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           it’s a name so familiar,  yet so foreign upon this plane.  it must harm the body,  its tongue and entire being unfit for such sounds,  but whatever creature resided within him did not care.  it bellowed eden’s name,  his true name,  distorting this plane with its very noise.  it crackled like fire,  the very flames bursting from the being across from him as he attempted something unachievable in this world –  and succeeded.

it causes eyes to widen,  frame to tense up in a way it had not for a very,  very long time.  was eden preparing to flee ?   “  you are not from this plane.  are you a demon,  or an even worse eldritch being ?  ”  voice is steady despite how shaken he is,  jaw clenched as he looks at the husk across from him.  “  why do you taint this human man ?  ”

☀) The Prophet regards the other with something akin to both amusement and detached resentment. The feelings were not his own. This one evidently sparked less rage than others had before, like Gabriel, whose mere presence could be enough to make him feel as though the fire in his veins was consuming him. Instead of a roaring blaze, he settles on an almost gentle, scolding tone.         “You would do well not to make presumptions about our being, 𝐳𝐚𝐚𝐳𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐡. When we say there are no words to describe what we have become, it is so.” Flames fall down from his mouth when he speaks, growing and blooming into fiery flowers the instant they touch the stone floor, but they do not spread. (He might still burn the church down to the ground, but that’s something for later.)

     THE CHANGE was so sudden that she could not have possible foreseen it. In the blink of an eye, not the Prophet but an ice statue of himself stood before her. Chris saw it in his eyes, in his stillness, in the sparrow’s destruction inside his closed fist and in the flames burning between his fingers. The one in his hand was not a playful fire anymore - it was the prelude to a blaze that did not know pity nor satisfaction (just like hers would be, so many years later). She opened her eyes wide. Her breath got stuck in her throat. Her foot had slipped in a crack on the ground, and she had not realized it yet. Only his words helped her, and she immediately understood which of her words had wronged him. She opened her mouth to speak, but the fire he spat out closed it immediately. He was a fountain of flames - and she could not even imagine what it was like to be burnt or even only touched by that jet. Burning water then turned into sparrows again, then any trace of it disappeared. As ephemeral as a dream, but realer than it. 

     For long seconds she did not speak, as if even just one more syllable could do further harm. Words spun in her head and on her tongue before she found the right ones to reply. “I beg your pardon.” (His and the other’s) “It was foolish and presumptuous of mine to assume such a thing.” Greater beings equaled to gods to her. In Father’s books she had never found any trace of prophets speaking in name of other creatures, but there was always a first time. She should have thought about it earlier, before saying words she did not have any right to say.

     She did not dare ask for forgiveness any further. Words were a powerful weapon, she had always known they were, and now she was afraid one more would set the city on fire.

☀) His expression was still somewhat vacant when he unhurriedly turned his gaze back to her. He saw the fear, and it did nothing to him. No pleasure, no displeasure. Absentmindedly, he wondered about this. It had been so long since he had felt fear. He couldn’t quite recall what it was like. Would there come a day he failed to even recognise it upon someone else’s face? He thought of the dreams he had every night which gnawed at his sleep, if he slept at all. His body remembered fear. It would wake him, quivering, perspiring, but to him it had long lost meaning. It didn’t belong to him. Nothing belonged to him. Not anymore.

         “We forgive you,” he said, “and likewise beg your pardon. The fault is not yours. We merely...” He trailed off into silence as he tried to think of a way to phrase it without igniting himself with rage once more. It was a very raw anger, an anger that had come forth from an unforgivable hurt, but The Prophet moulded it into a sadness. (It felt just as foreign to him as anger.) “...dislike being reminded.”

        What an odd feeling, this anger turned sorrow. No wonder he had been gifted with fire to sear his veins shut. The Prophet folded his hands behind his back and turned just slightly, eyes cast towards the sky once more as if he may still see the sparrows. “Ours is a most unfortunate existence. We were never meant to be this way.” And for that, they would take everything.

u can yell at him he’ll just cry

     HAD HER people not abandoned their gods like they had abandoned them - or so whispered voices inside books said - centuries before, she would have been even more akin to the Prophet. A creature like her, so powerful and so important, could not be but a God’s incarnation. She had read that somewhere, in a volume she had not found in her house anymore, even if she had looked on every shelf and in every trunk. Whether it had been lost or brought out of the house, she could not tell. She knew her parents would only answer vaguely to any question, thus she had not even tried. From time to time, she still thought about that small piece of information, a tessera which would never find its place in the mosaic of her life. What God could have possibly nestled in her soul? The Great Mother of Life and Death? The God all of their magic had come, came and would always come from? It was so hard to tell. Hours of researches had not took her a step closer to her destination at all.

