Peniel

[Patricus I]

Armande said these things to bait him: lording over the reminder of his divine post as the benefactor to a mere man. Anger nipped his heels red as the leather shoes that adorned his feet. Armande would find that the tighter he tugged the chain, the less compliant an animal he led, and Philip was no dog to be trained into heel. He paused to settle the matter once and for all.

“I once told you that I feared nothing, but I did not tell you why. I fear nothing because my soul is secure in the knowledge that I know nothing I should not know. There is nothing that can be taken or added to me that I would not regret. I accepted this office because I was meant for it. All you did was accelerate my appointment. So, let’s be done with these shows of ego. I will cease my demands that you honor me for who I am and you will cease your rebukes,” he said. Philip spoke with all the clarity of spring water: sure and true. Other men may offer a hand as if the clasping made firm their mutual acknowledgment. But Philip’s gloved hands were folded neatly within the layer of his cape. He waited patiently for agreement, uncertain it would come, yet solid in knowing their work (whatever it was to become) would grind to an ugly halt if they could not stand one another’s presence.

Finally, he sighed and looked around. “If ever the Garden of Eden endures, I walked through it in my dreams.” A moment of awe flickered astonishment across his features, but a sort of sadness soon replaced it. "And it was nothing like this,” he spoke softly, accepting the offer in as few of words.

Such was when a strange chill crept up his spine. No sound accompanied the sensation. Nor was there any movement or disturbance to explain, but the only thing he could liken it, was the time Armande showed him a creature of inexplicable darkness.

With the change, the landscape felt all the more dead. The ground was all the more scorched. The sky all the dimmer, as if the very sun veiled itself of what it may next witness.