The Tears of Time

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Over the next few days, Elanor was met by hostile glares from the Host, and Raphael even more on edge around her. With days to spare, she abandoned the Realm of the Immortal, and dwelt back in the City, flitting from place to place in an unending search to feel human again. She realised, fairly soon, that she could not return to the blissful ignorance which had hidden her before.

On the 10th day of September, she woke early, unable to sleep.

The niggling sense in her mind had grown overnight, to a throbbing headache which urged her into action. She dressed slowly, ritually; shirt, dark black trousers, jacket, a swathe of thick fabric wrapped twice around her waist as a belt, boots laced to the knee, arm braces, sword belt, scabbard, sword. Each buttoned, laced and arranged meticulously until satisfactory. She let the ritual push away the fear and panic which threatened to engulf her at any moment.

When she was done she flew fast back to the Realm of the Immortal where she found Raphael sleeping. She gazed at him for a long time, confusing feelings welling up inside her; watching the flicker of his eyelids in dream, pulse in his temple, the rise and fall of his breath. Out of time, she leant over and kissed him softly on the forehead, then left.

Her wings came as needed, and she leapt into the sky gracefully, passing through the veil into the Mortal Realm. Her city, once her home, now an alien disturbance in the natural world, flew past below her, but she ignored it, flying straight for the mountains. The clouds flew away in apprehension of her arrival, revealing a view of the valleys stretching out in front of her, the city verging into the vast expanse of the sea, which spread out across the horizon in a sheet of blue.

Ella took a deep breath, sighed fast and short, took one last look at the world with her dark brown eyes, then closed them and let go.

Her eyelids flickered open only seconds later, but the brown was banished by the black, and mercy had left them, replaced only by duty. The desire to destroy fired through her veins. She smiled, grim satisfaction spreading across her face, darkness flickering behind her eyes. She drew her sword, the steel ringing out through the mountains, echoing across the cliffs.

Closed her eyes again, and reached down deep into the soil, down into the depths of the Earth. The ground shuddered, slightly at first, then more and more, the echo spreading throughout the Earth, into the hills and upsetting the snow, sending avalanches pouring into the valleys, annihilating tiny villages. A deep rumbling groan, as the earth ached. The sound was terrifying, deceiving, as if it was human in origin; a man screaming in terror and pain. The sea shuddered in response, throwing up a wall of water which didn’t stop at the land.

The animals seemed to disappear simultaneously, bird calls ceasing like a cut record, disappearing without a trace. The continuous shuffling of the undergrowth went, replaced by silence, and the terrifying roar of earth and sea.

The earth opened up, swallowing the cities and towns and villages, its dreadful open maw engulfing the human disease. Lava spewed from the open crevasses, eating away at the soil and slipping into the sea were it boiled and hissed angrily, the elements rebelling against each other.

Ahead of Elanor, the moon hung in the sky, a penny sliver, round and beautiful. Then the sky grew dark, the moon invaded slowly by colour, as it crossed the sun and blocked the light, leaving a halo of blood red swirling around it. The darkness revealed the spread of stars in the sky, the usually tiny pinpricks larger and brighter. Elanor raised a hand, and the stars appeared fell from the heavens. A shower of flaming meteorites powered through the atmosphere, hitting the earth with a wave of destruction, ringing out with a force that rippled the ground.

Away from the fires that swept civilisation, cold stretched out its icy fingers. The temperature dropped quickly, sheens of ice trapping the living plants under translucent cover. Plants crippled, green leaves wilting and dying, the once fertile land drying up into a long expanse of dead foliage, blackened, dead. Trees fell in a barrage of lightning and storm, hail pounding the earth’s flesh, rupturing the fragile sandstone and clay, ripping into its core.

“Ella!”

In confusion, Elanor turned, her eyes flickering briefly to brown, but dispelled immediately. Instinctively she swept her sword in counterattack, the blade slicing through flesh and blood and bone, whilst all around her the world disintegrated.

