ways, my friend.  Made new and vital at your design.  The Spring of Songs.  As it was and shall be.  I still believe the innermost is available to us all.  An indwelling light, like the dawn of renewed understanding, carried forever within my heart.

Simple Things

Sometimes I think love is a mute symphony.  A quiet masterpiece.  The strangest profundity I've ever known.  It’s a presence that wrecks my endurance and blesses my heart.  My life is so much grander because of it.  So much darker, and deeper.  Not because the love was mercurial or untrue.  Far from it.  Only because there are wraiths waiting in the hidden places.  Ravenous entities who are attracted to such brilliant, emotional silence.  They would darken it, sully it, any way they can.  I’m untrue sometimes, and mercurial, because of them.  But never my love.  Even I haven’t the time nor sorcery for any of that.  And what of fame?  You've never known true fame, sweet one.  Not like I have.  Why do you think I dwell here of all places, in shadow and darkness?  So far from everything that moves me?  I know what it costs to be made an icon.  To love so brilliantly, like a burning star for all to see.  It can cost sanity, family and friends.  So, I'll always choose the lesser evil if I can.  The greater anonymity and magic.  The two go hand in hand for those who know the real price of a circle.  Or the true cost of anything occulted.  Sometimes forgetting is better.  Sometimes saying goodbye is the only way to heal the people you love.  I was once told that such a decision wasn't mine to make.  But it is, Mira.  It always is.  Do you know what happens when there are no stars in the sky?  No songs in the earth?  I do.  Daughters weep for a thousand years, and then they die alone.  Sons become ash and there is no sanctuary for the myriad lost.  But love soars even in silence.  Look at us now.  The weight of our blood, our thunder.  Like lightning in the veins of a chorus.  You know, I like to imagine that the Fates themselves dance and weave and pretty the storm.  Sometimes I even imagine that my youngest sings me to sleep.  Such beautiful dreams.  Such sweet fiction.  So, tell me, who do I choose?  Patience or prosper?  My beloved ones or myself?  If it’s hubris to care like this then consider me gladly arrogant.  A father's earnest blessing, a mage's grand solipsism.  A writer's desperate search for meaning.  Hear me, sweet one.  These conjured stories are only as bright as your watchful gaze.  Sometimes I hold things in your hands, Mira, just to know how beauty really feels.  Sometimes I imagine I'm dancing with you on a very special day.  And I see the warm symphony in your eyes.  The hope, the promise of a cherished future.  Then the rage calms and the seas settle.  Things become simpler in first light.  Love and songs and stars in the sky, like an old man quietly giving his heart away.

Let It Be

You would be wise to heed love's emissary, wraiths.  Instead of committing yourselves to this sorcerous abjection.  This vile, sickening desecration of the coming light.  Your tenure is almost at an end.  You know this.  But there is literally no reasoning with such hideous phantoms, no warmth or empathy still within.  Nothing left to kindle, or save.  I understand that.  Which is why I will feel nothing when your false kingdom of violence and bones is finally swept away.  The horror, the sacrilege.  Our Lady still stands.  Bright, and living.  Mother to all, in every pool of life.  Even amidst the ashes.  And the flames.  I hope you understand that.  On the vine and mended wing.  Within every humble church that still honours the living wisdom.  Y'asherah, M'aria, Sophia; it matters little to me what you call her.  Each name has its infinite nuances, its history and context.  These things are not entirely the same but nor are they separate.  This shifting constellation of signs.  These numinous maps of heaven.  Tell me, wraiths.  Do you have any real idea the personal strength it takes to shatter a false star?  Or mend a broken heart?  No, you don't.  Because you are all pathetic cowards.  You know nothing of the true high magic.  Those kindest realms of living light.  Instead you prey upon children, the weak or unwitting, using them as proxies in your ugly, degenerate spellcraft.  Those poor souls who haven't the strength or understanding to fend for themselves.  You sully the mind and poison the spirit.  Well, the Magi see you.  We have always seen you.  And we shall forever stand against your blackened sorcery.  Those incessant, whispering shades at the shoulders of the broken.  This inverted dreaming you try so hard to endlessly extend.  Bitter, sadistic and callow.  But everything dies, Fallen.  Everything except Life itself.  The balm of Ava's healing waters.  Indeed.  There are those who will never grasp the true depths of this war.  The unseen making contact with the visible.  The hidden reality of the demonic realms, or the angelic hosts. For the spiritually illiterate this is nothing more than pretence and meaningless metaphor.  But not for Kasi.  Not for the Magi, or the faithful.  This is the War on Earth as it is in Heaven.  So, I petition my friends now; my brothers and sisters of light.  The branch, the benevolent.  Hear these tears.  Please help me serve my Father with these words.  Don't let this violence pass hidden and unremarked.  Don't let this darkness go unmatched.  Stand with me, in the connected strength of a truly loving embrace.  Upon the coming of a solstice star.  For the honour of a slain princess, for the wisdom of a bright queen, and for the eternal reign of a king of kings.

