| 146: Hidden |
[Oct. 31st, 2006 ~ 09:30 am] |
Hidden.
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"Jerry, come here. If you were a soul, where would you hide?"
"The hell away from you."
-- Gabriel and Jerry, the Prophecy |
In the beginning, we walked on earth much as we did in heaven. No bother with bodies, with imitating monkey form. Yes, there was a certain… beauty to these strange, symmetrical, two-legged, hairless forms (and you understand I’m talking of the early days here, and Adam and Eve were both serious lookers), but not something we felt compelled to try for ourselves. And before they fell we had no need to; they could look at us as we were, as equals in a state of grace, disparate origins notwithstanding.
‘As we were’ was… fire. In my case, at least. ‘Course, I’ve always had an affinity with fire, my element, part of what and who I am. Some of my brethren manifested as light, or as notes of music, or winds blowing through the garden, each of us according to our nature and gifts, but me, I was as a flame, many-winged and many-eyed. Flash-burning across the untainted sky of Eden. And… after… when the gates were shut, then I blazed implacable and terrible.
Some point after this and I had to be sent to them, tell them just what they’d earned for themselves. And the Name stopped me from going in the form I would have. He said, He said, THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BEAR YOU NOW.
I didn’t understand. He instructed me to touch one of the flowers that grew outside the gates. And it was not warmed by my touch, as I expected, but consumed, destroyed utterly. Black ash. Ashes and dust.
SO IT IS WITH THEM NOW, GABRIEL. THEY ARE AS GRASSES OF THE FIELDS, AND MY GLORY THAT IS IN YOU IS TOO MUCH FOR THEM. CLOTHE YOURSELF.
So flesh settled around me, and from that day to this when we walk on the earth we do so in the fashion of men, with that which we were in the beginning hidden from eyes that would be blinded by it.
The copy is not exact-- I don’t know why, why this should be so, why even in looking like them we do not look exactly like them, but the differences remain in subtle things, eyes and fingernails and details that they can pick up with their ever-advancing science.
Oh yeah, and the wings.
Ezekiel had the chance to see us more or less as we are (poor bastard). As he writes of it, 'Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.' That part, the covering bit, that remained, so the spirit becomes flesh and the wings become cloth, wham bam thank you ma’am. They make nice coats, essentially. And ensure that we can walk around discreetly, inconspicuously.
Among you, with you unawares.
Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? Because, when we really look… not that much about you guys is hidden from us.
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gabriel * the prophecy (series) * word count: 486 |
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thoughtful