DAY 2

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Angelfall.

It was the name we’d given the most momentous day in history; the day everything changed. The day when a piece of God fell to earth.

Or, so they said.

A being of supernal nature and unknown origin descended from the twilight sky to land upon the shore. This being gave us Three Gifts: a Sword; a girl, anointed by His touch, and the visionary experiences of all who Witnessed it. Today, few doubted the event’s historical reality. Someone or something did, in fact, appear to the ancient Trentonians. But, beyond that, everything was controversy, mystery and Mystery—of the capital-letter-M sort.

Case in point: where did it happen? You could hardly go a stone’s throw along the coast north or south of Elpeck without coming across a candidate for the true site of Angelfall, and that was if you asked the locals. Different denominations had different traditions. According to the Church tradition—the modern, Resurrected, Angelical Church tradition—it happened on a stretch of Elpeck’s beach now known as Angel’s Cove. For some fifteen-hundred years, the College of the Angelic Doctors had stood on that shore, along with the High Mausoleum, where the Lassedites were laid to rest. The First Empire had built a grand road from Elpeck Cathedral—the predecessor of the Melted Palace—to Angel’s Cove. To this very day, the Imperial Promenade was one of the most beautiful sights in the city. From where the Melted Palace stood at the heart of the city, you could watch the Sun rise and set behind the College’s towers and the Mausoleum’s dome. Contrary to the Angelical Church, the Old Believers were just as adamant that Angelfall happened where the city of Angel’s Rest now stood, some fifty miles north of Elpeck. Archaeologists argued in favor of Tonevay as the true location—once a city, now an incorporated community—a couple of miles south from downtown Elpeck. The scholars claimed that the most probable site for Angelfall now lay beneath the Tonevay Wastewater Facility, one of the main wastewater treatment plants servicing the Elpeck metropolitan area. Obviously, this ruffled more than a few feathers. And, as for the Neangelicals? Well, there were just too many beliefs to count.

The most important controversy, of course, was over what Angelfall meant. For most of us, the answers came from the Testaments, the Canons, and the Church’s magisterium. As a child, I had been taught the traditional explanation. The Angel descended to our world to tell us the story of His primordial sacrifice: of how He had killed Himself, sacrificing His Face to become the Sun, so that He might offer us Salvation, and guide us there by the warmth of His Truth, Light, and Love. This divine contact gifted man with the revelation of our origin—as known by the Witnesses—our true purpose—as entrusted to the Lass—and our ultimate fate—as embodied in the Sword. The Church was consecrated to vouchsafe these gifts forevermore under the watchful leadership of the holy Lassedites, so that we would never forget them, nor stray from our path.

And I had believed it, wholeheartedly.

With time, though, I came to learn that life was far more complex than what I had been taught in Sessions School. Now, treading into middle age, I no longer had the luxury of knowing what I believed.

Did I believe in God?

I don’t know.

What does “God” even mean?

I don’t know.

But, I wanted to believe. That, I knew. I wanted to believe in something. I wanted to know where to stand, and what was right, and what was worth doing. And what was worth regretting.

And yet… old habits were not so easily shaken.

I sat on the side of my bed, in clean clothes, fuzzy socks and all, looking for all the world like I was ready to leave for work. My loafers awaited me at the base of my nightstand, filled with MagicArches, the best squishy blue orthopedic inserts that money could buy. The Weatherboard app on my PortaCon forecasted a sunny—but chilly—day, and I’d dressed accordingly: white, buttoned shirt, buttoned all the way up; gray slacks with the belt threaded through them the night before and my wallet safely zippered away in my right pocket; white, buttoned-up doctor’s coat—its buttons not buttoned up; and the mandatory accessories: my glasses, my hypoallergenic wristwatch, synced with my PortaCon, and, of course, my red-spotted lucky yellow bow-tie—the bow on top. Pleasure still buzzed through my back and shoulders, the afterglow of my morning sonic shower. Its refreshing mists had pulsed against my body for minutes on end. I should have been raring to go.

And yet, I wasn’t, and not just because I felt bizarrely hungry.

My sleep had done what I’d hoped: last night’s aches, pains, and nausea were a thing of the past. But, still, I felt… off. And, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t shake my dream from my thoughts. The dream held a vise around my thoughts; it wouldn’t let me go.

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That girl…

I shivered.

It had felt so real.

Even if the interpretation of dreams was mostly bunk—and, to be clear, it was almost entirely bunk—I had half a mind to ponder what sort of wild abysses my psyche had reached into to dredge up Andalon, but… I decided against it. Instead, I indulged in an old habit of mine.

