This is torture, Sofiel thinks. Her wounds are barely healing, closing up at an excruciating rate. But at least for the first time in forever, she is breathing without that sharp whistle in her lungs, and the pain that has plagued her since her fall has dulled into faint throb. However, she is not about to tempt fate and make that same foolish mistake of getting up before she’s completely ready to.

The last time she tried, she had spent days keening over in agonising pain, coughing up mouthful after mouthful of golden ichor. So much so that her tongue had tasted cloyingly thick and putrid for days on end.

Never again, she swears, and has since then resigned herself to a perpetual state of inertia. So, she spends the hours and days watching as the mortals pass her by, carefully and gingerly side-stepping over her prone form along the sidewalk.

She has long since learnt that calling out to them for help is of no use. No matter how pitiful her cries are, no matter how loud she pleads, they can’t hear her. Well, not that they can’t actually hear, hear her per se, more like that they don’t (can’t) notice her.

Because to the mortals, Sofiel is just another faceless stranger in the crowd; the ever so familiar name on the tip of one’s tongue. The memory in your head that doesn’t linger long enough to be retained or remembered.

If they do happen to notice her on the off chance, they’ll just forget about her instantly. Humans are ever quite the forgetful creatures, after all. Father has specially made them that way. A form of leniency, Sofiel would say – to spare them from being plighted by otherworldly troubles far beyond their understanding.

Whatever their mortal brains cannot comprehend, will hence be forgotten.

Father always has had a soft spot for them like that. It’s almost something He tries to instil in all of His children.

Well, maybe not all of them.

Her mind inevitably flickers over to Samael and his disdain for humanity, and she wonders where at which point did it all went wrong.

A squabble catches her attention one odd evening. It starts off as something trivial. Nothing that Sofiel has never seen before in a bicker between a man and a woman. She doesn’t pay much mind to it at first, not wanting to involve herself unnecessarily in some petty mortal dispute. After all, it’s not anything she’s particularly unused to by now, having since spent her remainder of days doing nothing but mortal-watching. But things eventually get heated, and the trivial squabble soon becomes a full-blown struggle.

Before Sofiel can even make sense of the situation, the young female mortal is pushed down onto the grimy floor with a particularly rough shove against her shoulders. And in the next moment, her attacker is looming over her, pinning her down steadfastly with a viciousness in his grip.

“No, please – stop!”

“Come on, doll, you were basically asking for it with that short skirt and that low top. Don’t think I didn’t notice you giving me those BJ eyes from across the floor – ”

At the resounding slap that echoes through the dark, seedy alleyway that Sofiel has unfortunately the full view of, the stocky man, who is a clear foot taller than his female companion, sees red. It’s a quick snap change, one that even takes Sofiel by surprise as he loses that simpering smile for something darker – more twisted.

She can smell it off him, wafting across the alleyway in thick, musky fumes. There’s nothing more foul and repulsive than the odour of lust and wrath weaving in and intermingling into one. And as much as Sofiel wishes she could do something to help – to rid the stain of sin off this earth – she can’t.

Not in this current state where she can barely lift a finger without bearing down in all sorts of pain, she can’t.

So, when the sinner throws himself onto his defenceless victim, Sofiel can’t do anything but watch on helplessly.

It is then does she realise that there might be some truth in her brother’s words after all.

Murder. Theft. Rape.

She has seen it all and heard it all in the time she has spent lying there, prone and weak in the sordid alleyway she has landed herself in since her fall.

The heart-wrenching cries for help, the sobs and pleas for mercy.

The spill of blood that soaks the earth red.

And the deafening silence that follows soon after.

It happens over and over again like a never-ending cycle. Like a tragic play predestined for misery, replaying, albeit with a different set of actors each time.

Sam was right.

Is right.

The mortals are rotten.

They lie, they cheat, they kill, and they take. They’re cruel and they’re selfish. And each time another one bites the dust, dropping limp onto the grubby concrete ground, stained with the sins of evil; something dark begins to bloom in Sofiel’s chest, taking seed and growing roots.

Resentment – as she would come to learn overtime. She begins to question her Father’s love for such selfish beings, second-guessing all that has ever been taught to her since her creation.

Are the mortals really worth protecting?