Gleaner of Souls: Act II, scene ii (REVISED)
this fucking chapter i swear to god
Hopefully this will be the last revision. I really need to get some feedback. I don't know if this is too opaque, dull, confusing, etc.
Act 1
Act 2, scene 1
Act II, scene ii
And all who defended Lucifer
were rousted from the fields
of Heaven and banished
from the sands of Earth.
Michael cut them up.
He burnt and plucked them.
He sentenced them to languish
in the pagan stench of Tartarus.
Manakel goes to the edge of Heaven and pauses there, feeling buzzy and complicated in her own form. She is too used to the swaddling of Marina's straight bones and the muscle curled over them, her sense-heavy skin, the squiggly routes between organs. Here Manakel moves without weight and misses the snap of her ligaments in rough landings. It takes longer to reach the Gates than it should.
A cherub flits out before she draws too near and calls out, "Hail Manakel, Angel of Oceans! Gleaner of Souls! Keeper of the Stone of Seeing! Great General of the Primordial War! He Who Fells Titans-"
"That is enough," says Manakel. "I know who I am and what I have done." She bristles at the sound of her own words dropping like stones. Mouths are for speaking to monkeys and monsters. She has been so long away from Heaven that she has forgotten the intricate paralanguage of her own kind, a thousand times more subtle than reading a woman's eyebrow. She has cocked her head at Vikings and crooked her fingers at ancient Greeks, yet she cannot speak to her brothers.
Perhaps that is why a cherub has been sent to greet her. They wallow in the hot hearts of humans and understand things such as mouths.
"Ooh, sorry, I am just so excited to see you!" cries the cherub, and collides his particles with hers.
"Glad to see you, too, punkin," says Manakel. She scritches his velvety ears and allows the tickle of his faces against her breast. "Brother, I would speak with Michael."
"Is the Stone of Seeing whole?" asks the cherub.
Manakel does not have Marina's lungs here, and cannot sigh. "No, the damn thing's still in pieces all over God's green Earth."
The cupid quivers, though Manakel does not know if he is upset, or if he is reflecting her own human-like unease. "Oh, then I'm so sorry, I can't let you in-"
"I understand that," she says, to soothe and to hush him. "Still, I would speak with Michael."
"I can ask him to come out to you, but he is very busy," says the cherub. "Please do not scream and beat your wings against the gates."
"When have I ever done that?" asks Manakel. She has not encroached upon Heaven for nearly a millennia. Even when she slew her berserker warrior by Michael's command, and could not feel her in Heaven as she could feel her other dead soldiers, Manakel did not come here. Wouldn't she remember, if she had?
Manakel went instead to Yan Luo, saying, this woman who was a child of Han, she who drowned demons in the Yellow River; is she with you? And Yan said, No, friend; I sent out Ox-Head and Horse-Face, but she struck them with her club and snuck away while they were dazed, for even in death she is loyal to you.
She then went to the goddess Hel, saying, this woman who was a berserker warrior of Loki, she who pricked the eye of Ragnarok; is she with you? And Hel said No, auntie; I did put my hand upon her shoulder, but she threw me off, for even in death she is loyal to you.
She went to Baron Samedi, saying, this woman who slew the dead you let walk and pilfered your liquor, she who oft refused your lusty advances; is she with you? And Baron Samedi said, No, lover; I tipped my hat, but she stamped her foot and turned away, for even in death she is loyal to you.
Still Manakel did not go to Heaven, for that was forbidden to her. Gabriel went; he snuck in and looked through all the lacunae housing human souls, and he passed among their brethren hearing gossip. He came back, saying, Kels, I'm so sorry. Lucy has her.
"Never mind all that," Manakel says to the cherub. "Fly to Michael and bid him to listen: Lucifer has a vessel upon Earth."
"But that's impossible," says the cherub. "That bloodline was ended, and we have not reincarnated any of his old souls, not since-" the cherub goes silent, as if he has said too much.
Manakel wonders who that reincarnated soul may have been: Lilith's dark-eyed aunt? Her many-greats grandfather, with pointed nose and curling hair? And who did that soul become, when they walked the Earth again? Manakel does not know why Michael would order such a reincarnation to happen if he wants to keep Lucifer contained. There is much that Manakel does not know.
