Playing with Faustus Fire: Angel and the Judge

She came before the Judge with her desperate petition, eyes muddy-watered blue like cornflowers, or like the storm-sea with its treasure trove of secret bounty and of forgotten horrors indifferently kept, lying still beneath. Her hair, straggly now in her neglect of it, never saw its moment of freedom; she kept it tied tightly behind her, to be out of the way. Once it had been like sunlight spidersilk, a curling crown of glory that cascaded in a cloud as she made dancing circles with toes, feet, legs flying guileless in delight over the land. Fair she had once been--though Angels come in all appearances and all of those are different equal in beauty--though still fair, this Angel’s hair was now earth red-brown, but the hue ill suited her.

"Strange, you aren’t dead, yet you are here." Remarked the Judge, looking at Angel. "You, living thing, you flew here, to this place of was-is-will be, this place of nothing, becoming something, and nothing once more?"

"I did." Angel agreed.

"You broke your wings getting here, Angel." Observed the Judge. Through Angel’s otherworld garment, two withered bony, sickly, grey, bare-feathered organs protruded, both beaten to a pulp no doubt by the winds of trial and tribulation between the world and eternity.

"The gamble seemed worth the risk, if I could but obtain what I came for." Replied Angel quietly.

The no-faced man in the corner of the nowhere, white-grey-black room mumbled softly. He was watching the interchange. His name was Despair, and he had a passive interest in all things. He was watching this, and yet a million other things also, for his broken shade hovered above an infinity of space-places at once. Such was his power, his brilliance, his familiarity with the animal man-plaything cursed by a spark of divinity.

"Yes, Despair, this Angel I know better than you do." Said the Judge, as furtive as Angel’s eyes. "Well?" She asked Angel and waited.

Angel looked at the Judge. Didn’t she, the Judge, know what Angel wanted if she really knew Angel so well?

Angel stood, saying nothing, her eyes kept guarded.

"Why are you here?" The Judge asked.

"I am tired of my destiny." Angel claimed decisively, certain now that the Judge was playing with her just for the Judge’s own amusement. "I want to change it. I want-I came to bargain with you for my immortality, my earthly immortality. I may even beg."

In the distance, Pride gave a start. He had been particularly and unusually crushed by his noble-hearted acolyte’s abandonment of him. And after all he had done for her, seen her through! He wanted to kick Angel, but feared it would not work.

"You wish to change your destiny?" The Judge said. "But Angel, you know that destiny is not always what you will, but what others will do to you. You know your fate on Earth lies not only in the power of your own hands, but just as much in the power of the random house down the street. You know that I am only the Judge. That I cannot change the pattern, or the chaos." And the Judge’s judgment was cool, as is judgment.

"But you can grant me immortality." Angel insisted. "I was told that this power lies in your hands."

The Judge nodded soberly. "I do bear that responsibility."

"Then can you give me my immortality? I want nothing else."