The damp grass soaked my leather boots in a wet shine.  The streets, slicked with rain, glowed purple-black beneath the warm yellow streetlamps.  I breathed shallowly as I walked down the gravel driveway, swallowing thick, humid air as I pushed open the white gate of the fence that separated my neighbor's house from mine.  The paint was peeling, the wood was rotting, and it was considerably short, but still required a small climb if one wished to surmount it sans the gate.  The sky growled and flashed above me, but withheld rain.  I continued walking, down past the house, past the pool, until I came to the door beneath it.  In a way, it had all begun with this door, I thought vaguely, standing and listening to the rumbling storm approach.  The door's knob trembled, then shook with progressing violence, as though something behind it was fighting for freedom.  I stepped closer to it, my fingers stretching to touch the cold metal knob.  The door itself shuddered with a terrible force.  Above me, the rain began to fall in heavy sheets, crashing angrily against the door, which was nearly throbbing with fury.  I clutched the doorknob, which quivered in my hands.  I turned it.  The lock released, and the door fell abruptly silent.  I hesitated, until I realized that-whatever it was in that little room-it was waiting for me.  So I inhaled sharply, turned the knob, and opened the door.  I never knew what was thrashing about in the darkness, as it was then that my eyes forced themselves open, as though my terrified subconscious had pushed me back to reality.  My eyes darted across my room, which was dimly lit by my lamp.  Residues of paranoid fear wriggled in my skin and bones, even though I knew I was alone in my room.  Even so, I lay very still, hardly daring to draw breath, fearing that such action would incite some hidden enemy.

Outside, the morning  was slowly brightening, glowing a soft, warm, pinkish orange as the sun dragged itself into the sky.  I could feel my heart throbbing slowly in my chest, resonating through my arms and legs with each solid beat.  Slowly I became aware of my reality and slid off my bed, mechanically pulling off my nightclothes and getting dressed.  The events of yesterday flooded into my memories, and I felt a small pang of fear as I fretted over what was to come.  Surprisingly, Sean was not in the kitchen when I went down, in search of breakfast.  I supposed he must still be sleeping, and fixed myself a bowl of cereal to eat while I watched the Saturday morning cartoons.  Sean didn't show up all morning, and was still absent when the angels came to call.  This time they had not bothered with the nicety of ringing the doorbell, electing instead to simply teleport into my living room.

"Good afternoon," Cadmiel said amicably. "Where is my trainee?"

"H-he hasn't been in," I said, not looking up from the TV set.

"No?" Cadmiel said. "Well, then, I'll fetch him."

"Er--I'd better do it," I said, standing up. "If you're fond of your li-limbs, that is."

"Yes, I do rather like them..." Cadmiel said slowly, with one eyebrow raised.

"Then I'll be right back," I said.  They followed me downstairs and onto the deck.

"This is ludicrous," Cadmiel muttered, standing with his arms over his chest as I crossed the length of my backyard, squeezing between the gap in the barbed wire that separated my house and the lot behind it.  The uncut grass irritated my bare ankles as I walked towards Sean's little shed.  The shed was a white building (or at least, it had likely once been white) with a flimsy screen door that Sean had outfitted with an array of padlocks, along with a few cracked, grimy windows, also padlocked.  I knocked on the screen, peering past its mesh to see Sean sprawled on his cot, purring softly in his sleep.

"Sean," I said. "S-sean, wake up!"

"Ngh," he answered, rolling over onto his stomach. "I think not."

"C'mon, the angels are h-here," I said.

"...no," he muttered. "No, I won't... I don't want to..."

I blinked.

"Th-they're not th-that bad," I said, mildly bewildered.

"Please... please, that.. it hurts..." his hands balled into fists and he curled up, muttering incoherently.

"Oh.  He's dreaming."  I thought stupidly.  I checked the locks--they were undone.  I wondered when he had returned here last night.  Sean's mumbling continued as I pushed open the screen and walked to his bedside, cautiously touching his shoulder.  He flinched and jerked away, but his eyes opened.  They were glazed, like blue-green glass, shining with water and terror.  He covered his face with his hands as though the air against his skin was fire.  Finding him like this was not unusual, but it always frightened me nonetheless.  I bravely took a bit of his arm between my fingers and pinched, pulling away before his reflex (which was a sound blow towards the face, normally) could respond.

"Fuck," he said, snapping aware and rubbing his arm.  Whatever mark I'd made was lost in his deeply tanned skin.

