she is beautiful. tear-sparking, mind-numbing, rip-the-air-from-your-chest beautiful. stunning. radiant. even through the terror that seizes your body, your quaking soul, teetering like porcelain on a high shelf somewhere inside you, you can't help but notice and revel. three meagre letters surface through the choking waters of your fear: awe.
he is leaning over you. there is no other way for her to face you; she is towering. you can feel from the way he moves the air in the room, the way the gooseflesh raises all over you, that he is strong in ways humans haven't properly learned to be afraid of. and still your body is screaming, every grain of you, every instinct shoving you to fight or flee, even if some knowledge beyond these animals fears tells you that swinging, arming, running, struggling, all of it would be useless. this thing in front of you, too much to even be called a creature, something so not of this world you feel sick to your stomach looking even though she is so beautiful and inexplicably human from some angles, angles that don't make any sense. uncanny. horrifying. holy.
your head aches like your whole brain is a bruise and ever thought is a mallet. new letters float up, stabbing into your soft flesh, attempting to understand what you see: angel. an angel.
suddenly, like a candle blown out, all that beauty and refraction and impossibilty folds neatly back down into the body it sprung from, the humble human box that holds the sun behind an easy, familiar smile.
you heave a breath, another, gasping like you'd been suffocated. you feel utterly empty in the absence of that divine pain, a dull numbness after such intense fire and light and sensation beyond sense. it's so stark, that shift, that a tide of nausea has you doubled over and the only sound you can make is a pitiful whimper.
and there she is. smiling at you. your knees give and thump hard on the cold stone of the nave, rattling your bones. your teeth ache, your eyes throb sore in your head with every blink. afterimages dance across your vision, too quick to be seen, but you feel them burned into you. he steps closer, unhurried, that same gait you're used to. friendly. you look up and see your friend, standing in the church you've seen frame her hundreds of times. but now you know.
you can't see the rays and impossible shapes anymore, but you know, like a stone in your stomach, you know there is an angel wearing your friend like a woolen coat. like a leper's rags. like a queen's travelling veil. like an iron cage holding back a beast.
that beautiful thing gazes out at you through soft, fond eyes, eyes you've gazed into and seen your own reflection in more times that you could count, crinkled at the corners from a dimpled, lopsided smile.
you hear your voice rasp yeses, you feel your head nod. you sit back on your heels. you cannot look away, fearing what the blurring between flits of your gaze might show, might obscure. your breath heaves from you like bellows feeding embers. your mouth is sand dry. you want to touch him, feel his solidity under your hands, dense and human, the man you've known. but your body recoils at even the thought, flinching as she reaches out to you, and even though you can't see it, that all encompasing manifestation, that adam-eve, that paradise unknowable, sits flickering underneath. you feel it. you know it.
you are terrified and he is beautiful.
"you have a purpose," she continues, reaching under your chin. movements slow, as if to a braying horse or hackled cat. you feel yourself convulse with a sob and do not know when the weeping began. "one from on high. it is my job to guide you through it, to march by your side into your destiny. this is the lord's will, god's plan for you. the fate of numberless souls, of thon's vast creation, relies on your participation in the great design. will you take on this blessing?"
you feel the painted and glassy tears of the madonna on you, the visages of saint micheal fiery and righteous all around you, the eyes of christ in all his forms boring into you mortal muscle and bone. you feel the stone under your knees and think of isaac. you feel the twist in your gut and think of the virgin mother. your tears slip gently from your chin and tiny coins of red splatter the floor below.
"I will." your voice is so fragile, like that of a child petrified by a nightmare that lingers even in the kind face of their soothing guardian. your blood stains his calloused hand as it cradles your jaw, and you can't help but reach up and cling to his arm, desperate for an anchor to this earth. "almighty god have mercy on me. in your name, I will."
teeth glint unnaturally in the dim, bright as moonlit water or a fresh-whetted dagger. too calm. too graceful. too content as you tremble on the floor at her feet. he smooths your cheek with a rough, grounding thumb.
"the lord is pleased with you, loyal soldier."
