176: Scars
I have no scars.
Yeah, there've been battles and fights aplenty. War.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
That's how John describes the first war. Not that he saw it. It was fought and won before his planet had even been formed. No; what he recounts in the Book is... only what I told him, my words to him. Summing up an eon in three verses of text.
There are no memorials of that war, no medals or stories. There were no witnesses, in that time before time, to see it. No one to tell tales. Those charged with the making of music in heaven do not sing of it.
We remember it, and we do not speak of it.
How should we? What, what could we say? Are there words for it? For the fire, the destruction? For the ambushes sprung in the cold silent gulfs between the stars, with the jewel-nets of the nebulae rotating as the only observers? For the blood on the golden streets?
I remember the sheeted sparks of blade on blade. Arms carved from the bones of creatures never created. The glare of newborn suns keen on the arcs of black metal wrested from lightning-kissed asteroids. Bone and knife, glittering, meeting; but silent, all in silence. The wicked curves drinking deep and releasing rubies that quivered in the void, stabilizing as perfect spheres, orbiting each other like miniature worlds.
We warred. We hurled fractured atoms at each other in the soundless reaches, birthing parabola-flowers of flame in the dark worldless places. In the silence. In the cold.
Shall we build monuments to this? To the pointless courage of the stand at Mazzaroth, or the charge to wrest Rigel from the enemy, or how desperate and savage was the fighting for the gate of Polaris, or the magnificence of the strategy the Fallen used in the battle for Sirius? At Mizar the light itself turned red.
And at Deneb, Saraqael alone against those of the children of fire that had sided with the Fallen; and at Rukbat, the ensnarement and capture of golden Ariel who had danced upon electrons; and at Procyon... at Procyon the fight, the single combat amid the towers of flame. Micha'el against him whose given name we no longer say. At Procyon the cosmos trembled with their blows...
There are no stories. There are no monuments. No remembrance of these things. Not in stone or song or body, because there are no scars.
There was war. We fought. They lost. The rest... the rest is not important.
And there was war again, later. Wars, and rumors of wars... Where the first had been fought among novae and nebulae, in swirling clouds of cosmic dust and the spaces between quarks and motes, this one was more.... visceral. Alleyways, and empty back lots, and deserts. A ground war, waged with hand and steel and tooth and nail.
We fought as men do. And we killed and we died. As men do.
Michael lit candles for each of the dead. I've seen them, since, since it all ended, and I still can't believe.... that we lost so many. I know the numbers, of course; by my nature I know them and yet-- so many. So many. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, et Dei venia tantum licet mihi donare veniam mihi...)
But those who didn't die, they healed. Again. There were no scars.
My war went on and on and on and on until, well, until Thomas Dagget shot me, the girl Mary shot me, I went through a car windshield, I was hit and punched and run over and blown up-- it was a fun couple of days-- and... there are no scars from that, either.
Lucifer ripped out my heart. You'd think that one would have left a mark. Dying, you'd think that'd write itself somewhere permanently. But no, there is no remembrance... not of that, not of the time after with Lucifer's idea of fun... and the whole point of it all was that he couldn't get to me, to me, the core. Couldn't leave his brand on that.
So he sent me back. Let me finish my war.
I got shot again (it is so annoying), and yeah, went through another windshield, took a few more punches to the mouth, few more wrenches to the head, these things happen-- fell about fifteen stories to get stuck on a chainlink fence-- that one, it doesn't happen so much--
...I fell. That one, it healed slower, that one took fifteen years to fade. But all things, all healing, all destruction and all creation, in His time.
And there were the incidental nicks and pricks and injuries of those fifteen years, too, but they're faded now as well, gone; statements that have ceased to have meaning, that have been overwritten by the ever-change of events. Vanished from the flesh, like the cities whose names no human scholar even remembers have vanished from the face of the earth. Ashes, and dust to dust.
Scars have the power to remind their owners that the past was real. Angels... do not scar. Is this... why we repeat our mistakes, over and over? Why we fall and tumble down the same paths, even when-- especially when-- we have had examples of how it turns out? Our arrogance, our confidence in our own strength-- I had seen Lucifer's fall and yet I thought I was better than that. Pyriel and Zophael had seen me and sought only to outdo me. Beshuel...
On and on and on, and Father, I do not understand; is this what we are, what we have become? You must be so disappointed in us, in Your firstborn children, who cannot or will not learn, who refuse to be taught by example, who are not marked by pain. In some ways even the stubbornest of monkeys has nothing on us.
But... when I think these things, when I see the self-righteousness blinding my brothers' eyes, the blank incomprehension of the past mirrored in blank skin, then You remind me that we are not unmarked. There is a statement written upon each of us, from Micha'el who stands at Your right hand to the least of the host, a statement that cannot ever cease to be meaningful, that is not overwritten by time or change or any power in all the universe. It is there on our bodies, between the heart and the head, just over the steady-beating vein.
A name. On each of us, the name chosen by the One who made us, the brand traced in fire. Can I call this a scar? Scars indicate violence, pain, and this one only ever hurt me when it was taken away. It is a mark not of violence, but of... You named me, and in so doing created all I am, defined me as a being unique from the rest of the universe, worthy of my own existence, of Your love.
And it must be so for each of us, for You touched each of us in this way, wrote upon us, and I believe, I must believe, that all You do has purpose, and that all You create reflects that, and that even in our stubbornness You teach us.
So mark us as You see fit.
