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 Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:40 pm
The book is mottled, black and red. On the cover, the symbol for eternity is deeply embossed within a circle inlaid with a thin gold strand. A small golden bead rests in each corner. Stuck carelessly inside as a bookmark is a wooden pin encircled in gold wire that snakes down its length.
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Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:46 pm
1.22.07
Your Herald is now a child with a personality all his own. Except for the wings, it's almost easy to forget that he was once an angel, isn't it? Even she seems to have forgotten. But the past hasn't forgotten him...
Your Herald has been dredging up odd bits and phrases from some hidden corner of the mind.
What are the words? What do they mean, and how does this fragment of memory return?
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:10 pm
 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
Certificate post
Prompt
Welcome
Memos
Alexei
Album
Pets
Belongings
Friends
--
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:13 pm
 In the beginning, God--
Genesis 1:1
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:16 pm
 And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto Jehovah of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they shall cry unto Jehovah because of oppressors, and he will send them a saviour, and a defender, and he will deliver them.
Isaiah 19:20[ Old Journal] 
N AME . Alexei
--M EANING . Man's defender, protector, warrior
G ENDER . Male
S ACRIFICE . Wooden hair clip
G UARDIAN . Ward of the church, watched over by Father Giancarlo Sorvino; formerly Azruael
L IKES . Reading, taking things apart, animals, sewing, the photograph he has of his father (Azruael), mashed potatoes, spaghetti, tiramisu, church bells, empty cathedrals
D ISIKES . Talking about his father, explaining himself, being touched, his wings, television
P ERSONALITY . A lot has happened since the time Alexei spent with Azruael. Though he had never been a talkative boy, now it seems as though he speaks only when spoken to. He internalizes much more than a boy his age should, and when he is addressed, one can tell that he has to physically draw himself out of some deep, dark place inside of his own head and recalibrate himself in the real world. He is still the affectionate kid he used to be, somewhere in there, and glimpses of his old self can be seen when he is in the company of animals and nature.
An anger is brewing within him, however, a quiet bitterness that is displayed when some sort of righteous injustice is witnessed or if he is pressed to much about Azruael and his old life. While quiet, a volatile temper is stirring in him, ready to be unleashed, and he has yet to find a healthy outlet for it.
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:21 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:23 pm
N IO . STATUS . Missing  Azruael bought the Great Dane as a companion and protector for Alexei when he was still just a pup (albeit, a massive one!), Alexei, however, tended to use him as a steed. Though named Nio -- after a family friend -- Alexei more often referred to the Dane as Jumbo because of his immense size. Not only was Jumbo his pet, he was his closest friend and confidant.
Unfortunately, he has been missing since the disappearance of Alexei's father. Alexei is still, of course, searching desperately for his dog. B LACK DAHLIA . STATUS . To come 
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:25 pm
 [image pending]
A long, black flight feather from his father's wings. Hughes the teddy bear, gifted to Alexei from ELF.
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:25 pm
"Though our feelings come and go, God's love for us does not." N AME . Father Giancarlo Sorvino
A GE . Forty-nine
P ROFESSION . Priest; Suffragan bishop
L IKES . the Word, philosophy, gardening, good cheese and hot bread, cigarettes, giving council, taverns
D ISLIKES . Religious zealots, cheap wine, new shoes, his metropolitan archbishop, hypocrites
P ERSONALITY . Father Giancarlo Sorvino is a charming priest, warm and kind to his congregation and to those who seek him out for help and guidance. There is something genuine about this playful man, who seems to be the go-to guy for those in need of a pep talk that reaches beyond the scope of the spiritual. He's not entirely without faults, and though while patient to an extent, he has very little patience for ineptitude. Father Sorvino can be brusque, occasionally brash, amongst his peers, forgetting his role as a spiritual leader at times. He enjoys a good joke and a good smoke, the latter of which he’s been meaning to quit. Bad habits are just hard to break!
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:45 am
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:46 am
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:47 am
About a Boy.Solo RP.“I’m so sorry, Elliot.”
