Thief (45 page)

Soon their flesh cried out to them, begging them to make it one. It was only echoing the hunger of their hearts and souls. There was never a thought of denying it. By then there was no thought, only love and passion.

They joined again in body as well as soul, and they discovered the abrupt wonder of finding themselves exactly where they belonged. It was like coming home after a very long day, and discovering they should never have left and should never leave again. They were home. The knowledge was a marvellous shock that simply wrapped them both up in it. They stared into each others eyes, and felt in each others hearts the wonder of total love.

Yet that sudden closeness and joy was just the beginning. Excitement took them over, and they just had to get closer still. It was a merger that neither wanted ever to end. 

As desperately as he wanted to be one with her, Sherial wanted to be one with him, and they simply couldn’t get close enough. Her arms, her legs and wings bound him to her, in a gigantic bear hug, which he returned with everything he had. Then, even the excitement chain reacted, as they were caught up in an explosion of need and thrill. All thought fled them both as they became frantic in their need. Distantly he heard the sound of a forest singing and knew it was Sherial crying out her joy, his own desperate gasps a poor but genuine accompaniment.

The explosion of joy when it came, was as nothing he had ever imagined possible. As one they screamed their joy and love, a shout in which they released everything they had ever dreamed of into the open air. All that mattered was what was. For a brief moment it was as though there were no longer two people there, but only one in two bodies. Mikel knew both the feel of her skin on his, and of his on hers. He celebrated both the pleasure of releasing his seed inside her and the delight of its arrival, as did Sherial.

The orgasm detonated through both of them like a raging bush fire, leaving the two of them gasping for air and clinging desperately to one another like limpets, simply trying to hang on in the inferno of pleasure exploding between them. Yet the physical was as nothing to the rest. He felt the joy surge through them both like a wild contagion and close behind it a nuclear blast of love that swallowed them both in their entirety.

Mikel had the mad desire to sing and dance in the streets. He wanted to fly like an eagle and roar like a lion. He wasn’t alone. The sound of a jungle gone berserk with excitement, love and laughter told him that. His own involuntary cries too were part of that same fanfare. He understood the wonder of being both man and woman, human and angel, and above all else of being two people deeply in love.

Long after, as they caught their breath and wiped the sweat off each other’s brow, and the tears of joy from each others eyes, when Mikel could begin to think again, he understood what had finally been, and knew only joy. He had finally done what he should have on that first day. He had finally given himself completely to Sherial. Body, mind and soul. Everything he had, everything he was, everything he ever could be was hers. He had at last accepted it in his soul. In giving he had also received, for Sherial gave the very same in return.

Utterly spent, they held each other close, sharing their love and the warmth of what had been, what was still to come, and what always would be. They were both exhausted, covered in sweat from head to foot, and panting as though they’d climbed a mountain. But it was a mountain more than worth climbing. Above all they were both wonderfully happy and totally satisfied. This time there was no insane need to do this again, at least for a little while, though they both knew they would. They wanted to, when they recovered.

Instead they laughed and kissed, and told of their love in the oldest of all languages. Words were unimportant as their bodies spoke for them, and their thoughts were still somehow in a magical harmony.

“What happened?” They were the first words he’d spoken in many hours and his throat rasped them out, his vocal cords apparently having forgotten how to work. He’d wanted to tell her he loved her, but what was the point? They both knew how they felt. He told her that with his every thought, his every touch, his every cell. As Sherial told him in return. Why use words to try and describe what was beyond their ability to explain? Instead he’d simply left all words behind until finally enough of his mind returned to ask the droll questions. The ones that his heart didn’t really care about.

Sherial naturally understood everything he asked, hearing his thoughts as much as the crude noises of his mouth. No more did she try and use even her unique vocal abilities to explain. Instead she told him with her eyes, her touch and her love. She shared her memories of what had passed, wanting him to know the wonder as well as the details.

As Sherial showed him what had passed he stroked her tenderly, kissing away the hurts he had caused as she kissed his, unable to really concentrate on anything else. But then Sherial knew that too. She would tell him again if she had to.

Through her memories he saw himself lying by that pool, burned to a cinder. His skin hadn’t merely blackened he saw, it had bubbled like a char grilled steak.  Unti then he hadn’t actually realized how terribly he’d been hurt. He had only known he was dying. How horrible he thought, for Sherial to have had to have seen him like that, to have nursed him like that. How much worse for her to have known he was dying and that she might be alone for the rest of her life. And how much more wonderful to have him here with her for the rest of their lives.

Instinctively he wrapped her up tighter in her arms, making sure she understood he was here with her. He had not died, he would not die without her. He could not allow her to suffer that pain.

From his new perspective Mikel suddenly understood how greatly she loved him, and how thankful she was for his being here with her. It was like the opening of another door. Years of isolation and disbelief had robbed him of his own sense of self worth. He had for so long been unafraid of death, believing it nothing more than an end. But now he knew too, it had been because he had had so little joy in life, so little self respect. Death would have merely been a release. He gave thanks to the Lord for his own life too, finally appreciating his own value through her eyes.