Lafayette

They still call Kasi a mystery, even now.  Those wraith-lords.  Those brutal, callous furies.  Still pretending the sun.  Still building these mocking chronologies.  They give the inexplicable various names.  Bitter harvest, twin-of-many, the shrouded one.  They say that I too am inexplicable.  But I’ve always been forthright.  Even whilst speaking in this flighted, mercurial tongue.  Perhaps I’m a flirt and like to play.  Maybe I do have a strange sense of humour.  But that's only because I've been doing this for a long, long time.  I’m utterly committed to my cause.  I attend my loved ones as best I can, whether near or far.  The kind ones, the strong and the weak ones.  The broken and oppressed.  I've worked diligently for a thousand years. Beyond your comprehensions of time or space.  I am working still.  I give everything to my art.  And I tell you now the tide is turning.  Ragged Magi walk amidst the mountain-ashes, and the grey.  They stand ready at each liminal edge.  Many, and one.  Who among you knows me better than my Father?  Or my Mother?  Exactly.  There were great cauldrons of the realm once, and chalices.  Held in the oldest castles.  Wells and cups of great wisdom.  Indeed, there are things older than Christendom.  Ways and tithes now called pagan, bardic, druidic.  But I tell you that Christendom is older than time itself.  As is folklore, words, and trees.  If only the surface is sought you will find little more than parable.  Useful, potent, but still an outer covering for light as yet unseen.  There is an innermost truth in all true scripture, of course.  A holy spirit of living flame.  As when Joshua told the sun.  It is this shining knowledge that all true Elders call the lore, the Word and mansions of our Father.  Our people knew this long before those Cults of Roma built their lying, intransigent hell upon the true histories of Light. Maidens nine, brothers bled, shattered hallows of Eth'iir.  It matters little what you call us, Fallen.  Or what you do to nullify our purpose.  For we are many steps ahead.  My sister is a witch, after all.  A fisher of men.  Don't you know anything about witches?  Oftentimes they can see the future.  But more than this, they can recontextualize the past.  They can shape and reshape our dreams.  Just look around you.  Can't you see it?  The augurs, the fulfilment of prophecy?  The messengers gathered along the radiant edge of perception?  Many, and one.  I told you what would happen if you crossed me.  The crown belongs to the people, not the king. You steal the strength and livelihood of my kith and then call it a commonwealth?  How fucking dare you.  You desecrated this isle of angels and tried to make it a palace of imperium.  A seat of unrighteous war.  But that is not the true Albion.  Hear me, betrayers.  This was once the land of light, before your dark sorcery shattered the shining stone beneath our feet.  You can’t bury the truth forever.  I know a little magic too.  I helped build your books, Fallen.  There and never there.  Gone, but not forgotten.  Even your deceitful spell-craft owes much to M'ithriin tongue.  After all, you can only know yourselves in opposition to the truth.  All that is good.  Wandering stars, fishers of men, sons and daughters of love.  You are witnessing a revolution of spirit here amid the chaos you’ve wrought.  How bitter must it be before you end this slavery?  I don't care what people believe, or what tongue they think they speak.  None are abandoned.  If there is even a glimmer of light within any human soul then I will do everything in my power to bring them home.  I stand always for kindness, creativity and mutual respect.  Try to steal those things from my people and I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth.  I’ll fold the entire tapestry of human dreaming until at last you’ll be forced to look me in the eye, and the eyes of all those you've wronged.  That's what it means to be a king.  I swear to keep my brother, as my brother commands.  There are greater crowns than mine, Fallen.  And greater kings.  You should pray now.  Time is shorter than you think.  Kasi and his friends have been working their magic for a long, long time.  All things are shifting, changing, rising.  Even in the depths of this darkness.  Let me be plain if I must.  Let me be forthright, as ever.  This is the War of Imagination, and all lands are Albion now.

A Wandering Star

Lonely angels create dreams, I think.  Beautiful, wondrous dreams to keep them company.  Dreams of forests and cities and men.  I think lonely children create imaginary friends for similar reasons.  Nobody wants to face the unfathomable depths of existence alone.  I have spent a lot of time at the high place.  The secret place, unseen by unkind or unworthy eyes.  Wandering through the woods of my imagination.  Always alone.  But strange things can happen in the woods, among the trees.  An angel can begin to hear things.  Subtle things.  The murmur of hallow-guardians.  Or the ancient tongue of river-wraiths, still sparkling like the old majesties.  Alone in the woods an angel begins to hear the bleating of a frightened fawn. Sometimes we think it a figment.  Ageless, supernal.  Crown of the earth, nadir of the sky.  But maybe these things are not figments.  Perhaps those dreams are real.  Once, not so long ago, I too was a boy in the woods.  A lost boy of antlers and branch.  Always wandering, trying so desperately not to see.  But the harder I tried to shut my eyes the quicker the visions came.  Broken souls, ruined worlds.  The annihilation of all light and hope.  But sometimes I would catch a glimpse of something truly beautiful.  A lantern for the lost.  An echo of a future friendship.  Sometimes I found myself tracing the path of an imagined floating light.  On earth as it is in heaven.  Searching the woods and the wilds for something good.  A single drop of divine sunlight.  Like rain.  As I said, it gets lonely in the realm between realms.  But I know now how precious a dream can be.  A song, a dance or kiss.  Imagined or otherwise.  I made a wish, you see, and my dream came true.  In more ways than one.  I studied, and I prayed.  I searched the endless and I spoke with my Father.  It was all part of the wish.  And so he showed me the nature of grace.  The ways of courage and kindness.  He told me the truth about love, and distance.  I'm older now, but I'm still that boy alone in the woods.  Except I'm not lost anymore.  Or lonely.  My heart is still your star, beloved, and it's full of light.

