Aerie

They all came forward then, hands touching him, the unbridled emotion of their thanks almost intoxicating. How many times had he wondered what became of them; of those half-breeds he had saved from the murderous Powers? How often had he questioned the validity of his mission?

The Nephilim survivors surged around him, the warmth of their gratitude enveloping him in a cocoon of fulfillment.

It wasn’t for naught, he thought as he welcomed each word of thanks, every loving touch. Camael, former leader of the Powers host, had at last found his peace, not only in place, but in spirit.

The prisoner curled himself tighter into a ball upon the floor of his cage, his body wracked with painful spasms brought about by the process of healing.

“It’s kind of fu

“Sorry about the interruption,” he said, trying to focus on something other than the sloughing of his old, dead flesh and the tenderness of the new pink skin beneath. “Where was I?”

The mouse snuffled gently.

“That’s right,” he answered. “My relationship with the Lord.” Another wave of pain swept through his body, and he gritted his teeth and bore the bulk of it before he continued. “I was pretty high on His list of favorites; the mightiest and most beloved of all the angels in Heaven. He called me His Morningstar, and He loved me as much as I loved Him—or so I believed.”

And though it was as torturous—even more so than having his burned flesh fall from his body—the prisoner remembered how beautiful it had been. “You should have seen it,” he said dreamily, his memories transporting him back to his place of creation, back to Heaven. “It was everything you could possibly dream of—and more. It was Paradise.”

He saw again the golden spires of Heaven’s celestial mansions, reaching upward into infinity, culminating in the final, seventh Heaven, the place of the highest spiritual perfection. “And that was where He sat, on His throne of light, with me often by His side.” The prisoner sighed, pain pulling his thoughts back to reality in his hanging prison.

The mouse was sleeping, but still he heard its voice, its questions about the past and his eventual downfall.

“Do you know I was by His side when He created humanity? The attention He languished on what appeared to us in the heavenly choirs as just another animal!” He remembered his anger, the uncontrollable emotion at the root of his fall so long ago. “He gave them their own paradise, a garden of incredible beauty and bounty. And He gave them something that we did not have. The Creator gave them a piece of Himself, a spark of His divinity—a soul.”

The agony of his healing mixed with the recollection of his indignation caused the prisoner to sit bolt upright within the confines of his cage. His hand moved quickly to his bare shoulder, preventing the sleeping rodent from falling. “After all this time it can still get a rise out of me,” he said, his voice less raspy, on the mend.

The mouse was in a panic, startled awake by the sudden movement. He could feel the racing beat of its tiny heart against the palm of his hand, the bars of the cage cold against the new flesh of his back.

“I was shocked and horrified, as were others of the various hosts. Why would He give such a priceless gift to a lowly animal? It was an insult to what we were.”

The prisoner cupped the fragile creature in the palm of his hand and calmed its jangled nerves with the gentle attentions of his finger.

“Jealousy,” he said, a deep sadness permeating the sound of his voice. “Every horrible act that followed was all because of jealousy.” In his mind he saw them in the Garden of Eden, man and woman, basking in the light of His glory. “What fragile things they were. And how He loved them—which just made matters all the worse.”

The mouse still trembled in his grasp, and the prisoner wondered if it was cold. He held it closer.

“As if things weren’t bad enough, it wasn’t long before He gathered us together and proclaimed that from that moment forth, we would bow to humanity, we would serve them as we served He who was the Creator of us all.”

His scalp began to tingle unpleasantly and he suspected that his hair had begun to grow back.

“Needless to say, several of us were less than thrilled with this new spin on things.” He remembered their angry faces again, their indignant fury, but none could match his own. His Lord and Creator had abandoned him, cast him aside for the love of something inferior, and he would not stand for it. “I was so blinded by jealousy and my wounded pride that I gathered an army of those who felt as I did, a third of Heaven’s angels they say, and waged war against my heavenly father, my creator, and all those who defended His edict.”

Glimpses of a battle fought countless mille

“We presumed that the Almighty had no right to do what He did to us—but we presumed too much,” the prisoner said sadly. He was exhausted by the painful remembrances of his sordid past; he lowered his hands, and the mouse resting within them, to his lap. “What were we trying to prove? What were our intentions?” He shook his head and smiled sadly. “Were we going to force the Creator to love us best?”

The mouse looked up from the nest within his hands, its dark eyes filled with what he read to be sympathy.

“It was a ferocious battle. I can’t even tell you how long it lasted—days, weeks, years perhaps—time passed differently for me then. We fought valiantly, but in the end, it was all in vain.”

The mouse nudged at his fingers, its tiny nose a pinprick of cold, and he began to gently pet it again.

“When the battle was finally over, when my elite were dead and myself in chains, I was brought before my Lord God, and finally began to realize the horror of what I had done.”

The prisoner closed his eyes to the flood of emotions that filled them, tears streamed down the newly grown skin on his face. “I tried to apologize. I begged for His forgiveness and mercy, but He wouldn’t hear it.”

A stray tear splashed into his hand and the mouse gingerly licked at the salty fluid.

“I was banished from Heaven, cast down to Earth, and as my constant companion, I would forever experience the pain and suffering of what I had done.”

The mouse looked up at him; its triangular head bent quizzically to one side.

“You want to know about the place called Hell?” he asked the curious animal. “There is no Hell,” he said. “Hell is in here.” He touched the raw, pink skin of his chest with the tips of his fingers. “And it will forever burn inside me for what I have done.”

“She said take a left onto Gagnon and there would be a community center where we could get food,” Gabriel whined.

“That’s what she said,” Aaron replied, looking around as they walked. All he could see were homes, each more rundown and dilapidated than the next.

“And what exactly is a community center?” the dog asked pathetically. It was past his suppertime and he was begi