Sanctus
an excerpt

A person houses only one of three things: an angel, a demon, or a human spirit. Human spirits either go to hell or the lower levels of heaven when the host body dies. Their paths depend solely on the works they did in life, because a human spirit is created only when a human is born. Angels, on the other hand, were created by God a long time ago. Demons are what the fallen angels are called, those who went with Lucifer to rebel against God. That was the instance in time when they made their choice, and they and all their descendants are forever bound to being an angel or a demon. It is a given that angels who become mortals do good works in their lifetime, while demons do evil. There is no judgment for them; they merely return to their sides upon death.

For angels, it is imperative that they experience human life in order to be "complete". Angels who have not gone to the world Below, the mortal world of Asiyah, are pure and innocent, but they do not know how to love. The angels do not know why this is so, but the Creator had decreed it, and so it had to be.

When angels ‘return’, they do not remember anything of their mortal life. It is not experience they go down to Asiyah for, but the learning born from these mortal experiences. They are given the Sonneteer of Memory, which, when used, show the angels snippets of their life as a mortal. Not everything, but enough so that they could fully comprehend what their ways on earth had been like and reflect on them. The angels exist in these visions drawn from their forgotten memories, outside what had been their physical host, but are only capable of observing.

Angels call the usage of the sonneteers the ‘re-collection’. They who have not gone through re-collection cannot enter the realm of the highest heavens, the realm of Beri’ah. For this reason, some angels consider the sonneteers the most important of the celestial items. They are kept safe by the angel Zachriel, the Angel of Memory.

-†-

There was no rain that day.

The woman hated the rain, he knew, so if she really wanted to kill herself, it would probably be on a rainy day. But the sky was clear-- tall and blue, and not a dark cloud for miles around. He watched, curious, somehow already knowing what would happen, what was going through the young woman’s mind, yet at the same time wondering if she really was going to go through with it. It wasn’t raining, and she hated the rain, and it was only fitting that she died in it.

She was…crying. Every inch of her red cotton handkerchief was soaked with tears. He could almost taste the salt himself as her tongue peeked out between trembling lips to wet them, and then she was whispering, so quickly and softly that he couldn’t hear what she was saying, or read her lips. He thought that maybe she was praying.

Her shirt was soaking wet too, with both her tears and perspiration. Her pants were slightly rumpled, straight-cut, made of denim, nothing too fancy. She didn’t have any jewelry on her either, or accessories, or make-up. She still wore her glasses even though she could probably no longer see through them clearly. Her hair was in disarray, wind-blown. Her shaking fingers only held her handkerchief. She was a strange one; most people to commit suicide cared for how they looked in death. He wondered if hers could possibly be filed under ‘murder’, with her mostly empty hands and the lack of a suicide note in the area.

And that she had written nothing wasn’t for a lack of anything to say. He knew her; he knew she had a lot of things in her mind, a lot of people in her mind, and a lot she wanted to tell those people. But he also knew she really had not written any letter to anyone, none that could be read anyway. She had left nothing. No matter how hard they would care to look, they would fail to find anything hidden. She was—

‘No, don’t!’

He felt as if his heart had leapt to his throat and as if a ton of bricks had settled at the bottom of his stomach at the same time. He didn’t think; he had no plan. He didn’t know what he was about to do but flew down to reach her anyway. He went as fast as he could, so fast he thought he was going to rip his own wings right off his back at the speed of his descent. He could almost feel pain.

But still, he thought he was going agonizingly too slow. The building and the woman standing on top of it looked so far away, and yet close enough that he could see her left foot move another inch closer towards the edge. Her right foot did as well, and then…

…and then nothing. She just stood there, with her feet tightly pressed together and half on the building’s ledge and half off it. White feathers came off his wings as he came to an abrupt stop as well, his view from the sky above her allowing him to see her lips moving even faster now than they did before. He really wished he could understand what she was saying.

Her name. He desperately wanted, no, needed, to know her name. But he had no way of asking her; he was just an observer after all, someone who really didn’t exist in that time and place. Not in the form he was in now anyway. This was the past. His past.

And the woman jumped.

-†-

And Kyriel was rambling, his tongue off on a tangent. Hazel placed a hand on one of his knees to try and stop the steady stream of praising words that was coming from his mouth. While it was Kyriel’s job to inform him, and indeed the other angel was a valuable source of information for almost all things concerning heaven, right now he needed to know what Kyriel thought, not what he knew.

It worked and Kyriel stopped, and Hazel waited patiently for him to speak again.

“Even if you say you won’t now, I think you will forget,” he said, placing his hand over Hazel’s on his knee quickly and squeezing it when Hazel made to protest. The grip begged that he be allowed to speak first, to be heard. “And even if you don’t, you’ll be far too busy with your responsibilities up there. I won’t resent you for that—I can never resent you for anything—but I… I’ll definitely wish I was there with you.”

And the angel fell silent again, and Hazel knew it was his turn to speak. But what was he to say to that? It made sense now, why Kyriel was always keeping around him, as if he was going to disappear right before him at any minute. “Kyriel…” he began, mind racing for anything, anything at all, really, to console his twin, but nothing came. “I’ll wait for you,” he said at length.

The black-haired angel just gave him a small smile. “Please. Promise me something.”

“What is it?” Hazel asked quickly.

“When we meet again, stay with me,” his twin told him, “We came into existence together, but we were separated and we didn’t grow up together. We may be twins, but we are not one, so we have to live separately. But even then, we were always thinking of each other. So when we meet again, promise me—promise me you’ll never leave again, and we’ll stay together forever.”

