Homeland

Letter 8

Citudaolle,

            .  I wonder about you, sometimes.  Did the government give you the antidote for the love potion?  Do you not love me anymore?  Have you advanced your position in the government?  Do you still deal with Hell’s relations with Heaven and Earth? 

            I don’t know why I even write to you.  There isn’t any way for you to even read these letters, let alone write back, as I don’t know how to contact Hell.  And why should I care about what you say?  What love we have is artificial, and your opinion is not something I should value, anyway.  You are blinded by the lies Hell feeds you.  If I had a companion, I probably would be perfectly fine without you.  But of course I have none, partially of my own will.

            Perhaps that is why I so readily confided in Alistriona.  Perhaps years of solitude weakened me.  Or perhaps I’m just out of practice. 

            At first she asked me mostly about Hell.  So I told her.  I told her that demons are born into nurseries, of sorts, and live amongst peers in dorm-like quarters.  From the day of birth, no one knows who their parents are.  I told her of our studies, about humans and angels and such.  Brushed quickly over the love potions at age fifteen, and went in depth about our being chosen into sectors.  Naturally, she was most interested in the love potions, and asked me in detail about you and the taste of the potion and the feeling of artificial love.  I tried to keep it in more of the political aspect, how the government wanted the allegiance of the civilian’s rebellious souls, and made sure that at least one person in every pair was tied to the government.   Alistriona, however, kept pressing toward you.  When I described you, though, she blushed.  Emotional little thing, she is.

            It was easier, for me, to explain the government.  How it was an overpowering, suppressive authority.  I explained it the way I saw it, not the way you saw it.  I still don’t understand how the government could have possible ensnared the loyalty of so many beings whose nature is to rebel.  It must have been the potion.  Have one person be in love with another, and have that person be devoted to the government.  And make sure everyone is blinded; ensure that from the start, the government is considered God.  I told Alistriona about the battles I fought, the wars I helped Hell win, and how the suffering and pain I witnessed opened my mind to the cruelty of the body ordering the fighting – the leaders.  They saw my thoughts and my gradual reluctance to do what I used to do on instinct.  They saw me talking of it to my peers, and saw me as a threat.  So they got rid of me.  But since I had taken the eternity potion, they couldn’t kill me.  And it was so hard to find the potion; no one had the antidote yet.  So they did the next best thing – they banished me.  Separated me from everything I knew, everything I loved. 

            They even stripped me of my fighting skills.  I’m not sure if you were aware, as you skipped my ‘ceremony’, but I showed her the marks.  The curling tendrils engraved into my skin, somehow stopping my heart whenever I tried to fight.  I did attempt it, in my earlier years on Earth, but soon found out that a mere strike would leave me collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.  Naturally, she asked me to punch her.  This was the most entertaining thing I had done for her.  When I withdrew my fist and left her hunched over, cradling her stomach, she seemed quite furious. 

“You said any fighting would knock you out!”

I shrugged.  “That wasn’t fighting.  Real fighting is something that you wouldn’t be able to see, as human eyes cannot see that quickly.  The marks only inhibit demon fighting.”  This, unfortunately, got her excessively rallied up.

“You have super powers?  Oh my god, that must be so awesome!  What is it?  Do you run like, a mile a minute?  Or do you have super strength?  Can you lift entire trees?  Are you as hard as a rock?   Are you really intelligent?  Do your eyes change color?  Wait.  Do you sparkle?”

“I’m not- “

“Hold on.  What do you eat?”

This girl has an imagination.  “No.  I do not have super powers.  They don’t exist.  Enhanced physical attributes, yes.  Without the markings shackling me to human boundaries, I can run about a mile a second.  I am quite a bit stronger than humans.  Some trees are very small, do you mean those?  No I am not born of stone.  I am naturally quite intelligent, but yes, my mind does have a considerably larger memory and works faster than a humans’.  And no, I do not suck human blood for sustenance.  I don’t eat.”  She looked extremely astonished.  “I can’t die.  Why should I waste money on food that I don’t need?”

“Do you sleep?”

“No.”

“Then what do you do at night?”

“Work night shifts at my job.”

“And your job is…?”

“Serving at a club, where no one cares about my insane height and stature.”

“Can you get drunk?”

“No.”

“That must suck.”  For a moment we stopped talking, and I thought back to all the painful things I wish I could drink away.  “Where do you get your clothes?”

“I make them.”

“Oh.  No offense or anything, but no wonder what you wear looks like crap.”

After she squeezed as much information as she could out of me about Hell and my ‘super powers’, she started interrogating me about life in early times on Earth.  This I more obediently obliged.  I told her how I lived during the Middle Ages – the poor hygiene, and the disgusting food and tiring work.  The way disease spread like wildfire.  I even told her how I fell in love with another man (yes, Citudaolle, there was another.  It can only be expected), sweet and mischievous in nature.  He was quite like you, actually.  Except kinder and less passionate.  I don’t believe it is possible for a human to be as passionate about anything as a demon.  Except perhaps love. 

            Then she asked me about the Black Plague.  I told her what I knew.  What I had surmised.  Hell’s government, it sent me to Earth to punish me.  Separate me from the one I love, the one that stabilized my life.  When I found another love another reason to enjoy existence, the banishment wasn’t a form of torture anymore.  So they killed him.  You killed him.  And to make sure I never formed a bond with anyone ever again, you killed a third of the entire human race, too.  In a sense, it was my fault, all those deaths.  Do you know how horrible it is, to see the ones you love dying?  To see innocents around you, ignorant and stupid, torturing themselves because they believed the plague wouldn’t kill them if they killed themselves first?  To hear their groans, their cries of mercy, see the gruesome lumps swelling up on their skin, smell the stench of death with every inhalation?

             I couldn’t talk much after that.  Talking about leaving Hell was fine.  Talking about you was upsetting.  Talking about my indirect murder of all those people?  I couldn’t bear reliving that.  I excused myself, and ran home.  Only to start writing to you.

You, the one my heart and soul belongs to.  You, who didn’t even have the courage or the face to come to your beloved’s banishment.

Khlamuherguetora

***Hey.  So... sorry for the long and boring explanitory chapter.  The Black Plague thing was pretty important to me; it added another dimention to Alina and Citudaolle's relationship.  The fun stuff comes next.  And then... I really haven't planned that far.

Comment/critique!