by Nathan
When Michael overpowered the First Brother, the universe held still. Even your world seemed to darken and echo with the tension between them. Cataclysmic floods broke upon Vuwn's surface, as it bore the brunt of a single focused scream of pure hate from all sides, a single cry of sheer agony.
Michael stood on the trunk of the dragon's neck, and his voice cut deep into us all. Even those who fought for him were bowed by the sheer force of his rage. I cannot translate what was said. There are shades of meaning to our language that simply do not exist to your kind. I might as well explain a richly coloured painting to a dog. It was nothing so simple as casting him out, though he certainly did that. He did not really have a right to, but at that point no longed mattered. We were all certain we would never see our First Brother again.
In essence, Michael had said to the First Brother that by his actions he had created sin. Worse still, no matter the purity of the First Brother's intentions, Michael was still correct. That alone drove the most honourable of the opposing armies into exile.
By exhorting the monkeys to live a good life free of the destructive power their feeble bodies threatened, we had inadvertantly convinced them they were betraying Father by being unable to do so. By trying to tell them they could be more and attain better, we had made them ashamed of their natures.
The simple truth was that we had no idea what they were going through, and they took our words for Father's. In the course of trying to call them to Father, in essence we had driven them in shame from his love. It was only right to those who bore that guilt that they should turn in shame as well. We added a new word to our language. Marat. Fallen.
We fell to the ground and wept, for Home would never be home again. We had defended the Gates but we had all lost the war. It sunk in all at once that we would never be whole again. We had joined Man in his lonely plight, to be laid apart from pieces of creation and thus laid apart from pieces of the divine. Not one of us escapes this. To be rejected by fragments of what we had always been an essential part.
It is rare that Father speaks, and when he does it is as if the fabric of everything itself ripples to form concepts we can understand. To each of us he bestowed his love, but the Marat could not hear it. They could not bear to hear it. They shut it out, and Father has never forced anything to do anything, not even to hear his love.
I almost shut it out myself, but by my virtue I could not. I was angry; I resented allowing myself to be comforted. I remember Puavale, and how the wound refused to heal. Puavale was among those who needed to know they had done right, and all Father would say was that his heart had been faithful and that was all that mattered. He gave Puavale the Aurochs that he might always remember that his heart and his character was known, and this single symbol has sustained Puavale's spirit since. Many of us were given tokens to remind us when the pain became too great - anyone whose heart cried out for it. But mine did not.
If it had ended there, the death would have ended as well. But it did not, and more wars were to come. Many of these were your fault, quite frankly. The more I watch the more I am certain that Man has zealously sought from the very beginning a way to shrug off the responsibility for his existance on someone else, as well as a means by which to dominate the very spirit of his bretheren. Many believe that if your kind would end, the pain would end, and the wounds that have not stopped bleeding would heal. There would be an end to it, at least - we are creatures which crave resolution.
They want to end you, and you help them. And we throw our lives away trying to stop them. It's not even about you. It's about them, the Marat. Puavale's company are sick to the very heart of the pain and the death. We stop the Marat not to protect you, but to keep them from heaping any more pain and shame on themselves, and on those who fall from the failure to protect you. We don't care what happens to you.
We only wish to protect our own.