“I love you,” she said. But you are all teeth and angles. Your mouth tastes of burning blood, however, you swallow the bitter substance. Wings brush the treetops behind you, their eyes quivering. You forgot to hide them. The air trembles around you, an electricity pulsing and palpable.

Scalding.

Even now, the air shimmered with heat as matter bent around the fleshy carcass that acted as your earthly body. It was just so small. Cracks began to form around joints and down your back from the burning energy, a bright light escaping, a glimpse at your true form.

“Why?” You ask, although it sounds more like a thunderclap. Her fingers trail over the scales across your flesh. Yet another thing you forgot to hide. She leans forward, standing up on her toes to reach the cracked slit that acts as your mouth. You stand there, unmoving, but your talons quiver at the warmth. It is strange, for it did not burn. It had been so long since you felt heat without pain...

You do not know how long she stood there, the strands of protein from her head brushing against your other faces. Eventually she moves away, and your wings sing at the missing contact.

But something is not right with her. She is leaking.

“I guess some things aren’t meant to be, huh?” she muttered. You say nothing, slowly enveloping her with one of your wings. She turns into the crackling heat, the liquid on her cheeks evaporating with a soft hiss.

Memories of the Garden; a forked tongue nursing the soft flesh at her head. “You did not submit to Him and for that, punishment must be wrought.” Jealous and wrathful and VENGEANCE IS MINE; then empty void and heat and flames and war and pain and red and pain and white--oh the sheer agony! Surely, such a wretched creature cannot be revived.

“We were not meant to love the same way.”