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name: azazel
gender: male (he/him)
whats heaven to them?:
"what's heaven to you?"
you had been asked that, back when you were young, and naive, and barely knew how to talk. your mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother--they'd all gotten the same speech, the same shtick, the same sentence that made you think too much over a handful of words that, to anyone else, might be easier to answer. but to you? it wasnt.
you, a creation of the holy spirit, a feathery being meant to protect and built to last a lifetime, a fighter and a hero not by your own will but by how other's have defined you. you, a savior to the low and the poor and the helpless, a light in the dark when their light bulb finally goes out, a phenomenon that amazes and inspires and terrifies all in the same breath. you, the right hand man of the right hand man, a being of virtue by birth, and when others hear your name, they imagine the most pure being in the world.
you.
you dont know what heaven feels like. you dont even know what heaven looks like. you try to think about it, try to picture what it looks like, what it might feel like, but all you come up with are blanks. blanks, blanks, blanks. it really sinks in then--that you dont know what heaven feels like, and maybe you never will. that makes you panic, makes you desperate, makes you dumb and foolish and clumsy in your search to find out the how and the why and the when and where and what.
you spent hours and days, pouring the infinite energy that fuels your body into books and parchment and documents that came long before your time, looking for answers you'll never find. not there. you have to look somewhere else.
but it's nowhere to be found.
you, so desperate in your search for belonging, so desperate in your desire to fit in, so desperate in your quest for knowledge, so desperate. you, so clueless about the journey ahead, so clueless about the end of the road that lay just a few feet away, so clueless.
you never knew when to stop.
you tore apart libraries and crypts and went places you should not have gone. you talked to monsters and demons and people you shouldn't have said a word to. you looked through every book a hundred times, spelled out every word in the empty rooms a hundred more, read each individual letter ten thousand times until you thought you understood.
but you did not find it.
but you found anger. the people that you thought you knew wouldnt respond to you, the big man in the sky wouldnt even look at you, the place you called home wouldnt even let you in. the big man took a glance at you offhand and he said, "get out," and then you were gone, the floor taken right from under your feet.
and you were dropped down to a world, far far below the clouds, where no one can see you even if you want them too. you tried to get them to see you, to speak to you, to even acknowledge you exist, but every attempt was met with nothing but frustration and tears.
and by god you tried. you tried to leave, to go back, to reverse your mistakes. you prayed away the sins that marked you as evil and you destroyed all the bad things about yourself that you knew everyone else hated too. you went to church like an example angel on those little pamphlets they passed out at school when you were young and you listened to every word even if you've heard it all a thousand times before and you never missed the chance to try anything you could, even if you knew, you knew it would never work.
and now here you are, all this time later, still stuck grounded to a world that you cant ever interact with. here you are, stuck grounded to a whole realm of possibilities that are blocked off by a force you cant even see. here you are, stuck grounded to a place that never knew you and will never know you, but will swallow you up and spit you out all the same. and as you walk the streets, dirty and scruffy and in a place nothing at all like you had dreamed about or thought of or imagined in your head, you think,
that kind of heaven doesnt exist.
heaven--the real kind-- is a sacrifice, a punishment. it isnt meant to be perfect. it isnt meant to be up there. it isnt meant to be a good thing for people strive to, to achieve. because that is how wayward ghosts and the deceased end up stuck on this dirt sphere, unable to flee to the skies and clouds above them.
they wished for a heaven that didnt exist.
heaven is no one place. maybe it's no place at all.
how do you know? you know because you're here.
heaven is a ruse, a farce, a trick, a clever lie planted in the minds of everyone who's ever had the misfortune of hearing the word.
and you believed it.
gender: male (he/him)
whats heaven to them?:
"what's heaven to you?"
you had been asked that, back when you were young, and naive, and barely knew how to talk. your mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother--they'd all gotten the same speech, the same shtick, the same sentence that made you think too much over a handful of words that, to anyone else, might be easier to answer. but to you? it wasnt.
you, a creation of the holy spirit, a feathery being meant to protect and built to last a lifetime, a fighter and a hero not by your own will but by how other's have defined you. you, a savior to the low and the poor and the helpless, a light in the dark when their light bulb finally goes out, a phenomenon that amazes and inspires and terrifies all in the same breath. you, the right hand man of the right hand man, a being of virtue by birth, and when others hear your name, they imagine the most pure being in the world.
you.
you dont know what heaven feels like. you dont even know what heaven looks like. you try to think about it, try to picture what it looks like, what it might feel like, but all you come up with are blanks. blanks, blanks, blanks. it really sinks in then--that you dont know what heaven feels like, and maybe you never will. that makes you panic, makes you desperate, makes you dumb and foolish and clumsy in your search to find out the how and the why and the when and where and what.
you spent hours and days, pouring the infinite energy that fuels your body into books and parchment and documents that came long before your time, looking for answers you'll never find. not there. you have to look somewhere else.
but it's nowhere to be found.
you, so desperate in your search for belonging, so desperate in your desire to fit in, so desperate in your quest for knowledge, so desperate. you, so clueless about the journey ahead, so clueless about the end of the road that lay just a few feet away, so clueless.
you never knew when to stop.
you tore apart libraries and crypts and went places you should not have gone. you talked to monsters and demons and people you shouldn't have said a word to. you looked through every book a hundred times, spelled out every word in the empty rooms a hundred more, read each individual letter ten thousand times until you thought you understood.
but you did not find it.
but you found anger. the people that you thought you knew wouldnt respond to you, the big man in the sky wouldnt even look at you, the place you called home wouldnt even let you in. the big man took a glance at you offhand and he said, "get out," and then you were gone, the floor taken right from under your feet.
and you were dropped down to a world, far far below the clouds, where no one can see you even if you want them too. you tried to get them to see you, to speak to you, to even acknowledge you exist, but every attempt was met with nothing but frustration and tears.
and by god you tried. you tried to leave, to go back, to reverse your mistakes. you prayed away the sins that marked you as evil and you destroyed all the bad things about yourself that you knew everyone else hated too. you went to church like an example angel on those little pamphlets they passed out at school when you were young and you listened to every word even if you've heard it all a thousand times before and you never missed the chance to try anything you could, even if you knew, you knew it would never work.
and now here you are, all this time later, still stuck grounded to a world that you cant ever interact with. here you are, stuck grounded to a whole realm of possibilities that are blocked off by a force you cant even see. here you are, stuck grounded to a place that never knew you and will never know you, but will swallow you up and spit you out all the same. and as you walk the streets, dirty and scruffy and in a place nothing at all like you had dreamed about or thought of or imagined in your head, you think,
that kind of heaven doesnt exist.
heaven--the real kind-- is a sacrifice, a punishment. it isnt meant to be perfect. it isnt meant to be up there. it isnt meant to be a good thing for people strive to, to achieve. because that is how wayward ghosts and the deceased end up stuck on this dirt sphere, unable to flee to the skies and clouds above them.
they wished for a heaven that didnt exist.
heaven is no one place. maybe it's no place at all.
how do you know? you know because you're here.
heaven is a ruse, a farce, a trick, a clever lie planted in the minds of everyone who's ever had the misfortune of hearing the word.
and you believed it.
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