The Marches -- The Far Marches
     Little more than a swirl, a thick grey mist swells below, covering feet and ground. Occasional lightening strikes screech across the sky, lighting grey into white for an instant. The swirl seems almost alive, teeming with energy, a power unharnessed. One can go further, into the mist, but visibility diminishes quickly.

     Where Scheherazade lit her last lamp, imparted the last breath of her story over a flickering resin flame, he gathered. Red and gold silk dripped from the Sky That Has No Beginning and pooled upon the Plains of the Far Marches.
     It still smells of myrrh and cinnamon...
     These are the sensations of the burning heart. The resin that is created from the lust of a 1001 nights fuels the lamps. And like the Cave of Forty Thieves, you have to know the secret word to gain passage. To make the Temple of the Burning Heart show itself.
     And it is said that only one or two in all the many universes even know that there is such a ... mirage out here. Out here in the fringes of Created Space. And of those... small... number, only one remembers the secret word...
     With a final breath, Andrealphus spoke a desire into a flame. The flame to become a ... flower... a burning trumpet lily, red and gold. It blossomed and then was incinerated by the sun...
     Its perfume lingers on the ... air here...
     Smelling oddly of cinnamon and myrrh...
     Andrealphus waits. In red and gold he waits. Upon cushions created out of rose and violet petals, with cups formed of the tigerlilies, with lotus blossom lamps and columns of bird of paradise, he waits to hear the words.
     And Love Shall Set You Free...

     The ground flourishes not so far away, Andrealphus. A herald and warning to those who see it. The pending explosion of sight and color, of essence and beauty. There is an instant, Prince, for you to change your mind. A speed that only archangels have...
     ...too late. Even for you. Radiant light breaks into component pieces, reflected in the pile of sweet and fresh that twine at Novalis' feet. The bloom of life and abundance has a scent, it's true, infused with peat, moss, and the promises that come with decay.
     Dressed in green, Novalis' yellow to corn-gold hair seems striking. She looks around at the space she's arrived in, but seems not so surprised.
     She'll have to leave you a bouquet.
     "It has been a while," Novalis says calmly, the flowers at her feet perking up, if possible, even more. "I was ... worried ... about you...Love."

     Your arrival transforms the temple to an oasis. Flowers, gardens, hanging gardens. And the petals where he sits lifts a little to hover in momentary greeting, petals open all around you, for you are the sustaining and life-giving sun.
     And the resplendant fallen angel opens his eyes. His platinum curls are a halo around his head, though all his holiness is long since perverted. Golden eyes, resonant with honey, streaks of cinnamon, burnished metallic tones, free tears and he smiles. Oh, when he stands...
     Though a shadow of his archangelic glory now, still how glorious. In his reds and his golds, his silk wrappings. "Thank you for coming..." he breathes it as his hand takes yours, as he places a kiss upon your cheek. "Thank you..."
     He smells of the resins of the world and sensual oils...
     "It has been a long time since we last talked," Andrealphus realizes it even as he says it. He frees your fiingers. "I have been... things have been... different for a long while now."
     I am running out of time...
     "Please," he gestures for you to sit among the flowers he prepared for you. There is a golden carafe, likely of ambrosia or manna. "... the tea of stars. I would like to share a cup with all the very Flower of Creation..."

     "You are kind," Novalis smiles, moving over to the flowers prepared for her. "Favorites," she smiles downward to them. "But no tea, Andrealphus. We have not much time." The Far Marches are a danger to all, especially to those of a celestial sort. The prying eyes are only worse.
     "How are things different for you?" Novalis wonders. "You seem the same, yes?"

     "I am glad it seems so," he says, content to stand. "Perhaps that will buy me and Mine a ... while until I may... make things right." He looks from you to the flowers at your feet. "I have asked you here now... for I may not have another opportunity." Still his golden head and his golden eyes are bowed.
     And then he gets on his knees....
     And then he lowers, bowing again until his fingers meet the flowers at your feet. "For millennia I was blind..."
     "I moved with all the reckless abandon of those who are truly lost..."
     "When Brilliance shone hotly in the darkness..."
     "It cast its light upon the loneliness in my own heart..."
     "It was then that I realized how empty it was without You..."
     "Without You, O Lord, what reason is there for Anything?"
     Andrealphus raises from his prostrate orison, hands upon his silken thighs and he looks you in the face. "I have come to ask for Your forgiveness," he says. "If not for me, then for those who followed me, who in their loyalty to me and to their Word erred against Us. Who, broken-hearted, crossed the field and followed me to their own peril..."

