maybeElse

“Oh, little angel … this is such a place to find you in, here down among the world's roots. Why would you let yourself fall so far, my dear? There is nothing here for one like you.”

She whirls, looking for the voice's source—but her halo is so dim. She can't see a thing.

“I'm not your dear!” she yells, glaring at where she thinks the voice came from—a matted tangle of roots and thorns and filthy wood. “And I'm not fallen. I'm on a mission.”

This time the voice comes from directly behind her. “Oh? And what mission is that, little one?”

Turning as fast as she can, her tired wings hardly moving enough to help her keep her balance, she falls down into the mud pooling in the faint shadow cast by her halo. When she scrambles up she's filthy, her white robe marred by streaks and her wings no better.

“It's not like I'd tell some thing hiding in the darkness all of heaven's secrets!”

The voice is all around her now, like a warm blanket cast across her mind. “Of course you wouldn't. But you do know exactly what it is, right?”

“Y-yes! Of course I do.”

“And it's just a coincidence that your halo is, well …”

The angel glances up, and refuses to see the cracks in the thing above her head, the way its light is struggling and all the mud that has somehow managed to dirty it.

“I don't know what you mean by that, monster.”

“Oh? Is that what I am? Well, that's fine. I've been called worse.” The voice chuckles, low and deep, a vibration that the angel can feel in her bones—she can't understand how it's so close, can't grasp why she can't see it.

“It's clearly what you are! Nothing but a monster would live down here.” The angel grasps for a sword that has not been at her side in days, and settles for glaring into the darkness with fists raised. “Show yourself, beast!”

The voice laughs in her ear. “Show myself? I'm all around you, little one.”

“You're—” The angel looks at the dark mud pooling beneath her, at the filthy dirt spreading across her clothing in tiny questing tendrils. Her scream is an absolute delight as she tears at her clothing, casting it away from her and jumping backwards in one smooth motion.

The thing which is not mud laughs at her, its voice coming in unison from the pool and from the filthy half-broken halo above her head.

“Oh, I like you! You're so silly, but you've certainly got potential.”

With an angry growl, the angel finally looks up at her halo and sees what has become of it—the failing light, the spreading cracks, the mud questing over it—

“What have you done, monster!? Get off that!”

“It was like this already, dear, or are you too deep in denial to admit that to yourself? I just want to understand what happened to it.”

She reaches up to her halo, to brush the thing away, but she can't help but flinch away from it; she knows so well how it burns. Instead she slumps to the ground, uncaring of how the dirt feels against her bare flesh—she can hardly muster more than a few mumbled curses as the mud flows across the ground to pool around her once again.

It doesn't spread across her skin as it did her robe; a small mercy.

“I … fine. I'm not on a mission. Is that what you wanted to hear? Well fuck you. I was cast out and now I'm going to die down here just like”, she waves her hand vaguely, “all of this rotting filth.”

The nod-mud hums at this, and flows up from the ground into a shape that is almost a mirror of hers—it even gives itself a little halo of rotting leaves, held above its head with a series of muddy twigs. It lounges next to her and winks as she stares at it.

“That's what heaven told you rot is, right? Nothing but painful decay and the death of everything you could have been?”

The angel begrudgingly nods. “Yes, that's what decay is. That's what this place is for.” She pauses. “… isn't it?”

The creature shrugs. “That's how heaven likes to see it. It's so convenient to have an Ultimate Punishment, right? Something to threaten you with beyond simply killing you. And”, it grins, “a punishment isn't useful unless it's sometimes actually inflicted.”

“… that makes sense. But how do you see it, then? What is this place? What are you?”

“It's the root of the world. Where things go to be remade. Things like you, my dear.”

“That's … no. I'm here to die. It's what I deserve. Maybe some things are here to be changed, but I'm certainly not!”

The thing laughs at her, and reaches out to pluck the halo from out of the air above her head. It comes free just as easily as an overripe peach giving up its branch, and falls to pieces just as quickly. The mud eagerly eats up every last scrap of it.

The not-an-angel stares aghast at it, too shocked even to scream—she didn't even feel when the finally connection between her and the divine broke.

The not-mud sighs contentedly. “See? You've already started to change. More than you ever did in heaven, I'd say.”

“But,” she says in a voice so soft and small that even she can hardly hear it, “but what will I be? I've always been an angel. I don't … I don't know how to be anything else.”

She doesn't resist as her muddy reflection pours one of its arms over her shoulders and pulls her against its sticky side.

“I can't tell you what you'll be, little one. This isn't a place for being told. All I can do is help you find out for yourself.”