"Y-you were having a n-nightmare," I said uncertainly.

"Was I," he grumbled. "Thank you, then."

"Cadmiel and them are all he-here," I said, edging away as he rose from the cot.  He didn't answer for a minute; instead, his expression shifted as he thought, recalling everything that had happened.  A small smile curved his lips, no doubt because he was remembering his challenge.

"Well," he said, plucking a rubber band off the small, wooden desk by his cot,  "Let's not keep them waiting."

He pulled back his hair into a ponytail with the band as he left the shed, noticing the open padlocks as he waited for me to follow.  He closed them with a mildly annoyed expression after I walked out, seeing him but saying nothing.  The nausea twisting in my stomach grew more acute with every step towards the deck.  I suppose my discomfort was obvious, because Metatron touched my shoulder comfortingly when I stood beside him.  I wondered how he could tell, and it occurred to me that he was reading my thoughts.

Don't worry.  Cadmiel knows what he's doing.  After all, he has survived many millenia of every kind of battle.

This was reassuring, but the sick nervousness still wrenched my gut. Sean cracked his knuckles.

"Ready?" he said, fixing his eyes on Cadmiel, who remained relaxed--a cigarette was again hanging out of his mouth.

"Er--d-don't you want breakfast f-first?" I said, desperately attempting to stall.

"I fight better on an empty stomach," Sean said, not looking at me.

"As do I," Cadmiel said. "So shall we begin?"

His body faded and then solidifed outside on the lawn.  He turned and smiled, calling back to us.

"Hurry up, I haven't got all day!"

"Show off," Sean muttered bitterly.  He turned swiftly, striding out across the deck and the grass.  He stood about three feet away from Cadmiel, arms crossed over his bare chest, glaring defiantly.  His expression did not improve when he saw that Cadmiel was holding his sword.  Noting Sean's dismay (with some degree of pleasure, I thought), he let the weapon fall to the ground.

"Lesson one," Cadmiel said. "Humility."

"Ha ha," Sean rolled his eyes.

Cadmiel responded to Sean's mocking with a solid kick to the stomach.  Plainly shocked by both the force and suddenness of the blow, Sean reeled back, clutching his middle but remaining upright.

"Sub lesson one," Cadmiel said, advancing. "Keep your guard up."

Humiliated, Sean returned with a punch to Cadmiel's face.  He moved too quickly for Cadmiel to block and his fist struck Cadmiel's cheek hard.  He, too, was surprised by his opponent's strength, but he smiled.

"Good," he murmured. "But not good enough."

The fight then began in earnest.  Watching them, I was reminded of some kind of bizarre action cartoon. They fought at an incredible speed, to the point where they were almost blurs in the air.  When my brother eventually meandered down for breakfast, he was awestruck by the sight, and came out to watch with a video camera in hand.

"Brandon," I growled. "Put that away."

"Dude, this is awesome," he said, shaking his head slightly so as not to disturb the camera.  Anael smirked, but the others showed no reaction.  Sean caught Cadmiel's next punch with his fist.  He took Cadmiel's wrist with his other hand and flipped him over, so that Cadmiel landed on his back on the grass, with the tails of his jacket flipping up around his body as he fell.  Cadmiel jumped back to his feet, swiftly kicking Sean in the center of his back.  Cadmiel was only slightly less graceful in hand-to-hand combat than with a sword--it was clear that he had experience in this style, but also that he was not as accustomed to it as swordplay.  Sean, meanwhile, was in his element.  He kept up the fight doggedly, rising when he fell and countering Cadmiel's every move.  The hit to his back stunned him momentarily, but he whipped around, delivering a strong kick halfway down Cadmiel’s right side.  This one instant took place so fast that I could hardly comprehend it.  It was just… inhuman.

"Again, not bad," Cadmiel breathed.  He clutched at his kidney area with one hand and wiped his brow with the other.  “But there’s something you ought to know.”

“What’s that?” Sean said, also panting.  Cadmiel smiled slowly.

“I’m holding back.”

Cadmiel’s fist slammed into Sean’s left temple, not even allowing for a reaction to his statement.  Sean crumpled, clutching his head, crying out with such anguish that Metatron had to grab my wrist to stop me from running to him.

Wait.

“You… you..” Sean hissed, his fingers twitching against his hair as he shook with pain and rage.

“Yes?” Cadmiel said, ever nonchalant.

“You—should know—“ he gasped, drawing himself up and letting his hands fall from his face. “I’m holding back, also.”

