I went flying. Why the hell not? I have wings and I’mma use them. Besides, it’s not there is ground here anyway. So…
Whee!
All this bright light coming from everything except me. I kinda knew where I was. Certainly someplace heavenly. There were clouds above me and clouds below me and layers of different clouds types to fly through. My wings were shadow and smoke, but they held me up well.
Ah. It’s good to relax.
It was relaxing. Loops and glides and climbing on thermals and diving for no reason but to feel the rush of wind. I occasionally asked out loud if I was intruding. Because if I was where I thought I was, I was where I shouldn’t be.
No one answered me.
I continued playing on the winds.
I looped and saw a sparkle of light following me. I corkscrewed and it followed my path exactly for the first turn, the corrected its course to anticipate where I would emerge from the spiral. I dove into a steep dive and suddenly flared my wings out for a tight turn. The stress on my wings felt good, like a good stretching. I looked over them to find I now had two sparkles of light tightly following me. One under each wing.
One of them blinked at me in a language I was surprised to understand. “That was fun. Do it again.”
A few climbs and loops and dives and sharp turns later, I wound up with dozens of sparkles. I felt surrounded by children, and they were all playing Tag. Guess who was ‘It’.
Very well, then.
Try to keep up.
I pushed myself. Faster dives. Tighter turns. Barrel rolls becoming freefall corkscrews. I often left them several body lengths behind me, but the moment I was at any speed but maximum, they caught up.
Cheering.
“Okay. I can’t shake y’all. And I’m tired. Mind if I just be lazy on this updraft?” They didn’t mind. They didn’t understand why I was tired. I’m not sure they understood what ‘tired’ was. They knew I couldn’t zip around now and was just gliding. So they made a new game of me. They clustered under my outstretched wings and somehow made updrafts. Like kids trying to keep a paper airplane aloft by blowing up, they were trying to raise my altitude.
Sometimes I slipped off the updraft by accident. Sometimes… well… Heh.
A solid arm slipped around my waist. “Call your wings in. Let me place you in custody before other things realize you are here.” K* was flying above me, kir six wings in glorious black and white radiance.
The sparkles blinked sadly that their playmate was being taken away. As I surrendered to K*, they clustered around my face one last time. I saw them clearly, then. An impossible form, but it reminded me of other things. I smiled and thanked them for their play. They flew away happy that I was happy.
K* took me to the terrace and we sat on the edge, our feet dangling over immeasurable cliffs. “I didn’t stumble into a nursery, did I?”
“You stumbled into a place you should not have been able to reach.”
“Echoes of your indwelling, I suppose. It wasn’t intentional. I wanted a safe and serene place to be. And there I was.”
“Yes. Echoes.” Ke sounded sad.
“You didn’t get your ass chewed about it, did you!”
“Let’s just say my actions were judged as rash.” Ke sighed. “Rash, and a risk that thankfully paid off. As long as you keep your mortal ass out of unauthorized areas!”
“How long until that wears off?”
Ke didn’t answer.
“[K*], you did not permanently change me. No angelic indwelling or possession ever has, and believe me, Jehovah’s krew has had more goes at me than a demo drill.”
“No, that wore off seconds after I left you. The problem is you are fast to learn but slow to understand. You know more than you think you know, but you don’t know it on a conscious level. You know it on an instinctual level. You said you wanted to be in a space that was calm and serene, and there you were. But you have no idea where you were, or why that space is calm and serene. Thankfully, you did not attack the inhabitants but provided a source of entertainment for them.”
“I kept asking if I should leave. No one answered me.”
“The decision had not been made yet.”
“I take it, your arrival was the expression of that decision?”
“No. I didn’t want to wait for the decision to be formally made. Your charm only gets you so far.”
I nodded in opposition to my understanding. We sat on the terrace edge for some time more.
“Why are you helping me?”
A half black, half white face turned to look at me. Ke smiled. “Because I want to.”
“Oh, come on. Why did you warn me that day up on the mountain? Why did you answer my very botched half-ass call later? Why are you remaining here with me, when it’s clear I am very much a pain in the ass to any angelic entity I meet?” Ke started to take a breath to answer but I cut kir off. “And don’t give me that ‘to teach you balance’ pablum, either! You could have wiped your hands of me a long time ago.”
“A lifetime ago.” Ke laughed at the very sour look I gave kir. “I shall answer question for question. When did you give me the [feathersword] to hold on to for you, and why?”
Oh. Yea. I had forgotten about that. Um. Hmm. I thought again on the sparkles. “Were those old or new? The [sparkles] that is.”
“You recognize them.”
“Heh. Let’s just say I went flying one night.”
“Old or new? Yes and no.”
“[K*]!”
Ke laughed with genuine mirth. “You know better.”
I grumbled, because ke was right. I did know better. “Okay, flip question. Your name is not [K*], that is a random grouping of letters to give my Label All The Things mind something to hold on to when calling you. Why do you allow me to use it?”
“Oh, you finally figured that out. Question for question. If it is a random assignment of letters as you claim, then it holds no power in itself. Why do you hide it from those you speak to?”
“Because I’m a jealous bitch.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Other thoughts intruded in my head. Other observations I had made about myself and my shortcomings. I did not speak them.
“Look. If I was in a no-mortal zone, I apologize. And you know I’m an optimistic shit in that I don’t launch nukes without provocation. I’ll be careful next time, and more aware of where I pop in.”
K* didn’t answer me but just watched my face without comment. The silence crushed me and I started crying. The world became dark and when I opened my eyes, I was still on the terrace, but my head was in K*’s lap. And I was still crying.
“I am most miserable above all men, aren’t I.”
“You’re wounded and some of your wounds heal slower than others.”
I did not counter, but closed my eyes and feel into deeper but restless sleep.