Elysius

Perfumes that smell of incense not yet burned.

Small golden bells that ring from an anklet, beckoning the spirits.

Freckles that show how much the light kisses our face.

Eyes that reflect the greens and browns of Earth or the icy greys of comets.

A feather welded to jewelry or selenite in a pendant, symbolic of the otherworldly.

Photo albums lacing the shelves, filled with images of all things holy or from the veil.

Blood that holds iron from eons ago, and hair that shimmers like precious bronze, obsidian, gold in the sun and moon light.

The warmth of freshly made hot chocolate hitting your face as you move the cup closer, smelling the rich creaminess and deep cocoa

Stars are visible through the breaks in the clouds, glistening as the days grow shorter and the sun disappears for longer

Sugar crystals glitter like ice on fresh out of the oven sugar cookies, falling between the butter-made crevices of the confections

A heated blanket warms your soft body as you lull yourself slowly asleep after a frigid day, frost hugging the frame of the bedroom window begging to be let into your cozy environment

Snow blankets the world in pure white, undisturbed in the middle of the night as it falls to Earth like angels, each little flake a radiant individual against the mass

Wind nipping at your cheek and nose while the rest of you is bundled up beneath fluff and fabric, your eyelashes flicker closed to give your eyes reprieve from the chill

Using the time inside to set up blankets and pillows like a nest to hibernate in, cozy in compare to the world just outside the door.

Skating on ice makes you feel non-corporeal as you drift and glide without effort, the silver of the skates carrying you as though you are weightless

The smell of pine trees and cinnamon pinecones fill the stores in random passing corners with artificially bright light covering every hall to highlight corporate holiday ads. It doesn't feel real, but the smells tell you otherwise.

Inner joy as your loved ones give you gifts, either physical or of their time and companionship, or perhaps the joy brought on by an animal friend you cherish and nurture in this human form when you give it a treat of its own

Soft and fuzzy blankets, socks, and sweaters remind you of down feathers, making you smile and giggle with a blush across your cold-paled cheeks

Every once in a great while, I join the alterhuman community again in full force and I find it very enjoyable and I feel very comfortable in the arms of therians and other types of otherkin folks, but I do get a jealous feeling towards them.

As an angel, I find it difficult not to be jealous of a more simple life. A life that is driven by animal instincts where there is an emphasis on food, shelter, and general survival. Life feels more simple that way. It seems more relaxing and less pressuring. When I look at myself, I feel like I always see a lack of free will as I am pushed at full efficiency constantly to perform some purpose. To change some industry. To open a business. To do everything that I feel that I am driven to do, and it gets very exhausting. In essence, being an angel in a human body creates this feeling of being chained to a ticking time bomb where we have to fulfill our given duty in a temporary form. 

I like to believe that if I were an animal, I’d be happier. I could move with the seasons and my purpose would be easy to understand. I would be able to see myself in the eyes of an animal. My awakening would be something lovely, not just a mundane sense of understanding that I am what I am. I would be able to have more acceptance in this community and be taken more seriously. I would be able to document exactly what I was like as animals are observable, biological beings that live here with us. I always just have to assume I’m right, and keep trudging forward with the hope that it isn’t all just a complex lie that I have told myself for four years now.

Throughout my life, I have felt a profound tie to the sea and all of its chaos and structures. I used to stare out at its cold depths with great reflection, seeing all that it is. The warm waters sinking down as it cools, brushing against the abyss. Death of things too small to see all the way to the falling of whales, both so precious as they feed scavengers left behind in the saline darkness. The birds that ride the sea spray for days at a time such as the albatross, going to the frigid lands of Antarctica. They work so hard that they must sleep as they beat their wings. They have no choice, otherwise their lungs will fill with water and their feathers will be forced to grace the waves and not the skies like they are supposed to.

There is nothing else on Earth that reminds me of home quite like the ocean. I often thought that I must be a spirit of the sea because of this, meant to be tangled in seaweeds and cased in salts. But I soon found myself comparing the riptides and flows that define these waters to the way home felt in all of its vastness, every drop of water just like the many stars in the universe which I once knew personally. It is a reminder so fortunately provided to me that provoked me to bury into myself like a caterpillar finally preparing to become a butterfly. Slow. Silent. Beautiful. A true realization of the self all thanks to those cold waters that made me feel and know that there was more to who I am, and then becoming that. 

This body is not that important to me in the end. It is only a shaped glass meant to hold my spirit until it withers away and vanishes into the soils and bodies of animals, and my temporary purpose in being here has hopefully been completed. My spirit will one day go home and my fingertips will pull through space time like it is a silken fabric rippling from my presence in tiny waves just like the sea. However, because I cannot take this vessel with me when I go, I still want to honor it for providing me shelter in this temporary home. To give thanks to its soft self for all of the hardships it endured and the abilities it offered me that I had never experienced before like emotions and language. It holds me like a mother holds her newborn child, and I love her for that even if I once used to hurt her. 

I want to thank the blue for the way its winds tangled my hair. For the way it dried my tears and sometimes, for the way they made them fall for its beauty. For the endless cycles it undergoes to help create balance and for the love and inspiration it provokes in people’s souls. One day, I will do that when this body passes. I will be born of fire again and turn ashen, taking one last form on this Earth when I have already long gone from my iron and carbon. My borrowed cells and memories and thoughts will be placed inside of a salt urn delicately and with great compassion by someone who remembers me and still cares. From there, my container will slowly melt away and I will join the currents, swimming with the great beasts of the sea and melding into the great quilt that is the ocean, and I will allow her to use me and spread me out across the world. I will wash away and one day be forgotten, but it does not bring me any sadness to know it because I will have a new understanding of the Earth’s embrace without them. 

Falling in love with an angel is a terrible fate, for your love is destined to become obsession. 

Their bodies look human but this is a mirage, an illusion. You can see it in their eyes and hear them speak without them even opening their mouth. You feel it as your thumb runs across their freckles when you embrace their face for they are like galaxies. You can hold them in your arms but they may always feel intangible, always light years away as if you are an astronomer skimming through the depths of space. When you kiss them, you will lose your hold on this world and your atoms will split apart as their fingers run tirelessly through your hair and along your skin. 

They strip you down to your soul like a zipper running down a dress and they make love to more than just your body for they reach down into the heart, the mind, your soul. They are naturals at it and the curiosity excites them, liberates them, beckons them for a taste of these strange Earth laden souls. They crash into your emotions like a meteor melting the sands of this planet and they leave behind shards of obsidian and moldavite in their burning wake. A fire and burning incomparable to even the hottest stars dying in the cosmos, and that is how they entangle you into their feathers. You can’t live without them once it happens, and you know it deep within yourself. You always will.

So how do you love an angel? 

You bring them home. You become their Heaven on Earth and remind them of the stars they once gave life to and how they once carried them to death, bleeding into black holes furiously. You give them moments that feel ethereal, that give them the sensation of being free again. Of being larger than all of the planets and stars for they were beyond even that. Of being themselves with every inch of their power, every drop of their origin story. Their truth. But you also make them feel human things like love and sadness and joy as long as you do not neglect giving them the moments that feel only comparable to the word “home”.

Home, 

home, 

home, 

and all of that word’s meanings and facets and images placed momentarily into one person, one existence, one soul: 

you.