The angel is on a dais in the center of the room, and it doesn’t matter what angle you look at it from because it is always facing you. You can’t tell how many faces it has, or which mouth it’s using to eat the apple it holds in one smooth, white hand that you have good reason to believe is every bit as alabaster-hard as it looks, veined like marble here and there with reds that are both dusky and vibrant.
It has a shapeless, sexless body and it doesn’t speak yet; you’ve only just entered the room, circular like all the rest to represent the universe as it is—without beginning or end, because these are the things that matter most once you hit angels and upward. It’s all about the symbolism, as a reminder, because angels have terrible memories. They only live in the present—after all, when you can look into the future and the past and the present all at once they become muddled and indistinct. So they focus on the present mostly, and have one angel to look into the future and one into the past. Often the two are very similar because time itself is very circular, or even nonexistent; it is only events, ordered, and it is the order that the angels hold on to.
They are a numerical group, always counting, always filing things one after the other.
When you walk in you can’t remember what door you came from because the wall has many doors, or none; it all blends together when you take in the central sight, because that angel on that throne is the only thing existing here. People travel for years and years to speak with it, only to forget; but you walk right up and kneel down and bow your head. You wait for it to speak first because you have something precious that you can never forget.
It shifts, but it seems to be always shifting, never still, never silent; there is no sound, of this you are positive, but there is the constant whisper of wings and quiet voices that tug and prick and poke behind your ears, just below the level of audibility, and the angel speaks.
There are no words at first, only its voice, only impressions and colors and impulses that guide your own thoughts and coax out responses that seem fitting, and maybe trivial.
But this is not trivial because it is the only thing that matters to you.
This shining creature, this mottled gold and glitter, the endless eyes that to look into is to look into the bright, bright corners of the universe where no one can look; the other side of darkness; a light that no one can see but angels, and people who can see the eyes of angels.
But this doesn’t matter to you.
You give the name. The name is all that matters because once something is named, once something is labeled, it becomes; it exists; it is. If something is, it can indisputably be found. You give the angel her name and the angel smiles.
It knows her well.
There is always a price to pay for these things, and angels are malicious; they have never held any love for humans, because humanity is forever the younger, better loved sibling who shuns the wishes of the Father and yet holds all the favor. The angel smiles a smile, even though you can’t quite make out its shape because you can’t hold anything angel-shaped in your field of vision—not as you are. They are spirit things, and it is the rarest of men that can see past the surface, into the spirit of things, into the core.
Last names don’t even matter, or full names; only what you called her—and even though it is ironic, you don’t waiver; you don’t hesitate in the slightest. She means too much for that.
You say her name, a heavenly thing for a heavenly girl, and she was every bit of her angelic.
It is real angels, you know, you admit to your gut as you bow your head, that tarnish the name, give it a dark cast, a vicious curl, a dusty, old feel to it that tastes copper on your mouth. You would never insult her to call her angel.
The angel says that you are lucky, but you know it wasn’t luck because you gave everything to be here on time. After the cursory seven days there would not have been hope; but you made it here, and they still have her soul.
Seven days in Heaven is a long time; it is measured in spirit cycles. If you had waited—if you had let the pain rest, or begin to heal, or simply erode your soul and sour until it was nothing but old ashes where your heart used to be—you never could have made the climb.
The angel stands, something in its face spreading out, seeking, searching; it has many eyes suddenly, but you would never note that it seems strange. Dozens of eyes and wings, and the angel thumbs through a book that must have been in its lap all along, that you must have seen because of the sheer size; but you do not recognize it. The angel says that she is here, yours, not ours, because yours is the one you have come for. Ours holds no interest in your affairs.
Ours is infinitely higher because ours is an angel.
It’s referencing her name like that is all of her; because she shares an angel name they must be compared.
You want to say that it is better to be human than to be angel—we are greater than angels when we die. But you don’t say this because you need this angel right now, and it is the only one. If you offend it, she will be gone from you forever.
The angel is closing the book now, and somehow you know that while the book is closed, no one is dying; but no one is being born either. This can’t happen very often, but when it does happen it is the same as anything else—actions in moderation, but you shouldn’t know any of this. You do know, though; about the book, and births and deaths, and you understand Sera’s importance to even such a high angel; she was like that, sweet that even these predatory birds of paradise, this winged monsters of purity, would revere her.
It wants you to know these things, has slipped them into your mind so you are fully aware of the inconvenience you are causing.
The angel closes the book and sets it on the throne and stands and you don’t try to make sense of its movements because they are beyond your sight.
You follow it from the room, through a door you hadn’t noticed—or the door you initially entered. They blend, these things; they are naught but details, and all you care about is her.
The outsides melt away until there is no longer a holy court, a long hall; it melts and fades and slips out through the corners, it slinks into itself, and suddenly you are walking next to and slightly behind the second power in Heaven and its sandals leave no footprints in the loose areas of dirt, leave no blade of grass flattened nor pebble overturned. You can only follow and try to stay focused, because the scenery is gorgeous and it startles you; it is just like this angel to distract you into forgetting. The shapes of the clouds, the clean, fresh air, the sharp breeze that has undercurrents of warmth-it all pulls at you, tugs and slithers through your mind because everything in Heaven would have you forget your mortal bonds.
It is catlike in this way; it is snakelike.
The angel pauses at the edge of the cliff, a sheer rock wall that slants up gracefully and curves out over the bossy ocean waves that are still restless as they butt up against the weathered stone despite the calm to the area. Not even angels may tame the sea to their liking because the sea, like man, is something of a manifest god itself—it generally follows the guidelines, casually; the moon can pull the sea, but only in a vague direction. It can offer its hands and gesture; it can go through the motions of command. The sea can only be said to consider suggestions.
