A Second Beginning

[Living_Hellfire]

Circa 4,358,018,237 AD.

 

He had pushed himself at first. Free from constraints and time limits, with nowhere to be and no-one depending on him he found himself playing with his limits. He pressed and pressed himself forward and the stars, some of which would now be long extinct smeared across the black as he approached the speed of light until he began to feel so heavy, his mass having increased so much that he could scarcely keep his eyes open before having to slow once more. He found evidence of life and civilization on his journey outward. A small ring of derelict satellites orbiting a dying star, an artificial habitat floating and spinning through space, long abandoned and likely jettisoned or broken away from some larger, space-faring structure or craft. But nothing truly alive.

 

He came to the cold realization that the black wasn't evil or malicious or even apathetic. It was merely an ocean without a shoreline. It was completely unaware, not so much uncaring as entirely ignorant of existence as a concept. He wondered why Grandfather had built it to be so and began to question if his resentment was justified. Perhaps there was something he didn't know. Having seen it now, firsthand, this tiny sliver and finally coming to grips with the enormity of what it was he wondered perhaps if there truly was something that he hadn't considered. Perhaps Grandfather was not what he thought He was. Perhaps he had underestimated.

 

The little planet that he chose was lush with life. The days and years comparable in length, although slightly longer in both cases. The thin blue light from the local star shifted the colours of the flora and fauna on the planet, what would have been green was instead red and orange, which suited him fine. The gravity was higher, necessitating more effort in terrestrial flight, but the slightly thinner air pressure allowed him to accelerate faster and also dampened his ambient heat, reducing minimum safe distance from about six feet to three or four and even allowing him to make physical contact with the denser matter on the planet; minerals and even the hardier plant life, though not for long before it immolated or melted between his fingers. As for the fauna, it was slightly more stunted, shorter in the higher gravitational pull of the small world but still surprisingly similar in concept. The aesthetics were different, but there were still insects, small mammals, reptiles, birds, large and small predators, large and small prey animals.

 

Most remarkably there was a sapient species. It was these that drew him as he had floated past, drawing his attention downward. A bipedal race, seemingly evolved from some form of canid species. They were furry, stout with forward facing eyes and long snouts with sharp, carnivorous teeth and triangular ears atop their heads that swiveled and folded depending on the situation. They had claws on the end of their hands and feet that were shortening slowly, at the speed of evolution and long tongues that lolled from their mouth after exertion. They carried sharpened sticks and lived in little burrows, caves and occasionally huts molded out of the local clay. They seemed to have language, although he couldn't understand it, mostly growls and yips. They were beautiful, terrible, primal and sophisticated all at once. They were brutal and kind, loving and hateful, generous and selfish, disciplined and hedonistic. They were perfectly imperfect. He fell in love with them almost immediately. Their breeding cycle was long, but their litters were large. They had a discernable, yet incomprehensible social hierarchy that was typical, the females caring for young and tending the homes while the males hunted and fought petty tribal wars. He thought of Bosco, his loyal hound in the Crucible and named them thus. They were the Boscans.

 

Were he pure-blood he could have changed his form to appear like them, to blend in at least at a glance, at a distance, but his human heritage prevented that and so he stayed well away. Their olfactory senses likely would have betrayed him anyway and so for lack of a better option decided to retain his flat black suit, loafers, shades and fedora when roaming about this new, little world.

 

Only now did he allow himself access to The Room of Many Doors through which he traveled back and forth between this little world and The Crucible.

 

Screwtape immediately demanded that he become their god, that he influence them and rule over them, a suggestion which earned him a mighty kick, but the grumbling never stopped. His constant devil, urging him into crapulence and debauchery of the heart and spirit, but he would endure it as he always had. Screwtape was denied.

 

Instead he would revert to his nature. He would be their Angel. He would watch over them and guard them, not from themselves or each other, but from any other who would interfere with them. He adopted them. He would not guide them. He would not give them law. He would not scold them or praise them. He would stand by and allow them to set their own path.

 

And so The Angel on Fire rested, finally, for the first time in five hundred millennia. He was home again.

Edited December 18 by Living_Hellfire