(6/?)

(tag)

vi. on healing

Walking is hard. There is no balance, there are too many steps, and people don’t seem to like it if you move too slow or too fast. Or at least, as fast as you can move now. You run out of breath too soon.

Human skin gets cold fast. It’s raining today and the clothes Lucia gave you feel heavy and cold.

You shiver when you see a girl sitting on the concrete quay, cleaning dark oil from fish she then piles on boxes. She is completely drenched and her knuckles are blue.

Just by looking at her you know everything about her. You know about her family, about her siblings, you know she sails a stolen boat into open sea everyday and dives under the oil layer to catch fish. You know her name is Ruth. You know she is sick and dying. She doesn’t know.

Her future unfolds before you too. All the options that could or could never be. You see her healthy, you see her with a family, with friends, leading activists, teaching children, teaching adults. You see pain in her life. You see her dying in a million ways, she is frail and she is unlucky. But you also see happiness.

You walk near her.

“What do you want?” She asks, and she is wary of you. “Do you want to buy?”

You whisper a word in a language no one here would understand and outstretch your right hand and it comes into contact faintly with one of her ringlets, before she slaps it away.

“Don’t touch me! Get away from here! You people from the Golden Quarter think you are entitled to anything in here!”

She stands, puts her box of fish on her cart, and walks away. And she is no longer coughing.

There is no fast way to let her know what you have just done for her. Humans require talking and explaining and they have no solid concept of Truth and it’s frustrating.

You find yourself wishing you could take credit and tell her what you have done for her. You realize you have ated upon feelings and changed the future of a human that is not important, that is not a prophet, a saint or a martyr.

And the clothes feel heavier and colder on your shoulders.

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]

(5/?)

(tag)

v. on bodies

Lucia comes back from the laundry room and finds the angel squirming on the floor, mouth open in agony. Two arms, no wings. Muscle and skin growing, covering the extra limbs and their halo. They clutch at their stomach and curl up, twitching.

Her basket drops but makes no sound. There room is completely silent despite the chaos in it. She scratches and feels around her ears wondering if she has gone deaf. She notices Segull scratching at their hair too, as honey-colored curls (very similar to hers) gro from their scalp. Kneeing next to them, she gently but firmly holds their hands, fingers stained in golden blood.

When it’s over, the first thing she hears is the angel’s panting, and she sighs in relief, coughing to be sure she can hear herself again.

Seagull looks certainly more human now. A normal number of limbs and eyes, no wings… Their skin is a few shades warmer, no longer looking like just polished obsidian. Their irises are still shine gold.

They look so perfect. Unnatural eyes, angular face that’s a bit too alien to be fully human. They look just like someone just out of the Gilded Quarter and it’s such a strange juxtaposition to see them curled up on her dirty floor. She notices with a smirk their hair is similar to hers, as is their nose, and their overall body shape…

“Did you just… scream silence?” she asks.

“Thought it would be safer. So I altered how sound worked for me.” For once their voice comes from their throat, and the angel seems just as surprised as her.

“Of course you did. Give me a warning next time, okay?”

“I will, I promise.”

They try to stand up and stumble, opening their arms wide, trying to find the same balance without the weight of their wings. Lucia holds their hand and helps them take a few steps on her room.

Turns out their choice of body was useful. Her clothes fit them perfectly, if only the sleeves are a bit too short. (They rub their arms through the fabric, run their hands over the fabric, roll the sleeves up and down, always finding it uncomfortable.)

They keep trying their voice, sometimes shouts sometimes inaudible whispers. (Sometimes they find themselves waiting for her answer when they have said nothing.)

“You’ll get the hang of it.” she reassures them.

Turns out being a mortal is harder than it seems.

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]

(4/?)

(tag)

iv. on the end of the world

“So, what are you doing here?” asks Lucia. “Is it the end of the world?”

The angel is now leaning over her apartment’s small balcony, with barely space for their now four wings, crammed uncomfortably against the concrete walls.

“No.” Several golden eyes on their back and wings focus on her. “Why do you ask?”

Lucia shrugs.

“I think about it a lot.” She swiftly changes topic. “So, what have you come for? Did you fall or something?”

The fiery halo blazes blue and grows in size. Lucia fears for her shirts hanging on the wire above their head.

“No!” Their voice resonates inside her head with something close to panic.

“Sorry…” Lucia scratches her neck, uncomfortable. “Are you going to tell me?”

The flames shrink back.

“Yes. I’ve been sent to find a chosen one. A person with a very important mission. Eight were sent before me… And all of them seem to have failed.”

Lucia raises her eyebrows.

“A messiah.”

“Yes. A… martyr, to be more exact.”

She lets out a long whistle.

“Well, good luck. Tell me if there’s something easy I can help with.” She looks at the alarm clock as she speaks. Six in the morning.

“I will.” A pause. “I thought your kind needed to sleep.”

“Mhm? Ah, yeah. I don’t sleep much, though. I’m used to sleepless nights.”

“Why? Isn’t that harmful?”

Lucia plays with a lock of her hair, shrugs.

