the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

/> ”I don’t know if we ever had him in the first place.”
The angels looked at each other. "What?" Gabriel said. "We cannot let him go like this, Gabriel!"
"I don't know what has happened to him." Raphael muttered.
Michael walked the other direction, leaving the others to look after him.
"I've heard it before." Michael shook his head. “I’m sure that I’ve heard it before.”
As Lucifer walked away heading for the horizon, Michael melancholically strolled along in the other direction. Things would never be the same. As they sighed, the rain fell and it turned into a flood. The angels took heed in a nearby cave up a hill. They looked down on the beach slowly filling up with water, waves crashing against the shore. A storm was brewing. Over the waves the five of them then saw Lucifer flying across the surface. Michael tried to see clearly, but Lucifer's wings looked black.

A RISING STAR FALLING
“Why did you speak to me with such hubris and disrespect?” God roared. No answer. “Answer me.” Lucifer said nothing. God continued angrily: “I created you out of a celestial body and you thank me by claiming that you were there first?”
Lucifer held up his hands, tears in his eyes. “No, Father. I …” Lucifer started panting.
“What?” the Lord cried. “No, what?”
“I was confused. I didn’t know where I belonged. But I know now. I will be good.”
“You only know that you are weak enough to fall into your vanity. That is all.”
“I am guilty of hubris.” He countered. “I do know that!”
“You are guilty of treason.” God turned around and faced Lucifer again, shaking his head. “I love you, my son. You must let me love you.” God put his hand on Lucifer’s shoulder. “Stand up.”
The angel stood up. God sighed. “I am a good father, but like any loving, considerate and emotionally profound father I have a bit more experience than his son. The road you are taking is not a road of ultimate glory. You must turn before you fall.”
Lucifer looked up. “I will not fall, Father.” He said and smiled, bitterly. There was a bit of irony in those words, a bit of strange emotion. Here was a sweet wish of being able to stop time. “I will be true.”
They looked into each other’s eyes. “Don’t give in to vanity. Don’t take the easy way out.”
“Am I vain, my Lord?” Lucifer shook his head. “Am I vain? Is this vanity? Liking to watch your own mirror image and enjoying being the best?”
The Lord nodded. “Lucifer, my son: you can enjoy being the best of your kind. Everyone is the best of his or her kind. I create unique individuals, not copies. That is purpose of creation. The problem with vanity is that it wants to push others down in order to be good and that doesn’t work. Be as good as you are in you.”
Lucifer shook his head, but now there was fear there. Inside Lucifer was a voice that wanted to be heard. It was the voice of appetite and greed. He battled with it, looked up and sobbed.
“I was first.”
He controlled it and looked into God’s eyes, kissed his hand, embraced him and walked out.
Just as Lucifer walked out, Michael walked in. “What is the matter with him, my Lord?”
God put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. There was no answer.
The failure at the beach was a thorn in the side of all of the angels. Lucifer included. In his mind he was plotting to break out. But he knew not how. The other angels were in his way and he understood that walking away that day had made him even more unpopular. To save the relationship with the others he would have to excuse himself and he would never do that.

The second troop arrived and this time it was a new beginning for the heavens.
When Metatron came, his transcendent, godly light stemming from a poignant star in the east sector gave a golden touch to Eden. Nothing could hurt him. Neapolonia was formed like a boot to resemble the forward character of his personality. The hills and valleys, trees and mountains, majestic soul and exuberance of this land was predicted to create a race of people that could prove strong and roam about the globe. If anyone had a wish, they could go to Metatron. Soon enough, he became king of angels. Lucifer saw Metatron as an angel who took his own place as pioneer.
Chamuel, number eight in his orange coloured glow, was a man of the sun and loved to promote understanding. His country, Hispania, had sun almost all the time and the most glorious fruit trees grew there. Yes, there was dust and dryness but that was only to show the contrast to the dazzling amazement of the lovely oasis by waterholes surrounded by green trees.
Israfel, quite soon after his arrival, started composing songs for the group to sing and wrote choirs for them to perform whilst working to make the work easier and seem faster. So it came as no surprise when his land, Vindobon, was a country where the echo had a home among the mountains and the few test animals were quite vocal.
Ramaela had, in happiness of manifesting, showed all of Heaven that it was possible to transcend pain into beauty. So the land that was created in Ramaela's name seemed to be a land of many colours and treasures. The highest mountain was no more than forty times lower than Israfel's highest. The two angels were inseparable. For without Music there would be no Happiness.
The eleventh angel came as a surprise to everyone but Lucifer. That angel made him smile because it reminded him that he once, too, had been like that. As God told all of them, future prayer would be the ultimate way for contact. They would have to listen very closely to all of humanity’s wishes.
It was not a surprise to Lucifer because he wanted to pray to God all the time. If he would pray to God, he would pray to become a child again. He would be a child of God, a star in the sky. Olandus was a land in the north with an amazing amount of nature, its spaciousness prevailed to freedom of honest conversation with the Lord. Zadkiel transformed them all and entered his land through Chopin’s piano flowers. Through prayer, the channel to God, they would see salvation.
Only Lucifer stayed put. He was a man without prayer who needed to pray. Lucifer talked to no one. He tried to make a joke now and then. Frustration dominated his every conversation. The very last real talk he’d had with his Father was after the failure at the beach. The last of the twelve main assistants was a creative angel of thankfulness and beauty. He loved all creative thought. He would be there when plans were to be made and treaties signed.
Jophiel created a land across the sea from Danalus. Hengestonen had a foggy climate, but green valleys to boot. It had forests and trees, but also lakes and rivers. Jophiel smiled with this prospect of owning and creating such a land. Lucifer tried to connect with Jophiel, being the last of them, in order to regroup. But Jophiel, in his soft-spoken shyness, could only serve as a humble man who smiled and nodded, giving advice with a chuckle. Jophiel and Lucifer parted ways and remained friends.
Michael kept remembering when they gazed across the Ocean of the Neverending Dawn together for the last time feeling like brothers.
He realized that Lucifer was relentless and started to worry if Lucifer would ever return home.