He then punched again, as he had at the fight’s beginning, but with such fury that the sound of it in my ears was almost painful.  I could almost hear a bone in Cadmiel’s cheek breaking.  Cadmiel was thrown backwards, to the point where he lost his balance and crashed onto the grass at Sean’s feet.  Rivulets of blood trickled down his chin and throat.

“Magnificent,” he said, not sounding bothered by the fact his lip was split open, or by the horrible bruise spreading out over his cheek.  I realized then that he had planned this.

“You bastard,” Sean said, clearly grasping Cadmiel’s intentions as well. “You punkass bitch.”

“I pushed you into revealing your potential.  What’s bastardly about that?” Cadmiel said.  He wiped away the blood on his lip with his thumb, grimacing. “Would you like to continue, or should we stop for today?”

Sean stepped back, releasing his fist.

“I’m done,” he muttered, stalking back towards us.  He glared at the ground as he strode into the kitchen and noisily set about fixing his own breakfast.  He seemed to be ignoring the myriad bruises and open, bleeding cuts that now decorated his skin.  The old scar on his cheek seemed almost at home among the wounds.  Almost.

Brandon shut off the camcorder in disappointment, apparently having expected a lengthier battle.  Possibly he was just dismayed by the lack of energy blasts.

“You’ll need practice fighting in darkness, as well,” Cadmiel said, watching as Sean stuffed bread into the toaster.  Cadmiel’s hand was resting lightly against his damaged cheek, and I noticed that the bruise was slowly shrinking in spite of his painful wince.

“Can’t,” Sean answered. “Not tonight.”

“Why not, if I might be so bold?”

“Busy,” he said.  He fired one of the burners on the stove and set a pan on it, seemingly focused on his task.  He cracked eggs on the pan’s edge as Cadmiel pursued his questioning.

“Doing what?”

“None of your business,” Sean said, and Cadmiel’s little smile told me that he had fully expected this answer.

“Fair enough,” Cadmiel said. “Tomorrow night, then.”

Sean opened the cracked egg over the frying pan, not answering immediately.  He finally shrugged and said,

“Fine.”

I figured that whatever was keeping him busy tonight was the same thing responsible for the money he'd had with him yesterday.  I stood apprehensively by the counter, wringing my hands.  I wanted to know where he was going and what he was doing.  More importantly I wanted to know if it was anything illegal.  I could not picture him at a normal job, like a clerk at a store, or anything, really, that required interaction with another person.

Of the angels, only Tialiel was interested in what might be the reason for Sean’s preoccupation.  I considered enlisting his help.  He caught me glancing in his direction and smiled benevolently, though when I let my gaze drop I saw him wringing his hands as well.  A white sundress patterned with lilies hung on his skinny, straight frame, and his lips and cheeks were painted and rouged.  His pink-streaked blue hair hung in a long braid down his back, tied at the end with a white ribbon.  His feminine face helped his effort at the illusion of womanhood, but coupled with his curveless body he seemed, at best, like an awkward little girl.  He had an anxiety about him; a self-conscious awareness that suggested even he thought he was doing something wrong.  I decided that I liked him, even if he was clearly smitten with Sean.

By this time Sean was sitting at the table with his breakfast, eating calmly as the angels milled about.  Cadmiel and Metatron were locked in each other’s eyes.  I assumed they were talking, in a manner of speaking.

“Want some eggs, Claris?” Sean said, gesturing towards the plate in front of his own, which was piled with slices of buttered toast and carefully seasoned, scrambled eggs (the only kind he knew how to make).

“I’ll have some,” Anael said cheerfully, sitting down and helping himself.

“Do you guys even need to eat?” Sean said, glaring.

“Do you?” Anael said. “Good eggs.”

“Actually…” Tialiel said. “Technically, yes, but we could survive without it for a long time, because we—“

“You have no sense of mystery, Tialiel,” Anael cut him off.  He looked sideways at Tialiel as he swallowed another forkful of eggs.

Tialiel blushed furiously. “Sorry…”

Sean tossed a slice of toast at Tialiel, who caught it with surprise.

“Would rather you ate my food than him,” Sean muttered. Tialiel beamed.

“Slings and arrows,” Anael said. “I’m family, you know.”

“All the more reason for me to dislike you,” Sean said.

“Love you, too, nephew.”

“We’re not going anywhere, Sean…” Cadmiel said. Having finished his discussion with Metatron, he took a seat at the table, across from Anael.  “You might as well get used to us.”

