Wings To The World

19.

'I can't go on like this,'

Have you ever felt Empty?

It's a steady wave lapping against a short of nothing, or a sky blanketed by endless blue. It's loving but not feeling it, it's being happy and never even knowing.

Empty is something people have been trying to define for years. There are thousands upon thousands of verses. Millions of poetry pieces, sonnets and books composed to convey it; 'Empty'.

And despite that thought, Empty has yet to have a name.

I still can't define feeling cold on my skin and in my bones but never feeling the joy and wonder that would come with it. There's no word for smelling the beginnings of spring and feeling 'Fine'.
But fine has never been a word. Fine can't be one. After all, no one can be only fine. No one can be completely neutral. And it's nothing like Empty. Because Empty is sitting in a bubble at the bottom of the ocean and watching everything happen. Fine is never being in that bubble at all.

Empty itches beneath your skin, your soul, and your eyes. It eats away at your heart and begs you do to something to get it away. Empty has me walking, marching alongside an angel who has promised nothing. The palm of my hand pressed into hers, our legs to fall into step with each other, and I feel Empty.

It has my body, which should be fuming with what has happened, laying somewhere between an excuse and a bed. Oh, a bed would be great right now. My feet ache and my body even more so.

My hands shake, my arms bristle with goosebumps, and I can't feel any emotional connection to it. I can only feel the heat of skin against mine. It feels searing. We're in clear space now. There's no car to drive in, so we're walking back. It's far, but not too. Never too far. Not if we walk.

"Flying would be quicker," Haphaes says. "We could-"

I nod. "Yeah, you all should go ahead. I'll catch up."

"Oh- that's-" Haphaes chokes on trying o explain herself, but I shrug to say I don't care. She looks a little paler than before. She looks like she might dissolve into the background. "Sorry."

"Don't be," I shrug again. "You all should go ahead. It won't take me long to catch up."

"Are you sure? It's night, you don't know what could..." Isael trails off. I assume Haphaes told her it was night now, back when the conversation had been more focused on other things.

I blink. "It is night," I nod. "And I don't know what could happen. But I don't know what else you want to do."

Saraiel, who had been watching me, nods towards the paths head. "We can walk, it's not difficult," she says. "Or we can bus. There are options."

I shrug. "Guess there are."

Silence settles in. Saraiel turns, marching forward down the path and taking me with her. Isael and Haphaes follow. The ground beneath me burns. When I lift my feet up, the black underneath is prominent. But we keep going, on to our beds.

-*-

We get to the edge of the town before things start to crumble. Isael is heavily leaning on Haphaes, who looks paler than before, and Saraiel is the fastest of us. My wings burn, back aching, as light drains from my being.

The world seems like it's turning. It's crashing to the ground the way the raindrops that followed the paths do. It is messy, unorganised, and nothing around us seems to slow down. Haphaes pulls Isael shortly after her.

Tanael isn't going to remember. Our home won't be the same.

And, across the border of the mountain, neither were we. The faint glow of our aura's have died down to nothing now, no glow settling upon our cheeks. The mountain was furthering in distance, and so was our hope to find home.

"We should stop," Isael says. Haphaes stumbles forward, no longer guiding Isael with their hands intertwined. "I can't take much more, please."

"We have to keep going," Saraiel nods towards the tip of the street. "Just until warmth-just until we can get to our room.

It feels clawing within me, like something I don't understand has flipped over. As if it is time for me to move on from this place as if my next calling was out of reach. As if I am so naïve and out of touch with the world around me.

"I-I can't," I say, stepping back. There is no love, no completeness to shine through me. There is a crack, and a pull, and belonging I've lost. "There's nothing there for me, Tanael is gone."

Isael steps toward me as if to reach out. As if she cares. But she isn't who I want to care, and who I want to care isn't going to step towards me. They haven't even bat an eye towards my issue.
"She's not gone," Saraiel says. "Just... in a different location. On a walk. We only have to remind her of who she was, and-"

"And then what?" Haphaes asks, fingers falling back into Isael's. "Then do we wait and see if she wants to come back, if she cared about us? If she wasn't masking her love for us? What then, Saraiel?

"She loved us," Saraiel's voice breaks. "Seven years- she had to have loved us."

"Did she?" I ask. "Did she have to have loved-" I motion to Haphaes, Isael, and I. "-The three angels that came a year too late? We should go back to Aphale."

"Aphale isn't Tanael," Saraiel states like a leader, but tears have made their way down her cheeks. It is a heavy, thick summer's night and I realise that things aren't going to be my way. "I want Tanael."

"She's gone," Haphaes breathes out, like a final goodbye. "She wanted to leave, and she's gone."

"We can't get her back," I add. "We love her, but she's gone. She's gone and she's happy being gone- let her be gone."

Saraiel's tears don't slow. I want to reach out and hold them, to wipe away her tears and let her know things are alright. I want her to know I love her, in whatever way she accepts it. I want her to know she is my family. That she is part of my 'Circus Family'.

But I don't.

"So we're going back?" She asks, finally. "Just- heading back? What do we tell her?"
"We tell her we're sorry," I say. "If any part of her remembers, in the slightest, she'll understand. She'll know what we're sorry for. And then? Then we leave."

And that is the moment of goodbye. The moment I realise it all: heaven wasn't only heaven to us. We are expected to be open about it- but what is open, when you have your slice of heaven taken from you?

What was open, when your first crumb of food after a starving night gets ripped from your hands?

Love comes in many forms.

This time; it comes in a goodbye.