Amicus

The place was large, definitely, so the people that at one time lived here had to have made their own wines, stored them away. Perhaps at one time they hosted parties, groupings, large ones that lasted well into the night. I wouldn't know. Perhaps I would never know. I looked at Silas and nodded. "That would be a good idea... Or, perhaps not, but what if they simply can't hear us?"

"I look like a demon." Silas said, but stood aside as I went to the door. It was more than a foot shorter than me.

"Yes, perhaps, but looks can be deceiving. Anyone would think one that looks like you would be evil, but do we have to prove it? And it's always assumed that one that looks like an angel is, in fact, a saint, but that can easily be disproved too."

"Are you saying you're not a saint?" Silas asked as I wrenched on the door, pulling first, then deciding to push.

"Me...? I'm not saying I'm a saint, and I'm not saying I'm a devil. It would either demean me or puff me up too much. Just because I guarded a church doesn't make me a real angel, and it doesn't mean I'm totally committed to the religion taught and practiced there." I pushed the door, and something cracked, swinging the door into a musty, dust-filled environment. I pulled my wings close at the prospect of dredging up more of the stuff and looked at Silas.

"Well..." He spoke quietly, looking into the dark. "You look like a saint. And you sound like one."

I felt my brow arch in question, but he was already inside. Whatever trace of concern or fear he'd had before was gone in place of finding someone alive. No wonder, too---our instincts made us disregard whatever we feared to find in favor of what we could find, or what we hoped to find. It was no darker in here than it was outside, however, so our eyes needed no time to adjust. Despite the lack of sun, moon, stars, or light from any source, we could somehow see. Perhaps it was our specially made eyes. Perhaps it was something else.

"Don't speak too quickly." I said gently. "Speak easily. Quietly. If someone is near we need not scare them to death. And I have a feeling I would scare them more than you." It was hard to stand in the room, because the long feathers on my head brushed the ceiling.

Silas

"Oh really? But I thought I was the scary looking one?" I commented, mostly joking. It wasn't a point worth continuing. I took my time observing the house we had just entered. Being inside even more than outside made it obvious how much time had passed. The human smells barely tinged the air which were instead choked with dust. Candles sat on a table which blocked entrance to what appeared to be a kitchen. The stubs of wax had been burned all the way down. When I sniffed one, I could still smell the burnt scent on them. The kitchen really looked like a good place to start.

"Will you help me move the table?" I asked softly. Now in cased in this sort of tense silence, I found it difficult to speak above a whisper. I wanted to keep quiet.

Amicus nodded and took one side of the table, I the other. Between the two if us, we had the path open in a couple seconds time. I led the way first because I found it easier to move around. In any other situation, I would have found it amusing how Amicus looked near ready to poke his head through the ceiling. With my wings folded tightly to my body, I took up no more room than the average human. My bells tinkled but other than that, we both fell into silence, listening.

Signs of humanity littered the counters and sink. Dirty and forgotten things, but a lot more signs than I'd seen in a long time. My brow furrowed as I dragged one finger though the dust. "Is it just me or is the dust thinner here?" I had a strange feeling, though nothing I could define.

I turned to see Amicus staring into a corner of the room. He raised a hand slightly and pointed out a plain door. "There. They surely went down there. I feel...something."

A trill of alarm and hope and a dozen different things went through me. Had we finally found something? In a hidden room in a countryside--humans. I rested my hand lightly on the doorknob. "Shall I lead the way?"

Amicus

When he put a hand on that door, I couldn't explain why I covered his with mine. Maybe it was the odd feeling I got. A cold dread. Fear. Terror, even. Whatever it was, it mingled with that desire to see what was below. "I... I don't know..."

"Do you want to lead then...?" Silas was giving me a curious look, but I wasn't sure why. "You look like you're sick..."

"Huh...?" I took a step back and hit my head on a bare wooden beam, suddenly seeing stars in front of my vision. "Uh... No, I mean... What?"

"Are you okay, Amicus?" Silas tugged me forward, and until then I hadn't realized I was leaning. "You really don't look well..."

"I'm fine... I mean, I'm not. I don't like the feeling coming from that door..."

"But there's got to be someone down there..." Silas looked back at the door, then to me again. "I feel them!"