Sean grumbled unintelligibly, his attention focused on his toast.

“As you like,” Cadmiel shrugged. “We need to do some reconnaissance.”

Sean raised his head with a “What’s that got to do with me?” look.

“You’re going, “ Anael said cheerfully.  Sean stabbed the last bit of egg on his plate, but did not argue.  Anael cocked his head slightly and nodded, towards me.

“You, too.”

“Why does she have to go?” Sean snapped, setting his fork down with a clang on the now empty plate.  “This hasn’t got anything to do with her.”

“Sure it does,” Anael said. “If we just leave her here alone, we might find her a lifeless corpse when we get back.  And nobody wants that.”

Octaves fell from his voice as he finished, coloring the last words with a kind of sinister humor.  A chill shivered through me like a cold wind.  Wildly, I wondered if he knew about Donovan’s visit, and I pressed my hand against my pocket, where the feather was curled still.  It was impossible, but even so, I could not shake my sick, suspicious feeling until we were standing in the hot sunshine.

Lucius bounded down the steps of the raised sidewalk, breaking into a run when his sneakers hit the pavement.

“Whee!” he cried, spinning until he was dizzy and stumbling. “It’s so pretty outside today!”

“Unfortunately,” Leliel said, slipping on a pair of sunglasses.  Donovan slouched behind her, also cringing in the overbearing sunlight.  He felt Shateiel’s long shadow stretch over him but could hardly hear his footsteps as the tall man walked, trailing the group by several paces.  Shateiel was watching, his half-lidded eyes surveying those in front of him and everything around them. His mind separated sounds and pictures and scents, categorizing and matching them to one another, scanning them for oddities.  The cacophony of car engines revving and slowing filtered into his ears.  With barely a glance, he picked apart these sounds, assigning makes and manufacturer’s names to every engine he chanced to hear.  His mind raked through his collection of sights and smells, picking up nothing out of the ordinary.  Still, he kept his focus, inconspicuously searching.

“Where is it that we’re going, exactly?” Donovan said, with mild irritation.  He did not like to walk in direct daylight—he had to leave the claw off or risk drawing attention to himself.  It was resting, in compact form, in a nebulous pocket of his sagging black pants.  He felt defenseless and somewhat half-dressed without it.

“Wherever Shateiel takes us,” Leliel said placidly.  She also hated the sun, but she would endure it, for their mission.  Lucius, on other hand, was so gleeful that it seemed his joy might overflow and kill him at any second (Donovan knew he was not that lucky, however).  He made a zig-zag through sidewalks and grass, trampling flowers as he chased butterflies and bees like a child.  Occasionally he would fade for a few moments, to the point of nearly disappearing, but Donovan’s snarl kept him aware of himself.

“If Shateiel’s leading,” Donovan said, “then why is he behind the rest of us?”

“Keeping watch,” Leliel said.  She kept her voice calm, but her growing discomfort with the sun showed through every step, glance, and word.  Behind them, Shateiel veered, turning off the sidewalk and striding briskly across someone’s front lawn.  The others duly followed, traipsing through the lot until they went out from the backyard, whereupon Shateiel cross the street and led them to a park.

“I don’t think this is a good time for a stroll,” Donovan mumbled, but if anyone heard, they ignored him.  The knowledge of that irritated him further, as there was not much he disliked above being ignored.

“Still nothing?” Leliel said, with just a trace of irritation.  She leaned against a nearby tree, grateful for the shade of its leaves.  The sun was cracking her resolve.

Shateiel did not answer, but instead entered the gazebo in the park’s center, looking all around him quietly, his brows furrowed.  Lucius shimmied up one of the gazebo’s supports as though it were a fire pole and sat on its roof, breathing in deeply as he smiled at the glowing sun.

“Shamshiel, get down from there,” Leliel called. “You could fall and break something.”

“I’m not that lucky,” Donovan muttered bitterly.  This earned him a withering look from Leliel, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a bare smile.

Shateiel whipped around suddenly, staring intently at the wicker chair hanging from a pair of rusting chains in the gazebo’s center.  Startled, Leliel watched him wonderingly as he sat down, closing his eyes.

Then, he disappeared.

“Shateiel!” Leliel cried, running from her shade.  Lucius floated down off the gazebo roof, his wings out, though reduced to mere outlines in the bright daylight.  Still, it was enough for Donovan, who grabbed his wrist sharply and twisted.

“What the hell is wrong you?” he hissed. “What if someone saw that?”

