Jewels of Darkness - 10. Coniungere Amo et Peccatum

“For 'twas not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. 'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul.”1

Judy Garland2

Alone in an unknown place, Love was terrified. Her crimson velvet cloak was barely enough to keep Her from freezing to death in the cold. She looked around in the dark place and, in the furthest corner from Her, saw a green flash. Sin was present.3

“Do not fear, Love, I shall not hurt you!” Sin’s words echoed; it had a rather comforting feel to hear. “You know why we are here,” Another flash turned Sin into human, at least in appearance; gone were the feline features. At least six foot tall, Sin defined masculinity.4

“Sin?” The single word escaped from Love’s mouth as She, too, became human in appearance. Neither had lost their skin colour; Sin was still green, and Love was still red. She stepped nearer to Him.5

“I have wanted this since I saw you millennia upon millennia ago.” Silently, lost in the memories of the past, He bowed His head. After leaving it a moment to recover, Sin stood at His full height directly in front of Love; She was not afraid of the lack of distance, since She fell in Her own trap the moment their eyes met at the start of creation. “May I?” Sin whispered. She nodded, letting Him gently hold Her head in His hands, and slowly kiss Her lips.6

Outside, people were looking up at the midnight sky, hypnotised by the flashes of light from the fireworks, on the wintry November night; the flashes were illuminating the inky black sky, protecting the seemingly randomly placed stars with a coloured blanket for an instant, before disappearing into the darkness. Others were putting more wood, and trash, onto the fire, to keep the onlookers warm, and the children spellbound; each glimmer of scarlet and yellow reflected on the faces of the innocent youngsters, as they stood, transfixed, watching the dancing heat. The fire was fuelled by pieces of dry, decomposing wood, found laying around the grassland.7

With all the attention set on the colourful and ear shattering fireworks, no one noticed the black clouds descending over the open heath. As if playing a game, the storm seemed to add its own fireworks to the display, exactly the same time as one of the people setting off a firework. The last few flashes of colour quickly became flashes of white, blinding and terrifying; it was the trigger of Heaven’s judgment, sending sheets of icy rain down upon the onlookers.8

The fires were drowned by the persistent rain, like ghosts fading over time. People tried to run to higher ground, but it was futile; the rain did not stop, and there was too much for the ground to hold. The land quickly became covered by an ever growing blanket of water. Priests headed for bars and pubs, whereas the alcoholics ran into the churches; each found a new deity to worship, whether it was God or the bottom of yet another bottle.9

“Look at them all, running from Nature,” Sin spoke up, while He and Love watched the rain fall. “They think they can escape her clutches, but they are so stupid, it is nearly pathetic.” Sin became fascinated with a heavily pregnant woman; she was trying to get her husband, who was obviously not a natural swimmer, to hold onto a branch of the tree.10

“Each one down there has their own story, just like us, my dear.” Love, too, watched the woman, but more out of curiosity than malevolence. The husband had, barely, managed to get a grip on the branch, but it broke, sending the man into the waters, quickly drowning the life out of him. “As one life fades, another always comes.” As She spoke, the woman hurled over in pain.11

“Love, are you really going to watch her give birth?” Love nodded at Sin’s pointless question. The woman had, with the help of others around her, managed to get up onto higher ground still. She was in labour. After a few moments of pain, screaming, and crying, she gave birth to a baby boy; she immediately called him her husband’s name.12

“With death, comes life. Sin, not many of them down there realise what we know. They can’t understand the power of words, not fully. Right now, that woman is feeling loss, suffering, happiness, and love, yet she won’t be able to explain any of that, not fully. The words they speak are but mere sounds, which have some sort of meaning, which they can just about half comprehend. The people down there believe that the echoes they hear in their thoughts are meaningless; they don’t understand that those echoes can be memories of the past, dreams of the future, and hopes of the times once gone. They cannot understand how the pain they feel at times when they are happy, is from the memories that they once had forgotten.13

“Once upon a time, words actually meant something more. They were more than just fragments of emotions. Once upon a time, they fully captured the emotions that people felt. Then time moved on, and things changed in language. Emotions were only felt by echoes of words, by having some relative meaning attached to a sound. Once upon a time used to exist. Once upon a time will exist again.”