#tdtst

WOMAN Are you Adam Schirra? ADAM (bristling) What kind of a question is that? (The machine’s needles dance wildly, drawing squiggles across the page.) WOMAN (unflinching) Are you Adam Schirra? ADAM (after a long pause, quietly) Yes. (The machine beeps, its light flashing red, and the WOMAN writes something on her clipboard. ADAM leans forward across the table, grimacing.) ADAM What? Is it saying that I lied? (No response.) -- Adam takes a lie detector test. It goes about as well as you would expect.

a little something to chew on while the wait for chapter four drags on (sorry!)

are there any sad old man fans out here in the audience tonight

The Virtue had always known that, obviously, but Cecil has never felt this kind of cold before, was not designed to exist in these conditions; in fact, this abyss has seemingly been constructed specifically to be as unaccommodating to humans as possible. Edges that are deadly sharp and yet oddly fluid grate against them no matter which way they turn, slicing painfully and uncomfortably through their form without actually doing any damage.

Cecil tries to breathe and anchor and calm himself, or to at least gasp in pain, but freezing oil-ink-nothingness-glass-static pours down his throat and he gags, struggling against a realm that tugs and pushes in all the wrong directions.

So she stops breathing. She has to, if she wants any semblance of comfort here. She can still feel the base of her neck burning, liquid fire spilling from it and held back only by the frigid pitch-black around her. This is a place of recovery for the Virtue’s kind, after all. As unpleasant as it is for humanity, it is as close as anything will ever be to Heaven for angels.

Well then.

Cecil’s blood runs cold(er).

Now what do We have here?

Even without sight, Cecil is immediately and completely aware of every detail of the being—or would that be Being?—that glides through the void before her. A mass of Light that pierces every sense, spinning, burning, melting, screaming wheels circling Its form that somehow chills the not-air despite Their blinding brightness.

Cecil swallows thickly, tasting blood and terror. He realizes belatedly that both are his own, and that if he can taste them, then his looming, omnipresent God most certainly can.

Welcome back, Our little Virtue.

He has no features, of course, being nothing but a star-sized mass of Light, but Cecil can almost feel It smiling down on him in a mixture of pity, disappointment, and a few other emotions that make him feel vaguely sick and significantly dizzy.

The freezing heat and pressure is too much. It has always been too much. It’s always the same.

The Virtue splits down the middle, curling inwards like a dead bug, like a crushed bug, curdling like expired milk, spilling outwards like putty squeezed in a the palm of a hand, and Cecil and everything else burns away.

God holds the malleable shape of a blank angel in the palm of His hand, admires its simple perfection for a moment, and then begins to work.

He almost chuckles at the word “afraid”— for how ridiculous is it that a creature of fear feels it?

Your shell will serve a noble purpose. You will be redeemed to Us. You will make up for your error.

Cecil whimpers. It’s a pathetic sound, one a little boy scared of the monster under his bed makes. She can almost feel God’s freezing heat against the impossibly-delicate folds of shadow that make up her form.

We will repair you. Mend you. Make you one with Us again, as We were meant to be.

Cecil strains to get away, but within himself he can feel sinuous threads working against their will, moving their limbs to bring them in. Her thoughts feel fuzzy, but she clings to the memory of soft blankets and Mark’s warm laughter and pizza parties where they’d stay up until three in the morning watching movies but the Virtue can’t see, has never been able to see, and those memories are merely stolen from one of its many victims.

God’s Throne folds backwards, opening to reveal the gaping maw of the impossibly-bright core within.

For the first and only time in its existence, the Virtue can see.

And then that Light swallows it whole.

God hums again, as if having Their suspicions confirmed. Angels cannot feel fear. Angels do not disobey their Creator. To be reshaped, recreated, reborn, is something they are used to— designed for, even. Even this Virtue has some faces it knows are from whatever it was before being itself (being himself, now), ones he does not and never will remember killing to gain.

The struggling is no use. The harder Cecil pushes back, the closer God looms, almost tsk, tsking at their feeble attempts to get away. Every way Cecil twists or turns leads back to It, though whether the void is working against them or God is merely keeping pace with their fleeing or both or something else entirely doesn’t matter.

The Virtue is suddenly aware of a million senses pressing in around him, eyes and tongues and teeth and fingertips and talons and countless other unspeakable features all directed at the little angel that’s causing such a fuss.

They are all watching, or listening, or feeling, or smelling, or tasting Cecil. The reactions of her kin range from curious, to annoyed, to excited, to confused, to anywhere in between; yet these emotions all feel muted, and Cecil is aware—as she buckles under the judgement of her kind—that it is not due to a disconnection. No, God just mended that connection, patched the Virtue back into the feed. (Cecil never even realized the others had gone silent.) She can feel all of them perfectly clearly; they’re all just dulled. Each is only a thin smear of barely-individual identity over something that belongs wholly to God.

Cecil turns her attention back to Them, and, with some effort, says—

◜ Please. ◞