At The Edge Of Time
I was dreaming last night and in my dream I was drawn through a tunnel of space and time and blackness and light to a place where two angels stood in converse at the edge of time. One's name was Sadrel and he was the angel of the past and the present. The other was called Michel and he was a visionary. They existed in a place outside the frame of time and there they discussed in present tense that which was seen on the grid of elapsed mortal time from the awakening of the stars to the awakening of the dead.
"The one is entered today" quoth Michel out of the silence of space.
"quiet down!" answered Sadrel. "Lest the one who is alike to us in nature but unalike in purpose have strayed to this place to hear us!"
"Ai," answered Michel "No force of he's going to yet become the outcome. And the one you speak of is quite the same as us as to purpose. It is his nature that is fallen."
"Alas you fall over words which befall us both with their mortal riddles" Sadrel replied- a slight chuckle in his voice. "and the destinies and provinces of both men and angels is not ours to discuss- nay to play."
He paused.
"Ai," Michel said, as if to finish an oft quoted verse of Sadrel, "All we have is our own purpose, and our time, course and function to transcend"
"E'en to the end -dear brother on wings; and an adventure it is to have. Yea, such as the mortals play at."
"Hmm" Michel sighed thoughtfully.
They stared for several moments more to stare into what in my dream I could not see. Then they conversed further.
"Look now!" it was Sadrel this time. "How his followers and devotees have taken after him with such love! Look at how now they face death... imprisonment....torture." Sadrel's eyes maintained an intense fix on the space as he paused between words- as if waiting for a new slide on a camera slide reel.
"Some of these have a better idea of what it is to live than do we." Michel added carefully.
"Oh death" he quoth on,
"should I know thee
would I know life more full.
Oh Mortality- to understand
Conceive of His Foreverness?"
He paused for a moment in timelessness.
"But now these ones cling so loosely to his identity. Their devotion is mingled as a cocktail of juices- pleasing at a sip but spiteful in result. "
"Don't judge them yet," Sadrel answered, "I see their reaching for the law and even their principles of his own, but this convergence of the world isn't enough to throw them out yet."
"I wonder if He agrees"
"hmm"
As they stood there, standing still with particles of timelessness quivering as paused in precision I saw as if they both reached out their hands- or their minds toward what I could not see. Sadrel seemed to do so carefully and willfully while I thought I caught a glimpse of joy and a tinge of eagerness in Michel's eye and breadth of reach.
In that moment a blueish - though dreams be hard to describe- significant light flashed as if to light up every microbe or particle which held the essence of nothing and blackness in submission and acknowledgment to the one who reigned over even their domain. The light flashed omnidirectional around the angelic beings as bits of their white garments sometimes caught the light and flashed and lit up thier features. And when their eyes were hit by this light I could see deeply into thier expression- beyond opinion, duty and will into a deeper resolve which I would name Hope.
Is it possible for angels to doubt?
Sadrels eyes glanced down and then up, and then across again to his comrade and broke that element of serenity.
"I can't help calling this the end of the beginning, brother."
"Forgive me, but I hardly play," Michel continued, "at that this is but the beginning of the end..."
But in that moment, thought these words seemed good to me I saw in the meeting of these two pairs of eyes that they understood that also to be somewhere unsatisfactory- at least to them. I held on to hear their resolve.
"So it begins,"
"The ultimate finale."
And in that moment, these two beings- having stored and worked side by side for a period we can not measure in mortal years- spoke in unison;
"It is the beginning of the beginning."
I woke in as peaceful a start as is possible. And morning light was coming through the blinds.
