Fall From Grace(103)

Gabriel gasped my face and pulled me forward, placing his closed lips on mine.  He kissed me and held me there. Calmness rolled over my spirit in slow circling waves, my eyelids closed.

“Selah, see the truth,” his voice whispered.  “Forgive me, I’ve always loved you.”

My eyes flared open; his lips still on mine.  Lying in front of me was my garden.  My father sat beneath the almond blossoms, waving to me in the sunshine.  From somewhere behind the trees I could not see, my mother called for him. “Enoch,” she sang his name.

My insides retched.  How I missed the innocence.  Before I knew, what evil was.  I felt my heart rip in half when I saw Shamsiel calling for me along the dirt pathway near the water, touching his hands against the bulrushes.  Gabriel walked alongside him, best friends, always together.

My heart soared as I watched myself run into his arms.  I leapt at him and laughing, he caught and twirled me. My feet tickled from the tall bulrushes that he swung me through.  Gabriel stood back and watched quietly, smiling tightly. He hugged me next and brushed my hair from my face.  “How blessed he is to have found you first,” he whispered.  He caressed my lips with his thumb and then he left us and walked towards my house to greet my father.  The touch had made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Shamsiel and I walked  holding hands and found a place near the waters to sit and sing.  For hours, we’d sing, sometimes we played the lyre and laugh, other villagers would come to listen, we never minded; we never really noticed.

I watched with bated breath, as the sun began setting and he held me in his arms to say goodbye.  He looked down into my eyes with such innocent love that hot tears burned my eyes.  Our lips met and I remembered how it felt falling off the end of the earth right into heaven.  I saw Gabriel hidden off to the side watching us, and tears filled his eyes.

Gabriel pushed me back, violently wrenching me from my heartbreaking vision.  I collapsed backwards, crashing my bottom into the flipped over table.  Heat spread over my cheeks, down my neck and traveled to the tips of my toes.  It became hotter and boiled into rage.

“Why did you show me that!  Because, that Gabriel is what I’ve been punished for all these years!  An innocent kiss, we did nothing more!”

He moved closer to where I was sprawled out on the floor and hovered over me. “Did you ever wonder why you saw heaven in that kiss?  Did you ever stop to wonder why everyone was wiped out but you?”

I sat up and crossed my arms waiting.  “Please enlighten me. It’s only been two thousand years or so.”

The skin around his pale blue eyes tightened as if he were in pain.  “We had to stop the suffering on earth, the fallen corrupted EVERYTHING!  Nothing was right; nothing was whole with them here!”  He inhaled deeply. As if he really needed air to breathe!  “He made the oath with them. He was one of the fallen ones and he needed to be punished along with the rest of them!  And I needed to get him away from you!”

“His crime was a kiss!”

“His crime was a kiss with you!  The daughter of Enoch!  Grandfather to Moses!  You had pure blood in your veins and innocence branded on your soul!  You were no mere human child!  And now Azazel and the rest of the fallen know you exist and they all want to own you!”

“Why?” I screamed.

“Because you have more power than all the angels put together.  When you prayed as a child, God answered.  You have a will of your own, where as we can only do what is sanctioned by God!”