Milton : A BxB Story

22: On the Edge Part 3

Authors Note:  I am republishing this chapter.  Some readers weren't able to view it in the previous chapter.  I'm hoping this work around is successful.  Apologies to those who see it as a repeated chapter.  

Chapter 22: On the Edge Part 3

After the festival

It was winter. Alec walked in snow drifts up to his calves, his expensive pants ruined, his feet frozen. Around him were barren, skeletal trees, their bare branches looked like fingers on a hand reaching up out of the earth, grasping for life.

But everything was still. Nothing was stirring, not even a mouse. Every animal was underground, cozy in a burrow or nest. Or dead, their remains a testament to this season of hunger.

He was home. But it wasn't home.

There was the pond. Frozen over. Normal for this time of the year.

But Alec felt a horrible sense of unease.

His home, the one he shared with his dark brothers, was gone.

Turning, he found it was the same on the side of the pond where he stood.

The Michaelson's home was gone.

And in the dream, he knew he needed to search so he left the broad path, and followed a tiny, winding trail up into the hills, blowing on his hands in a vain attempt to keep them warm. The damp creeped up his pant legs as the fabric soaked up the water. But he kept walking, unworried about the state of his clothes, his feet or his destination.

Finally, he stood on a slight rise, and down in a gully not quite a mile from the pond, completely hidden, was a cathedral. An immense, awe inspiring cathedral. Here in the middle of nowhere Vermont.

Alec gaped as he stumbled down the hill, paused, looking up, up, up. Confused and dumbfounded, he walked around its perimeter. He'd seen the churches of Europe, immense structures built over decades, an engineering feat of stone and wood, the grandiose embellishments.

This one, this anomaly, was made only of timber, in keeping with the woodland setting. Very like the one north of St. Petersburg, built on an island in a lake, the land covered in snow and ice.

It was perfect. A perfect distillation of design and craftsmanship. A marriage of art and hard work. Something this glorious only achieved through the blood and sweat and years of men dedicated to the task.

But... this was not his destination.

Something called him forwards, and he left behind the work of wonder, to continue on a deer trail, until he was once again lost in the woods.

Stepping behind a boulder, he found a ... structure of some kind. Barely more than a few long branches thrown together to form a nod to a shelter.

He needed, absolutely needed to go inside.

He got on his hands and knees, absolutely ruining his pants and dirtying his hands in the mixture of snow and wet earth. Inside he couldn't stand, only kneel.

There was a shelf of sorts, and on the shelf was a clay figure. Not an exquisite work of art. Not something beautiful to the casual eye. Rough and made with haste. Ugly, maybe.

But somehow it wasn't.

Somehow it was far more beautiful and important than the immense glory of a building he'd left behind him.

It was an angel. A man's form, but here were rough outlines of wings. And even though there was no face, Alec could somehow tell the intention was an expression of peace and love and humility and sacrifice.