Avenging Cupids

Chapter 23: Where Demons Fear to Tread

"Alden!" she exclaimed, and wrapped her arms around his neck. She weeped into his shoulder, seeing through the blur of her eyes the darker patch of forest-green on his shirt where her tears soiled. But then a thought began to form, and she suddenly pulled away from him and held him an arm's length away from her. Dark Cupids were crafty, she knew, and this person she was embracing just seconds ago could have quite possibly been an illusion. She saw too, that she was still holding her makeshift spear, but she had to be sure first. "What is the true Genesis?" she asked him, knowing that before her, he alone carried the one secret that even the universe wasn't privy to.

"What--"

"Tell me the true story of Genesis!" she cried, and strategically jabbed the point of her spear against the center of his chest so that it might scare him, but not quite piercing flesh in case he wasn't a demon after all.

"Take it easy," he said in a smooth, milky voice that seemed too melodious and too mighty for anyone, demon or human, to imitate. "You and I were the original Adam and Eve until a Dark Cupid possessed a snake to entice us, and we were replaced."

"Oh," Willow gasped, and dropped her spear and folded her body into him again. "How in the world did you end up here?" she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

"I came to find you," said Alden. He released her, but held her close against his muscled side as he scanned the plains with the same wonder as she had had.

"What happened to me? Did I die? What is this place?"

Alden turned back to her, and the raging sadness in his eyes told her that something was wrong.

"Alden?" she said. "Tell me."

"I'm so sorry, Willow. I--I was too late. I couldn't pull you out of the ocean in time."

Every cell, every limb of her body seemed to turn to stone, and an incredible weight kept her rooted to the ground. She bowed her head in understanding and felt tears hit the bare skin on her knees where she had drawn them towards her chin.

Alden cupped her chin and tilted her head until they were eye to eye. "Come back, Willow. Come back to me."

"What? I thought I was dead?"

"You're in a coma, holding onto life by a hair's breadth. I soul-travelled here."

"You soul-travelled here?"

Alden stood and Willow watched as he examined the berries on the tree, then plucked a blossom from a nearby cluster of honeysuckles. "Yes. It's an angelic skill involving the dismembering of a soul from its host, and travelling to any world or dimension or universe." He turned away and walked towards the river.

Willow stood and followed him. "But I can see your body."

"What you see of me and your own self is merely the imprint that physicality has left on the soul. The soul is a living, rational thing--more sentient even, than our own physical bodies. The soul survives beyond the death of its host, to await its next host or to burn eternally in hell or lost in purgatory depending." Alden bent down and dipped his hand into the river.

She stood up and joined him at the river's edge where he gazed at the majestic mountains. Automatically, he wrapped both arms around her waist and held her in front of him. "So this is your purgatory, huh?" he said.

"My purgatory?"

"Everyone has their own, created specifically for them. Mortals' purgatorial worlds manifest according to their ideals and fears. I'm assuming here that an undisturbed plain appeals to you at the same time that you fear water."