"The world's got a way of changing, sometimes. Things change. Times change. People change. Sometimes I think I've finally become the person I needed to be six months ago, but I haven't the faintest idea who I need to be now."
Words. They had just been words, at the time, making conversation with a man because they both were pretending that there wasn't anything wrong, that all they wanted from each other was a few words. Pretending that she wasn't trying to provoke him with every other sentence into doing something he shouldn't. She'd known from the start that something was off about him. She'd just told herself that she was doing it to protect her city.
Told herself that she wasn't doing it because she wanted an excuse to hunt him down.
It was the middle of the night, and she was on the rooftop of the synagogue, alone. She was most places alone, these days. Sometimes she didn't mind. Other times... other times she felt the loneliness, and sat up on top of the holy place of a god she didn't believe in, as if maybe getting a little closer to him would ease the ache. It never did, though.
Sitri understood. She knew the stories. 'Daughter of Enoch,' the rabbi called her, progeny of one of the fallen, who had aeons ago traded paradise for pleasure. Thus, she had inherited. Both, in equal measure. Sometimes she tried to ignore that part of herself. Sitri had once been very good at ignoring parts of herself. She seemed to be getting worse at that as she got older. Maybe it was maturity. Or maybe it was just failure.
Her eyes lifted sightless to the denied heavens, and graced a smile to the demon within, clamoring for torment. For blood, for slaughter, for the thrill of the hunt. She denied it most of that... but torment she would indulge. She still refused it the torment of others, but her own... well, her own was hers to offer where she wanted, and the one she would have given it to had refused her.
She closed her eyes to the absent god, and whispered the name of his bereft: "Iyrin." Around her, the world fell still, an endless ocean of sorrow. Everywhere, the hint of what could have been, what might have been, what once was. What had been thrown away for a future that had seemed better at the time, but now lay unbearable, an echo of constant reminder. Lost, denied, cast away.
These days, Sitri understood her fallen side very well. She drew her knees to her chest, and waited for the tears to pass, feeling below her the consecration, the holiness, the ache of something gone that could not be regained. She breathed in, and out, and felt her consciousness extend, an awareness of all those places in the city where the world touched on the faith of those that could bear it. Synagogues, churches, temples, mosques... the name of the faith didn't matter, merely that it existed. Beyond the city, she could feel them too, stretching out across the world. One and then another, little places man carved out of the world to bring him closer to a god, seeking the paradise he had never seen.
She wondered if it was better never to know of it, or to know it and lose it, again and again. The wings of the nephilim wrapped around her, and she fell back into their embrace, reaching for the next nearest blessed fragment of earth and grasping at it. For a moment, she almost touched paradise, and then it was gone again and there was only the falling and the loss and the blindness, and the wings unfurled around her as she landed lightly on the pointe of a cross.
The ache of denial suffused her, and she channeled its agony into the demon bound within, stored damnation waiting for another day. Some day, she might let it out. Not today, though. The city bound her, held her, caged her. She'd called herself its guardian, and it was a role she could fill, and did as needed, but at the same time she knew that a guardian was not who she was meant to be. She'd always known, she supposed. There were some that thrived on protection, on defense.
Sitri though... she had always wanted to hunt. The demon pricked within her, and all her selves whispered in accord. There was no haven. If she could not have it, then she could rip it from the others who sought it, cast them down into their own damnations.
Or she could wait, and be a guardian. Abject denial, and solitude. Some days, it was enough. Other days, she'd had enough of it. The demon smiled within her, pointed beneath the tears of dystopian remains.
Open your eyes, it whispered, a song within her soul.
Open your eyes... and see who you are.
Things change. Times change. People change.
Open your eyes... and be who you are.
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