(this woman who was a servant of Heaven, she who defended humans as we once did; why was she damned? and Michael said-)
Manakel wants to press the cherub to tell her everything, but she does not. It was once Manakel who was the lieutenant, keeping the secrets of her superiors. She was once the enigmatic general telling falsehoods to footsoldiers.
"I beg thee, cherub, go to Michael with this news," she says. Michael will tell her what she needs to know; she dare not cross him for the sake of mere curiosity.
"What news? We have not bred a vessel for Lucifer," the cherub says, satisfied and firm.
"Then he must have been fashioned some other way," says Manakel. She knows what she has seen; she knows the purpose she saw burning in Sam Winchester's flesh. "Cherubim are not the only beings who influence mating."
The cherub cocks his head, confused.
"Demons," says Manakel. "How many more babes are born of sin, than of piety? I respect your station and your expertise, but I have been on Earth these many centuries. I have seen as many couplings as a cherub. Do I speak truth?"
"Yes," says the cherub, though it is clear he does not want to.
"I know better than any that Lucifer's children play idle games with human bodies, and you know too well that Lucifer can lay claim to souls," says Manakel. "If his hand be upon the spirit as well as the flesh, then he may hold dominion over the womb and the seed as well as we do. Is that sensible to you?"
"No!" says the cherub. "Demons are awful, destructive things. All they can do is twist and taint the beautiful work we have done."
"A chunk of ore may be twisted into a sword, or a gate," says Manakel. "Or a brazen idol to rouse the passion of whole nations."
"Well," sniffs the cherub. "I don't know about all that soldier stuff."
Manakel can feel her tail-the shaft of energy which on Earth coalesces into a whip-slim thing with a sharp heart's tip-tap against the firmament. "Forget that, then," she says. She loves all her brothers, but some of them are more limited than others. "Creation is not the realm of demons; I will concede that. Yet I swear to you that this is Lucifer's vessel. There are ways to rejuvenate a bloodline even if it has been destroyed, right?"
Manakel remembers disasters over the millennia; fire and flood, unexpected strikes by pagans or parasites. Some bloodlines are inconveniently chaste and thus prone to extinction. Her own vessels were prolific and far-flung-any port in a storm-but Michael ordered them slain with her heroes, allowing her only a few tepid lineages. Marina is a child of careful joining. "A single bloodline can be made to begat vessels for several angels," she says. "The sister of my vessel is the vessel of another; Cain and Abel were brothers. If Michael's bloodline is sound, then-"
"Of course the bloodline is sound!" cries the cherub. "What makes you think it isn't sound?"
"Nothing, sugar, nothing," says Manakel. She knows how seriously the cherubim take their duties. "He seemed quite cozy, last time I saw him on Earth." She had just returned from Hell, with Ping Lin flushed and breathing once again. Michael appeared before them in a vessel, a woman with a rifle on her back and limbs as taut and corded as the rope holding ship to anchor.
"Oh, Cora," says the cherub, and fidgets in a frequency that makes Manakel's heads hurt.
Manakel knows nothing of that vessel and what children she may have had, but looking back, there is some resemblance there to Sam: the rangy spine and mulish jaw; hard voice; their vows to do her harm. Would Sam's brother have her green eyes and heavy brow, her bowed legs, her dark, curling hair?
"Perhaps this boy I speak of has some stuff of Michael in him," says Manakel. "And he was a brother's vessel, or his mother and father were, and demons pressed into him as Lucifer once pressed into Lilith."
The cherub flares up suddenly with an energy that would burst light bulbs on Earth. "No angel would allow such a thing to happen to their vessel," he says.
"No angel who serves Heaven," says Manakel. "But those of our kin who gave themselves over to Lucifer, those brothers who lie now in Tartarus-"
"Ooh, brother, do not speak of such horrible things!" cries the cherub.
"-could they not also give their vessels?" Manakel asks, more patiently than she would like. "Could those vessels not allow themselves to be given? You remember those humans who fought us after Michael plucked the angels from their skins; those first souls who quivered in Hell and were twisted to Lucifer's design."
