Nephilim

Flatere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo

When the angels fell from heaven, heaven felt it like a knife. The sky opened like a wound, and festered with storm clouds.

It bled drops of gold that once would have opened their wings and caught the air. But on their shoulder blades were stubs, softened with downy feathers, sticky and burning with the blood of angels. The memory of wings. 

They hit the earth with an impact that rattled their bitterness from the crevices of their hearts into their fingertips.

They burned less with heaven’s dying fire, more with the smoldering anger of the forsaken.

They lusted for sin, for oh, it was delicious.

And when they lay with the daughters of man, and their children were born from their light, their children craved win with a hunger like the starving winter wolf’s. And they feared falling with a memory passed on to them from their fathers.

Art by Matt Barley

Text by Lucie MacAulay