The tower's stones drank the moonlight like thristy beasts, their ancient cracks glowing faintly as Seraphiel descended, each step a whisper against the weathered stairs. Now on the ground outside of Lysander's tower, Sera stood barefoot and halo-less, her dress stitched from shadows. Not paying attention a single feather of hers, obsidian and faintly iridescent, clung to her sleeve.
She tilted her head, studying him. Lysander didnt want to expect her return. Yet there he sat, hunched over his desk, quill in hand, its nib splitting under the force of his grip. A fresh page glared up at him, empty—too empty. The air smelled of ink and burnt wick, the lone candle on his desk guttering as her shadow fell across the room.
"You.... came." he said, not looking up, though his knuckles whitened around the quill. "You're late."
"Mortals invented clocks," she replied, drifting to his desk with a glide. Her eyes caught the candlelight, flickering too brightly, "Angels invented patience."
Lysander's quill paused mid-scribble, a blot spreading like a bruise on the page. "What about them?"
"Hm?"
"Angels. What about them?"
Seraphiel tilted her head. Her fingers grazed the edge of his desk."Hm. I don't know. You tell me, Mister Writer."
He snorted, but in just a moment his gaze snagged on the feather at her sleeve, its unnatural sheen refusing to blend with her dress. "What's that?"
"Another feather, a trinket....? It seems. Hah."she laughed nervously, plucking it free and holding it out between thumb and forefinger. "Crows here must be… ambitious."
Lysander took it, the feather colder than winter, heavier than it should be, its edges shimmering like tar under moonlight. He rolled it between his fingers. Curious. Cautious. "Crows don't fly this high," he muttered. "Too windy. Too lonely."
"Lonely?" Her voice softened. She leaned closer. And bent down to meet him eye to eye. Tilting her head while tucking her hair in her ear, as if she was a mermaid seducing a man.
"Is that what you are, ghost-who-writes?"
He set the feather aside with slowness, as though it might bite. She leaned over his desk now, her presence cool and ozone-sharp,her hair drifting like waves of the water. The page before him was a graveyard of half-formed ideas: *Rivers that flow backward…*…undoing the weight of what's been said…*
*…drowned voices in the current…*
"Why a river?" she asked, tracing her fingers on the line written in the paper.
"Why not?"
"Rivers are patient." He said, as her fingertips left a faint mark on the desk. "They carve canyons, feed forests, drown kingdoms—all without hurrying."
She dragged a nail down his text, the paper curling in protest. Ripping it in the process. "Yours seems… impatient."
Lysander scowled, shoving back in his chair until it groaned. "It's a metaphor. For regret. For wanting to claw back the past."
"Ah." Her finger brushed a struck-through phrase: *The water remembers what the shore forgets*. The words fizzed faintly at her touch. "This. Why is this crossed out?"
"Why not?" He snatched the page from her, his sleeve smudging the ink of a story he was currently writing. "It's irrelevant. Why are you so nosy, girl?"
Seraphiel plucked the quill from his hand, her fingers brushing his palm—a shock of static that made him jerk. "Let me."
Before he could protest, she wrote, her strokes swift and unhesitating, the nib screeching as if it were a living thing:
*The river does not ask permission to flood. It simply says: Here, holds what you've ignored.*
Lysander stared at the words. They hummed faintly, the ink shimmering, reflecting the moonlight, as though liquid silver had been poured into the letters. "Did you just… rhyme?"
"Problem?" She twirled the quill, a smirk playing at her lips.
"Rhymes are for children's lullabies and bad tavern poets."
"And angels," she said lightly, tossing the quill back. It clattered against an inkpot, sending droplets flying all around his desk.
"You're not an angel."
"No?" Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "What am I, then?"
He studied her—the too-bright gaze, the way the shadows around her twisted, as if trying to flee. "A hallucination. Sleep deprivation. A fever dream with decent penmanship."
She laughed, and the sound was like wind chimes in a storm, sharp and dangerous yet still : sweet. The candle flared, throwing their silhouettes against the wall, the moment of slilence was broken by her statement. "Call me Sera. It's shorter than 'fever dream.'"
As the night deepened, so did their duel of quills. They wrote ever so desparately, like madmen. Lysander slashed lines into parchment, his script growing jagged, while Sera's hand flowed smooth like a serpent's glide. By dawn, the tower floor was littered with crumpled pages. Seraphiel gathered them, smoothing each one against her thigh, her touch leaving the paper unnaturally pristine.
"What do you plan to do with those?" Lysander said crossing his arms. "Leave it." He snapped, kicking some papers along as they dissapeared in the shadows. "They're garbage."
"Garbage," she repeated, as if tasting the word, rolling it between her teeth. She pressed a salvaged page to her chest, where no heartbeat stirred. "Why throw away such treasures..?"
Above the clouds, in the Library of Echoes, Cassiel watched, The chamber around him was vast, shelves stretching into infinity, scrolls that hissed when touched. He traced the empty spaces where Seraphiel's hands had once lingered, the air thick with the musk of forgotten stories. A moth, its wings etched with blasphemies, alighted on his shoulder. He crushed it absently.
"Its getting late, or should I say early?" Sera glanced at the window, where dawn bled gold to the tower. "The sun is out. I need to go."
"You'll come back?" The question slipped out, raw and unguarded.
"Do you want me to?"
Lysander's jaw tightened. He turned to the window, where the first rays of sun clawed at the horizon, then back to her. "I.. I want to finish the river scene."
"Ah. Of course." She smiled, bittersweet. "I'll be back." The wink she offered was all defiance, as she left him.
____________________________
Seraphiel soared upward, the feather in his drawer vibrating faintly, a lodestone to her wings. Above the clouds, Cassiel caught her arm, his fingers digging into the flesh of hers that shimmered.
"You're rewriting cosmic law." Cassiel hissed, his true form flickering—a thing of burning souls and screaming mouths.
Seraphiel didn't flinch. "So?" She wrenched free, a strand of her hair tearing loose and falling back to clouds gracefully as it bursts then turn into stardust.
"Your fading," he growled, gesturing to her trembling hands, translucent.
She flexed her wings, uncovering her body, as he watched dawn paint them gold. "I'm living. You wouldn't understand, Cassiel, You've never let yourself feel anything but duty"
Cassiel's heart ached hearing the words that came out of her mouth.