Su leaned against the doorframe to her daughter’s room, arms folded against her chest in a pensive stance the priest had not seen in such a long time. A child not her own lay still beneath the canopy bed that belonged to her youngest, Elda, his black curls like the well-oiled springs in a machine, spread across the pillow in corkscrews that reached in every direction. The nightlight threw stars and moons against the ceiling, rotating false constellations across that plaster sky. With one last look, Su shut the door, leaving only a sliver open to allow light from the hall to spill in.
“For what, Yocheved?” Her orange eyes cut to him then—“You didn’t leave him. If anything, I should be thanking you. I can’t enough.”
Both priest and beast traversed the narrow hall in silence, back to the small kitchen of Su’s equally small apartment. The light there was dim, orange, a coffee-stain glow, and she bee-lined immediately for the cup of coffee she had abandoned next to her laptop when Father James had dropped by. He lingered by the doorway.
“I’m just sorry I can’t keep him,” she continued, rubbing a hand through her hair. She collapsed onto the stool at the island, fingers continuing to massage circles against her scalp. “I just have too much work, not enough room, and Elda’s still here….”
“Please—don’t beat yourself up over it. Providing a temporary hospice for him while I get things sorted out is enough. Really.” Elliot crossed the room and took a seat across from his old friend, removing his pince-nez for a brief moment to rub his brow. The day had been one that had tested his nerve—stress was not something he felt often, but today it had come bearing a weight that would make Atlas drop his shoulders in defeat. He returned his spectacles, straightened with a sigh, “I’ll call Sorvino in the morning.”
“In Durem?”
He nodded, “I phoned him earlier and he said he’d make preparations. There’s room enough at their compound. I just wish—“
“I know,” Su smiled ruefully, cutting him off. “Me too.”
The silence that fell between the pair was tense, questions heavy on his side, answers burdening on hers. Their thoughts lingered on the boy that slept in a bed not his own, far away from a life that had been taken from him. They wondered if, despite the exhaustion they’d seen line the child’s face, whether he slept, or whether in fact, he had pretended and now lay awake, wondering the same ‘why’ that continued to cross their minds.
Su nursed her cup of coffee, took a sip, set it down. Restless, she stood and moved around the kitchen, throwing out the stale pot of coffee and throwing out the old filter. She stopped just short of scooping out the grounds, resting her weight on one foot and leaning against the counter. Elliot watched the jutting bones of her shoulder blades tense—calm – tense.
“I knew this was going to happen.”
Elliot laughed a humorless laugh, “Don’t say that. Don’t blame yourself for something that is clearly not your fault.”
Su shook her head and tossed the grounds into the filter, turning the pot on to percolate. She did not face the priest, but folded against the cool, red tiles, her hands cupping her eyes.
“No, I knew it was going to happen. Azruael—he could barely take care of himself. This—he—all of this. He never had the capacity to care for another human being. Ever.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know what really happened, nor do I, and I doubt the boy will ever speak of it, not to us. Not yet.”
“Elliot, you didn’t know Az like I did,” she bit off with anger directed at a man that was long gone. “He was—just, he was doomed to fail, all right? This isn’t the first time he’s come and gone like this. I really thought he had changed, that Alexei was his light at the end of the tunnel, but I think his tunnel’s collapsed. There is no light. There’s no tunnel. He’s buried.”
Father James didn’t say a word and neither did Su, both retreating back into their thoughts as the coffee plip-plip-plipped away and swept its heady scent through the kitchen. She felt such anger on Alexei’s behalf, a bystander watching from the sidelines, living vicariously through the little information she knew on the situation. Su couldn’t help jumping to conclusions. She had known Azruael, intimately, known his flighty tendencies, the way he lost interest and moved on. But he had loved Alexei with a love befitting a father to his son. His only son.
The cabinet opened and shut with a clatter, the coffee pouring into a chipped mug with a reluctant hiss. Su didn’t get the chance to hand it to Elliot, no, he had already stood, moving to her side to retrieve the mug—
– but they both simply stood, side-by-side, and stared into the smoke drifting up and up in whorls above their heads.
“The poor boy,” she said.
“I know,” he returned.
And in a room down the hall, a child was awake, staring at false constellations as they moved across a ceiling that wasn’t his.
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:31 am
He Said Yes.Solo RP.He said yes.