"I do too, but... I feel bad. Something bad... It might not be anything, let m-me do it..." I decided to move without double-thinking it then, and grabbed the door knob, wrenching it and finding that it was a bit rusty, but unlocked. I expected it to be just as dark as it was in the rest of the rooms, but was shocked to see a tiny glow away from the bottom of the stairs. "Oh... Good lord..."

"What!?" Silas's voice came out as a hiss, but I barely heard it, registering only when he hit me in the side. "What the hell is it?"

"It... it's a light." I felt him push me forward, so I ducked, sliding into the narrow tunnel and testing my weight on what looked to be very rickety stairs. Somehow none broke under me, but I was catching something new. A new smell. It wasn't good, not at all---It was coppery, tinged with an almost sewer-like odor. Something awful. I pressed my arm across my face as Silas crept in beside me, blinking at the glow. The source was a candle on a table, lit and nearly burned out. It cast dark shadows on the forms at the legs of the table.

"That... Oh God, that smell..." Silas coughed, bringing me to look at him. "God, what is that...? It's like..."

"It reminds me of... how certain places smelled when humans were alive..." I took a step, which allowed me to clear half the room, and bent to pick up the candle. The light shifted, and I gasped, horror flooding me and making me cold. "S-Silas... Silas...?"

Silas

I felt the strange feeling turn twisted the farther down the stairs I got. I ducked up beside the taller gargoyle so I could see, but my view was limited by the light and the general size of the dirt room we'd descended into. "Ami-" I never finished my sentence because the light suddenly touched the floor under the table. "Oh my god!" Two large lumps and one small lump separated itself from the shadows. Pairs of feet, little shoelaces that had come undone like the things I collected back at the marciana library.

Amicus stayed frozen with the candle in his hand, but I slid forward on my knees. "There are people. I'll wake them up! I'll w-wake them!" I didn't think. I had a nose, but I didn't listen it.

"Wait! I don't think those people are still....alive..." His voice dropped down quiet at the end so I could ignore him. I'd gotten under the table at that point and touched the small one. Up close like this, I could see he was a boy of perhaps thirteen. His hair looked dark in the candlelight and his face half sat in shadow. But he looked asleep still, just asleep. I picked up his hand and patted it.

"Come on. Wake up kid!" I kept patting. I barely registered when Amicus grabbed my shoulder.

"Get away from there! They're already dead!"

I never heard his voice get that loud. For a second I looked back at him, confused. Why was he so upset? And then I felt it, something oozing onto my hand. The putrid smells wafted up like a wall. Amicus pulled me back and I let him. "I just thought...I really wanted them to be...." Because the candle hadn't even gone out yet. I wiped the goo off on the floor while in a daze.

Amicus

I could feel something on the hand that held the candle. Hot. Damp, almost. The melted wax. It had begun dripping down my fingers, but I could barely acknowledge it. How long had these humans been here? How much had they suffered? Were they afraid of the plants that seemed safe to eat? Did they even know they were safe? How had they killed themselves? It looked... planned. Two men and a young boy. I put my candle a little closer despite the... ugly sensation of despair. I had to fight it. Keep it at bay. If not for me then for the gargoyle beside me. He looked worse than I felt, and I grabbed him, shaking the candle out and hauling him out of the basement. The stink, the dank dark worse than anything I thought I'd ever see.

"It... they... they haven't been dead long..." I heard Silas say as we put several room lengths between ourselves and the poor beings below our feet. "The candle was still burning..."

I flexed my fingers, freeing them of their waxy shell. "I know, Silas... I had such an awful feeling... So... bad... I didn't want to go down there..."

"Then why did you? Why'd you let me?" His voice caught and I felt like a monster. Could I have convinced him not to go down? But then, would my own curiosity have been quelled? Or I could have gone down... lied to him about what I saw. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't lie. He would have seen through any story I tried to concoct because I just wasn't made to deceive. I was made to be truthful and to keep those around me safe and sane and at ease. Even if that meant telling everything I could.

"I'm sorry, Silas. I didn't know it'd be as bad as it was..." I sighed and looked around, finding that we stood in what seemed to be a large kitchen. I found a dusty rag in a drawer nearby and knelt, shifting so my wings folded against themselves and took up as little room as possible. "I didn't want to go either... But it could have been different..." I grasped his hand to inspect it, and grimaced at the blood. Dark. Sticky. Not fresh, but a few hours old.

