The Crystal in the Chasm

chapter 15

Onyx kept glancing over at me as we walked, the tips of her wings dragging on the ground behind us. I shifted uneasily under her sight but remained staring back at her.

"What is it?" I blurted out. She had been staring at me for far too long. It was making my skin crawl.

Onyx flashed me a light smile, her teeth white as her wings. "Your mind. Well, your soul, really..." she shrugged as she skipped every other step.

"My soul?" I swallowed my confusion.

"When I touch someone, I can enter their mind. I see things... The past, present, and future. What it could be, at least. It's always changing. I have only ever encountered a soul like yours once in my two hundred years of existence!" Onyx beamed outwardly, her pale hand covering her heart.

I blinked and allowed her words to digest. "What did you see?"

Onyx swallowed, smoothing down her shimmering skin-tight dress. "I saw life and death. Pain and strife. Growth and rebirth. Creation and destruction. The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth. Galaxies and planets. Water, wind, fire. I saw blood, flesh, bone, and things I will likely never understand. Not even in death. Your mind is an endless abyss, one that beings with my abilities could easily get lost in. I almost lost my life to the first mind like yours I peered too far into. I looked too closely, couldn't find my way back, couldn't remember who I was or even what I was. He had to find me and lead me back out." Her eyes were wild like stars and full of intrigue with a haunted gleam beneath.

My heart was racing. "Who?"

"I saw him in your mind. You know him. You have for a long while, in fact. Death Bringer is what he calls himself these days," she exclaimed, unusually upbeat for having almost plummeted to her death.

I shook my head in confusion, "I haven't known him very long."

Onyx shrugged again casually as if she weren't altering my entire perception of reality in one conversation. "Your souls come from the same place, wherever that is... But it's not here."

"That doesn't make sense," I scoffed and clung to the dress in my arms uneasily.

"Things don't always have to make sense. One thing I have come to know is that there are simply some things that are bigger than me. Some things only the universe itself could ever understand. I used to be afraid of it... Of minds like yours. But Death Bringer hasn't ended the world yet, so I think we will be okay." Onyx spoke in a way that made her seem both ancient and young all at once. She was upbeat and full of light, while talking about concepts of the universe that no happy-go-lucky person would ever truly ponder. 

I didn't have time to respond before we were standing on Death Bringer's doorstep. I led us in just as Death Bringer and Cordelia emerged from his bedroom, both of them looking a mess as she tried to fix her hair and he fumbled to button his pants. His eyes locked with mine and I froze for a moment.

"Well I see some things never change," Onyx chimed from beside me with a raised brow as she scanned Death Bringer from head to toe.

Cordelia's light brown eyes were wide as she took in the angel standing beside me. "Your wings look like they have been burnt," she gasped.

"You wouldn't say?" Onyx peered over her shoulders with a baffled expression.

I fought the laughter surging up my throat, admiring Onyx and her wittiness.

"I'll catch up with you later," Death Bringer whispered into Cordelia's ear and placed a hand on the small of her back to coax her toward the side door before returning his gaze to us. "Onyx... Always a pleasure," he didn't look even the slightest amused.