Last Emissary: Sraosha (III)

Day 3

‘Tis the dawn of the third day. I am Sraosha צ, last of the envoys of the Great One sent to this Earth. Diary mine –

          Another sleepless night. When the thought of rest comes to mind, my body reacts – pain, first, then the spasms, then the palpitations. Sometimes I can drift closer to stillness, but these spells are temporary; as soon as my consciousness fades, the dreams begin, and I quickly jolt awake. Dreams – perhaps calling them so is inappropriate. Visions, more like; echoes of the blood spilled on this land. My eyes return four-hundred years to the birthplace of this city (the temple is, of course, in the periphery of a city); they see the slave-ships docking at the port and unloading hundreds of dark-skinned men and women onto cobble streets, gawked at and spit on and dragged by chain and rope to their fields. They see the once-lush forests of the place, marshlands and beaches, the people and the statues and the music. It’s all gone now; only the constructs are left, and not too many.

          I do not remember my previous life, if I had one. The earliest of my memories is the one when I was born; I remember my hair, so long as to almost touch the ground, smooth and reflective and heavy. I went to great lengths to care for it, in those times; baths would always take centuries to finish. Long hair is inconvenient for a traveler, I discovered, and my fading Light could no longer nourish its strands. So now it thins, short and coarse, once onyx-black and now ashy. Too fragile – I cannot afford to stroke it pensively any longer, or to play with it in times of boredom.

          He had complimented me on my hair, once. Metatron יהוה‎ had, when I was knighted. I remember that day, so many years after my creation. I had been summoned to the Lesser Throne on account of my good deeds; people on the streets of the Lower Kingdom had already begun to whisper that something wrong was happening in Creation, but very few reasonable types had paid them any mind. I had been surprised: though already an older creature, I was not among the souls enshrined in the Upper Kingdom. My human life had surely been subpar, and the good deeds I accomplished in Heaven were not particularly intentional or organized. Perhaps they were numerous, but they all sprang from a sense of moral obligation and basic decency; whenever I saw a person in need, I helped them because someone had to. The Right Hand told me that that was the very reason I was gifted a letter by the Holy One; because to me, the deeds came without intention. “Boy with the silken hair,” he called me when the ceremony was done, and in my purified humility I stood in bare white linen before the Throne, “you shall become and exemplar of our kind,” and gently his fingers stroked the locks, a burning ember lit aflame within my chest. Metatron died not too long after Heaven’s death toll hit the halfway mark of its population; perhaps his prestigious position left his Light more exposed to the withering caused by the Calamity. That was so long ago, now; and yet I never did forget that encounter.

          I’ve taken to exploring the temple’s underground again. Today, I entered the eastern door, to the right of the entrance to the study. What I found was more intimate: a bedroom. The bedroom, I suspect, of a young person; with a bed fit for a teenager, colorful walls decorated with posters, and large closets full of paraphernalia and wrinkled clothing. The posters – I am not familiar with their references, so I do not know what meaning they had had to this person. One was drawn, a girl in an elaborate ruffled dress holding a magic wand and speaking a foreign language; another had a picture of a caduceus on a maroon field, and “THE FINAL HIDDEN TESTAMENT” written in bold lettering across the top and bottom of the paper. A third featured a serious-looking man holding a pistol above a beautiful woman over a city’s skyline; the poster for a motion picture, it seems, dated 1982. “Best movie ever!” was written in metallic silver marker pen on the upper left corner. A picture of a nude woman with impressive curves was hidden beneath the bed, printed on neat, high-end paper; on the other side, another nude picture of the same woman, signed and kissed, also in a foreign script.

          Among the clothes – I suppose they are women’s clothes, all shirts cinched at the waist, some shorts shorter than most men would like, one or two long dresses – I found two sets of acolyte’s clothes, long robes beneath their albs, some rudimentary embroidery on the hems. An impressive wardrobe, for a survivor; perhaps the clothes were a reminder of better times, a connection to what had been lost. Though wrinkled, they were clean; I suppose there hadn’t been much opportunity to actually wear them.

          Shame. That is what I felt when I saw them. By the end of my journey, I had come to look truly wretched. Clothes ragged and torn from travel and disrepair; hair thinning and dying; skin pock-marked from the fading Light and the ambient fallout. I saw her clothes and I was ashamed – ashamed that a girl desperate for the existence of her species, in her last moments, probably not even a fully-grown, had taken better care of her few possessions than I. Greater shame still when I saw myself in her standing mirror on the corner of the room, this emaciated pallid thing I have become, eyes red with tiredness, nails overgrown, full of petty scratches and old dark spots. Shame into terror; I could not stand seeing myself anymore. Mirror lifted and turned away. No longer there to make me ashamed.

