Britannia Unleashed

Temporalis-10

WINGEDDarkness pooled over the insides of his eyes, a liquid thing ever in motion, ever in turmoil, a flowing oblivion. An endless nothingness enveloped Belvedere, oozed over him with a reassuring warmth. The heat masked the fear he should have felt but had already accepted. Eternal night came for him as snowflakes began to fall, or stars, or something equally amazing, twinkling and dancing across his vision before coalescing into something brighter than a newborn sun.

Belvedere opened his eyes to those of the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, a face so serene that Da Vinci himself could have painted it. She regarded him through those angel’s eyes, flaxen hair streaming in unfelt winds. Clear as crystal, clearer even than a Britannian rainstorm in midsummer, they observed him, stark against her skin of powdered gold. The world stood reflected in her golden epidermis, amplified ad infinitum, until the difference between she and all that was became insignificant. What magnificence she portrayed.

A dazzled Belvedere shied from the beauteous creature ashamed by his own appearance, but weaker than a spring lamb, only adjusted enough to glimpse her snow-white wings unfolding into forever. He supposed himself dead and in the arms of a seraph then, for what else could she have been.

Serenity washed over Belvedere in endless waves, and for the first time in too long, he knew happiness. Only when a shiver of such magnitude as to almost propel him from the arms that cradled him did he realise he was still very much alive.

“The altitude? My apologies, I shall fly lower. I forget myself at times.”

Belvedere swooned at that angel’s voice of honeyed silk. It swept through the biting winds, soothing his troubled mind, allaying his fears, capturing his heart.

Belvedere watched the night diminish before his eyes, the full intensity of that primordial sun taking hold of him. The solar beams caught his angel at an ever-decreasing angle, the reflected light moving across his face like a sundial playing out a day in mere seconds. Her aura grew more spellbinding with every passing moment. The winged one’s skin seemed alive in an ever fluid gold, the stuff illuminating her in shimmering majesty, a rolling ocean of captured light. Belvedere noted each tidal surge that rolled across her perfect cheeks, down her neck and across the curves of her breast: she was n***d, and a gentleman knew shame.

Quickly averting his eyes, as any decent man would, Belvedere twisted in his guardian’s arms, so he faced away from the golden beauty to look down, down, down. The landscape was a patchwork of emerald and ochre interspersed by towering mountain massifs those he had seen when awakening into this world. The peaks of the mighty, snow-tipped mountains looked close enough to touch, and Belvedere felt an irresistible urge to reach out and do just that.

“Like touching infinity,” he chuckled, as the two swept through a cloud of bugs. He absently swiped at the things when a sharp sound pierced his head with pain. Belvedere covered his ears, but it did nothing to help. A second blast of high-pitched wailing stung at him, again the intense pain. The angel appeared not to notice Belvedere’s discomfort. Only when he winced a third time did she draw back her wings forcing the two into a steep plummet.

“Oh, my goodness!” exclaimed the passenger. “Oh my, oh my, oh my!” Belvedere stuttered like a child. However, much to his relief, as the ground grew equidistantly closer, the sound grew less and less stinging. “Are we to land?” he asked, trying to sound inquisitive rather than scared half to death.

“Not quite, my friend,” she sang back.

Before he could ask more, the angel’s wings shot back out catching the jungle’s heated updrafts to sweep the two back into the sky like a rifle shot. Belvedere felt his stomach lurch as the momentum flung his head forwards into his hostess’ fulsome frame. There was no time to close his eyes as etiquette demanded, for they had already caught sight of the gleaming star rested upon her breast. He turned away, almost blinding himself in the process, to what he was sure he’d spied from the clifftop: a diamond the size of a mansion house sat atop a shard of rock. No ordinary if overly large diamond was this either, for it was also the angel’s destination. They’d arrived.