“I’ll wait,” I whispered at last. “One day. I can do one day. I will take one more day of pain, because I love you. One day, Lucius. Then Gwenhwyfar is done.”
He brushed his lips to my forehead and shifted; dust and pebbles danced in his wake.
And I sat there in the dust and waited as the sun swung down and the moon crossed the sky and the pink of new dawn tinged the horizon.
The stones were raking the sky when I slowly rose to my feet once more.
I’d kept my word.
I’d waited.
But he had not returned.
So I flew slowly home, and alighted on my balcony. I watered my lavender, and wrote my letter to him.
I thanked him for his thankless kindness down the long and bitter years.
I asked him to understand, and to remember me how I had been, not how I was.
I folded the sheet of fine pink paper, scrawled a heart and kisses on the outside which were swiftly blotted with tears.
I left it in the middle of my table.
And closed my door on my home for the last time.
I made my way to the great Reliquary. I waited for Azrael to notice me. And I said the words.
He watched me as the final echoes of my request died away.
“Please,” I whispered, when he said nothing and the silence had grown awful.
“You know there is no return from this,” he answered, gently. “You will be unwound, and the little strands that make you you will go into other living things. You know there is no way to unpick that, right?”
“I don’t want to return. I’ve… done enough.”
“Oh, Jenny,” he sighed. “You have done nothing, in the greater scheme of things.”
“Your viewpoint is necessarily wider than mine,” I whispered. “You see the forest. I’m the rotten tree that stifles new life.”
“Little Gwenhwyfar. So certain in your shame. It’s almost pride, in a way. A vanity, believing that what you have done is too terrible to forgive. Nothing is unforgivable.”
I felt the shadow of his great, terrible wings spread over me.
An awful cold pierced my body and I fell to my knees.
I stared upwards at him, towering over me.
“Do you understand what oblivion is?” he said, his words coming as if from aeons away.
“Freedom,” I whispered.
“No. It’s undoing. Think, child, of what you’d undo. All those bright, burnished moments you’ve shared with me, with your friends. Even with that remarkably unfortunate human girl you were unlucky enough to cross paths with… so often,” he finished, with a gentle soft irony in his tone.
“You knew.”
My words were a statement of fact.
“I see the signs,” he answered. “I see many things, Jenny. All this has been before. All this will be again. You are not the first of us to… dally where we shouldn’t.”
His wings furled, he shrank, I took a painful breath.
“Would you undo all that you are? All that you will be?”
His voice was gentle, fatherly. He reached forward to raise my chin so that I’d be forced to look at him.
“All I am is pain,” I said, low and resigned. “I was born in loneliness and born again here in blood. Pain follows me. Destruction of all I love dogs my shadow. I… please. Release me. Please, Azrael. Please. Let me go.”
“And what of Jezebel? Would you tear out the heart of the woman you love? Curse her to an eternity of regrets, too?”
“She… doesn’t love me,” I whispered. I clutched myself, unable to suppress the agony of that thought. “Maybe she did. I don’t know. But… but she won’t now, and she never will again.”
His eyes seemed to fill the world.
Old.
Ageless.
Profoundly sad.
“Jenny. Go back below,” he cajoled. “Go live again. Be part of this great work.”
“No. There is nothing for me down there.”
I stared up at him, and the tears fell.
“Please,” I whispered. “Be merciful. Please. Let me go.”
He sighed.
And shadows gathered around the edges of things.
“Gwenhwyfar Sian Carew,” he whispered in words as loud as all Creation. “You will stand.”
I could not disobey.
But I did look down in shock as first one, and then others of my grey feathers began to fall, the light in each winking out as it touched the black marble beneath my feet.
“Oh,” I whispered.
So that was how it happened.
How quaint…
“You stand at a crossroads, Gwenhwyfar Sian Carew. Turn aside here… or walk on but a little way and you will find that ultimate end that you believe you so desperately seek. Others have stood where you stand. Most turned aside. I beg you, child. Follow their example. Do not end yourself. You still have so much to be.”
I stared upwards at him.
“But… why?” I managed. “Why continue, when every step brings pain and all joy is dead? I’ve destroyed all that was precious to me through my own pride. I will never get it back. Why should I go on?”
“Hope, girl!” he answered. “I am Azrael. Do you think that I amongst all His creations would not know futility? And yet… we hope. We feel. We embrace one another.”
He smiled a strange smile.
“And greatest and most important, we love. Love, Jenny. Love her as she loves you – with everything that you are.”
A gust of wind.
A singled terrified “No!”
And someone collided with me and grappled me and knocked me to the floor, sliding over the polished stone, entangled with me until we fetched up painfully against the stairs.
Pain lanced through me; someone was slapping and punching, flailing ineffectually at me, screaming.
Jezebel, my heart whispered.