The angel tells you something that is off topic; it wants to tell you a story, and the story could be anything—could be everything, but you have something precious and if you listen, you’ll forget; so you relate it instantly to the girl you are saving, and talk about her, and the angel listens.
It is a moment longer than you’d expected that it finally mentions your hypocrisy; which is fine, because you hadn’t been sure.
It asks why you would have her back; you killed her, didn’t you, and why would you do something if you were going to regret it?
Angels are snide things, almost; so perfect because they are without choice, because they can make no mistakes of their own.
You say that it is good to know it was your fault. You mention that the love of a human can be a destructive thing; this fact makes the angel jealous, because angels are jealous creatures by nature. The idea of destructive love appeals to them, just as that bright fallen angel, that morning star—just as he once spoke of love with that fiery passion, that power that love builds up into, that inferno.
Lucifer is suffering for it, and he is the only one who knows selfish love; for this the other angels both fear and envy him. For this, God loves him best of all the angels—but never best of all.
It was his jealousy that felled him in the first place: as the older sibling to the younger brother that was mankind, forever vying for Father’s affection.
The angel stands on the ledge and looks out. The gauzy material that streams from it—the strands and strips of light, the heavy-as-air shawls that can’t be more than thick, solidified sunbeams, it all catches in the wind and trails back behind it like wings; with wings. Angels are too delicate to wear any but light itself; too delicate to bear wings more burdensome than a wind that has taken form.
You were a poet, once; she stood here, the girl did, on this very spot where the angel is standing.
She fell from here—but falling implies unintent.
Your story doesn’t start with meeting the love of your life; anyone can talk about romance because it is the singular topic of mankind—love and being in love and finding love and enduring love. Love in its many forms.
This is not that story, and you know it; however you want to write it, you know you can’t write it from that beginning—because that beginning was not the beginning of this.
No; no. What signaled your ascent—or rather, your descent into Heaven, into the angels, because angels are lesser beings; and it was a fall, of sorts; it was she, your little princess, your angel in name; it was her, and what you drove her to unintentionally; it was love, and death, and the plain fact that you cannot continue to breathe if she is not breathing back your air; your heart cannot beat if hers remains silent; your blood, red as it is and blue as it is, your blood does not have the drive—there is no ambition in you, there is no spirit, if there is no silver-eyed goddess beside you.
Love like that is dangerous, and that is why you are here with an angel that could deny you as easily as help you—condemn you as easily as setting you free, and her, and dangerous because the angel remains unaffected either way.
It is very important, it is of the utmost importance, that this angel likes you.
Gold and gilt, it turns, it smiles. It should be serene, an angel smiling, but it is not. It is sharp in the way that the wind pointedly is not; it is cold in the way the sun hotly shines down on you with just enough intensity for you to realize that this world is at the every whim of this being, this holy beast that is greater than you are—until you die.
It is strange how our bodies, our vessels of flesh serve only as tools for sin; serve only to cover up and blot out the bright stars of our souls that might soar higher than all of the angels, than this angel, even if this angel is the second power of Heaven.
The angel speaks.
You hate this because the words of angels are indisputable; the words of this angel are the words of God anyway, and God cannot be wrong.
They have been conversing.
You await their verdict.
The thing with angels is that to look at them is to see all of them at once. It is overwhelming. But they are very simultaneous in nature. So angels eating apples and speaking to you, angels looking down and looking to the left with closed eyes or to the upper right with a glazed expression as they talk to other angels, or as this angel talks to God, they do it while looking you full in the face.
This angel, this most important of angels, this most essential—it quiets, somehow. It pauses. It looks at you with a focus, with an intensity that is severe because it stands before you with a human amount of limbs and faces. It still gleams gold, but now there is one pair of wings and eyes and arms and legs and ears, one nose and one mouth that is smiling tightly.
It says to you, and you know the universe is on hold:
It says to you, This has been permitted.
It says, You may find her if she so wishes.
Says, Because of how she loved you, you may go.
She is well loved. It is not you. It is she. This is the only reason.
The room melts back into place. The dais is restored, the angel is many-faced and many-armed and many-mouthed again, and all the cares of the Heavens restored to its shoulders.
You are beneath its notice now, and there is a door nearby to you that you are sure wasn’t there previously, but it is the only one; you go through it, taking this as dismissal. Rarely are the actions of angels unknowingly misinterpreted; only the saints record contrarily to their dictations.
It’s a long hall that you can’t see the end of, all white lights and pearly floors and otherworldly shining; another door is there, steps away, before you reach the end. It was not sudden, so much as immediate; so much as you only notice it when it is directly in front of you.
You step through it. There is a gray that seems black next to all the colorless glow that has encompassed you from the beginning. You step through it, and fall. It is usually this—an unceremonious drop, a disinterested return of you to wherever you belong.
It’s the field where you found them, anyway; the field at the base of the cliff, the very place her body hit the ground and broke into just enough pieces that she could no longer walk beside you, squeeze your hand when they held; enough that she could no longer breathe the same air as you.
You almost fancy there is still a bit of blood, here, on the grass; you know there isn’t, know it’s been weeks, months, a year—the time in Heaven is separate from that of Earth, and you have no concept of time since she died. It, like so many other things you thought you cared about, pales in comparison, fades out, and there is nothing left in you but your mourning for her.
It’s cold, but not as cold as that night. It has been winter, but the snow is gone now—it gets warmer slowly, but the nights are still harsh and cold and cruel in the way that wind so loves to be this time of year. But at least the spring is visible; far off, but visible.
You will be with her again. You have to, because she is all you have left; it only took her death to realize she was all you had in the world.
You start up the hill. The stars are old and tired but still smile at you—they loved her, too.
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