The Man Named After the Sky

Azrael's Wish

Written by J. L. Gryphon

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Click Here for Audio Version

Ambient sounds courtesy of tosha73 and EminYILDIRIM

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by peter_pyw from Pixabay – Modified by J. L. Gryphon

Greetings to those below. I am Death, and if I cared enough, I would ask that you call me Azrael. Today, though, I’m afraid I don’t have the energy. Call me what you like. Believe about me what you will. I don’t have the willpower to defend myself today because today I . . . I didn’t expect to speak about him. The words came to me on a night without stars, and now that they have, I’m afraid I’m quite used up. It’s a hard thing to discuss for so many reasons, but the biggest of them simply is: I care.
You must understand, in my line of work it doesn’t do well to care. Yes, I have expressed my sympathies to varying degrees so far, but I must admit those sympathies were expressed at a distance. I hover. I drift. I bow to those I collect. But I don’t get close. I can’t. Or at least, I know I shouldn’t. But when I came to collect the man named after the sky, I did more than just bow.
He was crying, you see. He’s not the only one to have cried upon meeting me. Of course not. But there was something different about the tears shed by the man named after the sky, something so lonely and so empty, it spawned a legacy that twists the world even to this day. When he saw me, he just . . . slumped. The last thread holding him together shivered, sighed, then trailed away in a curl of smoke. He cried. And I couldn’t help but embrace him. I had to hold him, keep his soul together, or else all the pieces of him would have crumbled into the wind. It was the most miserable thing I have ever seen. Even now, it haunts me. I’ll never forget the last thing he said:

"I chose the wrong sister."

Choice is law. How many times have I said that? How many times have I observed from afar and slowly shaken my head, wishing people had chosen better—wishing they had been able to see what was coming. But this wasn’t like that. This wasn’t a mistake.
This was betrayal.
Choice is law, but this was not his fault. The horror that came after was not his fault. Nothing of that night that still limps on today is his fault. I wish with all my being he had known that. I wanted to tell him. I even tried, but he couldn’t hear me. The voices of his past shrieked too loudly for me to get in a word, and after they had screamed themselves raw, my brother woke up and started laughing. All I could do was collect the man. It was the only merciful thing left. Perhaps this is what Helios, my greatest fan, means when he says I am the one good thing left in the world. Maybe he’s right. I just wish I didn’t have to wonder.
I wish the man named after the sky had lived.

Signed your wistful narrator,
Azrael the Star of Death

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Book Information

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