"Michael ordered us to abandon those lineages," he answers.
"Nevertheless, they have continued," says Manakel. Her last devoted was not claimed by any in Heaven, yet she was capacious and bright, as frenzied in battle as Azazel had been. Ping Lin stood against the psychopomps as staunchly as Azazel's vessel stood against Michael. That small human commanded his own limbs for the first time in years, but wasted no time in wailing and mourning his angel. He took up the sword even as his flesh trembled and his skin sloughed off, even as his eyes began to burn, and struck Michael. The blow fell upon the holy shield, and the reverberation shattered all his bones, and Azazel's vessel fell down dead.
Continue to serve the Adversary, if you insist, said Michael, and tossed his soul into the pit that would become Hell. After centuries down there, Azazel's vessel turned into sulfur: yellow and sifted; a fine, sneaky dust.
Ping Lin went also to Hell and was burnished there, not broken.
"It may be coincidence, or the toil of clans to cultivate marriages," says Manakel. "Humans maintain their own bloodlines and join their brightest together. All one needs then is a discerning eye to pull the diamonds from the rough, as I did with my own heroes and hunters."
The cherub undulates in a scoff. "But you, brother, are an angel. A demon couldn't pick out a servant of Heaven any more than a puppy dog could distinguish between gold and pyrite."
"Do not discount the powers of demons," says Manakel. "They are passionate and resourceful things, some more ancient than the First War, and all of them were once human. The most loyal of them served as bodies for our brothers; who knows what knowledge they gleaned when angels used their eyes to see, their hands to grasp, and their mouths to speak?" Her own Marina knows far too much; Manakel does not keep her blindered as often as she should.
Something roils in the cherub, like wringing hands if he were human, or the churning of a nervous gut.
Manakel lays a limb upon him, as humans do when they must reveal terrible things to those they love. "You know there are demons who have cut us and stood in our way," she says. "Those who are as dangerous as pagan gods once were. How many brethren bled to tie down Lilith? How many divine secrets have spilled at Alastair's feet?"
The cherub spins his heads slowly around and around. "They're just troublemakers," he moans. "Silly inconveniences. Demons cannot conquer angels," he says, stuttering and soft to himself, like the prayers of a child in the dark.
"These demons have an angel among them," Manakel reminds him. "Say to me truthfully, Brother: is it really so impossible that they would fashion a vessel for their master?"
"I-I don't-there were some instances of tainted vessels, but we assumed that was sabotage," says the cherub. "Those poor babies. That dreadful yellow-eyed man," he says, and begins to weep.
Manakel freezes. She heard something of that affair, but not much. She stood guard over her gibbering prophet, but could not pierce the magic that tangled her tongue. Even Anael, who transcribed every bleat and scribble, had to carry the prophecies to Heaven's scholars to be deciphered. Manakel knew there was pain and fire in these visions; she did not know until now that vessels were involved.
"Oh, for the love of-Brother," she says, then more sharply: "Brother!" She shakes him, for she has wasted too much time already. "Sabotage it may have been, but there was certainly more to it than that. Was Sam Winchester one of those children?"
The cherub trembles. "I'd have to go check."
"Then do that. For hark, cherub: the boy I speak of has a brother, who suffers now in Hell. So I ask you again: does Michael have a vessel upon Earth? Or is he being broken by demons?"
"I don't know," he says, flickering and distressed. Even a cherub, who wears rosy blinders and concerns himself with fruitful loins, knows how the world is meant to end. "My orders were very specific. There was never any indication that we had failed in our duties."
perhaps that is because you have not.
Manakel does not say this.
The cherub swivels his heads again. "If the Adversary really does have a vessel, then-"
"Our place is not to wonder why," says Manakel. "I know only what has been written and what I have seen. Go and see for yourself who begat this boy, and who his brother may be, then go to Michael and tell him that I await his command."
"Yes, brother," he says, and departs as quickly as she has ever seen a cherub fly.
This entry is cross-posted from http://kayliemalinza.dreamwidth.org/332950.html (
comments.)
