Fall From Grace
He remained crouched on the ground where he had fallen, his arms wrapped tightly around his self as he lay in fetal position.
The drugs worked quickly.
Sometimes too quickly.
There was nothing else that eased his pain other than the pinch of the cool metal as the needle pierced his arm and slid into his vein, releasing its toxins into his bloodstream. How could he have been so mistaken to have fallen from grace? The scars on his back were all that remained of his once glorious wings. At times he could almost still feel them underneath his clothing - the scars certainly remained in case he ever needed reminding.
Inside his mind raged a battle. Before he could not understand the concept of pain and hurt, but neither could he understand the need for nurturing or love. It was his curiosity to know all of this that brought him to where he was - an immortal trapped within the body of a mortal, his mind fully aware of how close it always was to dying as was the fate of all those that wandered this earth.
What he didn’t know was how painful of an experience it would be to lose his wings, or how hard it would be to find love in the complex maze of this environment. The only thing that tamed the trauma of his mind was the heroin that brought him closer to the end of this punishment he had inflicted upon himself.
How many nights had he been subjected to this pain? How many nights did he lay in dark alleys with cold droplets of rain showering down on him, causing him to shiver from the chill spreading through his body? How many nights had he been forced to use his body to be able to afford his next fix, and of those nights, how many did he find himself getting beaten within an inch of his life?
Death was the only mercy he knew and he would have found it that night if not for the angel that came to his aid. He smiled and reached out for the stranger, assuming that this man would want to use him for his body like all of the others. But this one was different. He offered his coat to the fallen man and moved him into the doorway of a closed shop where he would find some respite from the cold wind. Was this the compassion that one human could feel from another? He looked up to find a silver haired stranger with a pair of striking green eyes and a bright aura looking down on him.
“Are you here to save me?” Zane asked weakly.
“I was told that you were another one of the fallen.”
“I want to die.”
“You need to live.”
These were the last words that Zane heard as his eyes slipped closed. He could feel a warmth surrounding him and for the first time the pain of his missing wings began to fade. Could this be what the mortals called love that eased his sorrows and gave him his first glimmer of hope since his fall from the heavens?
Continued in: Why The Caged Bird Sings