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The boy stood in place and gazed, with the very same grief always implanted in him, at the event which was taking place a couple of meters away in the center of the dark Dutch road, illuminated by yellow. His hands were laid out calmly (so a stranger who did not know him could have thought. However, I identified this constant vigilance in his gentle posture) by his body which faced the road. His figure seemed about to start walking again at any moment, as opposed to his curly head which turned in the direction of the things that had stolen his attention with such interest, which I had thought - before I met him - was robbed from our species. I stopped at a distance behind him, as I knew I shouldn't come near. I looked ahead, followed the course of his gaze, at the pair of animals that laid on the damp pavement in the cold of the night, clean of man but dirty with the steps of his soles.
A black cat was lying on the ground, stretched out on its side in a limp, unnatural way to the wild beast. Above him, no, but above her – nipples protruded from her swollen belly – a male cat, large and white, yearned to mate with her. The same female cat – the other creature bit and pulled at the nape of her neck, shook his rear at hers even though she was pregnant – is she asleep? No. Dead. If her capitulation didn't suffice, the smell of death, diluted with the scent of animalistic heat, did. The scent that had not yet faded. How did she die so suddenly, and why? I realized gradually, in a fraction of a second, but if it weren’t for Magdiel, out of my own accord I wouldn’t have granted the animals even a glance. An animalistic thing was there, wild, innocent and pure. The same cat, to whom the scent of heat made impossible to figure out why she doesn't respond to his innocent whims, is superior to me and all my children. And it occurred to me that even though the reason I wouldn't have stopped was much simpler – I didn't deserve the right to stop.
My eyes turned to my angel. He, on the other hand… I couldn't see his face clearly from where I was standing, but I recognized in his expression the suffering that belonged only to him as always. At the end of his eyebrow, in the dimple almost hidden from my eyes on his sculpted forehead, at the end of his lips. But the grain of dust passing through time which he witnessed didn't claim itself the seraph's misery, the sentiment was still his and his alone. What he had expressed towards the animals themselves, at least externally alone (Which I realized only due to the long time I spent in a ridiculous attempt to get to know him) was total indifference.
Yet he stopped.
I didn't speak. I stayed behind. The thought of such a thing affecting him, reaching him, seemed so ridiculous to me, yet painfully logical. The white cat pulled several more times at the back of the pregnant corpse and paused, stirred away from it, turned around in confusion and lust and returned to its actions. This was repeated several times over the course of long minutes in which I gave Magdiel the space I could not have taken from him, at the end of which the cat licked its loins. The ancient boy stood like a statue. His body, in spite of the uncomfortable posture in which he stood, didn't move. Even his fingers didn't tremble in the face of the events that would have easily caused discomfort in every human being.
"Magdiel…" to taste his name at that moment I broke the silence in fear of a reason that I had just begun to touch its understanding's root, but I was doing it for him still, as another cat, grayed and speckled from head to tail, approached the unsettling pair. I walked toward Magdiel and stood next to him. I didn't look away from him for even a moment, yet he turned towards me with a smile hung on his lips. A smile I hadn’t noticed in the split second he had managed to raise up against me. He could smile an O-so-familiar smile, a smile parents show their child to fool him that everything is fine. That angel, O devilish son of the heavens, could have fooled me as easily as the mortal system to which he gave his kiss. But his face remained etched in his grief, and the smile he smiled, in the simplest way, asked for my love.
It was ironic how vulnerable the Nephilim’s son had then appeared to me. The white cat tensed and arched its back against the gray, which tried to approach the black body and join it himself. But the warning wails were only a background noise to my understanding and to the voice of Magdiel following it. Did this remind you of a forgotten pain?
Suddenly Magdiel continued his human walk, pulled himself forward a step or two before he paused to wait for me, as if I were the one who lingered in front of the flea-infested in their agitating, unconscious actions. Time seemed to stop, and began to progress again only with the movement of my beloved, Magdiel, the conductor, signifying the sequence of time and me to go on. Indeed, is it not always so? He smiled as ghosts such as us passed the empty street, those miserable furs that don't even constitute a comma in the pages of history forever behind us. The same smile that stung in my heart did not leave his face. I slowed down to his usual pace and Magdiel joined his arm in mine. He was silent. He looked at my face with that eternal, handsome sorrow, with the same intense affection. I looked back at him. I'm worried about you, my love. Go on, he leaned against me in command, put his head against my shoulder instantly and his eyes were already shut. The early heat of the kill radiated from his body and emphasized his sweet, deep smell. My desire for him was more effective than any words he could have spoken to me.
I poured sweet nothings into his ears as intoxicating drink and kissed his fragrant head from time to time as we crossed the ghostly streets in a painfully slow walk, as if we were the only two damned creatures in the world.