          I never did cease to be boyish, which in this case was not the worst fate. The longer and looser of her clothes fit me; some of the shorter and tighter ones, too. My old, journey-worn attire had served its due; I could no longer wear it. What’s more, I traveled in practical clothing, close to the body and in several pieces and made of resistant materials; which is to say, practical, but uncomfortable. I always did prefer robes; certainly at home. I suppose this is what this temple is for me, now: home. I shiver a bit as I write this.

           I returned to the study, then; to brave the residents’ notes as a beginning to my search for the Words. The writer, says my intuition, was an older individual, drier and more world-weary than one would expect a teenager to be. Nothing important lay within, mostly commentary on the state of affairs during the Last War and some poetry. Laments, generally. Not uninteresting or devoid of value, to be sure; but sadly devoid of Words. At the very end, a picture, tucked between loose blank pages and fastened with a metal clip. An older gentleman and a woman, and in between them their young daughter. The family, I presume, that hid in this temple. The man hugs the woman and caresses the child’s head; how long has it been since I last touched anyone at all? They all seemed so full of joy in the picture; the girl, especially. My mind is cast back to my knighting, when Metatron stroked my hair; the pride I felt in being complimented by the Right Hand, the fluttering in my chest as it occurred, the thankfulness for having been allowed to live through that moment at all. I miss them, all of them – all the ones who are now gone, and those I can no longer see while in my mission. I suppose they too will be gone soon.

           I returned above-ground soon after; reminiscing feels more so painful than useful as it stands. A new task: clean the temple proper. Show it care. Or rather, keep busy; when I allow myself to stop, a dark feeling takes over me, and my desire to continue this endeavor wavers. So I did, for a good while; cleaned whatever I could with just the supplies in the above-ground closet. And then I noticed it, beneath one of the pews on the third row from the pulpit: a long firearm, enormous in diameter and all-black, menacing and hungry. A shotgun, I believe; within it, one slug in the barrel, and six more un a tube underneath. The residents were prepared for it all, I suppose – but the thought of needing to use this weapon fills me with dread. Two riders in perfect stillness, watching me day and night; surely the armies of Terror all around me, waiting for a time to strike. I never was a killer – perhaps I will have to become one in days to come. What a terrible feeling.

          Terrible, and distracting. Cleaning duty took longer than I would like. Too long – and careless. An accident while scrubbing the pews; my hand slid too far up, in too violent a motion, and the palm was caught in a large splinter. Punctured, then cut. Slashed, really, not too deep but in pain; no matter, in the long term, as the Light will make me heal. No matter, were it not for what I saw: not blood, but black, thick oil, bubbling and curdling and smelling of refuse. Wrong. Sick. And inside of me, underneath my skin.

          I’m hungrier, now. I have thrown up most of the food I ate yesterday, but I cannot bring myself to eat. I don’t know what this thing is that courses through me. I don’t know what it makes me. Thinking of the image in the mirror, I don’t even know if I am an angel anymore. How much of a difference really is there between myself and the Terror by now? A wretched thing, thin and colorless and ill, cut and bruised and hairless and invaded, atrophied and dying wings and lacking in Light. Not an angel; not anymore. Forgive me, Great One; forgive me, dear Metatron. I never did deserve my letter.

          I return to the storage-room tonight, in search of more writing. There are books down there, amid cans of food and other essentials. Perhaps those ones will contain what I look for.   

Night, Third Day

Too many hours spent by candlelight reading books; nothing to show for it. So many holy texts here; from almost every religion on this dying planet, it seems. Scripture and theology and philosophy; perhaps the family that lived here were the greatest syncretists still alive. Two books consumed, but no Words learned; maybe their provenance was too recent, too dissociated from the Divine Creation chronologically to store its Words. Maybe they were simply fictitious and lacking in Light. I cannot tell; I would not know. By now, I feel my eyes drifting above the letters; I feel the words hitting a wall before fully entering my mind. It is worthless to continue, but can I sleep? 

          I hear noises outside and below. I do not worry much about the outside; I do not stray too far from the temple grounds, or have not done so yet in any event. The ones below concern me deeply. Is it the Terror? Am I in the company of demons and aberrations, now? Could it be a stray animal, one of the few that remain alive, crawling through the pipework underground, or deeper still in a cavern beneath the building?  I feared I will face the need to kill, but must it truly be so soon? Kill or die; so do the stories characterize encounters with the Terror. But not tonight, not if there is any Light left in the Almighty. Tonight I sleep. Tomorrow I investigate.