______
gabriel * the prophecy series (movie) * word count: 1285
Yeah, there've been battles and fights aplenty. War.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
That's how John describes the first war. Not that he saw it. It was fought and won before his planet had even been formed. No; what he recounts in the Book is... only what I told him, my words to him. Summing up an eon in three verses of text.
There are no memorials of that war, no medals or stories. There were no witnesses, in that time before time, to see it. No one to tell tales. Those charged with the making of music in heaven do not sing of it.
We remember it, and we do not speak of it.
How should we? What, what could we say? Are there words for it? For the fire, the destruction? For the ambushes sprung in the cold silent gulfs between the stars, with the jewel-nets of the nebulae rotating as the only observers? For the blood on the golden streets?
I remember the sheeted sparks of blade on blade. Arms carved from the bones of creatures never created. The glare of newborn suns keen on the arcs of black metal wrested from lightning-kissed asteroids. Bone and knife, glittering, meeting; but silent, all in silence. The wicked curves drinking deep and releasing rubies that quivered in the void, stabilizing as perfect spheres, orbiting each other like miniature worlds.
We warred. We hurled fractured atoms at each other in the soundless reaches, birthing parabola-flowers of flame in the dark worldless places. In the silence. In the cold.
Shall we build monuments to this? To the pointless courage of the stand at Mazzaroth, or the charge to wrest Rigel from the enemy, or how desperate and savage was the fighting for the gate of Polaris, or the magnificence of the strategy the Fallen used in the battle for Sirius? At Mizar the light itself turned red.
And at Deneb, Saraqael alone against those of the children of fire that had sided with the Fallen; and at Rukbat, the ensnarement and capture of golden Ariel who had danced upon electrons; and at Procyon... at Procyon the fight, the single combat amid the towers of flame. Micha'el against him whose given name we no longer say. At Procyon the cosmos trembled with their blows...
There are no stories. There are no monuments. No remembrance of these things. Not in stone or song or body, because there are no scars.
There was war. We fought. They lost. The rest... the rest is not important.
And there was war again, later. Wars, and rumors of wars... Where the first had been fought among novae and nebulae, in swirling clouds of cosmic dust and the spaces between quarks and motes, this one was more.... visceral. Alleyways, and empty back lots, and deserts. A ground war, waged with hand and steel and tooth and nail.
We fought as men do. And we killed and we died. As men do.
Michael lit candles for each of the dead. I've seen them, since, since it all ended, and I still can't believe.... that we lost so many. I know the numbers, of course; by my nature I know them and yet-- so many. So many. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, et Dei venia tantum licet mihi donare veniam mihi...)
But those who didn't die, they healed. Again. There were no scars.
My war went on and on and on and on until, well, until Thomas Dagget shot me, the girl Mary shot me, I went through a car windshield, I was hit and punched and run over and blown up-- it was a fun couple of days-- and... there are no scars from that, either.
Lucifer ripped out my heart. You'd think that one would have left a mark. Dying, you'd think that'd write itself somewhere permanently. But no, there is no remembrance... not of that, not of the time after with Lucifer's idea of fun... and the whole point of it all was that he couldn't get to me, to me, the core. Couldn't leave his brand on that.
So he sent me back. Let me finish my war.
I got shot again (it is so annoying), and yeah, went through another windshield, took a few more punches to the mouth, few more wrenches to the head, these things happen-- fell about fifteen stories to get stuck on a chainlink fence-- that one, it doesn't happen so much--
...I fell. That one, it healed slower, that one took fifteen years to fade. But all things, all healing, all destruction and all creation, in His time.
And there were the incidental nicks and pricks and injuries of those fifteen years, too, but they're faded now as well, gone; statements that have ceased to have meaning, that have been overwritten by the ever-change of events. Vanished from the flesh, like the cities whose names no human scholar even remembers have vanished from the face of the earth. Ashes, and dust to dust.
Scars have the power to remind their owners that the past was real. Angels... do not scar. Is this... why we repeat our mistakes, over and over? Why we fall and tumble down the same paths, even when-- especially when-- we have had examples of how it turns out? Our arrogance, our confidence in our own strength-- I had seen Lucifer's fall and yet I thought I was better than that. Pyriel and Zophael had seen me and sought only to outdo me. Beshuel...
On and on and on, and Father, I do not understand; is this what we are, what we have become? You must be so disappointed in us, in Your firstborn children, who cannot or will not learn, who refuse to be taught by example, who are not marked by pain. In some ways even the stubbornest of monkeys has nothing on us.
But... when I think these things, when I see the self-righteousness blinding my brothers' eyes, the blank incomprehension of the past mirrored in blank skin, then You remind me that we are not unmarked. There is a statement written upon each of us, from Micha'el who stands at Your right hand to the least of the host, a statement that cannot ever cease to be meaningful, that is not overwritten by time or change or any power in all the universe. It is there on our bodies, between the heart and the head, just over the steady-beating vein.
A name. On each of us, the name chosen by the One who made us, the brand traced in fire. Can I call this a scar? Scars indicate violence, pain, and this one only ever hurt me when it was taken away. It is a mark not of violence, but of... You named me, and in so doing created all I am, defined me as a being unique from the rest of the universe, worthy of my own existence, of Your love.
And it must be so for each of us, for You touched each of us in this way, wrote upon us, and I believe, I must believe, that all You do has purpose, and that all You create reflects that, and that even in our stubbornness You teach us.
So mark us as You see fit.
______
gabriel * the prophecy series (movie) * word count: 1285