Hopefully this will be the last revision. I really need to get some feedback. I don't know if this is too opaque, dull, confusing, etc.
Act 1
Act 2, scene 1
Act II, scene ii
And all who defended Lucifer
were rousted from the fields
of Heaven and banished
from the sands of Earth.
Michael cut them up.
He burnt and plucked them.
He sentenced them to languish
in the pagan stench of Tartarus.
Manakel goes to the edge of Heaven and pauses there, feeling buzzy and complicated in her own form. She is too used to the swaddling of Marina's straight bones and the muscle curled over them, her sense-heavy skin, the squiggly routes between organs. Here Manakel moves without weight and misses the snap of her ligaments in rough landings. It takes longer to reach the Gates than it should.
A cherub flits out before she draws too near and calls out, "Hail Manakel, Angel of Oceans! Gleaner of Souls! Keeper of the Stone of Seeing! Great General of the Primordial War! He Who Fells Titans-"
"That is enough," says Manakel. "I know who I am and what I have done." She bristles at the sound of her own words dropping like stones. Mouths are for speaking to monkeys and monsters. She has been so long away from Heaven that she has forgotten the intricate paralanguage of her own kind, a thousand times more subtle than reading a woman's eyebrow. She has cocked her head at Vikings and crooked her fingers at ancient Greeks, yet she cannot speak to her brothers.
Perhaps that is why a cherub has been sent to greet her. They wallow in the hot hearts of humans and understand things such as mouths.
"Ooh, sorry, I am just so excited to see you!" cries the cherub, and collides his particles with hers.
"Glad to see you, too, punkin," says Manakel. She scritches his velvety ears and allows the tickle of his faces against her breast. "Brother, I would speak with Michael."
"Is the Stone of Seeing whole?" asks the cherub.
Manakel does not have Marina's lungs here, and cannot sigh. "No, the damn thing's still in pieces all over God's green Earth."
The cupid quivers, though Manakel does not know if he is upset, or if he is reflecting her own human-like unease. "Oh, then I'm so sorry, I can't let you in-"
"I understand that," she says, to soothe and to hush him. "Still, I would speak with Michael."
"I can ask him to come out to you, but he is very busy," says the cherub. "Please do not scream and beat your wings against the gates."
"When have I ever done that?" asks Manakel. She has not encroached upon Heaven for nearly a millennia. Even when she slew her berserker warrior by Michael's command, and could not feel her in Heaven as she could feel her other dead soldiers, Manakel did not come here. Wouldn't she remember, if she had?
Manakel went instead to Yan Luo, saying, this woman who was a child of Han, she who drowned demons in the Yellow River; is she with you? And Yan said, No, friend; I sent out Ox-Head and Horse-Face, but she struck them with her club and snuck away while they were dazed, for even in death she is loyal to you.
She then went to the goddess Hel, saying, this woman who was a berserker warrior of Loki, she who pricked the eye of Ragnarok; is she with you? And Hel said No, auntie; I did put my hand upon her shoulder, but she threw me off, for even in death she is loyal to you.
She went to Baron Samedi, saying, this woman who slew the dead you let walk and pilfered your liquor, she who oft refused your lusty advances; is she with you? And Baron Samedi said, No, lover; I tipped my hat, but she stamped her foot and turned away, for even in death she is loyal to you.
Still Manakel did not go to Heaven, for that was forbidden to her. Gabriel went; he snuck in and looked through all the lacunae housing human souls, and he passed among their brethren hearing gossip. He came back, saying, Kels, I'm so sorry. Lucy has her.
"Never mind all that," Manakel says to the cherub. "Fly to Michael and bid him to listen: Lucifer has a vessel upon Earth."
"But that's impossible," says the cherub. "That bloodline was ended, and we have not reincarnated any of his old souls, not since-" the cherub goes silent, as if he has said too much.
Manakel wonders who that reincarnated soul may have been: Lilith's dark-eyed aunt? Her many-greats grandfather, with pointed nose and curling hair? And who did that soul become, when they walked the Earth again? Manakel does not know why Michael would order such a reincarnation to happen if he wants to keep Lucifer contained. There is much that Manakel does not know.