Lucius squealed in pain and faded long enough to free himself.  He clutched his wrist as tears misted his eyes.  His spectacles slid even farther down his nose than usual as he bawled,
“I’m sorry!  I didn’t think—“

“No, you never do,” Donovan said savagely.

“Stop it, Ireul,” Leliel said.  She touched Lucius’s hair and spoke in soothing tones.

“It’s alright.  Don’t cry.  You shouldn’t fly when we’re walking in the open like this, though. You might frighten someone.”
 

“I thought people liked angels,” Lucius said sadly.

“They wouldn’t like us,” Donovan growled.

“May I remind you that Shateiel has disappeared?” said Leliel, gesturing to the wicker chair.

“Has he?” Pain forgotten, Lucius turned his head this way and that in bewilderment. “Leaving without saying so isn’t very nice.”

“I don’t think he meant to do it,” Leliel said. “He sat down here—“ she stood by the chair, “and then was gone.”

“Oh,” Lucius said. “We’d better go after him.”

And he sat down on the chair, disappearing before Leliel could even get the word “Wait” out of her mouth.

Donovan grinned at Leliel.

“Just you and me, eh?”

“We’re following them,” she frowned. “I just want to examine this chair first.”

“Suit yourself.” Donovan pulled his claw from his pocket and slipped it over his left hand.

“I wish you would be kinder to Shamshiel,” Leliel said.  She did not notice his equipping the claw, as she was on her knees, peering around beneath the chair. “You know he can’t help himself.”

“There’s no law saying I have to like everyone I meet,” he said.

“True,” she answered. She brushed her black hair away from her pale face.  Her lips, ruby red with lipstick, contrasted sharply with her pallid complexion, and Donovan couldn’t help but stare at them as she talked. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be cruel.”

“Free world,” he said, hoping to incite her to further lecturing.  She sighed in exasperation.

“Everything seems ordinary,” she mumbled to herself.  Her curtain of hair fell over her face again, to Donovan’s disappointment. “But still, it must be a rip.  What else could it be?”

“Let’s stop wasting time, then.” Impulsively, Donovan took her by the crook of her arm, pulling her up off her knees.  He pulled her back down with him as he sat on the chair, ignoring her struggles and protests, which were quickly silenced with the fading of their bodies.

“Wh-what is it th-that we’re looking for, exactly?” I said.  We had been walking for nearly an hour, aimlessly it seemed, wandering from my house and into the strip mall a short distance from my street.

“Anything unusual,” Cadmiel said. “Out of place.”

We were standing in a Wendy’s parking lot, and I thought back to the sack of gold coins that had fallen from the nearby bushes.  I supposed they meant something like that.

“How about that?” Sean pointed up at a branch of the tree he stood beneath.  A pendant hung from the branch’s end, suspended precariously by its chain.  It was silver, oval-shaped, and set with a diamond-cut green jewel.  It flashed and sparkled as it twitched in the wind, catching sunlight.  Sean climbed the tree deftly, crawling out onto the branch and retrieving the necklace.  He hopped down and proffered the pendant to us.

“Could just be an imitation from a fantasy shop, but…” Sean shrugged.

“No,” Cadmiel said, examining it closely. “See these carvings?”

He traced his fingers around the pendant’s rim, which was carved with unrecognizable symbols.  They resembled the elven runes of Tolkien, but more complicated, as though cross-bred with another symbol language, like Chinese.

“This language does not exist in this world, or in the mind of anyone who lives here,” Cadmiel said. “Better hang on to it.”

He handed it to me, and I slipped it over my neck with some reluctance.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want it, but let me put it this way—when Brandon and I order pizza, my parents always entrust the money to him.

The pendant weighed on my neck, as it was, unsurprisingly, rather heavy.  But the silver against my skin calmed me somehow, and a bit of my usual nervous tension lifted, as though absorbed by the necklace.  Anael circled the base of the tree, running his hands over its bark.  He then climbed it as well, settling on the same branch.

“There’s nothing here,” he called. “The tear must have closed itself already, somehow.”

“Unusual,” Cadmiel muttered.

“This—this is—“ I started.

“Yes, yes, it’s all happened before,” Anael said.  He jumped off the tree branch and rejoined the group. “Have you any idea why?”

I told them about the machine Necavi and Alistair had destroyed, adding that Donovan had said it was only a prototype.

“M-maybe it’s the real thing that’s doing this now…” I murmured, fingering the pendant.  I wondered who might be its owner and if she (or he, possibly) had noticed its absence.

