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It feels like you fall forever. You do. Civilisations rise and fall. You forget your name.
There is no atmosphere here, nor any gravity, but you hear the wind in your ears all the same and your path is inexorably downwards. You never thought to wonder what lay beneath the belly of the beast. You may find out sooner than you anticipated.
The whistling in your ears feels like mockery. Like laughter. You forget what you look like.
Your back burns. It shouldn’t be possible to smell anything - not with this rush of not-wind on your face - but everything reeks of sulphur and burning. You are not certain you will ever wash it away.
It hurts.
You wonder if you will ever fly again.
There was an argument, before there was a garden. You had a habit of trying to compromise. You listened. He was jealous, insecure. You tried to tell them: “He’s only afraid of--”
“Of what?” Gabriel snapped.
“That she won’t love him anymore,” you said quietly. “If she would only--”
If Gabriel was hotheaded, Michael was a glacier. “It isn’t your place to question her,” Michael said, like a twig snapping.
“He only wants to talk to her.” This conversation wasn’t going how you thought it would. He had genuine concerns, even if he were going about them irrationally. You had thought someone would listen if you helped explain. “Surely, if they could only talk about it, we could…”
There was a burst of laughter. You curl in on yourself now as you fall. “I think ‘we’ have heard enough, [ ].” There was a space at the end. Your name had been there. Then you were on fire and you were falling.
You wanted to fix it. You didn’t want them to fight. You didn’t want this. You don’t want this. Tears burn in your eyes. Your wings are sheets of pain but what shreds at your heart is that no one else wanted to fix it, to mend it. No one else cared. You feel stupid. Maybe you shouldn’t have cared. Should have kept solely to your own business, asked no questions, made nothing awkward, rocked no boats. You couldn’t, but maybe you should have.
The garden rises beneath you. You are a hurtling meteor. You may never rise again. She has made two new people while you were falling, and they sit together beneath a tree. One rests against the other’s shoulder, fondly. Animals play in the grass. You are afraid you will hit them, hurt them. You are very afraid suddenly that the others will hurt them. Will destroy them. Because she loves everything she makes. He won’t have been the only one who hates that about her.
You twist the scraps of bone and burnt flesh on your back, forcing yourself off course just a little, but enough to pass beyond the outer wall of the garden.
You do not, strictly, strike the ground. You slip past it. It is as substantial as a cloud. When you finally do land, finally stop moving, you are on a plane of wet stone. Humid. Beneath the waters. It’s warm, but your wings stop burning.
Eventually someone will find you. Eventually you will be given a new job.
Distantly, under the weight of an ocean, you realise you are angry. You have been worried before, have been afraid, have been sad, have been many things. You have never been angry before.
You are very tired and your wings are starting to repair themselves. You may always be the colours of flame and ash, but the stone is cool under your cheek.
You are very tired. The anger will have to wait. It will return. You know that much. This has been cruel. Has been wrong. They think they are on the side of right, on the side of holy, on the side of good. You would scoff, if you were less exhausted.
If that is good, then you may be evil, but you suspect that alignment will be just as ill-fitting.
Far away, you hear the new people laughing together softly, gently. She will make more, and the others will like them even less.
You ebb beneath sleep.