THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TROUBLES

 "The Creator has shaped the world in such a way that there will always be troubles so that there will always be a time for heroes, a time for Man to be better than what he believes he can be."

 - Deborah

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TROUBLES

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's tap on your shoulder."

 - Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein

Amos snorted, “Seraph, threaten away. Rick is a friend. And I have long known each moment is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings. And here in the Stone Age, it may well steamroll away with the lives of everyone here.”

The lanky Seraph Provocateur, Darael, sat down light as a helium balloon beside me. 

“Except for myself and the fledgling.  We will survive quite well … and of course, 

Deborah with her ‘People’ who have done so for weeks. Elohim would not have planted them here earlier if He thought otherwise. Why did you ever give her that name?”

The unusual creature, native to the shadows of New Orleans, sat down with a lithe grace just beyond the body of Sister Ameal. 

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. Gone was the gown in which I last saw her. A combat uniform similar to the ones I and the Spartan 3oo wore now replaced it.

The fur collar of her leather bomber jacket seemed to be bristling to match the fur at the top of her sloped head.

Her raspy voice snorted, “Because, unlike you, Seraph, he sees me and mine being of worth.”

Darael sighed, “I cannot believe I am saying this, but I miss my brother, Uriel. He would make sense of this, finding a path out of this madness.”

He shook his head, now adorned with an antique Spartan helmet that matched Helen’s’ and that of nurse, Rachel Reynolds.

 “I recall the springtime of the world as though it were yesterday—those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when we shook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies!”

“Fun times?” asked Sergeant-Major Theo Savalas walking up to us.

“Not hardly. But it was good to have a brother I trusted at my side.”

Helen’s fiery eyebrow raised. “You do not trust me?”

“Fledgling, I trust you to be inexperienced … and that could be the death of all of us.”

I murmured, “You work with what you have, Darael, and make the best of it.”

“You are correct, Richard Blaine, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light.

His lips curled, 

“A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were, Blaine. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires . . .

 his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that
which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream.”

He sighed, 

“Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival, and a departure. Always, he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition.

 Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing we seraphs call the curse of man … regret.”

MI6 agent, James Cloverfield sat on the other side of the Seraph. “I am very afraid, for I understood most of that.”

The other fifteen Spartans clustered not too far behind him. Deborah’s ten Grunches were only feet away from them.

It was unwise to cluster so close together in strange, dangerous territory.  

But I could not blame them. We are herd animals and seek the comfort of bodies close to us when death waits in the shadows.

I gathered myself to rise to my feet. Death and Light were everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon Elohim’s Dream that is the world, burning words within Existence, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.

Then, Sister Ameal’s wiry fingers shot out and wrapped about my temples, knocking my Spartan helmet to the rutted ground.

"If trouble always comes when you least expect it, perhaps the thing to do is always expect it." 

- Major Richard Blaine