“But who created it?  Who’s controlling it?  And why are they doing this at all?” Cadmiel said.  His frustration was more evident with every voiced thought.  Tialiel, perfectly quiet up until then, rested a hand on Cadmiel’s shoulder reassuringly.

“That’s what we’re here to find out, right?”

Cadmiel visibly relaxed.

“Right,” he said, covering Tialiel’s hand with his own. “I know.”

“This tender Kodak moment is truly beautiful,” Sean began, “but I think we should probably press on.”

“Y-yes,” I said faintly.  Dealing with heat never was my specialty, and even with the umbrage of the tree I was weak and perspiring.

“We’ll not go much farther today,” Cadmiel said. His eyes were on me, concerned.

We set out in the opposite direction, moving back towards the suburbs.  Most of the area where houses now stood was once covered with forest, as evidenced by the patches that yet remained.  We were walking through one such patch, and thus thankfully protected somewhat from the stifling heat.  I felt that my energy was ebbing from my body with each drop of sweat that slid down my pale, flushed skin.  I longed for my air conditioned house and a nice Coke, in a cup filled with ice.  Yet I refrained from complaint, knowing that it was probably in my best interest to be here, though my aching feet thought otherwise.  I supposed my weakness was showing, as Sean asked not a moment later,

“Are you all right?”

The other angels stopped walking and turned to look at me.

“Fragile one, aren’t you?” Anael said.

“Would you like to rest?” Cadmiel said kindly.  None of them, not even Tialiel, had even broken a sweat.

“I’m f-fine,” I said feebly, even as my body quivered and my knees threatened to buckle.  The sheer force of my embarrassment was holding me up, as it seemed that everything else was engaging in a mutiny.

“Never be a lawyer, Claris,” Sean said.  He picked me up easily and grinned at my shocked expression. “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met.”

Although thankful for the break from walking, Sean toting me around was twice as embarrassing as simply wanting to stop for a moment.  Fortunately he didn’t carry me for long.

Anael had gone on without us, and when we caught up with him, he was standing in a peaceful clearing, in the middle of which was a massive fountain crafted of crystal.  The water flowing through it was so blue as to look deliberately colored, and the statue of the praying woman inside it featured elven ears.  Water flowed upwards into her body and out through her clasped hands, splashing back into a pool blanketed with water-lilies.  The crystal glinted, pristine and untainted by the filth of time and the scars of the elements.

It was breathtaking.

“I guess there’s a chance it could belong to this world,” Anael was saying, “but somehow I doubt it.”

“One way to find out,” Cadmiel said. “Over here, please, Claris.”

He beckoned me towards the fountain.  Sean set me down warily, clearly suspicious of his intentions, but I was eager to join him.

Cadmiel took my pendant and a handful of the fountain’s water, sprinkling it over the emerald, which shimmered in response.  When the white glow faded, the emerald was a sapphire.

“Definitely not of this world,” Cadmiel said grimly.  But I could not have been happier; in fact, I couldn’t remember when I had last felt so refreshed.  Within a minute, the red had drained from my face and my skin had become perfectly dry and cool.  The change was noticeable, as Cadmiel nearly did a double take.

“No.  Definitely not,” he said, but that was all.

“This isn’t good,” Tialiel fretted, and began to wring his hands again.  “Whatever was here is in the world where that fountain originated… and this is a pretty big space… what if a person was here?”

“And the tear is gone, too,” Anael said with dismay.

“B-but,” I said, “isn’t that good?”

“No,” Anael said. “We don’t know how long it was open or what came in or out…and when one tear closes, another one generally opens soon afterwards.”

He paused, and then went on,

“The main reason we’re not panicking is because of this, true…but we’re looking for an open tear so we can analyze the properties.”

The day was waning.  Even with the cool pendant against my skin, I could tell, as faint shadows began to descend over the clearing.  It was one of those times I wished I owned a watch.

Sean knocked lightly on the crystal statue, and it responded with a clear, melodic ring.  Abruptly, he jumped on the fountain’s edge and hit the statue’s side with a solid kick.  The clear sound rang again, reverberating loudly throughout the trees and scattering the birds in their branches.  The sudden noise also severely startled Tialiel, who jerked in surprise and gasped.

“Jesus!” Anael cried.  Sean hopped down, grinning wildly.

“What did you do that for?” Cadmiel demanded.

“Felt like it,” Sean said, still grinning. "Relax, it’s not like I broke it or something.”