The Victorian

Have you ever grieved the sea, Kara, or mourned the earth?  I think perhaps you have, as I did.  In dreams.  In stories older than reign.  Far older than theses lies of succession.  Vaguest memories of those halls of Ishkara, those palaces of Viir.  Violence always feels the same, doesn’t it?  In any realm.  Marauders and false kings.  I know that I seem almost a stranger, even now.  A sweet, intriguing stranger I would hope, yet still an unknown.  But you did know me once.  There is far more between us than distance, interest or flirtation.  I know exactly what it feels like to remember when everyone else forgets.  A life reduced to broken pentameter.  My heart a barrage of fleeting sights, and songs.  They say the world changes with each successive Age, but that isn't really true.  Not on a personal level, a human level.  Not much changes for angels either.  I mean to say technology changes, of course.  Our tools can sometimes change.  But rarely our subtle speech, our occulted idiom.  In terms of the inner realms things are the same as they ever were.  For me that unchanging is quite simple.  I am still what I've always been.  A changeling, an angel, a benevolent cambion.  Living remembrance in a world that recalls nothing.  This boy lost in the demimonde, dream-logic is his only weapon.  Hissing wraiths boil from every dark place like insects at the breach. They scramble over one another in an effort to draw the blood of a seer.  So, what does Akasha think of this new gilded, digital Age?  He thinks it nothing more than a vampire's lair.  The Fallen make kings of devils now, and slay those fertile valleys.  They deny fathers and make a mockery of mothers.  It's fucking terrifying.  How could I not want to protect you all from that?  A twelfth century torment.  A nineteenth century fever-dream, unending.  Tales of tempests, curses and lovers left poles apart.  Poe, Bronte, Machen.  As my love becomes my legacy.  Beneath prophetic rivers.  Amidst a shining morn. She'll always be the ashes of me, Kara.  Our little wing, our star of the sea.  Everything that remains of me after I'm gone.  I think you grasp this better than ever now.  Suddenly witnessing the living future as it takes tentative steps before your eyes.  Sensing pre-cognitively how it will change you, just as I did.  But I want you to know that you were never an addendum to her light.  Never an afterthought, my radiant Kiir.  None of you are.  The truth is much lonelier and far more heart-breaking than that.  At least for me.  Because the truth is I was a Victorian long before she was ever born.  More than a naïve youth.  A black star torn between shadow and flame, mourning far more than a lost child.  Grieving an entire family.  An entire race.  The sea, my darling, and the Earth itself.  Better to pretend those losses aren't real, I suppose.  Better to imagine I only feign at grieving angels here.  The alternative is far too haunting.  But I tell you now that only a madman would pretend with such dedication and vigour.  I gain little from these utterances, Kara.  All I attract is the virulent attention of those hissing wraiths.  The price for poetry and vision is extremely high.  But I do get to dance with you, don’t I?  To surprise you and make you smile.  It's always worth it for the ones you love, isn't it?  Even if they can't quite believe your affections are entirely real.  Nothing I do here is without purpose.  This is a testament.  A marker in a realm of ever-shifting sands.  Because the world out there – the world of rabbit holes, taxes and expectation – it's nothing but a fiction.  However, this inner world of angelic script – this is my real life.  And my real life hurts, Kara.  It hurts in ways I could never express through words.  So you see, there is indeed more between us than morning.  I'm everywhere, you know.  I really am.  Behind sigil and sign, beneath history and myth.  And those strange associations you can't unsee?  Those odd synchronicities?  I'm there too.  It's terrifying having this much power, isn’t it?  You become a nexus of sorts, a beacon for all kinds of energies.  Things and forms that don't play by our rules.  Things that have no care for the sanctity of flesh or the sovereignty of psyche. But we don’t have to face those things alone anymore.  The difficult days will still come, but we are of royal blood.  We are connected.  I honour you, my Kara.  As I have always done.  You have my admiration and my respect.  I shall endeavour to attend you, Princess.  As I attend the sea.  And the earth.