He watched his body breathing its last in her arms again, and then briefly, dying. He heard the sound of an angel grieving, a song more painful than death as he knew her heart was breaking. But it only lasted for an instant. A single split second in which he / they had decided their future. The many hours they had spent in the Lord’s garden had not happened in the real world. But they had happened. They both knew that.

The blink of an eye after his heart had stopped, his body was breathing again while Sherial held him tight and prayed, this time giving thanks for his life. His skin, even from that instant had begun to change, a normal healthy colour replacing the charred wreck it had been. Still healing took a long time.

Later, much later, after she had laughed and cried, prayed and given thanks, and washed the worst of the muck off him, Sherial had brought him home, flying between worlds while he slept in her arms like a new born baby. In a way that was exactly what he was. He had been changed in some way by the Lord, and both of them knew it. He didn’t quite know what had changed, or how, but he didn’t really care either. Sherial did know and told him it was for him to learn and cherish. Once that would have bothered him, having secrets kept from him - especially secrets about himself - no longer. In time he would no doubt find out, and it would be good. They both knew that.

He saw Sherial again lay him down in his own bed, still looking like a boiled lobster, and then join him, waiting for him to waken. Even though she knew he was going to be all right by then, she had been promised by an Authority that could not be denied, she had worried for him. Holding him close, tending his hurts, hurrying his healing and above all waiting for her love to awaken. For only then would she be content.

It had been a long wait. Long days had passed as he lay there like a sack of potatoes slowly sprouting, yet she had never left him through all that time. She would never leave him. Sherial had covered his badly injured body with herself, the best of all possible blankets as he told her, and then had waited and prayed. And all the while as his body had been healing, she’d felt the strength slowly returning, watched the health begin to shine through, and had given thanks. She’d never left him, holding him to her, protecting him from every possible thing that the universe could throw at them.

He laughed as he experienced her memories, realizing that she was doing then only what she had done ever since that first time they had slept here, and every night since. Once Sherial had watched from a distance as he slept, an angel looking after her charge. Now she held him in her arms as she watched over him, a lover looking after her beloved, yet it was still the same. She still loved him, she still guarded him. Sherial was indeed his guardian angel.

“How long have you been watching over me?” A little voice at the back of his mind suddenly told him Sherial hadn’t suddenly sought him out on that high wire the first day. That was simply the first time she’d shown herself to him, allowing him to see what had always been there. Sherial had been guarding him long before he’d ever seen her.

Memories of the bad times came to him, and of the good. His times of pain when he had started deciding the course of his life. And he knew she had been there, guiding him, showing him the way, if only he’d been smart enough to listen. But sometimes he had he realised, or at least half listened.

It was most clear when he remembered his first take down of a gang. The long days lying in the hospital bed, wanting nothing more than the feel of their blood in his hands, and the moment when he had had the chance, and yet somehow found the strength to let the courts have them. Until that moment he had never known what had led him to take that path. Now he knew, that it was Sherial, whispering in his soul. And he thanked her for that, utterly glad he had not turned that corner.

Not long afterwards he had found his home, his sanctuary. That too he knew was her doing. She had guided him to a place where his soul could recover from its injuries. He too had been part of her duties from the first.

Sherial gave him no answer and he understood he would receive none. He didn’t need to know all she had done. Without a doubt he found he agreed with her. It was more than enough to know that she did. He promised her then that as she watched over him, he too would watch over her.

Mikel also knew that everything that he remembered from their time in the Lord’s garden was true. It had happened, no matter how impossible. Sherial too remembered it, and she too knew its truth. But unlike him, the impossibility of that time never even entered her thoughts. It had happened and that was all there was too it.

There were limits placed upon him he found out. And even as she told him he knew it was so and even understood why. He accepted them all without question, feeling the rightness of them deep inside. It wasn’t punishment or anything so merely human. It was simply that he was stronger now. Somehow, he had been rebuilt, and he could feel the extra strength flowing through him like a vitality with its own life. He couldn’t have explained it if he’d tried, but he knew it was so. It wasn’t a physical strength, or even of the mind though both were there. It was the strength born of faith, love and the soul. More powerful than all of the others put together.

And with that strength came responsibility. But with that strength so too had come the chance, nay the reality of being with Sherial, and that was worth everything and a lot more besides. Of course he realized, he’d been rebuilt simply so he could be with Sherial. His human self was simply too weak to endure. If nothing else it would age and wear out much more quickly, leaving Sherial alone far too soon. That wasn’t acceptable. He had to become more to be with her, and so the Lord had made him more.

It wasn’t a radical change though. He didn’t feel very different, just stronger, though even that didn’t quite describe the difference. Perhaps cleaner would be a better term. As though his body, his mind and his soul had been full of static, but overnight they had become digital. Perhaps even the next step in the evolutionary ladder he mused, though not a step the scientists would ever have expected. Then again he knew from Atal that evolution does not occur through natural selection, as his people foolishly believed. It was most definitely guided from above.

He understood he would live longer than a normal man, but also that he wasn’t immortal. Neither was Sherial, nor any of the other angels, nor even the titans or those even older, he realized. There was only one true immortal, one creator. All others were created. The only thing that mattered was that he would be able to live with Sherial for exactly as long as she lived. That was the Lord’s gift to the lovers.