Chapter 2: When Wick and Oil Are Clean

Chapter 2:  When Wick and Oil Are Clean

"So it's you, Shackleborn."
My mind seems to be moving too slowly for this conversation.  By the time I figure out what she's talking about she has already started talking again.
"I have spent the last ten thousand years waiting - here - for you."
As she stands up the rags which had covered her fall away, revealing startlingly white wings that stretch six feet in either direction.  She turns and stares straight at me with golden hair, azure eyes, and not enough clothing for something so clearly angelic.  She begins to slowly walk down the altar toward me.
"Yes, surely you are the one chosen from the very dawn of creation for this noble task."
Her voice echoes throughout the chamber, filling the entire hall with her powerful, yet lilting soprano.  I take a few steps back, still trying to figure out what's going on.  She casts her hand forward toward me.
"Come, Shackleborn, your fight against evil is not yet complete!"
"My what?"

She comes to a stop, hand held still in a half-pointing, half-summoning gesture.  Her eyes widen as her expression shifts into one of confusion.  In a much quieter voice she asks, "Wait, aren't you fighting evil?"
"No- uh, not really?"  The words spill out before I can think.  I'm still completely off balance.  No, I'm significantly more off balance by the sudden shift in the conversation.  Her eyebrows scrunch inward as she stares at me.
"But you're really nice though!  And you've got a lantern!"  There's a pause for a moment, before she repeats, "A lantern!  That means you bring light to places.  And!  Who carries lanterns around anymore?"
She sounds so triumphant at the end that it's almost impossible to argue with her; the way she states her conclusion makes me feel bad for trying to argue in the first place.  Still, I find myself answering.
"I was born with it.  It's a kind of- well, it's like a curse, sorta."

She continues to stare blankly at me for a while still, before she finally pulls back her hand and her expression lights up like a child on Kurisumas morning.
"That's it!"  I cringe slightly at how loudly her voice reverberates through the hall.  "Cursed by an evil wizard, you've used the cruel punishment to instead enact righteous vengeance upon him and his evil minions!"
The gears all finally click into place in my head.  My entire body relaxes and I let out something between a protracted sigh and a laugh.
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen.  Why?"
You "waited a thousand years" my ass.  Still, that explains a lot.  There are practically no angels anymore, since the majority of them died in battle.  She would've been six months old at the time of the war starting, so even if she'd been created fully formed there still wouldn't have been time to train or teach her.  She would've been less than useless on a battlefield.
"How do you know the plot of Dimension Breaker X?"
"I watched it on the television."
"Ah, so you at least have a home."

Her expression shifts painfully into something distant and flat.  "Well, no, but I can hide really well.  Unless someone is really good, they usually can't see me."  Dammit.  I should've seen that coming.  The muscles in my chest grow painfully tense as I look at her.  Seeing something so beautiful making that expression is just too painful.
I try to change the subject.  "Huh.  Well, I guess that makes me unusual, then-"
"Don't think that way!"  Her eyes meet my own, looking fierce, but still sad.
"I can tell when someone has a kind heart.  There's a," she pauses as her eyes settle on my chest, "a pain one feels when he sees others suffer.  I can see it."
With that she steps forward and places one hand on the center of my chest.  There's a moment of silence where she simply stares at her own hand, before she turns upward.  When she speaks it is so much more quiet than before, and she sounds so pained for speaking, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to help you."  She looks away, "No, I'm just not strong enough to help you."

I've been playing the defense for this entire conversation.  No, it's not even a conversation: I've just been getting talked to this entire time.  I don't really know what she's doing, or why she's doing it, but at the very least I want her to stop looking like she's on the verge of tears.  I try to force an easy laugh.  "Hey, when'd I ask for help?  I'm doing well enough."
She looks at me again, and this time she finally manages to smile.  "You're doing it again.  You're trying to help others."
Her words hang in the air for a minute.  I take the time to finally pull me eyes away from the beautiful figure before me and turn to look around the temple.
"This place will be gone soon.  You're living here, right?"  I don't bother to wait for a response.  "You'll need to find somewhere else to go."
"That's right!"  I almost jump as her voice returns to bouncy excitedness.  "I'll need to find a new secret lair!  Do you know of any volcanoes nearby?  No, wait!  What about floating castles?  Ooh, maybe an underwater science lab!"
For once I actually managed to hold onto the conversation as it shifted.  "You might have an easier time getting something on land."

For the next fifteen minutes I entertain various notions the short-haired angel presents, bouncing happily from one unreasonable sci-fi or fantasy lair to another.  Each one seems to come with its own supervillain for her to do battle with in different, often mutually exclusive ways.  She's just as frequently using the power of friendship as she is incredible deductive reasoning skills, brute strength, magical artifacts, or training in one hundred times Earth's gravity.  It's not long after she begins discussing the pros and cons of having a moonbase that I stifle a yawn and, with a startling realization, check my phone.  Dammit.  It's going to be two A.M. before I can get back home.

"Hey, listen, I've gotta go," I say in a rush.  For a moment she doesn't show any response at all, before her expression starts to fall.
"Ah.  No, that makes sense.  You need to sleep, don't you?"
"Well, yeah.  But hey," I begin to regret my words before I can even say them, "we'll meet again sometime."
Her smile returns slightly as her eyes seem to grow distant.  No, it's more like she's looking right through me.  Her voice reverberates through the hall as she speaks, "Yes, we will.  And perhaps, then, I will be able to aid you.  But until then, there's something which I must speak, and which you should hear."  She steps closer to me, and looks at me without ever seeming to see me.  "Until we meet again, I want you to remember something.  To know something.  It is this:  They are not acting in cruelty, they who seek only to protect themselves - body, mind, or heart."  There's something archaic about they way she speaks which I almost recognize.  "It is in cruelty they act, those who would constrain your very soul to shed a single mote of suffering from their shoulders.  Take not the words of deceivers who would fill you with shame before they break you, but hear only the wisdom of those who truly seek your happiness."

"Um.  Okay.  Thanks."  There's a moment where she doesn't move, but simply stares at some random point five inches behind me.  Then, once again, her eyes widen and she shouts, "wait!"  I cringe slightly, but do as she asks.  "I forgot to ask your name!  What is it?"
"Val."  I wait for a second, but she simply blinks at me.  "I'm Val."
"Oh," she almost sighs in disappointment.  Then she raises her head back up, "oh!  Oh right!  I forgot how short your names were!  Right."  She nods to herself.  "Right."
"And, uh.  And you?"
She stops and stares at me in complete confusion.  Again, I wait for a moment and a look of realization washes across her expression.  "Right!  Right, you can't sense my name!"  In the temporary pause that follows, she seems to consider her new discovery while I'm forced to wonder if she has ever actually spoken to a human being before.
"I'm Camisahasriel, of the Fifth Circle of the Eighth Fundament, Watcher of the Five-and-Five dawns of the Forgotten Paradise, Sleeper Among the Plains of the Idyllic, and Dreamer of All-Lost-Dreams."

For a moment I wonder how much of that is truly part of her angelic nature and the circumstances of her birth, and how much of that is part of her fantastical delusions.  I decide against asking.  "Cami.  Got it.  Well, it was nice to meet you, Cami."
I turn and set out to leave, not giving her anymore time to distract me with cryptic, archaic preaching or ridiculous fantasy-realm imaginings.  As I walk out through the side door I entered from I spare a glance back toward the angel.  She is simply staring at me, watching me leave.  I walk down the stone corridor back to the offices and I wonder what will happen to that girl.  It strikes me that she's not unlike that nekomata.  She's another stray in this world.

Another orphan.

