The frosted breath of Njörðr had long been abandoned for less favoring seas, and if anyone was watching, the young Dane would most certainly be taken for a corpse. The strongest of his lineage, he had received the grand achievement of being the last of his crew to live. His vessel’s narrow hull lay splintered, settled into a low, rising arch across the base of a dune. Opposite him was that foreign sea, glassy green caps almost successful in their temptation…he snapped back to focus. He did not know what the gods thought, or even which gods to think of. He looked greyly at the waters, and began across the sand. En forårsdag i helvede. Eight nights. The desert is often mistaken for a place, but its fine army of grain is not without name. It has a pulse; a temperament. A conditional god, one forgotten by all, its sole acolyte is the unfortunate. These conditions fell strictly upon the white raider. Danes were feared in every part of the western world: seafaring men, warriors, healers, nomads. But here he was the ruled, and the speckled geckos he had feasted on had now become scarce.
He reached to remove his helmet, only to remember he had left it behind on day three…five…nine? Squinting, the illusion of a pond flashed before him. Nearer and nearer it came, his camel looked at him in excitement…wait. He travelled by foot and behold: the mirror of liquid glass, complete with trees aimed at the heavens. He wept, lapping up the drink headfirst. Pausing, he overheard what sounded to be the soft crying of a village boy, barely reaching through the howling of the yellow wind. The oasis was perfectly circular. In the center was a small island of sand, no larger than a boulder, crowned with a shallow pit like a child had dug into wet clay. What are angel? The aboriginal sat bare in the sand, arms wrapped around his knees. He looked younger than the sun worn traveler, skin pale and smooth, laying flush against his muscles. His irises were inlaid like the Gemini twins of early spring, and like points of a compass, four thin isosceles blackly surrounded his nebulous pupils of gold. The Dane had missed these, his attention aimed at the scarlet blemishing around the man’s tear ducts. Crying. The golden-eyed individual looked up, but stayed put.
He handed the Dane some bread, and taking it, he sat down next to him. The bread of heaven. “Do you know where you are?” “No.” “This is the Tottori Desert... the Inaba Province of Yamato.” “Where did you get the bread? What are you doing all the way...” “The Caspian Sea!” the younger man interrupted. “You know the Caspian Sea, yes? This is much beyond that, oh yes! Far beyond that...” He seemed to slip into a trance. The Dane did not quite care where he was. He had accepted the idea of his being dead, or that if he was not, he would be soon. He scanned the other man. Delicate, like a woman of the village. The two sat in silence, the trees providing covering from that afternoon’s blaze. As the sun began to set, the young man spoke. “My name is Raphael, and I am an angel, an archangel…one of four.” A flash of silver glinted behind him. “I have a proposal for you northman. Listen to my story, and I shall aid you home.” The Dane nodded once and reclined against the heat baked mound behind him. “A very long time ago, before a man ever had that white skin you washed up here with, I had a pool much like this. God gave it to me. It was a place of refuge for Abraham’s seed, but for the nations as well.
Should any man have come to find it, he would receive all that he needs, in body as well as that inner cosmos. King David found it, and his son, the wisest of rulers. Noah was the first to rediscover it after the first ragnarok. There are others, and many more from the line of Cain... These men did discover it, but received not from its resources." Raphael's face momentarily reddened. "That was not my doing… I offered it to them just as I had the others but…here is where the problem lies."
The viking was not unfamiliar to the art of fables, but could scarce recall the last time he had heard one told so seriously. He sat up, and the angel continued. "You wonder why I weep. Long before the rómverjar, my pool sat in Jerusalem. The children of Israel would come, and I would heal them. And now? My pool remains, a shrine to a foreign devil. Rome calls him a god, as did Greece before. He is as ancient as I, a being wrapped in deception.
Lucifer's healer, one who fancy’s a dim light. Where my pool is now lives a devil, one who offers healing from wounds of which he afflicts." The Dane spoke. "If you are a true Valkyrie, why did you not destroy him?" "Oh I did for a time. Michael threw him from Empyrion, his soul damned until the end. But devils never die until that day, and so he comes back in every age, much like you to me." Raphael withdrew a thin beaded rope from under his thigh.
"The rope of resurrection. Laced with jade, it once belonged to Enoch. When I have finished, wrap it around your fist and submerge yourself in my pool of tears." The Dane took the object. "I start toward Bethesda every year when winter has all but gone. For the sake of the faithful, God has allowed me one day in the land of unbelievers." With this, Raphael abruptly stood. The veiled silver was now fully in view, four carved wings of metal; adorned with strange symbols no man had ever seen, illuminated by the desert moon.