one final story before I pass tf out my dad is a protestant pastor. when I was young I asked him if Catholics were real Christians, and he hemmed and hawed but eventually said, yeah, they're orthodox, we're not really that different when you get down to it. I said cool, and later the same week I told him I wanted to become a priest so I could absolve people from their sins. and he said that that isn't something a person can do, really, only jesus can, and I said, so they're wrong then and they're not really getting absolved? and he said I guess not and I said so do they go to hell then? and he said, no, no, god wouldn't send someone to hell just for being a bit wrong and so I said why would he send a Hindu to hell then? Or a Buddhist, or a Jew, or an atheist? and he got real quiet. and I think I may have stopped being Christian about then idk
Out of them all, he preferred you. He will always prefer you.
Notes: reverse Isekai except with Illumina <3 if this makes no sense, my bad. Idk what I'm on about either.
~~~
Humans, Illumina is learning, are soft creatures.
He's used to Inphernals and the hardness of them all, of being demanded of by those who don't respect him or his siblings, of sharp weapons and even sharper words. He's used to the Inpherno. You had told him Inferno (not the same word, in his opinion. It's spelt different, and to him mean different things) could be synonymous with Hell. And you had told him that those who believe in Hell believe it to be a place of horror and fear and torment. The Inpherno wasn't like that, but he wouldn't tell you as such.
One thing Illumina really liked about you, though, was the softness of your skin. He enjoyed holding you, squishing you, poking and proding, hugging, being close to you in such a way. There weren't many things he found enjoyment in, but this was one of the few things he found it in. Now, before you, he had touched other humans. Killed them, helped them, simply touched just to feel. They all felt so different, some rougher than others, some harder than others, each different from the rest. It was all so interesting, all so different.
Even the hardest of human skin he's felt was softer than the softest Inphernal skin Illumina has touched. Even the rough, the patchy, the peeling, the coarse skin of different humans. It was all soft to him. But to him, he prefered your skin. Your touch. To him, no matter what it was like, it was your touch and he has grown to long for it.
Illumina wouldn't use the word crave. He thought it was too rough of a word to describe what he felt. Too depraved, too sharp. But, longing felt like a peaceful word, smooth and velvety. Soft. He tried not to be a rough person, tried not to hurt unless he had to. Tried not to let you see how destructive he could really be. He'd prefer not to destroy, really.
Oh, you. One of his favorite things, when it came to you and just being able to touch you, was when he'd sit cross-legged in front of your couch, you in his lap, his arms loosely wrapped around your waist as you did whatever. He liked holding you. He liked watching you fiddle with that silly device (you called it a phone, and he held himself back from asking why it wasn't spelt with an f), he liked watching 'movies' with you (those moving pictures sure did interest him. How did they work??), he liked reading books over your shoulder, he liked watching you draw. Anything, really. He just liked having you close.
If he could hold you like this forever, he would. If he could keep you close, he wouldn't want to leave. If staying in an unfamiliar world meant staying with you, he'd stay for as long as he could.
I hate it when xtians reduce my religious trauma to "a religious person said something mean to you once so now you're mad at religion".
Like, shut the fuck up. My trauma isn't just someone being a little rude to me once, it was systematic, deliberate manipulation with the threat of possible eternity of suffering in Hell if I didn't obey religious rules and "keep Christ in my heart". It was "Nonbelievers burn in a lake of eternal fire. Tell your friends to convert to our faith or they'll be damned for eternity".
I have suffered from anxiety, ocd and other mental health issues for several fucking years because of this shit. I've suppressed my sexuality and felt terrible guilt just for the 'sin' of having sexual thoughts. I've feared for my loved one's souls, genuinely believing they would go to Hell for simply not being xtians and that I'd never see them again in the afterlife.
These beliefs are sick and twisted. What I went through was sick and twisted.
I seriously don't know what to say to you if you still think telling anyone, let alone a child, that they're going to be damned for eternity if they disobey 'God's word' is totally fine and not abusive.
Know your fucking place and stop speaking over trauma survivors who have been hurt by your shitty religion.
The thing that makes me just hate Christianity the most is the concept of hell. Believing in endlessly suffering for the rest of eternity simply because you don’t believe in the Christian god is abhorrent to me. There is no way to make such a concept not disgusting. It also doesn’t make sense when you include the doctrine of election (I was raised somewhat quasi baptist) because your actions are basically irrelevant because god just randomly selects people. And even denominations that don’t believe in literal hell still believe you get punished in the afterlife because you didn’t believe.