“Ella,” Raphael moaned, the blade bathed in his blood, the wound burning numb with painful fire. Elanor opened her mouth, terrified, backing away. Her eyes flickered from brown to black, brown to black, brown to black, either side fighting the other.

“Ella…” Raphael cried, unable to breath.

Brown won.

“I-I-,” Ella sobbed, fear and panic burning through her heart. She covered her mouth, hysterical tears pouring down her face in an endless torrent.

“I love you,” Raphael coughed, blood bubbling in his throat.

Ella collapsed to her knees beside him, her hands fluttering from his face to the blade, which she longed to plunge into her own chest in guilt. He didn’t deserve this, no matter what he had done, not this… Raphael moaned, slipping the blade out of his flesh, which allowed a flood of blood to pour from the wound, spreading out across the snow at an alarming pace. He collapsed forward into Ella, who steadied him in her lap.

“Ella, don’t,” Raphael said, laying a hand on hers as she picked up the blade, “Just- just hold me.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed repeatedly, rocking backwards and forwards, holding him like she would a small child, the solidarity of his shoulder blades shocking her, the iron-hard clasp of his arms around her a guilty comfort.

“Look,” Raphael said, pointing towards the north. The howl of the wind swept towards them, followed closely by a wall of darkness which swept through the land, obliterating everything, “Look.”

Ella laughed as she saw it, a panicked bubble of laughter which escaped her throat hysterically.

“We’ll go together,” Raphael said, clutching both hands to his chest.

“Together,” she repeated, meaning not only them but the entire human race which now watched as their end came towards them.

They parted, took one last look at the world, then embraced tightly, Ella closing her eyes against the rising tide of darkness. She tried to forget the world, ignoring the pain which swept through her limbs like wildfire. Nothing built into a crescendo, a cacophony of noise delectable to every dead ear, pounding in the head. Fire burst to new life and skeletons burned again, the wind screaming wildly in man and beast’s ear. Until-

Elanor didn’t question the return of her soul. The chaos inside her had done its work, and in the silence her self was returned to her. All her visions realised in one horrific last encounter, spreading through the world like an invasive disease. And now there was nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing cannot be described, or put into words, however hard you may struggle. Because nothing requires the absence of speech. Absence of anything, though it also includes everything that had, was and would be in its vast depths and expanse, which was at the same time, no space at all.

In the last seconds of being, Gabriel had smiled at the world and felt the Spirit return, an overwhelming sense of peace which spread throughout his body erasing pain and memory.

Ambriel and Dina held hands in silent friendship as they sat on the edge of the Altar.

Dumah stood up to welcome its coming, singing softly a song she had once heard sung on the breath of the wind, though her silence had never let her imitate it before.

Lucifer shot denial at the sky.

Jezabel simply grimaced.

On Earth, some cowered, some blasphemed, some sighed, some smiled… Emily stood up in from her kitchen table and gazed stunned out of the window. In the Library, the librarian snored not at all quietly, oblivious of the panic which had sent students packing.

In the hospital, a doctor took one last look at a mistaken diagnosis, and sighed.

In her window, Time sighed, watching the world crumble and die, the universe collapsing in on itself. The void beckoned her, though she knew a few moments were still hers. Fate lay still beside her, his body drained of life, echoing the fate of the world. Time stooped to give him one last kiss, then stepped out of the window and began to wade into the unknown darkness.

10th September, the 6th hour, the 6th minute, 6th day…

For an eternal moment Nothing, darkness, death reigned.

Then life exploded once more.

And so Time began again, given back her life from the depths, crying from the fresh betrayal, yet relishing in the new lease of life. Around her, Elanor began to weave the world again, smiling briefly at her mother, then disappearing into the future.

In Delphi, she touched the lips of a woman, who began to see terrible things. In London she gave a painter a brief glimpse of what was to come. So she scattered the clues to her existence amongst the newborn world, and then allowed herself to settle in readiness. Waiting, until she would be needed again, until the moment when her eternal soul would dive once more into human flesh, back into the bliss of ignorance.