Monster March Part 3/4 - Divine (Patreon)

"I want to know," the demon had said, "If there is a love and a torment that can reconcile. If there is a beauty in a desperation, without tragedy. If there is a kindness that draws tears and leaves no scars. If tenderness and agony can coincide."

And the angel answered in the sound of chiming bells, of rustling wings and clinking rings, the faint hum of the halo rotating in orbit around its head: "There is. It exists. There is, and it is true. It is splendor and humility. It is weakness and it is desire. It finds itself in laughter like the singing of clarion bluebells in a spring glade. It finds itself in the dance of soft feathers on wanting flesh. It is soft, and rough, and kind, and cruel. It is divine."

Somewhere far below in the material plane, a flat swath of snow-covered ground cracks and melts, soaking the frozen, shivering dirt in springthaw. The moistened earth relaxes in the newfound warmth, smiling up at the pale sky, and from it sprouts a spackle of snowdrops and feathery green grass.

"There is a beauty in suffering, you know this, demon," sang the angel through the hollowing sound of astral wind through its slowly turning rings, "Your hood is pierced. That little stud of gold must have hurt, and yet it brings you such pleasure. Its coolness rubs against your bud every time you move. You endured this soreness in want of something sweet."

The demon could not respond, thanks to the golden bit. Feathers danced along their sides like the creeping fingers of a sneeze. Their exposed armpits were worshipped and licked by long silky plumes, tickling them dutifully and intensely; their laughter was swallowed by the platinum bar capped by gold stuffed between their teeth. It tickled, almost unbearably, their thrashing stifled by their bondage, but the angel did not yield, only drifted a few plumes down to the sole of their foot.

Deep down where the sun meets the soil, a warmth spreads its fingertips through the land, spidering them across the glassy face of a lake to tickle its icy cheeks. Slowly, the ice splinters, cracks, breaks to the tickling touch of the spring, and sinks, laughing, into the water. Warmed by the sun, the lake sighs, smiling, laughter sending ripples across its surface as it's tickled, in turn, by the river's bubbling tide and the low patter of cool postwinter rain.

"Your tattoos, too. The garden of roses adorning your skin. Your inner thigh and the base of your tail are sensitive spots." The angel demonstrated by fluttering feathers on the demon's most tender points, eliciting a muted yelp between the laughs. "They must have hurt, and yet you endure, as roses are a thing that you love. Your skin, your individuality, your capacity for growth, something permanent in this existential landslide; all are things you adore. You suffer for them, as such, and look back on the proof of your endurance with fondness."

The demon whimpered behind their bit. They twisted and torqued to escape the tickling but  could not; the feathers knew no mercy and were driven to dance across every stimulated nerve on their taut red body. They could feel tears budding behind their blindfold and drool forming at their lips - both, both ends, both kinds, both hungry. They rolled their hips and whined. The angel, finally, slowed, but did not stop.

"This is it; tenderness and agony." Its voice was teacherly and calm, like the faint groan of oaks after the frost, the yawn of leaves turned to mulch. "To suffer and struggle and love and laugh. To be aware of every nerve. To cry that it tickles too intensely and to never ask for the sensation to stop. This is what you searched for. This is divinity, demon. This is what you have achieved.

Divinity is to bear the unbearable and laugh."