At last, the angel touched something solid. It was soft, pure as snow. His hands glided across its surface with a natural grace, surrendering his entire body to the embrace, pure and untainted. His eyes were immersed in darkness, not because sight had fled, but because his face pressed fully against the other's shoulder. The grip tightened, passionate, almost desperate. Fingers clawed at the surface, as if trying to pierce it.
"Go…" he heard suddenly. "Go away…"
In an instant, the Creator's dwelling was restored before the warrior's eyes. The embrace once shared with his father, unbeknownst to him, was swept away. As always, the angel stood, filled with questions destined to remain unanswered. The Creator, seated in his customary dying pose, first gazed at the longest branch of the bonsai, then at the brightest star above.
"Still nothing… nothing has changed," he muttered, shaking his head, creases forming across the crimson hood as pessimism devoured him. "Waste no more feathers… I beg you…"
Not a single emotion had the time to take root in the angel's mind. No gestures to seek guidance, no plea for more help. The floor of clouds vanished as the Creator spoke his last word. The void welcomed the nameless one's feet, legs, and body, suspending him in the air for a brief heartbeat. Then gravity seized him, dragging him down violently, ready for yet another fall.
It was the twentieth. As always, the angel's somatic fragments were retrieved by the same figures, each repeating phrases more or less similar. There was no way for the angel to resist the fall. The wings, naturally, were useless. Only to pluck, death by death, a feather that brought him closer to the point of no return. The ocean and the immense mother-flame had vanished entirely. Time and again, he tried to fall differently, striking different parts of his body first. Hands and arms flailed in a futile attempt to touch the black-and-white abyss floor in another way. First his toes, then knees, head, back... none of it worked. Only more feathers were lost.
Seven hundred eighty-five remained.
It was hard to know how so easily he could twist mid-fall. The medium surrounding him was pure air, yet the movements that allowed him to turn and change direction felt as if performed within some viscous liquid.
Over the next ten deaths, he experimented further: first touching with hands, then elbows, then any fragment he could conceive: shoulders, buttocks, heels. Even with different angles, nothing changed. Death was his companion, the beginning and the end of a loop that would never cease.
"@+&-##, as always, you think you can do everything alone…"
"And now, what will you do?"
"*?!%$¢, trust me, leave it be. You should have thought twice before…"
"The die is cast. You cannot return."
"Nothing surprises me about you anymore. You are always the same deceiver."
"Liar."
"Usurper."
TIIIINNNN!
Silence followed. No insults came from outside. The voices had ceased. The figures vanished. The angel, immersed in the black-and-white depths, was… paralyzed. Until moments ago, he had flailed endlessly, trying to adjust his position in the air-liquid around him. Unwittingly, he touched something other than the abyss floor. Perhaps, at last, he would cease seeing the Creator and understand what awaited him henceforth. But he could not move. Time itself seemed frozen.
His garments, suspended, seemed about to tear. The long gray hair coiled around his neck like monstrous tentacles ready to strangle. Arms threatened to break, bones and blood poised to spill. The blade of the sword remained unchanged, pointing to the ground. Yet between it and the tip, there was something: a fingertip.
It was not the Creator. Not the angel. Nor one of the many figures that had stolen his fragments. They were all hidden in darkness, waiting to witness the angel's fall, ready to desecrate him like vultures. They appeared human when the black-and-white light brought by the winged creature reached them. In the dark, who could say what grotesque forms they assumed, what insults they were ready to hurl or fling at each other, awaiting the celestial savior. And when the newcomer entered, they believed they could pour all their hatred upon him. But their words were too weak even to touch.
They soon realized it was unnecessary: the mysterious being had no discernible form. Like the Creator, he stood upright, majestic, heroic, balancing the paralyzed angel on a single fingertip. Yet the rest of his body seemed resistant to the environment. Sparks and water vapor continuously issued from him, concealing his true form. He did not seem destined to remain long.
Then came the reaction of the realm that had haunted the angel: in the dark sea, where the voices of the thieving figures echoed, countless greenish lights appeared. At first glance, like fireflies, each describing its motion, occasionally overlapping in clumsy levitation. But the truth was different: each was vomiting, drooling a green liquid, so powerless they could not even touch the newcomer with words. They could only disrupt the surrounding air-liquid medium. Flows of consciousness, mixed with visceral hatred, caused the bodies and reflections to warp into undulating shapes. Among them was the winged warrior's own body. Uncontrollable echoes assaulted his ears, casting him into a limbo of suffering beyond endurance, until…
"@€&%$, my voice shall carry the echoes of lived days to you, who still walk at dawn."
"I shall be the ancient river, offering its clear waters to you, *^¥£], taking your first steps along the shore."
"What I have gathered in the wrinkles of time, I lay as seed in your hands, @_€/+, yet to grow."
"From the worn summit of my mountain, I shall show you the paths, @€+*¢, who begin the ascent."
Each voice within the darkness shifted tone. They no longer sought the angel for themselves, driven by selfishness, but to share him. All laughed. Yet not harmonious laughter, but a mosaic of madness, absurdity, and unsettling suffering.
Amidst the agonizing crescendo of their cries, the angel stirred, awakening from paralysis. This time, he felt a new embrace, warmer than any with the Creator, when death's despair had made him crave even the faintest love. Yet it was not reciprocal. Suspended, held by an almost maternal grip, likely the product of those beautiful voices on the brink of madness, tainting the forgotten abyss floor...
After many minutes, savoring the bliss that still cradled him, the angel reopened his eyes. The final part of his body recovered from stasis. It felt as if destiny itself had granted permission. Alas, torrents of sparks and vapor still emitted from the "new" savior, obscuring all detail, preventing him from committing the image to memory.
No word came from the presumed savior. He let the nameless one observe him at length. If the first trials, according to the Creator, had been among the least hostile, who knew what awaited the angel henceforth? The evils born, or rather generated, within men only deepened his astonishment with each passing second. There was always something new, some absurd event beyond imagination. This, of course, only heightened the winged warrior's dread. Again, the sword gifted by the Creator was useless; even the wings and unique tools lost their meaning. The only constant trial was his own emotional response to the unusual, to the unexpected.
All thought aside, reality pressed close. Subaqueous vapors and sparks obscured his view, as if forbidden to spy. The black-and-white light, bidding farewell to the lost in the abyss, blended into gray, initiating a dance of shadows. These were the silhouettes of the dark floor, forcibly extracted to form a dense vortex spiraling around the two central figures, shielded by mist, ascending toward sea level. Sparks crackled, disturbing the maternal calm cradling the angel in a womb-like embrace. Finally, the underwater rivers evaporating from the savior solidified, and darkened, forming ten distinct columns…
Yes, fingers, just like those that had obscured the nameless one's sight before the figure who gave him her eye.
This was what the winged being saw, yet reality was otherwise: like a graceful bird, he was held within the savior's white hands. Now ready to rise, once more, for such was, is, and shall forever be his ultimate destination.
Gently extending arms forward, he launched the angel into the air, allowing not his wings, but the same levitation that first carried him through the Creator's dwelling and the endless ocean, to lift him skyward.
ጥላ ከማይኖርበት ብርሃንን እሻለሁ። ልብ በጭራሽ የማይወድበት ደስታ ፣ ዝምታ የነገሰበት ደም ፣ ውሃ በማይሞላበት ቦታ መተንፈስ ፣ ራሴ እዚያ ፣ ማንም የማይጠብቀኝ ።
(I seek the light where shadows dare not dwell,
joy where the heart has never loved,
blood where silence reigns unbroken,
breath where waters hold no sway,
and myself, there, where no one awaits.)