"It wasn't..." Silas muttered, accepting my help and sitting in one of the chairs behind him. "It was exactly the way you thought."

"I didn't think anything." I said stonily. "I had a bad feeling. But if something had been down there worth saving..."

"We could have been earlier." Silas was speaking quietly, and I remembered what he told me. Get him out of the slump, out of the pessimism. I had promised. Standing, I threw the rag aside and crossed my arms.

"Silas. We couldn't have foreseen what happened here. We aren't magic. We aren't omnipresent. We can only sense the presence of humans. And why not find what little positive there is in this situation---that humans are still alive. They survived what destroyed the rest of the humans. They're alive and we can find them. We just can't get discouraged when we don't make it in time. We aren't God, after all, Silas. We have our limits. We have to try, but we can't give up when we fail." My hard voice had softened halfway through what I said, and I crouched down in front of the other gargoyle. "We have to try, though. If we keep it up, eventually we'll find our place."

Silas

I'd so fervently thought there was hope. I'd stubborned persisted in my thought when I already knew I'd been dashed, and now...? We'd found humans and so barely dead! I couldn't wrap my mind around this at all. I glanced around the kitchen and saw his less used it was. The dusty look strangely comforted me. After a minute of sitting and conversing in the half aware state I had been, Amicus finally got to me. At first, I paid him no attention. I didn't want to be told this wasn't anybody's fault. If not his, then mine. Amicus wouldn't allow that though. "But..." I couldn't gather enough voice to talk over him. With his arms crossed, he looked less like an angel than I'd ever seen him. He reminded me of a human.

The reality hit me strong. I felt myself sitting in the chair and I saw Amicus clearly. We were on eye level now and I couldn't look away. "How do you keep hopeful all the time? I don't get it. After seeing that..." I didn't bother finishing my sentence. I could put words to what I had seen. Thus was the first time I saw death so close up. It'd always been from up in the sky or long after. Never so fresh and near as to touch. I wished I hadn't touched the boy.

Amicus' smile was a bit strained, but he did smile. "I'm not perfect either but I think there are still reasons to stay hopeful. If not for myself then for...others." He stood and turned away a bit so I couldn't see his face. I stared after him for a second, baffled. The only others around us were...each other. I understood then.

Nodding, I took a second more to form words. "Then I'll try to be hopeful too. I'm sorry I get like this. I must seem a little weak," I said as I stood from the chair and crept up next to him and pulled on his sleeve so he would look at me. When he did, he had his usual soft expression in place.

"Not at all. These are tough times."

I smiled. Already I felt much better. How one gargoyle's words could mean so much, I didn't know. I'd definitely make sure to return the favor if I ever saw Amicus needing strength. I ran my hand along one of my horns and let a bell ring out softly. "Right, but let's get out of here. I don't think I can stand to stay in this house any longer." A small shiver went though me. "I don't think there is any reason to stay."

Amicus

I was no longer angry, or disheartened, or inwardly broken up by the discovery we had made. It was nearly gone, like the remains of wax on my hand, which I rubbed away carefully. "We should definitely get out of here." I agreed, and let Silas lead the way back out of the old house. It could have been such a beautiful place---probably was at one time, free of dust, lit by the sun, with bunches of beautiful, sweet grapes growing and waiting to be picked. Did those men and that boy live here before? Was this their home once upon a time? Or had they just found it out of desperation and holed up in the basement? What had transpired? I could only imagine the darkest of things. Had they killed the boy first after all their hope ran out? Had one decided that they didn't want the young one to endure watching one or the other die first? Had he been asleep, never seeing the end finally arrive? I hoped God could forgive them for losing hope in such a terrible time.

I must have allowed tears to fall, somehow, because when we were outside Silas turned and gave me a startled look. "Amicus? Are you okay, you're...?"

"Fine, I'm fine." I registered the cool, damp feeling on my face and swiped at it, unfolding my wings in the open space to give them some movement.

"Don't say that, I know you're not." Silas was giving me a hard look, probably like what I had given him not long ago. "What we found in there... I know it's hard..."

