Treasured Gold

Wraith-ravage upon a ruined eye.  We've seen enough of it, haven't we?  Enough lies and illicit wealth gathered through the broken promises of all tribes.  The ostensibly rarefied air in which you dwell, Fallen.  Hideous seething of an inverted temple kept in half-life with distorted pulse.  Far below the healthy, or the sane.  I've seen those lowest places.  The way you cluster like flies among the scent of your own, or feed like locusts upon the passing and unwary.  I've seen the savage hells you've built here and elsewhere.

   But I'm not afraid.

  True, there was a time.  When I was young in the aftermath; when my lungs were full of ash, my wings still trembling and burnt.  But no more.  There is only so much shadow-play a wraith can cast before it reveals its hand.  Utopia, Fallen?  Really? These are your lies of colony?  You have a truly dark sense of humour.  Mine is far darker though, knowing times and laws as I do.  Isn't that why you fear me so, and built this butchering of Word and Light?  Angels bled for further, and food.  Nailing bright birds to the trees.

   Voiceless, without tongues.

   Now you eat your gods and devils in equal measure, and the earth is sickened by your glut.  This bespoke damnation.  Most chic of oppressions.  You desire hellscapes hidden beneath synthetic skin.  A perception ruled by thieves and caution’s shades.  Seeping, born of looking-glass wound.  Lacquered with dubious veneer.  But this glittering nonsense fools only the most naive of souls. It is savage, ugly and imperious.  An ignorant blood-letting, like all blood-letting. A mockery of shields and uncut rock.  What ghastly wraiths you are, living fleshless.  Else flesh you feigned, or stole.  As with thrones and skies.

   K'Athari, Y'Ashaya.

   Eth'iri.

  We have always seen you, Fallen.  And your hideous inverted temples.  Of locusts and flies. Others will see you too, soon enough.  Their blindness is healing now in ways you cannot fathom. In a realm of fallen chronologies and butchered geometries all we have is so-called time.  This sallow, grinding mockery of Father's trinity and Mother’s magic.  Through a window, perhaps.  For a rose.  For every single soul who suffered and lost as I did.  As we all did.  Do you still balk at a future reckoning?  Oh, Fallen.  You never know.  Stranger things have happened.

   So hear this, if some faintest glimmer still wishes to recall the truth.

   A king is not a castle.  Castles burn.  A warrior is not a sword.  Swords shatter.  The Word is not the angel.  Angels can fall.

  However, love is eternal.  Beyond misery, loss or destitution.  Beyond wraith-ravage and ruined eyes.  It always lives, in the end.  Written in light.  Human experience has been tainted by your brutal shadow-colonies.  But take them all away and the heart's flame is still the true conqueror, and the conquered.  You know that, don’t you?  When all else is ashes, and ye monsters mere cautions once again, the Word will be all that remains.  The unseen quickening of heart and mind is the very coherence of spirit, most holy.  The difference between void and potential.  What is, and what might be.  These are not simple linguistic games, Fallen.  These are the secret workings of the heart.  The Mysteries of God.  Deep within the flame.  If this were not so, none of us would even dream. Or dare to dream.