-†-

“All angels here in Yetsirah wear this color. There’s nothing else in this realm that is this precise shade of blue—oh, except for those flowers in the garden. They say that’s it because of those flowers that this light blue was picked to represent our class, since we’re the lowest class of angels, and the rest of the flowers of that bush, the purple ones, are the exact same purple of the highest angels, the Seraphim. It symbolizes that, high or low, all angels come from and must answer to the Creator.

“Anyway, not only in color, but our robes are more or less the same make compared to each other too, except for the sizes. The seventh level of Yetsirah is preparation for Beri’ah and tries to emulate the Ensis’ system of uniforms. But since we are not worthy of the ways of the Ensis yet, our clothes do not have the military feel to it like theirs do, and we’re only allowed to call them robes instead of uniforms. There are only two angels who live here in Yetsirah that do not wear the blue robes, but a uniform from Beri’ah. One of them is Uriel.”

‘No,’ Hazel thought, wondering what Daiciel’s uniform looked like underneath his outer robes, ‘if he lives here too, then there are three of them.’

“Uriel is an archangel,” Kyriel continued, not seeming to notice anything. Hazel looked up from where he had been staring at a spot on the young angel’s bed and saw his twin looking straight ahead, a thoughtful, almost pensive look on his face, “Archangels belong to Beri’ah, but Uriel, as the Angel of Death, stays here in Yetsirah to guide every single human soul that has made it into heaven, and welcome the returned angels from Asiyah. The white set of uniforms is exclusive to the archangels, and there are only four of them: Uriel, Raphael, Michael and Gabriel. Raphael is the Archangel of Healing and used to visit here a lot, at least, that’s what they said. I’ve never really seen him. They said that the last he had been here was about a decade since God’s last visit, which would roughly make it around half a century ago. That was around the time we came into existence too, Hazel,” Kyriel told him and Hazel, paying rapt attention, nodded his head in a timely manner, showing that he was taking in everything his twin was saying. The brown-eyed of the pair beamed and continued:

“The last time Gabriel came here was a few years before that, with Raphael. Oh—Raphael is Uriel’s older twin, that’s why he comes down here a lot. Gabriel is Michael’s younger twin, but she’s much closer to Raphael. So, since Raphael no longer comes here, she doesn’t either. The other angels say Raphael is really nice and they’ve never heard him and Uriel having a fight before so it’s really a mystery why he no longer visits. And I’ve never seen or heard about Uriel leaving to go visit him in Beri’ah so—“

“And what about Michael?” Hazel interrupted before Kyriel could start quoting from even more other angels on their thoughts about Raphael’s disappearance. By now his twin was looking at him animatedly, and clearly the Mystery of the Archangels’ Visits was something that intrigued him a lot. Hazel had to wonder if he was that easy to please or if he was really simply bored. Knowing both Kyriel and how days seemed so utterly long here in heaven, he thought it may be a mix of both.

“Michael is the Archangel of War. I’ve never seen him either but he comes down—way down—a lot to lead a squad of the Ensis to fend off demons who have dared to come to surface in Asiyah. I heard that some of his feathers and even his white uniform are red with the blood of the demons he had slain that refuse to be washed away. I can’t imagine what they can possibly look like…”

‘Pretty. They must be really beautiful,’ Hazel thought and then gave a start, not quite knowing where that had come from. He shook his head and prodded Kyriel’s arm again. “And what about the other colors of clothes?” he reminded his younger twin. He had gone off on another tangent once more but the green-eyed angel was slightly surprised to realize that he really did not mind.

“Oh! Sorry,” Kyriel apologized with an enthusiastic nod of his head, “The only other angel here aside from Uriel who does not share our light blue robes is Zachriel. You’ve seen him. He wears light brown robes. He’s a medium-ranked angel and should be in Beri’ah too, but he has to stay here since he’s the Angel of Memory and is in charge with the Sonneteers and guidance for the re-collection. He doesn’t really mind. He told me once he likes it here, because there are too many rules up in Beri’ah for him to be comfortable there.”

-†-

Hazel was quick to approach them, lightly grabbing Daiciel by the shoulders and trying to pull him away. The angel would not let go so easily though, so Hazel sighed, bent his head to bring it closer to his ear so that even Kyriel would not be able to hear his words, and hastily whispered, “Daiciel, that is not your twin. Let go of him, he is not Rowel!” It seemed to get through to the angel and he slowly released his twin. He blinked at Hazel almost owlishly, eyes wide and still very much surprised.

-†-

Crying wounds that would never heal
Faded scars and broken will
Throw more salt into my pain
It doesn't matter to one insane

Tears that would never fully dry
Laughter that always end with a sigh
God, if You're out there, look out for me
I'm doing my best and I want you to see

That I haven't given up yet no matter how hard
It is to keep the smiles and hold the last shard
Of my heart that keeps on breaking
Of this soul slowly dying

Dying, drowning, dying
Dying, drowning, dying

The last shard of my heart is still shattering
Into a thousand pieces that won't stop glittering
In the obscure moonlight of you and all
Like the sun fading from spring to fall

God, if You're out there, look down on me
See how stained these hands once so pretty....

God, please violate me.

Just punish me already....

Hazel shivered as he finished reading the verses, feeling impossibly chilled. It was no worse than the one written on the first page of Denise’s notebook, but this one just shook him for no reason. He very nearly dropped the notebook and shouted in shock when he saw the next two page’s contents: