He was granted not even a breath's reprieve before the Creator; in the span of a heartbeat, he was cast back into the shadowed outline from whence he came. Yet fortune, or perhaps divine mercy, had preserved the sanguine trail he had forged, along with all the hard-won progress. The angel, now poised with renewed resolve, turned to return to her and perhaps, at last, to comprehend how he might mend what had been fractured. Yet at his very first step, his form collided once more with an unseen force. A familiar resistance.
It was the fifty-first feather that awakened his understanding: the misshapen orbs scattered like ornaments beyond the bramble's edge were not stones, nor illusions, but ripe, glistening apples—fruits of temptation, their crimson and gold hues blending into a siren's shimmer of irresistible beauty.
He longed to approach, to examine them with reverent awe, but an anguished voice shattered the stillness and rooted him in place.
"Where are you?! WHERE ARE YOU?! Please! I beg you, return to me!"
He did not hesitate. Headlong, he plunged into the thorns, retracing the path marked by his own blood. There, collapsed upon herself like a flame dying in the wind, was the weeping silhouette. Her edges were frayed and flickering, as though she were fading from existence with every tremble of the air. And when their eyes met, there was union. Immediate. Unbreakable.
Her gaze faltered, burdened by shame. She recognized the purity in his eyes—the absence of cruelty—and knew with certainty that what had befallen her was not born of malice, but of misjudgment and despair. Through trembling sobs and the softest caress upon his silent visage, she spoke—her voice barely a breath upon the wind:
"You… have never been cherished. You have wandered a world forever cloaked in shadow. But I beg of you, let my vision become yours. Permit my feeble light to reach into your soul, and temper your innocent sorrow."
The angel could not answer. He stood as stone, wordless and still, and allowed the one he thought lost to become the bearer of his way forward.
His eyes dropped in shame, consumed by the weight of the vile act he had committed.
It was no longer a dream, but a truth—horror incarnate.
He deserved a hundred more lost feathers, and perhaps, in his heart, knew himself unworthy of the Creator's gaze.
Perhaps the Creator had foreseen his failings and, in divine foresight, turned away.
Yes… it had to be so. The refusal to offer aid, the silence in the face of his pleas—these were not cruelties, but judgments. And how he had pleaded. Like a wretched child, he had wept and begged, never understanding the weight of what he would become.
He stared into the delicate, trembling frame before him. And then, three verdant, elongated fingers reached forth and touched his vision. The helper's fingertips, tender as breath, pressed against his sclera… and became claws. Hooks of flesh and vine, they burrowed with unnatural swiftness into the soft sanctum of his eye.
The warrior, once blind and now newly sighted, felt his vision being torn from him anew—and before resistance could rise, the eye was taken. Yet he felt no pain. Not a spark. Only the rush of warm blood, cascading endlessly.
Still, he remained, arms cradling the fragile being who had gifted him light. And then something stirred deep within: an essence ancient and alien. It surged upward, coiling through his lymph, his blood, his breath, until it found its seat within his skull.
As if obeying an unspoken command, the gaping wound ceased to bleed.
His cheekbones remained stained with the dark crimson of sacrifice—a color no longer foreign to the warrior's battered flesh.
Alas, the weeping attendant could gaze upon him no longer. For the first time, she beheld the ruin of her own form—not through the reflection of a mirror, but directly, with a clarity sharpened by finality. It began with the jagged scar she had for so long sought to rend from her flesh, a cruel emblem of suffering etched deep into her being. Her lone eye, pale as dying embers, framed by locks of golden hue, had now become part of the vision shared with the nameless warrior. Thus did her purpose reach its conclusion, though she had never known it was a purpose at all.
The son of the Creator now perceived the world through her gaze: the same hues, the same contours, the same dimensions shaped by shared memory and forgotten pain. And yet, he could not tell whether the slow fading of her aquamarine figure was a natural decay or a divine unraveling. She had begun to lose color, imperceptibly at first, then wholly—her essence shriveling, fluids departing her as though exhaled by a dying flower scorched beneath an eternal sun. The air itself had turned hostile, charged with an ancient, silent wrath. No path remained to return whence they came. But this, for her, was no longer a burden nor sorrow. She had at last freed herself from the prison she had unknowingly wrought around that fractured sanctuary. From the eyes of the angel fell tears not of water, but of different substances—each a silent testimony to two distinct sufferings.
"Thank you."
The words rang only within his soul, unspoken yet thunderous.
To offer her an embrace felt natural, inevitable—the final gesture of gratitude owed to one whose final moments belonged to rot and release. Even in death, she had carried him. But before he could bend toward the wilted form, he saw them—four fingers, black as oblivion, reaching like tendrils of shadow. His sight fractured into slashing bands of light and dark, until the figure in his arms revealed itself for what it was: a withered stalk, brittle and lifeless.
And from behind, hands covered his eyes—not to blind him, but to lead him. Back to where it all began.
Who else, if not the Creator?
"Gastei toda a minha força em buscar a alegria, mas nunca com tanto fervor como quando eu procurava-seja pelo silêncio ou pela sombra-para escondê-la dos outros."
(All my strength I have spent in pursuit of joy, yet never with such fervor as when I sought—whether by silence or by shadow—to withhold it from others.)