zophiel

zophiel does not believe the war will end.

she has no frame of reference for it, can’t remember a heaven not scored by shelling and smelling of the pyre. “before the war” is nothing but a story her brothers tell each other with their bellies deep in mud, a sweet lie to warm their wings—this thing that began must have an ending, we need only live to see it.

(her wings smelled of iron before she knew what they were for; the harps were long ago unstrung, sword-calloused hands not knowing how to hold them. there is no before, not for her, and not after)

heaven is battlelines and mud, and hell is fire; all else is vacuum, and darkness, but zophiel survives, and she is glad, glad, glad.

.

zophiel walks through the trenches with bare feet and knees scraped down to the marrow, collarbones like pottery shards and teeth, so many teeth. her brothers call her the beauty of god—see her rouged with demon’s blood, her hair like a flocks of goats, slaughtered on the hills of Gilead. when she opens her wings, they make a sound like artillery fire, and she laughs as it is said lucifer laughed, like she is asking to be kicked in the teeth.

her brothers call her the beauty of god—

yes, she agrees.

I must be, yes.

.

they have a running joke, in heaven. it goes like this:
it’s not too late, you can still turn back.

.

the first time she meets the archangel raphael, her blood is on his hands (and labcoat)(and cheek)(and her hands, her armor, her everything, she is all blood on the wrong side of her skin, even her laughing mouth tastes of copper.) she does not know him, not then—only that he is bright and terrible in the white of the hospital, and she is afraid.

but the archangel raphael’s eyes hold more gentleness than she had known was in the universe, and he says, little sister, you are very nearly dead. let me heal you.

(dead is a human word, dead is a word they had to borrow, transliterate, the morningstar teaching them its meaning in lines of broken angels, all the light gone out of them. and for a moment zophiel can’t remember what that means, dead—)

when she sinks to her knees, raphael is there. be not afraid, he whispers, as she slips away into the darkness. do not be afraid.

.

raphael is a relic of Before, with skin that smells of myrtle and hands that do not understand how to do violence despite the blood under their nails. zophiel does not believe he is real either, except sometimes he rattles the windows, as he passes.

.

you do not like it here, raphael observes as he examines her. his hands follow the curvature of her spine, but the sensation is strange—there are no callouses on his palms, no powder burns at his fingertips. they are not like any other hands she has known.

it’s the quiet, she finally says. I was not made to languish in this white peace. we are creatures for the battlefield, it is strange to find a place set apart from it.

no. none of us were made for war, raphael says quietly. I was there, I remember.

she does not know how to answer that.

raphael’s unscarred hands come to rest over her scapulae. I am sorry, little sister, he says. there is a kind of grief in his voice zophiel does not know. I am so sorry.

.

she has never been sorry. it has never occurred to her that she ought to be—she did not know she was meant for anything else, made for some other purpose. there is nothing in her but mud and blood and laughter, what god would make her for something else but that?

the knowledge sits with her, bitter.

.

how did you forgive our father? she asks raphael. they are rolling bandages in the cool green storeroom. her stitches ache from the rise and fall of her stomach, and she is dizzy with trying to breathe shallowly. she shuts her eyes. how did you forgive him?

forgive him what? raphael asks, which is an answer in itself.

.

they have another joke, told in the trenches on those dark, freezing nights. what’s the difference between heaven and hell?

they’re still looking for a punchline.