“I get nightmares.”

“Nightmares?”

“Like… bad images while we sleep. Usually they’re scary.”

“Images of what?”

“The end of the world.”

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]

(3/?)

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iii. on seagulls

They barely fit sat on the floor of her small apartment. White-gold feathers (still somewhat oil-stained), fiery halo around their head, and dozens of eyes fixed on her. Six wings and four arms now. They’re a strange sight but look weirdly mundane sitting against the wall, lit blue by the neon sign on the building across from her.

“What’s your name?” She asks, her head haging upside down from her bed.

“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.”

“I’m willing to try.”

They think for a while.

“Better not. I was told you are fragile and break with ease. I don’t know what effect it would have.”

Lucia raises one eyebrow but doesn’t push it.

“How should I call you then?”

“However you want.”

“Should I give you a name?”

“A nickname.” They say, hesitantly, and she could swear the dozens of slits over their skin that make up their mouth are trying to unsettlignly imitate the smile she is sporting right now.

She snorts and nods, looking at the dry ceiling, thinking. At that moment her tablet vibrates, almost out of battery, and she looks at the article on how to clean birds after an oil-spill, still open.

“How about Seagull?”

“That is the name of an animal.”

“Sorry. Would you rather a human name?”

Their eyes seem to open wide for a second then drop to the floor. The halo flashes a moment then seems to burn lower, trembling cold flames.

“Seagull will do.”

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]

(2/?)

(tag)

ii. on names

“This is also toxic to your kind.”

Even when talking behind a door, their voice rings inside her head. She rubs her ears, feeling them numb from the strange no-sound.

“Well, it’s not for drinking, it’s for washing. It’s not even for washing ourselves, just dishes. But it’s the only thing that will rub that oil out according to this…”

Her voice lowers to a mutter as she taps her tablet. An article from a few decades before she was born on how to clean seagulls after an oil spill. She assumed the whole “calming the bird” part wasn’t necessary. She coughs, scratching her neck.

“So an angel, huh?”

“Yes.”

Slowly, she picks up her pillow and screams out her lungs into it, then takes a deep breath. It’s fine, it’s fine. Nothing to panic about, right? Unless this time it really is the end of the world. She shakes her head.

“N-nice. Good for you.”

She scratches her neck, awkwardly.

“Can you keep talking?” The voice emerges again.

“Huh?”

“Your world is too quiet.”

“Well, two contribute to a silence.”

When they talk again she could swear there’s embarassement somewhere in there.

“Talking is tiring. The laws of your world are tiring, and not efficient. But the silence is worse.”

She lets herself fall backwards until she’s lying on her bed.

“Alright. Uhm, my name is Luc. I’m-”

“Lucia.”

“What?”

“Your name is Lucia.”

“It’s… It’s a nickname, a short version of my name. It’s easier to pronounce. It’s… less serious?”

“You have two names.”

“More, depending on who you ask.” She muffles a laugh. “But hey, if you know it all already then there’s no point in me telling you.”

There’s a silence that lasts a few seconds.

“I’m sorry. Please, continue.”

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]

(1/?)

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i. on fear

The rainbow coast, they call it, because of the way the neon light glows on the iridescent oily waters. Some optimistic souls do lounge on the sand on hotter days but everyone knows better than to dip a finger in the water. Nothing can survive there except bacteria and some very unappetizing fish that have to be thoroughly cleaned before consumption.

She once jumped in the water. Back when she was a kid. Thought the lights from the ships reflected in the water at nigt were stars and that the shimmering waters at night were a gate into space. She really wanted to reach the stars. And that had cost her several weeks at the hospital and, apparently, infertility. It didn’t bother much, so many people were unable to have children nowadays. Her mother had been one of them, and she had given birth to her anyway.

It wasn’t, therefore, an odd thing to find a mass of wings entangled in nets and seaweed washed in by the tide. Some poor animal (or animals, judging by the size) getting caught in debris and drowning. In the middle of the night she just spared a single glance and kept walking home, with her hands in her pockets.

It was when it writhed that she stopped and turned. She wasn’t fully heartless and there was no one around to help. Maybe this could be her good deed of the day. She stepped onto the sand and approached the thing. She pulled out her knife and started to cut the net but up close she noticed something among the feathers… hands. Black skin, long fingers. Three or… four?

She froze. It wasn’t the really the idea of half-drowned people that scared her but the possibility of stepping on another gang’s business or, worse, a mafia’s.

She didn’t have time to reconsider. Dozens of slits opened. On the wings, On the arms.

Dark and shimmering as the sea. With irises of molten gold.

They looked at her like they were going to pierce her head. She instinctively gripped the knife harder.

A voice… rang? Enveloped her? She heard it in her head but it also felt as if the whole city could hear it, like the toll of a bell. Yet she was sure it wasn’t normal sound and it certainly wasn’t carried by waves. She wasn’t even sure if she was hearing words of music.

“Be not afraid.”

Later she could have sworn there was a tinge of irony in it.

[if you like my writing consider buying me a coffee? your girl works night shifts ;u;]