Today, during Study Hall I opened up Gmail. I needed to be near a friend, and I email friends. My morning hadn't been so keen. I'd completely butchered my math, and Taylor'd had a seizure, and I almost missed the Senior Picture, and I won't have money for the Senior trip or Finley's birthday... Stupid things like that, but they were all piling up after I'd seen Taylor go purple. And I got a weird email from an address I didn't immediately recognize, so I went through my old email's contacts and found out... Ryan.
The email dictated that he was in charge of my Roses now, and that there was a matter of great importance that I alone, as the Eliac, even on Hiatus, could deal away with. To such a plea, the temptation to return gathered like fireflies to a streetlight just before a hurricane. I answered immediately, and was met with a chat on the Gmail. A chat with Ryan? Not good.
But I was hopeful... maybe, just maybe, they'd forgiven themselves for the injustices done my heart.
I was wrong. This is copy and pasted (with proper spacing in-between, I hate the ''this is right here'' and here are the 'Azrael:' shit)
"My Lady, it harkens me wholesomely to see you so happy and in such a light as so seeming. How fare you?"
"Well enough, my Azrael. Yet I am doubting very much you come here for the frivolity of my company. I am no longer partaking in the sport of remembering our home-woods; our revels and our feasts, our walks among the sweet-tongues...."
"Yes, so I hear, so I hear. Human as the rest of them."
For these typed words, I smelled trouble. I debated contacting Tolien, who I'd left in charge, on another window, but decided not to. This boy had been my pupil, once. He had no great power over me anymore, not now that my heart belonged to my loved ones; my Finley, my Katie, my husband and my heart-friend. I could puzzle his lies, myself.
I was wrong.
"Human as the rest? Do not I remain as Eliac? The wave-servant? The visionary of the waves?"
Oh, how I missed these words. As Thorneveld when he rose from the ice and ash in the cold winter back to earth, Ryan was my Marius. Above all, I longed to revel in the sweetness of his words and the promise of his languor-fill, intrigue.
"Of course, my love. Such would be far from us, to take your birthright as bestowed you by tradition and blood."
"In that event... my lor--Ryan.... what may I do to serve your purposes?"
"You may remind me what we had, Payton."
"You melted my heart with promises, Ryan. You took my hand when I had none to take. You lifted me with wings that kept me warm and day, and through the nights. We were together in our hearts, and for every cruelty done me--both in our world and out--you were my heart. I gave you my heart, but it was glass, was sand struck by lightning... and you dropped it."
"And if I promised to renew myself to your heart? To take your hand again? If I made to feel your face against my skin, today? Now? This instant? *Reaches to carress her face*
"*Turns away* I would not take your touch, your lips, would not let you melt my heart."
"Whore! Liar! You liar who preached forgiveness and love, above all love, you will not forgive me! *Takes her in his arms anyway* And yet, how I love you, you selfish one who made me whole. How I love the hatred I feel when you are here to me, when I know your heart again. I have to ask, Pa--Eliac. Why did you make me so? Why choose to raise me above the others?"
"You needed love, my Ryan. You needed to be lead with a different direction and road, and I was the road and the flowers beside, too. You needed to take my hand, needed to talk to and trust me. And I made you what you were in your dreams only. I made you powerful, strong, and handsome... to yourself. You always were to me. I could say that I, alone, knew the power in your heart, Ryan. I could say that not once did I think of myself during that time, that time when I made you Lord Azrael for the world I made to save those just like you, but I did. Often. I thought of a Lord and Lady ruling a world where Good and Evil were clear..."
"Oh, yes, the sob-story. I've heard it before. 'Poor Me! Alas, alack! He has forsaken the dreams I left him! I am the death to the man he would have become, but he hurt me first! He did it! Only him!' Do you find me death, faery, my darling? Am I death to you, still? Would that I were in the room with you now, to remind you exactly how much death I Could be. Would that I were there, this very, damned instant, to sink my teeth into you again...."
"Is it commonly your business to renew old wounds, my Lord? I recall that there was duty at question here, so stated you. If it is your duty so given to hack at me with your rusty knives, so let be you so. It is not in me to shield myself. Not from you. Not from the boy who took his meals in bathrooms for fear of interaction, the fool who only slowly learned to grasp my devious intrigues and last at best; the man who could not hold a sword. Do you think I fear you because you have hurt me? Your pain has made me stronger for it. I lead the Roses, Ryan. Only me! Only me! I will put you back from whence you came with a snap of my fingers! A blink of my eyes! You will not bite me again, Ryan. In any way.