---

I quietly close the door as I enter my home.  It's probable that I'm going to get some questions about this, but I at least want to put that off until tomorrow.  Unfortunately that hope is dashed as an exceptionally strong pressure suddenly appears around my right leg, stopping all movement.  In the darkness two pairs of light reflect the flickering light of my flame: one golden and the other violet.  The golden pair shift right up next to me without so much as a sound, and I feel the two wet tips of Safi's tongue barely graze my cheek.  A sigh fills the air.

"Didn't even touch her," Safi whispers.
"I know," responds Sister.
"It was four hours, though."
"I know."
"But she already tried to have sex."
"I know."
There's a pause as I consider my response to all of this.
"It must be torture," Safi finally concludes.
For a moment, Lythalia and I are both silent, before she angrily mutters, "I know."

"Hey, Safi, I'm starting to lose feeling in my leg here."  Once again, there's a pause before I feel the pressure around my leg disappear.  The golden lights in my vision shift to look elsewhere and I hear a barely perceptible "I'm sorry."  For a moment that's all that happens, before I hear a rustling sound and the occasional reflective glint of purple disappears into the hallway heading toward the bedrooms.  The two violet discs continue to stare directly into my eyes as I wait.

"Something wrong, Sister?"  There are two loud clicks of heels on wood as the eyes advance on me, followed by a sudden and sharp sound and stinging pain.  My hand reaches toward my cheek without me consciously guiding it.  It takes me a moment to figure out what just happened before I can turn to look back toward those eyes.
When she finally draws in enough air to do so, Lythalia speaks in something between a whisper and a shout.  "How many girls do you have to fucking torment before you'll just fucking help one of them!?"
I'm honestly shocked.  I don't think I've heard Lythalia curse before, nor have I ever seen her show even the slightest violence.  She's always wearing that weird smile that makes me uncomfortable, but now that she's this close I can see genuine anger and frustration in her expression.
"What would it cost you to just stop hurting everyone around you?  Nothing!  It wouldn't be the slightest fucking discomfort."  She's practically spitting out the words now.  "But no, a few days from now your stupid lunar calendar will go off and you'll lock yourself in your room and just fucking ignore your sisters and friends while we stew in our pain.  You won't even-"

Her face shifts into a pained expression as her eyes finally break away from mine.  After a moment she continues.  "You don't even care.  I'm just- I'm just so hungry, dammit.  The crystals the church provide aren't like the real thing, they keep me alive but they don't feel- they're not like," she trails off.  Her head slumps forward as a pair of hands press into my chest, pushing me back slightly before I can regain my balance.  "I'm just so hungry," she practically cries into my chest.  "Val, please," she whines, as one of her hands begins to travel downward.  "I'll make it fast.  It won't be any trouble.  I'll be done before you can even blink."  Her voice is shifting, even though it's still marked by the faintest hint of sobs, into something different.  Deeper, throaty, needy.

Pain begins radiating outward throughout my chest.  It's the same nervous tension I always get whenever Sister starts trying to drag me into something sexual.  This time, though, it's different.  There's another kind of pain that I also immediately recognize.  The pain of every muscle in my chest tensing up in unison.  It's the sympathetic pain I always get when I see one of my sisters hurting.  In a few seconds a dozen thoughts race through my head.  Is she really suffering, or is this just another one of her attempts at dragging me into her cult?  Or is she trying to get me to forgive her in her own twisted, perverse way?  Or is she starving, just as she says?  For a moment the two different pains war in my body, heart, and mind, vying for dominance, trying to figure out what I should do.

It doesn't last long.  Her hand clasps the front of my jeans and my body reacts on its own.  There's a flash of movement that I'm barely aware of, and a loud thump as her back hits the far wall.  My arms are still outstretched as I figure out what my reflexes just did without me.  The flickering violet discs shift and distort as her expression fully shifts to pained frustration, and then they're gone.  A series of loud taps and a few hiccuping sobs echo from the hallways as she runs crying from the room.

The war between the pains in my body finally ends.  Only one remains.