     "And what God is yours?” She had read about many of them. Dead gods whose tombs had been buried by centuries of sand and dust. Goddesses still alive on high mountains where only few humans dared live. Deities lying at the bottom of the ocean, waiting for the day of their terrible coming. She wondered whether his had still a throne and a kingdom or was looking for their old ones.

     The little fire sparrow on his palms surprised her more than his words. Chris watched it gently flapping its wings, perhaps waiting for the right moment to take flight and disappear in an explosion of flames in the air. Her eyes then moved to the Prophet, and her lips opened in a peaceful smile. Her heart felt a little lighter. “Thank you.” She had never been afraid of consequences. She would not be not even on her final day, and she would accept her staying in her private limbo like she had accepted her fate, decades before. “I offer you my help too, shall you ever be in need of it. Although…” A soft laughter cascaded from her lips. “Although I’m not sure a Prophet will ever need it.”

☀) At the mention of the word ‘God’, the sparrow of flames halted its movements abruptly, its head canted so that it would be staring at Chris if not for its lack of eyes. Likewise, The Prophet had grown still as a statue. There was no name for what he served, for what flowed through his veins. Not anymore. The Hyacinths Girl could not be blamed for her ignorance (for who but he was not ignorant?) but it sparked something nevertheless.

                  An anger that was not his.

      The Prophet had long since been detached from his emotion. A vessel had no use for emotions of his own. Yet the desire to call forth a furious blaze coursed through his veins as if it was his own. A vessel, indeed. Together with emotions, his physical senses had dulled. Cold or warm made no difference to him. That which could not harm him, did not hurt him. The wrath of that which he was bound to, however... it seared his insides, threatening to consume him from within if he ignored it.                    (Well, in that sense it was no different from the fire... merely stronger.)

       The Prophet waited, however, and The Hyacinth Girl said the words, and with something akin to relief he closed his hand. Although the sparrow vanished, the flames did not, leaking from between his fingers and rapidly engulfing him, growing only larger. His face showed no change, remaining icily calm, with the corners of his mouth still faintly turned upwards as if he had forgotten about them.

        “We are but a shadow of what we once were.” His voice was only barely audible over the fire, which roared and snapped like only fire could. “There is no name for what we are now. You would do well not to presume otherwise.”

eyes emoji

     maybe she should have been scared of a man who knew so much about her without having never seen her before, but in fact she was not. If rather, she was intrigued. Not one of his words was a lie, not one of them was out of place. Some of his abilities were the same as hers, but he was much, much more powerful than she was. She would not be lacking in modesty and state the opposite.

     “I’d think you’re just like me, if I didn’t already know that’s impossible.” Chris did not doubt The Prophet already knew what she was referring to. There was another question wanting to be asked; a more important one. “Why do you speak as if you were more people but also just one at the same time? Are you speaking in your god’s name too?”

☀) "You and I may have been very much alike, once.” The Prophet could tell that the girl did not hear the way he did, but there was something slumbering inside her nevertheless. Despite himself, they were already thinking about all the things they could do with that potential -- how her gifts might be amplified and supplemented. 

                   ...as well as the destruction they might bring forth as a result. 

      “You catch on quickly,” The Prophet said, sounding pleased. “It is true. I speak for us, as well as for myself. I am our voice. I was the first. That is why I speak, while others may merely act to carry out our will. Our connection is the strongest.”        He fell silent then, gaze focusing on something distant that eyes could not see. Memories. It seemed so long ago that he had been alone, and not just because of the passed time since then. Recollections of emotions and attachments from Before now seemed so alien to him. He knew it had mattered to him, once. It had mattered so much. He couldn’t even imagine the feeling. He couldn’t imagine dreaming not of inevitable destruction. He had been so weak, at the very end. So excruciatingly mortal. Had that which guided him not also remembered, The Prophet might very well have questioned it had happened at all.

       “Hyacinths Girl. We know of your plight, and we know of your wish.” The Prophet gently clasped his hands together and when he opened them, there was another tiny sparrow made of flames resting between his palms. It moved its fiery little body so naturally one might mistake it for a living thing. “There may very well come a time when failure seems all but inevitable. Should that ever happen, you may call upon us. We will be happy to assist you in any way necessary---” 

       (Though of course, that didn’t mean they might not very well step in earlier and force her hand if they so pleased.)