Reflections of a stormy petrel

WHO is the utter and total sweetheart who sent me one of the best Silver Angel sketches anyone has ever made?


May you have the 2012 you deserve, ani_bester. In a lot of cases, this would be a curse; with you, it's a blessing.

I wonder if anyone will be interested, but many of you will know that I have made a superhero universe of my own. Its main character[s] are the twin incarnations of light itself, the mortal and the immortal Silver Angel. The immortal Silver Angel lives in Olympus with four other great gods - her husband Lord Longinus, king of justice; Athena the Wise, queen of wisdom; Aphrodite; and Hermes, lord of youth and beauty.

As with most self-respecting mythologies, mine has a doomsday story. It will happen, one dark day in the future, that the enemies of the gods begin to win; and in spite of the heroic efforts of the Silver Angel and all the gods, their black tide will spread across the universe, till Olympus itself is besieged.

At that time, before the last liturgy is offered to the ultimate power of justice and truth, the Silver Angel will fly into the deep recesses of her own palace. A crowd of lesser gods will be following her; and she will lift the great bar to one door, and swing it open to reveal to them the stores of weapons she has been building, taking home from battle after battle for thousands of year; and nobody shall go away unarmed.

Then the Silver Angel will fly alone into the gardens of her own palace, and to a door that is closed - not because of any lock, but because only her strength is great enough to shift it. Using all the strength of light itself, the Silver Angel will open the door, and will call to those inside: "The time has come. I promised you long lives in strength and joy, and you promised that when the time came your strength would be offered to me." And from inside the door another voice will be heard, answering: "The time has come. And we recall what was promised. We shall come." And from inside the door and the garden that lay beyond, will come twelve enormous and terrible animals, dwarfing the small, beautiful goddess: a bull and an elk, a tiger and a lion, a rhino and a hippopotamus, a stag and a boar, a grizzly bear and a polar bear, a buffalo and a jaguar. And all the giants will do her obeisance.

After the Last Liturgy has been offered and the last prayer said, the twelve terrible things will place their necks of lead and iron under yokes, and will let themselves be harnessed to pull the Silver Angel's shining diamond chariot. And she will mount it, her great war-club in her right hand and the pole of her great standard in her left; she will unfurl her standard; and she will take the head of the whole army of immortals, as is her right, driving the most terrible team ever placed under yoke to the field of the last battle, to death and glory that does not die.

I just wondered how this would sound to anyone else. And frankly, I had an itch to write it down.