THE TREES
God took the brethren down to the Fields of Nostalgia. There he showed them the two opponents in creation being Nostalgia for Thankfulness, which grew on the Tree of Hweoim, and Melancholy for Regret, that grew on the Tree of Hwee-Aell-Sihl. A tree of remembrance and love with flowers of glory and pride over won experience was excellence and self-confidence, marriage and success. The flowers of shame that could not accept the past were lust and pain, regret never to be tasted. Only to the awakened the fruits of the trees could be seen.
God said: “An angel falls only completely if he kills his own purity, loses it. Two souls live in one body,” he said, “And if the one crushes the other, the angel in him dies. Hope never dies.”
Michael repeated: “Hope never dies in the hearts of the righteous.”
Lucifer looked at the tree and smiled and promised himself one day to steal seeds from it.
Maybe he could create his own world if this one proved bad for him on the basis of these seeds.
Envy hath bred vanity and its fruit was greed.
The two brethren were drifting apart. One lived in shadow, the other walked in light.
St. Michael, Archangel of Protection, was named the warrior and protector among the angels. As the judger of deceased souls, his element was fire and his colour the more disciplined dark blue.
St. Raphael, Archangel of Healing, in blue-green tones, was protector of the human spirit and its maturity, healing and pilgrimage.
St. Gabriel's silver-bluish micro cosmos in heaven had a name: the Archangel of Revelation, revealer of sins and mercy, of freedom and the creatures that come from water.
St. Uriel's red violet root of spirit and truth seeking gave him the title Archangel of Manifestation, Conversion and Fulfillment. As such, he was also protector of the physical world and of Nature. Truth, fact, honesty, these were his guiding stars.
St. Shushienae, Archangel of Purity, laboured to see stainlessness prevail and his clearness of thought sometimes scared the other angels. But it was a necessity.
St. Metatron, in his strength and as Archangel of Transcendence of Godly Light and Wishes, was clearly a king among them. In his golden-white light he shone brightly.
St. Chamuel guarded the communication between souls and relationships and was soon named Archangel and Protector of Destiny and Admiration. His orange coloured aura would always heed the love that came out from a soul. As the music lover St. Israfel would promote what actually came out and into a person and what kind of person his soul had become. The Archangel of Music was named, but because of the strength of his indignation, he also became and Archangel of the Last Judgement.
St. Ramaela, as Archangel of Happiness, soon worked quite closely with St.Uriel’s realism and St.Chamuel's relationships, but also with St.Raphael's healing.
St. Zadkiel's title as Archangel of Prayer was of utmost importance for the likes of St. Shishienae and St.Uriel and he often assembled all of the Archangels to pray.
St. Jophiel was Archangel of Creative Power and Thought, having the power of the spiritual process that came from development.
There was a judge, a healer, a revealing one, a realist, a purifier, a transcending angel, a lover, a musician, a joyful one and a creator.
Then there were the two opposites in one angel: there was light and there was darkness.
St. Lucifer received his title as Archangel of Light and Darkness.
Lucifer and Gabriel were given the task of guardian of the gates and judging the souls. Because of their transcendal quality they were given the title, Twilight Angels.
Soon enough there twelve sub angels under each one of the initial twelve.
The angels under Lucifer's guidance became strange and moody and some were mirrors of himself, melancholy and depressed and scowling. Others became strangely witty.

It was a bright sunny day in Eden when Lucifer broke out and took his twelve sub angels away from the Gate. God summoned