[P] I can tell you will always be danger [festival]

[Raziel]

R A Z I E L


—

T

here is dread under his skin, twisting and writhing like a dead-dying thing. It winds deeper to burrow beneath sinew and flesh, hemorrhaging under moonlight; he knows it will not be shaken from his bones now. It is too late. 

You might be mistaken for thinking a man like Raziel, a man whelped upon the lap of luxury, bloated by the fortune of his house, would dread nothing. For what could plebeian fear could touch his god-gold heart? 

But Raziel was no deity, numen or creator. He was not, would never be, free of mortal sensibility, no matter how fervently he might pray. The base desires of men and women were perhaps the only certainty they should bear in each long dark night. And Raziel? He was no different. 

It had opened the door at noon. Sauntering between the white walls of his teeth and slipping down his throat with an arrogant familiarity. The music that drifted in east from the capitol on a low, sweaty breeze had only excited it so. Gahenna sensed it immediately, lifting her muzzle from the leopard-skin pouffe upon which she was sprawled (the autumn heat was a noose pulled slack) but the stallion had shaken his head as if to say 'don't'.

Now he is drowning. He had never learned to swim. 

Festivals brought a myriad of opportunities to Solterra -- each one doused in salt and fire -- but to Raziel it meant only one thing; the one thing he could not have. 

Alcohol. 

When Zolin fell and his brother's head was severed like a thread cut loose, Raziel lost everything. Grief has never been the tragic poeticism portrayed by the great writers of bygone worlds. It is ugly and wet-mud-brown. It is dark decomposition and darker despair. It is waking at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, watching indifferently as another day dies before you ever had the chance to fill it with all the life that was slipping through your hands. The life that was not now any such thing, but time; endless, flat, agonizing time. It is not knowing how to speak, how to move, breathe or eat. It is simple in its method, and devastating in its force.

So when he had taken a shaking hand to the bottles tucked neatly inside his dead mother's cabinet, it had been in naked desperation. It, of course, was not the first time he had drunk; he was a teenager after all and even if he hadn't snuck out with it to the Baobab tree with Raoul at his side, the grandiose dinner parties thrown by the Nazaret had been anything but dry. 

But he'd never needed it. Not like he'd needed it then and certainly not like he needed it now. 

His favourite poison was (is) damassine: a spirit distilled from the Nazaret's private orchard of plums their ancestors had brought with them from the Orient. The aroma is strong and the taste stronger. An empty glass soon turned into empty glasses and later empty bottles, but the oblivion it awarded him was a mercy he could not quit. 

It took almost losing Gahenna to realise the gravity of his dependence, but that was a story for another day.

Now three years sober, he stands on the outskirts of Solterra's revelry, watching on with a gaze that is both guarded and envious. The dread of this afternoon has turned into a barely-kept thirst; darkness has always been slippery and persuasive but he holds himself on a tight leash. At least that's what he tells himself.

The streets are ablaze with foreigners and nationals alike, though the wayfarers stick out like sore thumbs in gloves made of gold. The air is matted in smoke, booze and forms of other debauchery he cares not to think about. Raoul had always called him a prude and it had always irritated him, no doubt because it was true.  

A girl catches his eye; a surprisingly rare thing for a man of his age and standing. She is caramel-honey and wide-winged, though it is not her looks (it never is) but the vitriol in her breath that hooks his mild interest. She grunts something about tourists and he does not respond. Instead he wonders why he has come so deep into the pit -- the inner city is not a place he often frequents; too many people, too much noise. Even his nose is not safe from assault - the fusion of malodours and perfumes clings to his nostrils like a glutinous leech. 

Raziel's ear twitches backward as he considers turning for home (as if he hadn't only been here fifteen minutes) but he can hear Gahenna's voice already, telling him how mind-numbingly boring he has become. As it happens, his hound is not far away; hunting rats in a dark alley no doubt. So he stays, with a cocked hip and a discreet expression, letting the night draw in a little closer as he calls out evenly, “terrible, aren't they?”

Though, evidently, not as terrible as his social skills. 

§

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