     "I don't understand, Andrealphus," Novalis says, she herself still standing upon the flowers you prepared. "You wish forgiveness for them, but you know as I, that such...is not the way..."
     They must ask themselves. Each is his own. That is the nature of will and forgiveness.
     "I am here," Novalis smiles, crouching down in her dress, "...to talk about you." Her fingers touch your chin to life your head.
     Fingers filled with Grace.
     "Just you and I, Andrealphus. And Him. He hears You..."
     Novalis looks off into the distance, as if seeing something further than the Far Marches.
     "You realize, that everyone...all of your others...will know. I can already hear...you..." Dissonance.
     "I worry for your safety, Andrealphus."
     "And if you look across the Marches, you will see the Truth of it."
     A tower with a light. A walk across the scape of Dreams. Forgiveness is not just in one's Heart.
     The fingers at your chin are as gentle and soft as memory. Peace, kindness, and reflections of Love pour forth, sweet as the Grace of God himself. Some things are never forgotten.

     "I know," he says. And he does. "And I know that I cannot hide any longer, Novalis. Nor can I be what I was. Nor can I ignore it. I have tried." He finally smiles a little, but it does not last. "I can only hope that by... seeing me walk away, that some of them will be awake enough... able... to ask themselves the questions that I have asked myself and to ... follow me again." He knows.
     "I do not worry for myself," he murmurs. He worries for Ramariel. He worries for Pharzuph. He shakes his head a little at the touch, his eyes spilling forth, and he smiles a little. "I am not afraid," Andrealphus murmurs. "For where there is the Love of God, there is no need to fear."
     He is not afraid for himself, but he is for two others...
     "Ramariel has remembered what Love is like and I ... have removed the ... blessing I bestowed upon Pharzuph, that with his memory returned he may ... be able to make his own way behind me once more. I hope that for them. I ... want to tell them. But I am afraid to see them again. Already, I have put them in danger. My poor beloveds."
     His eyes drift toward the tower with the light, glance across the scape of Dreams. The path of Forgiveness is long...
     "The way will be long..." he speaks in the hiss and fire of his adopted, and perverted, tongue. Andrealphus bows his head into the touch and closes his eyes to bask in the sweetness for a moment. And he lifts his hand...
     A touch of his hand to yours, and Andrealphus rises. "But I am not afraid..."

     Her beatific smile rarely leaves. She wishes to relieve the pain you feel, somehow make it all easier. But the two of you know such is impossible. "I am glad to hear it, Andrealphus." Novalis looks in the same direction once more, narrowing her gaze.
     "We miss you."
     Though her hand rises with the stand, fingers curl at the cheek beneath it. She is loathe to sever the physical connection. "Will you stay here?" In the Far Marches. "You must protect yourself." Until you set upon the Path. "Some...once they hear you. If things worsen, know that they will come for you, Andrealphus. They will not let you become something else. They cannot."

     "I thought it was my fault," he whispers. "I thought that Love had brought us there," fighting and destroying one another. "That was not it. That was not it at all." The touch of his hand becomes an embrace. "That was not it..."
     "That was not it at all..."
     "It is the only thing that can Heal Us..."
     And Love Shall Set You Free...
     "I will stay here," Andrealphus speaks it in your ear. "It will not be long." The longer he waits to make the journey, the less likely he will make it at all. But he smiles. Love can never die. Love cannot be destroyed. Not unless God Itself ceases to be.
     "It will not be long," he repeats it again and pulls away just enough to look at you. "I miss You, too..." And then the Archangel of Love laughs.
     And he cries...
     For is that not the way of Love?

     "Not long, Andrealphus. Be smart, but wait not so long. We will have the best party on the Lawn," her place in Heaven. "A party as such the Lawn has ever seen. A glorious homecoming," Novalis barely whispers. Her embrace -- there is peace in it. Vestiges of You. "Everyone -- everyone -- will be there..."
     "The Tower waits. It waits for everyone. Dreams...can be fulfilled, yes?"
     The Eternal Dreamer would say so.
     "And we will be together, again."

     No, it will not be long. Time is short, even if the road to Forgiveness is long. He nods as you speak of being smart. The smartest thing he could do is not tarry. He parts from the hold, holding yet your hands. One last squeeze and he sets them free.
     "I hope to see you there," he smiles. "I ... will dream of it, in fact." Platinum curls waver a little as he tilts his head. "Yes... I will dream of it. A party on the Lawn. And an end to Hell..."
     Will I run like Orpheus, like Lot? Doomed not to look over my shoulder lest I turn my loved ones to pillars of salt or consign them to an eternity without me, in a place worse than Hades -- the absence of God's presence... and mine? How may I leave you, Ramariel? How may I leave you, Pharzuph?
     "I will dream of it," Andrealphus repeats. "First Love, now Hope." He is surprised to feel it. "Wish me luck..."
     I'm going to need it...

     Novalis steps back faintly, her hands extended in clasping another pair. Her smile has broadened and she whispers a final thing as she begins to disappear:
     "I will see you, Archangel. My Love and Dreams are for you..."
     The flowers at her feet mingle with yours, tendrils and leaves crawling to form twined bunches.
     In the air, a crown of woven, multicolored flowers spreads, with you at the center. A Crown of Joy, it is called, a rarity to see. Pollen dusts from it, and in the sprinkling petals is Restoration and Happiness.
     Made spectacular in the dankness of the Far Marches.
     A parting gift.

Posted by rowan at October 10, 2003 07:58 PM