Late into the evening, Father Giancarlo Sorvino was wondering just how wise his impulsive decision had been. He had been pleasantly surprised by Elliot’s call so early in the morning that same day, several hours before mass as he had been finishing his meager breakfast of French bread and cheese. The man had sounded perplexed, tired, and just at the start of the day too! Unaware of his plight, Father Sorvino had laughed and taken the call outside, where he proceeded to poke fun at Elliot’s anxiety as he lit up a cigarette.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said pleasantly as he took a drag.
“What?” the priest on the other line had asked.
“Nothing,” he responded, blowing smoke from his nostrils.
Looking back on the conversation, he didn’t even remember how they had gotten on the topic of angels, or little boys with wings, for that matter. Something about fate knocking at one’s door, a sign from the heavens, God reaching out and touching the church to say ‘you are doing something right.’ Elliot had mentioned something about obligations, the inability to take charge, insufficient room. To be honest, Father Sorvino caught only half of it, too busy nursing the whiplash Elliot had pressed upon him with his ramblings. The older priest tapped ash from his cigarette, stared out into the empty square Durem presented him with in all of its post-winter splendor. It was too early for philosophical conversations—or whatever it was Elliot was trying to get at.
“What do you think of cherubs and putti?” the younger priest had prompted after a stretch of static-y silence.
“Absolutely terrifying,” he responded with some amusement, now perplexed himself. He stared at the slowly burning tip of his cigarette. “I could do with one less carving of one on the organ myself.”
Elliot’s sigh sounded harsh through the phone, “I’m serious.”
Father Sorvino laughed, sobering as he tossed the cigarette down the steps, “Yes, I know. I just don’t understand what you’re trying to get at, my friend.”
“What if….” Elliot began again. “What if one cannot host a messenger from God?”
“Then one must make the effort,” Giancarlo said seriously. Elliot was skirting around the issue, like a boy did when they had a fantastical tale to tell that would inevitably end with them admitting to breaking your favorite vase. But Elliot was not a boy, and having known the younger man long enough, also knew him well enough to know that his conversational floundering was uncommon; Elliot had always been the more serious of the two. The quiet was broken by the punctuated chirrups of the sparrows that lit upon the nude trees standing in the square. His thrown cigarette smoldered just four steps down.
“What’s the matter, Elliot?” Sorvino prompted, tired of all this p***y-footing, and with a sigh, Elliot unfolded his tale with much less enthusiasm and much more anxiety.
An abandoned boy at his church, a boy with eyes greener than sin, a boy who he had seen once, but knew not. A boy that had belonged to a demon, a boy with an angel’s face.
“A boy with wings,” he said at last. “And I do not know what to do with him.”
Elliot had no room to board the child at his church outside of Barton and he did not have the means to care for him. We cannot pass up an opportunity, not this kind of blessing, not when he was sent in hopes of finding sanctuary.
And something within Giancarlo Sorvino stirred. Bring him here, then he told his fellow priest without thinking. I will make the preparations for his stay. House him and give me some time before then.
Father Giancarlo Sorvino had said yes to a boy he had never seen, let alone met, and wondered at his choice over a cigarette.
Oh well, he thought, staring up at the sky through the haze of smoke that came tumbling from his mouth. I can’t back out of a blessing, now can I?
The heavens didn’t answer and the clouds continued to inch by above him.
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:17 pm
Glass Boy.Solo RP.
Alexei had never been to Durem. He had never been to Aekea. He would have liked to visit both under different circumstances, but waking up in a girl’s bed, in a room and house that smelt of nothing he remembered, and knowing if he looked out the window, he would see a city that was not his, Alexei wanted nothing to do with either. So he rolled onto his side and breathed deeply, smelt the sweetness of lavender in his pillow, and tried to go back to sleep.
A soft knock at the door drew him back to reality, as did the shock of pink hair poking itself into the room.
“Oh, you’re awake!” A smile stole across Elda’s lips, bright as the sun peeking through the blinds, “Mama wanted me to come and wake you for breakfast. Did you sleep well? I hope Carroll wasn’t any trouble. I told him to be a good boy, but he never listens to me….”
Alexei blinked, pushed himself up. She spoke an awful lot and incredibly fast at that, as if filling up the empty air his voice had yet to occupy. He scratched a hand through his mussed curls as he slid from the bed, the floor cold beneath his naked feet.