(this woman who was a servant of Heaven, she who defended humans as we once did; why was she damned? and Michael said-)
Manakel wants to press the cherub to tell her everything, but she does not. It was once Manakel who was the lieutenant, keeping the secrets of her superiors. She was once the enigmatic general telling falsehoods to footsoldiers.
"I beg thee, cherub, go to Michael with this news," she says. Michael will tell her what she needs to know; she dare not cross him for the sake of mere curiosity.
"What news? We have not bred a vessel for Lucifer," the cherub says, satisfied and firm.
"Then he must have been fashioned some other way," says Manakel. She knows what she has seen; she knows the purpose she saw burning in Sam Winchester's flesh. "Cherubim are not the only beings who influence mating."
The cherub cocks his head, confused.
"Demons," says Manakel. "How many more babes are born of sin, than of piety? I respect your station and your expertise, but I have been on Earth these many centuries. I have seen as many couplings as a cherub. Do I speak truth?"
"Yes," says the cherub, though it is clear he does not want to.
"I know better than any that Lucifer's children play idle games with human bodies, and you know too well that Lucifer can lay claim to souls," says Manakel. "If his hand be upon the spirit as well as the flesh, then he may hold dominion over the womb and the seed as well as we do. Is that sensible to you?"
"No!" says the cherub. "Demons are awful, destructive things. All they can do is twist and taint the beautiful work we have done."
"A chunk of ore may be twisted into a sword, or a gate," says Manakel. "Or a brazen idol to rouse the passion of whole nations."
"Well," sniffs the cherub. "I don't know about all that soldier stuff."
Manakel can feel her tail-the shaft of energy which on Earth coalesces into a whip-slim thing with a sharp heart's tip-tap against the firmament. "Forget that, then," she says. She loves all her brothers, but some of them are more limited than others. "Creation is not the realm of demons; I will concede that. Yet I swear to you that this is Lucifer's vessel. There are ways to rejuvenate a bloodline even if it has been destroyed, right?"
Manakel remembers disasters over the millennia; fire and flood, unexpected strikes by pagans or parasites. Some bloodlines are inconveniently chaste and thus prone to extinction. Her own vessels were prolific and far-flung-any port in a storm-but Michael ordered them slain with her heroes, allowing her only a few tepid lineages. Marina is a child of careful joining. "A single bloodline can be made to begat vessels for several angels," she says. "The sister of my vessel is the vessel of another; Cain and Abel were brothers. If Michael's bloodline is sound, then-"
"Of course the bloodline is sound!" cries the cherub. "What makes you think it isn't sound?"
"Nothing, sugar, nothing," says Manakel. She knows how seriously the cherubim take their duties. "He seemed quite cozy, last time I saw him on Earth." She had just returned from Hell, with Ping Lin flushed and breathing once again. Michael appeared before them in a vessel, a woman with a rifle on her back and limbs as taut and corded as the rope holding ship to anchor.
"Oh, Cora," says the cherub, and fidgets in a frequency that makes Manakel's heads hurt.
Manakel knows nothing of that vessel and what children she may have had, but looking back, there is some resemblance there to Sam: the rangy spine and mulish jaw; hard voice; their vows to do her harm. Would Sam's brother have her green eyes and heavy brow, her bowed legs, her dark, curling hair?
"Perhaps this boy I speak of has some stuff of Michael in him," says Manakel. "And he was a brother's vessel, or his mother and father were, and demons pressed into him as Lucifer once pressed into Lilith."
The cherub flares up suddenly with an energy that would burst light bulbs on Earth. "No angel would allow such a thing to happen to their vessel," he says.
"No angel who serves Heaven," says Manakel. "But those of our kin who gave themselves over to Lucifer, those brothers who lie now in Tartarus-"
"Ooh, brother, do not speak of such horrible things!" cries the cherub.
"-could they not also give their vessels?" Manakel asks, more patiently than she would like. "Could those vessels not allow themselves to be given? You remember those humans who fought us after Michael plucked the angels from their skins; those first souls who quivered in Hell and were twisted to Lucifer's design."
