closed starter for @hecatombi
it is the sad duty for those who would be older than the world to see it grow and to see it change and to see it become altered beyond recognition. to lose their footing in it, though it was only ever questionable in the first place, and to have the scope of their vision cut short by a new horizon. the angel has seen all of time, yet the looming darkness of the world he'd only ever pushed away in his mind ages ago, hoping that the winds should turn and the clouds would dissolve in the atmosphere before the storm would ever have a chance to start. but it did. and the world did turn dark and strange to him. heartbreaking, hard. cold. a lot of it had to do with the absence of a kind word from the almighty. a pause to span over centuries.
he wanders this world, and he sees it crumble before his feet, and sees others rush to save the fragments falling off the edge, much like he would have back in the day. he doesn't, now. he doesn't use his wings, and so he walks, and he slowly learned to tune away the hum of the universe, the eternal human prayer screaming with pain, and so his days are ruled by the divine silence. sometimes something does move him, however. those are the unguarded moments, right before entering yet another hopeless settlement, when a young tree is broken, nothing more than a twig, yet a promise of centuries of shade. something about its marred future drives a fog into his eyes and that familiar tenderness, one invoked by caring.
a pilgrim seemingly stepped out of the void of the past, encountering a youngling of its own era who would never see and know anything besides it, or what's to become of it. he tears a strip out of his own coat in order to tie it around the thin broken trunk. only then does he scrape the pits of his ribcage for the holy energy to heal it. it would take a few more hours to grow over. there ought to be space for trees, here. or, it ought to at least get a fair fighting chance.