I ran my fingers over the stiff, sparsely fuzzy cover of the antique book in my hands: my copy of the Testaments, a pocket edition that my father had given me when I was a young man. I’d kept with me through adulthood’s tumult, even after the years of not going to church had stacked up into decades. It was useful for when I needed to contemplate or meditate. The book moved along with ups and downs of my life. In good times, it was usually in the drawer of my nightstand. In troubled times, it was on top of my nightstand. In the worst times, it was in a sealed ziplock bag tucked away on one of the shelves hidden behind the mirror over the bathroom sink in the master bathroom, so that the kids wouldn’t see me weeping.

Back when we were dating—and then, even after we’d been wed—Pel occasionally asked me why I read from Scripture, given what she knew about what I had to say about God. The first time she asked me, I spent almost ten minutes before the right words finally came to me.

I believed in it, just in a different way. Where she saw divine revelation, I saw humanity and time, at least most of the time. Even if I couldn’t quite believe in what the words were supposed to mean, I found solace in being but one link in a long, unbroken, millennia-spanning chain of people who had found their rock, their core in the text printed upon the pale, crinkly pages that, even now, passed beneath my fretful fingers. If I could not currently believe in all of their beliefs, then, at the very least, I could believe in the very real power held by those beliefs.

Belief…

The Testaments were the foundational texts for the religion I no longer believed I believed in. To make a thoroughly inappropriate analogy, the Testaments were to the faith what combined home, auto, and health, and life insurance bundles were to the Dayton-DAISHU Insurance company. It put everything in one place. They consisted of two parts: the Words of the Witnesses and the Elder Voices. As tradition taught, the Words were the testimonies left behind by the ancient Trentonians who had witnessed Angelfall with their own eyes. The Words were part diary, part gospel, part confession of the soul. They contained the Witnesses’ accounts of their impressions, and what they heard and saw and felt in the brief, shining moment they spent in the Angel’s presence, as well as the dreams and visions that plagued them ever after. It had been the Lass’ idea, you see—the little girl, Enille, the seller of fossils and sea-shells that the Angel had deigned to touch before He sacrificed Himself to become the Sun. It had been her idea to record for posterity the Words of the Witnesses. The Lass of the Sea; she who became the first Lassedite, head of the Church of the Lass of the Sea; the Church of the Lassedicy. (Yes, this folk etymology was the official etymology. As a kid, in Sessions School, I got myself sent to sit on a stool in the Quiet Corner on multiple occasions by pointing out that the languages spoken long ago probably wouldn’t have been the same as their modern descendants.)

The Elder Voices—the Testaments’ second part—were a later addition, consisting of portions of records of the teachings and sayings of the first five Lassedites to succeed the Lass: the Righteous Five, her earliest followers, and her truest friends. The Lassedicy and its magisterium stemmed from the Elder Voices. The Words themselves were more of a font for mystic revelation, through which doctrine was discerned, interpreted, and justified. True, even as a child, I was never much of a fan of the Elder Voices. They didn’t have the same depth as the Words, and, as literature—with the exceptions of the Lass’ writings (which were pure poetry, literally and figuratively) and the writings of Lassedite Barnald—they were real hit-or-miss. The Voices were didactic, and there was no hiding from it. The deuterocanonical scriptures were little better. To the extent something beautiful could be found in the likes of the Truths, the Scryings, and the Litanies of Hope, their rigidity frequently eclipsed it. But the Words? To me, the Words were different. They were filled with possibilities. They were chronicles of human experiences, speaking to us from the other side of time. They rarely gave clear-cut answers. Their authors were just confused and lost as any human being ever was, or ever would be.

Find the kindness in one another. In it, you will know Him.

I read it aloud several times over, savoring the Words’ sounds on my tongue. It was one of my favorite lines. It was easy—far too easy—to read the Elder Voices, or even the Words, and find declarations that chewed up my idealism and spat it out shredded, leaving me rueful, or even (quietly) vindictive. But that line… whether or not God existed, and all our disagreements notwithstanding… that line resonated with me. I could take pride in it.

I flipped through the faded pages, letting my fingers stop at one of the Words’ more mystic visions.

The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring, growing green and anew. Forever blue is the horizon, everywhere, forever.

“Forever.” I let the word hang in the air, as if to etch it there. Slowly, I said it twice more, repeating it like a mantra, pausing to drink in the sound of each word and let them wash over me.

How precious were those moments where a person felt oneness with the world? Not at war with it, not enraged at it, but merged with its vicissitudes, riding along, frissoning with splendor of life?

Valuable beyond measure.

Though the world held our sorrows, it also held all our happinesses. It held all our dreams. All our sacred hopes.

“Genneth?”

I heard Pel’s voice from down the hallway, poking in through the ajar bedroom door.

With a sigh, I shelved my meditative mood, carefully placing my copy of the Testaments atop my nightstand. I craned my head toward the door to the hallway.

“I’m coming. I’m just about ready…”

I slipped my feet into my loafers and then stashed my console in its usual place in my right coat-pocket.

“There!”

I made for the kitchen, lickety-split, hoping I wasn’t too late.