Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Timber squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay. Chicken it is.”
Tarek grins between them. “Don’t worry, you’ll see, what should come true always does, and what happens isn’t something you can prevent even if you want to, even if you had the power to.”
I take a deep breath and look toward the bedroom where I stored my uniform. I realize that the only thing I can do right now, in all this confusion, is walk through that door, grab my uniform, put it on, and serve drinks. I can smile. I can live my life one second, one minute at a time, and pray that it’s enough for when Horus, a man I never saw coming…
Descends into the Abyss.
All because he wants me to know myself.
He doesn’t love me.
He doesn’t need me.
He’s a god.
And I suddenly realize that the gods of old that seemed so selfish are the exact opposite, because who am I that he would travel into darkness—just so I could feel the light?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
惚れた病に薬なし
horeta yamai ni kusuri nashi
“There’s no medicine for falling in love.”
~Japanese proverb
Horus
Hours pass, hours of training her on the job. I need a few minutes to think so I go to the bar to set up for the customers. I need silence. And being too close to her was tempting. What if I just say that we don’t return her past to her and what was lost. Memories we can make new, but parts of her that help her exist as she was created? I can’t do that. As a god of the past, I would have been able to create her as new. I would be able to do with her what I did with my brother. But I used the last of my power to rebuild a soul on him, leaving her this soulless creature to walk the earth for maybe another fifty years if she’s extremely lucky, only to die without a soul. A being, no matter how powerful, won’t join the Creator if they have no soul, and she’s already burned through what was given to her by living so many lifetimes in search… of what? Me? Everything around us feels extremely mundane, human. But I still can’t shake what I’ve seen with her and what I feel. Every single time I look at her, I don’t see her the way I’m supposed to.
At times she’s in the black T-shirt she wears for work, but other times she has on a Kimono in colors of bright white and brilliant orange, smiling over at me, serving customers only for the reality to slip back to the black shirt and denim shorts.
I shake my head and approach her. “Hey, you should probably take a break. You’ve been at it a few hours.”
She stares up at me, her dark eyebrows arching like I’m about to get scolded. “I’m fine. I’m not the one who’s going to Hell.”
I freeze, then chase after her as she stomps off toward the bar. “Who said I was going to Hell?”
“I searched it on my phone.” She grabs a tray and starts pulling empty glasses from tables; I’m surprised they don’t break as she puts them on the tray. I don’t reach for her though; I let her speak. She’s angry. Anyone can see it. “I looked up the Abyss, it brought me to the book of Enoch. You know what that is?”
I swallow the lump in my throat over the brothers, who I know are still suffering because of their fall. Anyone else would laugh that she used the internet to find out the truth, but truth has a way of hiding in the most ridiculous places.
“It was never included in the Canon.”
She’s right. Enoch wasn’t included for obvious reasons. It gave humans too much knowledge, too much access, and it was the final middle finger to the heavens for daring to say that the sons of man couldn’t lay with women, that they weren’t on the same level, that angels, while created, were nothing like humanity.
No. Humans were special.
Imagine being created as an angel, an immortal being for the heavens, only to be told this sniffling, sad, pathetic-looking creature…
Was the crown of creation.
Of course, a third of heaven was pissed.
And, of course, the church didn’t want to include it in the Bible, and any other “religion” or sect, left it out as well.
All of them ignore the fact that, at one point, an angelic race of immortals were not just taken down by the darkness of narcissism; they were taken down by sadness and in their own minds.
Betrayal.
“Maybe you should rest,” I suggest again a few hours later, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to the side. “Did you have lunch?”
Good subject change. Solid. Give me an award.
She jerks away from me and laughs softly. “I think I’ll be okay.” Her voice is quieter, subdued. I don’t like it. “I’ll just grab a protein bar before dinner. I have customers. I think I’m good, so you don’t have to follow me anymore.”