You step through the clearing first, boots crunching wet leaves. The angel waits ahead, stone arms open, moss clinging like old grief. You press a clutch of orange flowers into her palms—color against gray, life against ruin. Flowers die, you remind yourself, but the act matters anyway.
Above, wings shuffle. The watchers have arrived. Black eyes track every breath. They are neither angels nor demons—something older, patient, exact. Crows for most, ravens for the marked. They do not judge, they remember. Care for one and all remember. Harm one, and you are never free. Their justice is slow, the kind that never announces itself, only waits. You feel why they are here: the message still lives.
You did not grow from love. You came on a day sewn with sorrow, carried by hands that knew only locked doors. The water of the womb gave you history, not safety. Blood offered something different. Not the blood in your veins—the blood you chose to spill beside others. The ones who fed you in silence, defended you in absence, kept choosing you when choosing hurt. The covenant.
You recall the first meeting: a look that split you open. No words needed. They saw the prayers you whispered into empty rooms, the secrets even you feared. They never flinched. They already understood the shape of love you required.
Your table is rough stone on damp ground, nothing like polished mahogany, yet it is yours. Around it sit the ones who bear no piece of your name but every piece of your truth. They know the darkest parts and stayed. Across the field, barely in view, stand the people who did not. Family by title, empty by weight. They watch your feast now, and you watch them back. You saw their betrayals long ago, in dreams that felt like warnings. You tried once to stop them. They chose otherwise.
The gifted ones settle near. They feel too much, think in color, hear in pulses. They sense when your mirror has become an enemy, when your smile is holding its breath. Their wish is to heal you, but they know they cannot. So they bleed the pain into art, into ink, into steady presence.
Tonight you gather because the raven called. Its cry slices the branches. The veil thins. Ancestors pause to listen, weighing loyalty over lineage. You murmur the phrase now clear: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Branches tremble. The crows consent.
You glance at the angel again. Wings eroded by time, gown eaten by moss, yet the bouquet still blazes in her grip. It will wither soon, but it burns bright now—proof that moments matter more than permanence.
They tell you not to bring the gifted ones flowers, because flowers die. Bring them your truth. Bring them your loyalty. Bring them your presence when the rest of the world goes dark.
And when the raven calls, you answer. The table is set. The watchers are perched. The covenant holds. The cure is just like heaven.
Leave a comment