cafe_coimbra | [Fic] Malkuth

Because I said I would, didn't I? Ohoho.
Not as good as the other ones because it was born on impulse. Very very very vague!
and short.

Malkuth

He had never shouted, not one bit, even when he was a child. Raising his voice was akin to some kind of wrong on some level that didn’t belong in his nature- the overwhelming shyness had always been there, as well as the aversion to most forms of physical contact and the nervous playing of his fingers on his collar or on the ends of his sleeves.

There was the addiction to walking and the (unintentional) fondness for accidentally leaving a scarf at home on cold days, and the soft, blank-slate gray of his eyes had always been there, never left.

-------

In the dim light of the cream-colored room, his right hand smoothed out dark blonde curls spread against a cream-colored pillow, the other being clasped tightly in a pair of cold, pale hands and his gray eyes regarding the equally gray ones of his sister, tired and flushed from a severe fever. Her immune system had always been weak, but this was one of the worse days and with her being so young there was only so much that her body could do to help her prevent infections like this—

“Sandy, am I going to die?”

It was a simple question, one not usually expected of an eleven year old (never expected, actually, but then again they were full of exceptions, weren’t they?) and spoken with an honest curiosity that lacked the regular fear of the unknown accompanying all words related to death. No, he mulled it over again, there was no fear there (but he was also young, barely thirteen years in the world, so maybe he had mistaken it for something else).

So he gave her the soft, slightly-hesitant smile that he was known for and pushed some strands of hair out of her (ill, in pain, accepting) face and said

“Not today, Yra, not today.”
--------

He didn’t remember the particular moment when their parents stopped being their parents and simply became like any other common noun in their life, but he was sure it started some time ago and they just hadn’t bothered to point the fact out until it became impossible to ignore.
They were businesspeople, economists, capitalists, and as such kept travelling to different regions of Brestia to negotiate, as well as the occasional venture abroad. The reality presented itself to them when eventually, the letters stopped coming.

They were alive, he was sure. They just stopped bothering anymore about the children they had grown so distant from- and it was a shame, really, the people would gossip, those children were so pretty but it really was too bad that the little girl (who was so gentle and proper) was such a sickly thing, and such a waste that the boy (who was so sweet) was so shy and anti-social, and their parents weren’t helping them along at all.

And thus it was arranged for them to go live with their relatives in an area so far away from their hometown.

------

His aunt and uncle were welcoming, and although they weren’t as high up on the social scale as their end of the family and their estate was slightly smaller, it felt better than their own home ever could- and yet it was not home, and so he didn’t stay.

He was still young, barely fifteen, and he was of the strong opinion that his parents had gotten bored of him (not his sister, how could anyone get bored of his sister unless they were totally heartless?) and if that was indeed the case, wouldn’t there be nothing to stop his relatives from getting bored of him as well?

-------
The building war between his homeland and Vespanola had reached the critical point when he was in his mid-teens, and during one of his walks to visit his sister at his uncle’s household, he had seen the young soldiers starting to patrol the streets, and at an intersection he had seen their superior talking to several of them, but at the time about what, he couldn’t fathom.

What he did see (and to an extent, understand) was the familiar shock of golden hair of his cousin, only one year (more or less) older than him, tied in a low ponytail (he must have been forced to, Sandalphon thought), and when Valerius turned to look at him (seeing him out of the corner of his eye), ice blue met cloud gray and it was only then that he noticed the guns in their holsters and the military uniform, and something had changed.

When he got to his destination, he found out that Peregrine had disappeared without word and his sister was bedridden again, and the atmosphere was cold.
---------
Sometimes he wondered why he decided to get himself into situations like this, and attributed it to his insatiable wanderlust and need to be anything but sedentary. The walking did him some good (took his mind off many, many things and directed his thoughts into a more favourable direction) but going into semi-remote areas while a war was raging with Vespanola was not a smart move on his part.

And so it came to be that in the outskirts of a town miles and miles away from where his sister stayed, he stood across from a foreign soldier (who was currently pinned to the ground with interweaving webs of energy- it had been one of the first times he put his abilities into practice but he didn’t expect to use it the way he did) with his shoulder a mess of blood and a shallow cut on his cheek, holding up the gun that had been used to shoot him at the other man’s head.

They looked at each other for a while (Sandalphon tried not to think about the fact that his hand was shaking) and suddenly there was that smile on his face again, the soft, somewhat angelic smile of forgiveness, and he lowered his arm and turned back to walk toward the town, tossing the gun to the ground and ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the persistent ‘why’s of the man behind him.

Later, much later, months and months later, that same man would step back onto his homeland’s soil, spirit awash with the feeling of victory and feeling the warm arms of a family, a lover, encircle themselves around him.

The man’s belief was that it was some sort of divine mercy. The truth was that Sandalphon was a coward.

------
He had come to accept the fact that he and his sister would most probably die young- her with her sickness and him with his frailty and perpetual indecision. Maybe he was alright with that, but it would be nice to have his sister live even just a bit longer than he would- she deserved it more.

What would there be for him to live for?

He hadn’t gotten through that puzzle yet, and at the present time it was only him striving to understand, to learn. It was always just him.
-------

Happy Birthday, Sandalphon was all that the card read. It was a scarf. It was from his parents.
It would later be the scarf that he would try to remember to wear, on days when the breeze was cold and the sun low, and it would later be the scarf that he would always forget.

---------

“Yra?”
“Hm?”
“Am I going to die?”
“Not today, Sandy, not today.”

So I like wiki-ing and googling random stuff, so I researched on Sandalphon (the angel). And he is the angel of:
Prayer
Heavenly song
Power
Glory
Tears

... lol that last bit. Fitting!?