In which Zariel struggles with stillness.
Waves sweep softly over an infinity of silver sand. Her fingers slide through it, the motion followed by a faint cascade of perfect chimes as each grain returns to the whole. Harmonised, always. Zariel looks up at the shimmering calm of the twilit sky and breathes slowly. It’s a miracle still, to breathe slowly. To allow her heart to beat like a heart, and not a war-drum.
She leans back against Lulu, whose mammoth form—though large—is but a speck among specks on this endless beach that stretches out, eternally, from the base of Mount Celestia. Lulu shifts and snuffles; one huge, liquid gold eye cracks open, confirms sleepily that Zariel is still there, then closes again.
They come here a lot of late. They came here a lot of old, but gone are the days of drawing battle plans in the sand, and whispering impossible dreams into the surf. Now Zariel is content to simply be, and Lulu is ecstatic to be with her.
Only…she trails her fingers through the sand, grooves that collapse in on themselves the moment her hand lifts away. She’s not content. She doesn’t know if she will ever be content again—if she was ever content to begin with. She suspects she was only ignorant, and then she was outraged, then prideful, and foolish, and lost.
She does not know if it is possible to be content, or if such a state is merely a construct meant to pacify.
Zariel’s hand strays to the blade at her hip, bound to its scabbard with delicate peace-thread. She’s sworn not to draw it again unless there is dire need. That she will not run headlong into any fight she can find to prove herself—the Seven Heavens do not need her to prove herself, but she’s afraid she’ll want to anyway. Her form implies redemption, but how can she earn forgiveness sitting quietly on a beach?
Lulu would say she doesn’t need to earn anything, that what she needs is to rest. To find stillness, and peace, and joy, the way she used to have it in abundance. Soaring the skies of Mount Celestia, up through the highest heavens she can reach, with Lulu at her side—this does bring her no small measure of joy. And seeing Lulu happy; this too brings her pleasure.
Lulu deserves happiness, after all the years of misery Zariel put her through.
Something silver darts through the waves. The sharp, bright movement spikes adrenaline through her heart, and without conscious thought, her fingers wrap tight around her sword hilt. Her eyes catch her instinct before she can draw the blade; just dolphins, souls, traversing their afterlife. A moment later, they’re out of sight, and Zariel relaxes her grip.
She’s still not used to being here. She keeps waiting for the ground to crack open and unleash screams of agony, for the skies to bleed, for the azure clarity of the rivers to run with bloody carnage. It’s so hard to get the war-drums out of her heart.
Lulu keeps encouraging her to forget, to move on. Because Archduke Zariel was not her Zariel, but some other creature—the real Zariel was trapped inside that monster, screaming and weeping at the atrocities the Lord of the First committed. Why shouldn’t she move on, when it wasn’t her that did those things?
It was her. Every part of it was her, and now she’s seen the kind of person she can become, she’s afraid that if she does move on, if she forgets for even a moment, she’ll one day make the same mistakes again. Thus the peace-thread, and the promises of pacifism, even though she wants to fight, aches to. She’s terrified that if she does, she won’t be able to stop.
Zariel moves her hand from hilt to wrist, running her fingers over the soft, white silk that wraps her stump. There have been countless offers to repair it, and countless pitying looks at her continued refusal. They think she’s choosing suffering, that it’s a penance, but it’s neither of those things.
It’s a consequence. Because people like her—angel or Archdevil—spend too much of their eternities free from consequence.
Lulu snorts and raises her head. Her trunk ruffles Zariel’s hair. “You’re doing that thing again.”
Zariel pets her trunk. “What thing?”
“The thing where you get all thoughtful and sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
“But you are thinking.”
“Yes.” Zariel shifts so she can see the face of her oldest, dearest friend. She smiles, because Lulu likes her smile. “You do not need to worry.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Lulu huffs, and settles more comfortably into the sand. Then, without warning, she shrinks back down to her ordinary hollyphant size. Zariel topples over with a cry as Lulu swoops up in a trail of golden sparks, laughing.
“You always fall for that!”
Zariel spits celestial sand and wipes her mouth. “Fly fast, little hollyphant. I shall give you a ten second head start.”
“Generous today!” Lulu calls, already speeding away. By the time Zariel is on her feet, she’s gotten a generous lead along the infinite shore, and it will take some doing to catch up with her. For someone so small, Lulu is deceptively fast.
Zariel leaps into the air and as she chases down Lulu and her laughter, she feels her maudlin mood falling away. It will be back, she knows, but for now there is the wind in her face and her friend in the skies, and though her heart pounds, it remains just that—a heart.