“You selfish fucking cunt”, she raged at me as she fought her way free of me. She grabbed my shoulders and began to shake me like a jaguar rending its prey. “You fucking… shit-headed little… fucker! What the fuck are you thinking, you stupid thrice-damned child! Do I mean nothing to you? Is my heart worth any consideration at all, you scraggly, spiteful fucking… fuck!”
“Jezebel,” I finally managed, too staggered, too disordered to say more.
“No, it’s Mother Fucking Theresa, you ignorant, infantile, stupid…. Oh fuck me, I am going to… I’m going to….”
And then she dragged me up onto her lap and wrapped her arms around me, keening as she rocked us back and forth.
Her perfect Magpie wings furled around me to shield me from everything.
I reached up to trail my fingers through her wrecked and tangled tresses.
“But… you left me,” I managed, strangely calm even to my own ears, convinced that this was some odd hallucination, some delusional moment of my final death.
“You… I… I was angry!” she roared, voice once again weird with the harmonics of profound rage and fear. “It’s my… fucking nature, you, you… oh fuck me I can’t even find the words, and now I find you here, doing this shit? Ending yourself! Fucking really? I should end you for this! Fuck!”
Her fingers clutched spasmodically at the fabric of my shirt.
She pulled back and glared down at me through her tears. White-hot rage flickered briefly in her eyes.
Then she shuddered, gulping.
“Don’t you ever, and I do mean ever, try this again,” she whispered. “Oh… oh fuck me, I can’t… I can’t believe you… I nearly lost you… ”
And she began to sob – helpless, rib-cracking gasps that I slowly, in my usual blind way, came to realise were a reaction to existential dread.
Slowly the unreality faded.
Slowly I understood that she was real, and I was in her arms again, her scent and warmth surrounding me as they so often had.
As I’d never expected them to ever do again.
And that she’d feared she’d lost me.
“How did you know…” I whispered, as she regained a sliver of control.
“Lucius,” she panted. “Found. Me. And I… found your… fucking note. Fuck! Fuck, I was so… terrified I’d be too… late. Fuck you, Gwen, for… for doing this to me, you… you selfish… little…”
And she pushed her face against mine and moaned wordlessly.
“Oh,” I whispered.
Guilt flamed through me. I’d come so close to destroying her.
“Don’t ever… do this again…” she moaned. “Promise me.”
“I…”
“Promise me on your soul!” she screamed, clenching her fingers painfully into my flesh.
“… promise,” I whispered.
A weight dropped away.
I curled my legs up against myself and slowly slumped in against her.
I tangled my fingers into her tresses and started to shiver as all the fears and doubt blew away like smoke.
“I love you,” I breathed, unwilling to leave the words unsaid any longer, screwing my eyes tightly together as I surrendered myself to her.
“Mine,” she moaned, choked-up, nodding fiercely against me, clutching me to her as fresh tears tracked down her cheeks.
“Yours,” I gasped into her chest, not caring about anything else but that, even after everything, she still wanted me.
“Children,” sighed Azrael, watching over us with the faintest of smiles.
He folded his wings and turned away and left us there.
Even Death has some sense of modesty, after all.
And we had things we needed to do.
The tall, curvy redhead was talking passionately. Even from the distant corner I could see the animation, the interest in her eyes. She reached out, touched Caitlyn’s arm. Caitlyn laughed, smiled up at her counterpart. She was flushed. Interested. Intrigued.
Happy.
“She’s pretty,” Jezebel whispered.
“The redhead? Yeah, she’s gorgeous, isn’t she? Reminds me of you, actually…”
“No, idiot,” she said, amused. “Your human.”
“She’s not my human.”
“I can see what you saw in her.”
“She was lonely, I was fucked up…”
Jezebel’s fingers curled into mine. “I’m just teasing you, Feathers. But she is gorgeous. I always liked shorter girls. Makes you easier to… pick up and ravish,” she said, with a throaty chuckle.
I sighed, relaxed against my lover’s body as she shifted behind me, enjoying the way her arm curled over my belly.
“I’m sorry…”
“Stop,” she breathed. “I’ve told you before. It’s done. We got through it.”
She planted the gentlest of kisses on my neck, I whimpered, turned to nuzzle against her for a moment.
Drawings and paintings hung interspersed on perspex walls – abstracts, landscapes, portraits of people Caitlyn had seen or met or known.
Her first exhibition at twenty five – a massive achievement for a girl of her background.
Jezebel had told me we were going.
“Closure,” she’d said, when I’d asked the hesitant “Why?”
And I’d nodded, understanding the message within the message.
We moved slowly, ignored by all the gallery patrons.
“She’s really good. Fantastic eye for detail and proportion.” Jezebel said.
“Yeah. She is amazingly gifted.”
We rounded a corner and stared up at the two works that took pride of place.
On the left canvas, Rhiannon, taking a step up into the air, hand stretching to the border of the canvas, smiling…