“Sociopath,” Cadmiel mumbled.

“Can we go home now?” Tialiel said, his voice small and tremulous.

“The tear is gone.  We have no way of knowing where the next one opened or if this one will reopen any time soon.  I suggest we go,” Anael, having composed himself, spoke evenly, but also with a strange sort of relief.  But he was just as morose as Tialiel and Cadmiel as we started for my house, so I put it off to my own paranoid imagination.

I half-expected Metatron to be waiting for us at the house, but no.  I fetched myself a Coke from the fridge, quietly displeased.

Cadmiel stood out on the deck, smoking, with Tialiel nearby.  Anael was draped over an armchair, and I blinked when I noticed that he had shifted to a she.

“D-doesn’t that unnerve people?” I said.  I curled up on the couch, sipping my soda.

“Angels aren’t as fixated on gender as human beings,” Anael said loftily, then added with a nod towards the deck, “Tialiel being a notable exception.”

“I-is that a r-roundabout way of saying no?” I said.  I’d never understood why certain people had such a problem answering questions directly.  Anael smirked.

“Might be,” she said.

Jeff, a morbidly obese tabby cat, came waddling hastily from the kitchen, being too fat to really run.  I suspected that Sean was frightening the cats from their food bowl again, a small part of his eternal war against them.  I caught Jeff and held him in my lap, scratching him behind the ears affectionately.  I could hear Sean growling from the next room.

“My dear, how have you tolerated him all these years?” Anael said.

“I think y-you guys are being a little h-harsh on him…” I said, but I was thinking of the fountain.  What possessed him to just attack it like that?  What if it had really shattered?  But I knew that even if I had been aware of Sean’s thought process, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make sense of it.

“We did have higher expectations,” Anael mumbled vaguely, choosing not to elaborate. “I suppose this is what spending one’s formative years amongst humans does to an angel…”

I was somewhat insulted.  Surely she was not intimating that Sean’s mental instability was my doing.

“Formative years?” I said, not wishing to argue.

“Do you know how old we are?” Anael said.  She was well aware that, of course, I did not.

“Let me put this way—we were alive before the earliest ancestors of your race were even considered for existence,” she went on. “A lot of time has passed since then.  Orifiel is young, even in human culture, but in terms of angels…”

Anael trailed off and then began again.

“Of course, we reach what you might call maturity on a physical level in these very early stages.  Generally emotional and physical maturity arrives a bit later, in the late twenties or as far as the mid-thirties.”

“I-it’s hard to th-think of Sean as an a-angel..” I admitted, addressing my Coke.

“Yes, he absolutely reeks of humanity,” Anael said dryly. “He really shouldn’t’ve left Heaven until he was least the age he is now.  I don’t expect it could have been helped, though.”

“Wh-why not?” I ventured, impressed with my own daring. “Wh-why wasn’t a s-search party s-sent out or s-something?”

“Well, darling,” Anael said, but was interrupted by Metatron’s sudden reappearance by the stairs.

A pair of sunglasses hid his eyes as he trained them on Anael.  I never knew their exchange, but Anael promptly dropped the subject.

“M-Metatron,” I said, pleased with his return (although his silencing of Anael was a little disturbing).  He sat down next to me, stiffly, with his hands folded in his lap.

Claris, are you well?

He touched a finger to his lips, which I took to mean that I should answer with my thoughts.

“As well as I can be, considering,” I answered.  I enjoyed conversing in Metatron’s peculiar thought speech—since it was not a spoken dialogue, I could not mumble or stutter as I usually did.

Metatron’s thin fingers hovered over my pendant, and his face questioned me as he stroked the blue gem lightly.  I explained how we had found it, and then told him about the fountain.  I left out the part about Sean’s outburst; it was not important, I thought, and Metatron likely already thought Sean was insane anyway.

Orifiel’s behavior is troubling.

“Wh-what?” I said this aloud in surprise, causing Anael to glower at us, clearly annoyed at being left out of the discussion.

I am sorry. I searched your mind on reflex when I sensed you were hiding something.

His feeling of shame washed over me.

“Oh… it’s okay,” I said, and it was.  I was simply a little taken aback.  Metatron smiled with relief.

“Is it very hard to stop yourself from reading everyone’s thoughts?” I asked.  I was both curious and trying to change the subject.

Sometimes… it is automatic at times, a reflex, like I said… It tends to aggravate most people.

His head cocked slightly at Anael, who had since lost interest and was watching television.

