Wine · and · Chocolate

He had never had a body of his own before. Ancient and eternal though he was, the childlike sense of wonder preserved in the very essence of his being (angelic and innocent) thrilled at the anticipation, then the experience, of stepping into the physical world—into a vessel that would be his alone to inhabit for as long as he chose to keep it, God willing and if he could avoid the countless options for accidental disembodiment offered generously by a world without mercy or discrimination in the business of death.

Throughout his decades as a spiritual traveller, he had often shared human experiences, huddled unobtrusively in the backseat of a foreign consciousness. In this way he had learned preference for a number of physical pleasures—wine and chocolate being foremost among them. He looked forward to indulging these and other acquired tastes without the murky fog of Someone Else automatically dictating impressions and reactions, an often overwhelmingly passionate clutter that was impossible to negate entirely and gave him a mind-ache if he stayed too long.

The moment arrived.

The clarity of unshared perception was startling. It took him several hours of meditation to adjust to the richness of sensory input before he even attempted to learn the delicate art of manipulating the body’s coordination. He mastered himself with relative speed and efficiency, savoring each triumph of mind and body correspondence through the pleasurable buzz of power-drunkenness. During this time, he came to understand the basic psychology behind the human desire to dominate other men. He recognized instantly its danger, and cultivated carefully the self-awareness to prevent himself from ever sprouting the lethal discontent with his own self-mastery which might lead to a no doubt addictive hobby in human puppetry. As an angel, the power to bend reality to his will was all too accessible.

He would be cautions, be human.

His choice of gender was simple foresight. He had shared experiences equally with men and women alike; he preferred neither sex, felt no particular inclination towards one or another combination of the mental and the physical , but Society (this one aspect remained a worldwide, time-spanning constant) was exponentially less tolerant of female nonconformists. He knew, with logic so clear it was almost instinctive, that his unalterable spiritual disconnect (however human he may appear) would condemn him to life as a reputed eccentric, a necessary recluse. He might learn, in time, almost to fit in—time he could afford, as a man, to budget towards constructing a cornucopia of skills and knowledge whose possession was forbidden to the fairer sex—but he also acknowledged the possibility that angelic and human natures might be ultimately irreconcilable: that the limitlessness of his being could never truly be an equal bedfellow to his mortal kin, to whom total self-annihilation in death was a stark probability faced every moment of every day. Men, the angel had to remember, were too deeply rooted in their linear, corporeal selves to be able to comprehend incorporeal eternity without going mad. The closest they could get was Faith—a force that could be strong enough to overpower all else, that had induced otherwise average humans to commit utterly inhuman acts since the day of their creation; yet beside the experience of Faith’s fruition—beside the experience of God—mere hypothesis, however strongly one believed, was bland and insubstantial as watery grape juice next to the finest champagne.

He would remember, be human.

And so, with an open mind and the heart of an Adventurer, Yeliel clothed himself in flesh and introduced himself to the world.