“Sorry for stealing your bed,” he said quietly, pulling the duvet forward in attempts to make her bed. Elda would have none of that, stealing across the room with a flutter and plucking the covers from his small hands. Her smile never wavered.
“Don’t even worry about that, darling,” she returned. The comforter snapped up and out, and she winked over her shoulder at the young boy, “I’ll get it. Go get some breakfast. Mama makes the most dazzling waffles! Unless you like eggs, then she makes spectacular eggs.”
The cheeriness in her voice wheedled its way into his bones, startling him awake and sending the vaguest notion of a smile across his face. Nodding at her turned back and giving her wings a once over, he finally padded to the door, leaving Elda humming a jazzy ditty in his wake.
“She has wings,” he said into his plate, herding a slice of waffle around to soak up the last of the syrup. Su poured more orange juice into his glass, brows rising.
“Who—Elda? Yeah, she’s part flamingo.” She shook the carton and returned it to the fridge. Alexei watched her move, lips folding into his mouth. Part flamingo? That explained all that pink hair and the inky black ridges on her flight feathers. He couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed over the realization; reaching for his glass, he washed down his last bite with some orange juice.
“We have to head out soon,” Su imparted as she turned back towards the island. Her smile was forced. “I promised Elliot we would be in Durem at 10 sharp.”
“Elliot?” Alexei slid from his stool and carried his plate to the sink.
“Father James, I mean,” she corrected with a light shrug. She took his dish and scraped the remaining food into the disposal. The formality of Elliot's name tasted alien on her tongue. “Go get your stuff together, kiddo. I think being late is the unofficial eighth deadly sin.”
Alexei humored his hostess with a small smile and made it to the edge of the kitchen when she called to him again.
“Hey, Alexei… I’m sorry.”
His wings drew in against his back, the golden beadwork clicking together softly. For a while, the Herald stared down at his bare toes curling against the stone floor; they were ashy from the winter cold, he noted. He meant to look back, but only managed to stare at a point beyond his shoulder and unable to find his voice, he only nodded as he headed into the hall. Su sighed.
“Is this yours too?”
Elda sat up on her knees, holding up a tiny sock for inspection. Considering socks didn’t look like they could even fit on the young woman’s clawed feet, Alexei couldn’t help but grin and nod as he reached across the bed to take it from her.
“Gosh, I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t think Jade would try to nest in your things. What a mess! Oh, look, I think this is your shoe… or what’s left of it, anyway… drat.”
Alexei laughed, a high, hollow sound, as he folded the sweater one of her rabbits had dragged from his suitcase and made into a temporary den. He didn’t mind their nosiness (or recklessness for that matter) and found it almost endearing despite his destroyed sneaker. Animals were going to be animals, after all. Thankfully, most of his things were already packed away, and fishing the straps free from beneath his things, he fastened them in tight.
“Ew, ew! She’s been using my feathers to nest! Oh, I’m going to have to clear this all out,” Elda pouted, sitting back. The other half of Alexei’s dearly departed shoe was in her hand, and when he looked up, she was peeling a long, black feather from the flopping sole. He started forward.
“That’s mine!”
Elda looked up, surprised by the fervor in his voice. It seemed to have startled Alexei as well, because he sat back and dropped his eyes, shyly, shamefully. His fingers traced the seams in Elda’s comforter, smoothing the wrinkles in the bed sheets with a slow deliberation as if he were awaiting her verdict. It never came.
“C’mon, kiddo, let’s move out!”
Su’s voice broke the quiet that had settled between them, and like an automaton set to move at her sounded command, Alexei stood up and shut his suitcase. It was so big in his small hands, a suitcase that most definitely belonged to an adult, not a child. In the silence that had followed his small outburst, he had again retreated into himself, carrying himself with the somber air of an adult—but he hadn’t mastered it just yet. To Elda, he looked as fragile as glass.
“Thank you for helping me,” he said softly, politely. Wrapping both hands around the handle, he struggled to move it on his way out.
“Don’t forget this,” Elda called after him, meeting him at the door of her room. Swiping the long, black feather clean in her palm, she tucked it into his hair, taking a moment to brush his curls back. Alexei only stared at her midsection and the tulle of her dress. He touched the feather.
“I wish I could,” he said quietly. Elda took his bag and walked him to the door.
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