I don’t mean to intrude, but…

“Well, I don’t mind… I mean, as long it’s not a purposeful habit or anything,” I said, and his small smile widened.

I managed to avoid the topic of Sean for the rest of our talk, instead focusing on the possible origins of the pendant and the fountain, how he was, the weather, anything.  It was calming to speak with him, strange as he was.

Eventually, night fell.  Sean, who had gone back into his shed just before Metatron’s arrival, appeared again on the threshold, dressed to go out.

“See you later, Claris,” he muttered, ignoring the angels, all of whom were still there.  About a minute after he left, Anael rose from her chair.

“That's our cue.  Let’s go.”

“Eh?” I said.  I had intended on waiting five minutes and then following him alone.

“It’s not safe for him to be out this late, alone,” Cadmiel said.  He coughed, then added, “Especially with his mental state.”

“B-but, he only just left,” I protested. “He’ll s-see you.”

“Silly, we’re not going to walk,” Anael said, taking my hand. “We’re going to fly.”

Some part of me had secretly suspected that their wings were merely decoration, as the angels had been around for several days and not yet flown at all.  I knew this was irrational, as I had of course seen Donovan fly several times before, but he was the only one.  Cadmiel and the others actually kept their wings hidden most of the time, through some sort of glamour, I guessed.  It was something else to watch their wings spring simultaneously from their backs, especially since Tialiel and Cadmiel had four each and Metatron had six.  Cadmiel lifted me into his arms and the four of them slid into the sky, their great wings beating silently against the night.  Although heights had never really bothered me, my palms sweated regardless as we climbed higher into the sky.  They caught up with Sean quickly.  He was no more than a dot on lines of landscape as he made his way to his destination.

“The morgue?” I said, though my words were stolen by the wind before they reached anyone’s ears.  The angels descended, landing outside the somber little building.  Their wings again disappeared into their backs, and we went in.  Sean was going out a side door when we entered, carrying a lantern and a shovel.

A graveyard surrounded the morgue, its plots carefully tended and protected by a high stone wall topped with gargoyle statues.  Sean walked between the rows of graves until he stopped at a piece of untouched earth next to another tombstone.  He set the lantern down and began to dig.

“I… I g-guess this is his job,” I whispered.

“Lovely choice of occupation,” Anael muttered, tapping a stone cross.  Sean’s head snapped up, and he nearly dropped the shovel when he saw us.

“What the hell?!”  he snapped, stalking over to us with the shovel aloft, as though he intended to use it on the lot of us.  “What are you doing here?!”

“S-sorry,” I stammered, as Anael answered coolly, “Following you.”

“I-is this y-your job?” I asked.  He avoided my eyes and muttered “Yeah.”

“You dig graves?” Tialiel said.

“I’m also a guard,” he continued to mumble sheepishly as he walked back to the work he had started, with us close behind. “You know, scare away vandals and dumb goths with cameras.  It pays pretty well.”

“Why w-were you h-hiding it?” I said. He shrugged, and struck the earth with his shovel, responding noncommittally.

“I didn’t.  You never really asked, did you?”

He was right.  I hadn’t.  I blushed in chagrin.  He continued digging.

“Hey!” Anael, who had gone off on her own again, called to us. “I found a tear!”

Every head but Sean’s whipped towards Anael, who was crouching behind one of the graves.

Impossibly, the headstone had a hole in it, like one might find in a piece of fabric, gaping and black.  Sean set his shovel down again and joined us in staring at it dumbly.  Anael was delighted.

“Finally!”  she said, moving her hand over the hole as though feeling air that was being expelled from within it.  She let her hand slip into the tear, and then tried to pull back, but could not.

“Something seems to have taken hold of my wrist,” she said in alarm, and with another tug she was gone, swallowed up by the tear.

“Anael!” Tialiel cried, falling in after her, which caused a kind of Domino effect, as Cadmiel and then Metatron went in after him.  I gasped, knowing I had to follow them and diving through the tear without a second thought. Sean’s cry of protest echoed behind me.

Darkness and stars enveloped me, as though I were falling through an empty universe, and then the stars faded, leaving me in a lonely void.  I did not know whether or not my eyes were open, but I lost consciousness shortly thereafter.

When I woke, I was lying on the ground, and a tall figure loomed over me, kneeling when he saw my eyelids flutter.  His mismatched red and blue eyes scrutinized mine, and at length he asked, carefully,

“Claris?”

Man, that was long.  Your thoughts?  Mail me or post or something. n__n (please? :3;)