Fushigi Yuugi Fan Fiction ❯ Fallen Angel ❯ Chapter 1

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Fallen Angel


I know what they're thinking when they stare at me like that. Fear mixed with repulse at the sight of me. They fear me, because I am not like them. They think me repulsuve, because I am hovering in the center of being man and being beast. I am a strange creature to both species - an anomaly to the world.

Their children throw sticks and stones from a distance, making fun of me, testing my patience. Yet when I roar, when I advance at them, they run away, hiding behind their parents who think their children can do no wrong. I have been chased out of over twenty villages; in none of those villges have I caused any harm, have I pilfered any of their sheep or fowl.

They are prejudiced, they are biased against things they don't understand. Humans - what do they know? How can they call themselves great? How can they think themselves to be above all beasts, when they themselves can only attack from a distance, when they themselves are such cowardly, weak beings?

The gods are unfair. They have bestowed upon this undeserving race such great riches and such power over the Earth. The gods do not punish the evil. The gods do not reward the good and kind. The world is cold, cruel, unfair. And I do not wish to belong here. Why was I born in such a world, so void of love and peace and understanding? Those who treat you so kindly now will turn their backs on you later. Those who defend you from murderers now will kill you themselves later.

I have been treated kindly only once, and that was a long time ago. I still remember the angelic face of that little boy, barely six and yet he knew how to show more kindness and more love to a monster such as myself than any adult could.

***
I once belonged to a travelling circus, who showed me off as one of their "wonders". When I attacked one of the audience, they lost their good reputation and thus they threw me out. It was a cold, cold winter's night. I was shivering.

Beaten and whipped until scars crisscrossed my face and limbs and back and blood pouring out of me like a leaking water-bucket, I was left in an alleyway to die. I wanted to die; my life was so miserable, whyever would I want to live? But then this little boy came.

He was an angel without any wings. I think I could see a faint, misty glow shrouding the boy, but that was most likely my imagination, or my rusty memory tricking me into believing what I never saw. Golden hair framed his pale face, wide blue eyes showed neither fear nor repulse, but concern as he came up to me, and reached out a hand to touch me. I, now having hatred for humans, snarled at him. The snarl ended with a whine, however. My wounds were sucking my life away.

Let me die in peace, I glared at the boy. Let me die alone.

"Are you hurt?" his voice, sweet and clear, was worried.

I whined again, involuntarily.

"Here," quietly, he came up to me and took of his thick cloak. He wrapped it around me, slowing down the rate of blood-loss and keeping me warm. By now I knew he was a friend. Without his cloak, he was now shivering in the icy air. Understanding, I snuggled up to him in an attempt to keep him warm as well. He smiled gratefully at me.

"Thank you," he whispered, running a hand through my thick mane of hair. What a wondrous surprise that was! The feeling of his small hand touching, so warm and caring, my cold and freezing self. I felt a spark of warmth, not physical, but somewhere under my skin, within me, where he had touched.

After time I healed from my wounds and would often go away to help both he and his mother find food. His mother was another person I loved. As caring and loving as the child she had borne, she was the one who often tended to my wounds. Every time I would come back to the same place, to find them lying close to each other, sleeping. And I would guard them at night from those who might want to hurt them.

One night, however, I came them to find the place burned down, and both of them gone. Were they both dead? Had they both died in the flames? After searching for them for hours, I realized it was too late. They had both gone.

I sank to my knees and howled.
It was the first time I ever cried for one of the human race.

***
Many years later, I returned to that place as I did every year in memory of my two only friends. There I found standing in the exact same spot where the young angel and his angel mother used to sleep was a tall man, with the same golden hair of that young angel's.

He turned around when he heard me, and my heart jerked within my chest, I stopped there, staring, stunned. That man so resembled the young angel! Golden hair and blue eyes... but something was not right. This man did not have the same kind, loving air around him that the angel did.

I should never have believed everything he said, nor should I have followed him. Yes, he had been that young angel. Yes, he had been the child of that angel mother. But now...but now, he was a demon - an angel too influenced by the ways of the world, an angel who had fallen too deep in the pit for me or anyone else to rescue.

I often dream of him, lying at the very botton of a dark, dank hole, smiling, not the smile he often beamed at me when he was a child, but one of malicious glee at someone else's pain, at someone else's sorrow. And I dream of myself, climbing down the pit towards him, to try to save him from his plight, but when I reach him, he snarls at me like an animal and blasts me back up with a strength of chi.

But still love him as the angel who had been so kind to me. I still love him, even though he is no longer the angel he once was.

I still love him, even though he has left me here to die, on this cold, cold winter's night so alike the one I had first met him.