"It is... But... I can't help but wonder, now..."

"About what?" A sudden gust of wind blew by, swirling around us and loosening feathers from my wings, bringing them around in a whirlwind formation.

"About..." I gritted my teeth. It was more difficult for me to say this than to keep my hope up. "... About... the presence of some higher being. A god. A lord. Everything that's happened... It can't have happened for a reason. What God would watch his people die? Wouldn't save them? Wouldn't answer... millions, billions of prayers, many of which I had to hear, had to be told. I was an angel at night, Silas, in a church. When the sickness got bad, people would come to me at night, and ask that I deliver their prayers to Heaven, so somehow they would know God were listening..." I cursed myself when I openly showed my tears, couldn't hold them back. How could a gargoyle cry? Were we just that human now?

Silas was shaking his head, giving me a wide-eyed stare. "Amicus... you... you said we can't lose hope. You can't, not... not you!" His voice cracked and he turned away, silent for a minute, and I was thankful for those few seconds to attempt---and fail---to compose myself. "You just said we can't lose faith---"

"That's not what I'm say now, Silas, it's not!" I looked up, to where the clouds were dark and thick and ugly and unbroken. Like coal above us. "I have faith in the will of humans. Some lose their hope and have nowhere to turn... and they end up the way we saw them... But... Silas, how can I believe in a God that would let his world wither and die? Ignore the prayers of so many people hoping to see the next day? Or has He just turned his back to us? To them, I mean? To the humans, his creations, his children, for whom he sent his one son to die for?" There was a tightness in my throat so strong I was surprised I could still speak. "Has He given up...? I've existed solely in a church, listened each day to preachings, to God's love for all, no matter what... I just wonder if... He's lost His love for us..."

"Are you giving up?" Silas asked. It was a broken, wavering tone, but very matter-of-fact.

"No. Silas. No I am not giving up. Humans somehow survived the sickness. Regardless of whether God is here with us or has turned His back on us, I refuse to give up on them, His creations, His children. I'll call them my children if I have to."

Silas

Amicus wasn't looking at me. I shook slightly and looked up to the sky, but quickly turned back to him. Don't give, don't ever give up, whispered over in my head. The mantra repeated for both of us. The thought that Amicus might give up...I'd fall if he did. He said he wasn't, but I couldn't totally understand his words either. I did not know god like he did, but I knew the hope and the doubt. I wanted to doubt all over again, but I did not. That's right, Amicus made me strong so I had to be for him. Don't let him worry over questions like this.

I launched myself into the air and dropped back down right in front of Amicus. "You better not be giving up or I'll start crying too!" I exclaimed. "You don't want to make me cry s-so..." My voice cracked at the end. I shook my head and hopped back a step so I could better look up at his face. He looked down at me with surprise. Whether over my words or my random hopping about, I couldn't care less. He cracked a smile though, so my actions were with it.

"I just said I wasn't. It's just the things behind humans that I worry about. Having hope in them is different than Him. I don't know how to say it..." Amicus said with his voice still soft and distant. He glanced back to the sky, his face worrying again.

"I don't know much about god, but...ah really, stop staring at the sky!" I jumped up and hovered between Amicus and the smokey sky which hid the heavens. It probably wassnt worth wishing on stars now because who knew if they still lay behind those clouds.

His blue eyes blinked up at me. "Silas what-?"

"If there's a god, I don't think he's up there." I quickly amended my words because I realized how lacking in comfort that was. "He's down here. I never believed in any cosmic power, but I always thought god was something like hope. You can't believe in one and not the other. Isn't he a human's reason to hope? We're still...if god did make humans then he made us too and we're still here fighting for humans. Just like you said, the humans are our children in his stead. So please don't lose your faith or your hope!"

My breath came in quick bursts. I got so wrapped up in emotion that I barely breathed through my words. Although I said them entirely for Amicus, I found I believed them as if I said them for myself. Hope, god--they were just two different words for the same thing.

Amicus' eyes slid closed for a second. When he opened them again, he reached for my hand and pulled me back to the ground. I landed, a little startled to find my feet hadn't been on the ground in the first place. Our eyes locked. "Thank you, Silas. That's very...I think I will keep my faith around after all."