"Michael ordered us to abandon those lineages," he answers.
"Nevertheless, they have continued," says Manakel. Her last devoted was not claimed by any in Heaven, yet she was capacious and bright, as frenzied in battle as Azazel had been. Ping Lin stood against the psychopomps as staunchly as Azazel's vessel stood against Michael. That small human commanded his own limbs for the first time in years, but wasted no time in wailing and mourning his angel. He took up the sword even as his flesh trembled and his skin sloughed off, even as his eyes began to burn, and struck Michael. The blow fell upon the holy shield, and the reverberation shattered all his bones, and Azazel's vessel fell down dead.
Continue to serve the Adversary, if you insist, said Michael, and tossed his soul into the pit that would become Hell. After centuries down there, Azazel's vessel turned into sulfur: yellow and sifted; a fine, sneaky dust.
Ping Lin went also to Hell and was burnished there, not broken.
"It may be coincidence, or the toil of clans to cultivate marriages," says Manakel. "Humans maintain their own bloodlines and join their brightest together. All one needs then is a discerning eye to pull the diamonds from the rough, as I did with my own heroes and hunters."
The cherub undulates in a scoff. "But you, brother, are an angel. A demon couldn't pick out a servant of Heaven any more than a puppy dog could distinguish between gold and pyrite."
"Do not discount the powers of demons," says Manakel. "They are passionate and resourceful things, some more ancient than the First War, and all of them were once human. The most loyal of them served as bodies for our brothers; who knows what knowledge they gleaned when angels used their eyes to see, their hands to grasp, and their mouths to speak?" Her own Marina knows far too much; Manakel does not keep her blindered as often as she should.
Something roils in the cherub, like wringing hands if he were human, or the churning of a nervous gut.
Manakel lays a limb upon him, as humans do when they must reveal terrible things to those they love. "You know there are demons who have cut us and stood in our way," she says. "Those who are as dangerous as pagan gods once were. How many brethren bled to tie down Lilith? How many divine secrets have spilled at Alastair's feet?"
The cherub spins his heads slowly around and around. "They're just troublemakers," he moans. "Silly inconveniences. Demons cannot conquer angels," he says, stuttering and soft to himself, like the prayers of a child in the dark.
"These demons have an angel among them," Manakel reminds him. "Say to me truthfully, Brother: is it really so impossible that they would fashion a vessel for their master?"
"I-I don't-there were some instances of tainted vessels, but we assumed that was sabotage," says the cherub. "Those poor babies. That dreadful yellow-eyed man," he says, and begins to weep.
Manakel freezes. She heard something of that affair, but not much. She stood guard over her gibbering prophet, but could not pierce the magic that tangled her tongue. Even Anael, who transcribed every bleat and scribble, had to carry the prophecies to Heaven's scholars to be deciphered. Manakel knew there was pain and fire in these visions; she did not know until now that vessels were involved.
"Oh, for the love of-Brother," she says, then more sharply: "Brother!" She shakes him, for she has wasted too much time already. "Sabotage it may have been, but there was certainly more to it than that. Was Sam Winchester one of those children?"
The cherub trembles. "I'd have to go check."
"Then do that. For hark, cherub: the boy I speak of has a brother, who suffers now in Hell. So I ask you again: does Michael have a vessel upon Earth? Or is he being broken by demons?"
"I don't know," he says, flickering and distressed. Even a cherub, who wears rosy blinders and concerns himself with fruitful loins, knows how the world is meant to end. "My orders were very specific. There was never any indication that we had failed in our duties."
perhaps that is because you have not.
Manakel does not say this.
The cherub swivels his heads again. "If the Adversary really does have a vessel, then-"
"Our place is not to wonder why," says Manakel. "I know only what has been written and what I have seen. Go and see for yourself who begat this boy, and who his brother may be, then go to Michael and tell him that I await his command."
"Yes, brother," he says, and departs as quickly as she has ever seen a cherub fly.
This entry is cross-posted from http://kayliemalinza.dreamwidth.org/332950.html (
comments.)