Eternity promises."
"You are very wrong, Eliac, whore-sucker. You do not hold the Roses anymore. Perhaps it should be my duty to inform you that we--the true Roses--have elected new leadership among us."
"Ryan..."
"Answer me!"
"I should suspect that you would tell me whether I would hear it or not. Such is the danger from idiots with open mouths; sound comes quickly."
"You would silence the truth-teller?"
"Far be it from me to silence a man with truth in his heart giving opposition, Azrael, dark-mongerer; but you are not one. I would silence you if it were my only need remaining."
"No need, my Lady. We are under new Leadership, one that surpasses by far your own."
"And whose is that?"
"Why, mine, Soul-faery. Who else would be destined to lead your fools through lie-made laws?"
"Ryan..."
"It's Azrael, bitch. Let me be that angel of Death to your dreams. Let those you love forget you, as I have... and as your Roses will. Let them know that you created a world to manipulate them into false soldiers with false powers, false politicans with false laws. Let it be you who tells them that, that they are not who they have grown to be, fought to be. Let it be you who tells them so. Say it!"
"It is not in my heart to disobey my principles. Do you even realize why the Roses were made at all, Azrael?"
"To give you power. Because no one else was daft enough to proffer it to an irristible, soul-stealing witch like you--! Whore! Liar! Fiend!"
"Far be it from me to remind you that not two hours ago, you offered me love, my Lord."
"If I were to offer you any remaining loving gesture, it would be to end you. It would be loving to the world that it should no longer bare such a poison as your gruesome heart. Oh, don't you see! It would have been better if I had died! If you had not made me so "
"What reply is there to that? End me if you desire it so. I challenge you."
"No. I would have you see what your darling little pupil is capable of first. And by the end, the world will know your truth, and you will be alone. Your friends, your family, my allies the Roses; even--"
"Oh, right! I've just remembered! Ryan likes to threaten. Particularly when there is no power. Do you forget who you adress, boy-child?"
"*Snorts* Even that man-consort of yours that Ignio spread like fire through the villages. I feel sorry for him. I know his madness! I know what it is like to run fingers through your hair and listen to promises." (There is a pause, here. Then:) "I know what it is like to believe that you are the only person worth loving in the entire world, that life is an exciting adventure and we are pawns to play the course. But even he will know your lies soon, bitch. Even he!"
"Ryan, you had business. Give it hence or I shall withdraw presently--and permantely, one hopes--from your company."
"Azrael, fool! I am your Lord!"
"You will always be Ryan to me. Ryan, the sully goat who couldn't know a sword or the words 'I love you'. Ryan, the one who took the gifts I forged him to bed more women than I had lives."
"AZRAEL!"
"An angel to death. The death of his future, the death of his wrongs..."
"Your Roses will be crushed, and your magic with it. I curse you. I curse you from the bottom of the heart you tore to make again, I curse you from that very heart. Let your magic perish on the wilting wings of this, your Angel. Oh, would that I could tear that magic now! Your faith! Your hope in the world! But I will begin with your precious Roses, Eliac... Payton. And then, slowly, like a lost game to gamblers, I will come for you--step by step, breath by breath, pulse by pulse. And one night you will find yourself alone. One night you will find me there with no one who would come for you. And I will laugh, and then I will leave, and I will leave you alone in your nights where your lips still cry for me--don't think I don't know! And I will leave you, broken. I'll leave you to do the honorable thing and end. I'll tear your life to pieces."
"I do not fear you. I will never fear you or them! Never again! My magic is was it always was, it has not perish, and no angel of darkness will take it from me--especially not you!"
"I came to warn you. I came to be civil, to attempt reconcilation, but it is clear to me now that your heart is as closed as my hands will be to you. It is a promise. Your heart will die by me. I will tear your dear life apart, but by bit. Make you a monster like you made me, see how you like it. I will enact my revenge for leaving me these wretched ones to make Knights, Ladies, Lords, faeries. See if I won't! Damn you! Know my curse, Payton, human, liar. Know it now."
And then, dramatic to the end, he left.
And all I could think was:
"...Let me be that angel of Death to your dreams. Let those you love forget you, as I have... and as your Roses will."
A repeated threat. A simple curse. And what power he has now. Look at what I've made! Look at what I made him. Look at the power he took from the words I spun him so long ago.
I look at them, I remember them now, and think, "Oh, God... what have I done?"
What have I done?
No comments:
Post a Comment