And then I talked, and he listened, and sat beside me as the sun slowly swung across the celestial heavens.
I told him about her, and about the way she’d been crying, about the way she’d desperately plucked at my sleeve to try to stop me from leaving. I told him about the colour of her eyes and about how she was far thinner than she should be. I told him about holding her, and about how… good it felt to hold another living being and try, just a bit, to help them.
His eyes grew very grave, but he held his peace.
I didn’t tell him the most important thing, though.
I was too scared.
See… my ability to find people is specific and narrow – it’s only ever related to the task I’m undertaking, and should only really work for as long as I need to find that person.
The problem, and to be honest a large part of the reason why I was so out of sorts was…
I’d been able to feel her from the moment she first so roughly touched me.
I could still feel her.
I knew where she was.
And I knew that she was crying.
And it would take me less than a breath to be there beside her.
So my problem was not trying not to think of her.
My problem was trying to be strong enough to…
Stay away.
Time passes just as slowly up Above, and Night comes on the same leisurely cycle for us as for you. The Sun sets in a riotous blaze of glory and the brilliant stars of the Celestial Heaven spread out above us. It’s the same sky as for you, just… brighter, somehow. More oil, less pastel.
Angels don’t really need to sleep, but those of us who were once human still do, from time to time.
It’s a comfort thing, I guess.
I had a small balcony – it’s convenient to be able to arrive by wing sometimes, after all. I’d carefully conjured myself a small table and two chairs – old and rustic, there were a poignant reminder of the table I’d eaten supper at with old Father Dominic for so many years. I remembered how he’d quiz me on my day, on whether I’d milked the goat and brought water and swept the vestry of the rickety old church and tended such graves as there were to tend. And I’d always answered yes, even if I hadn’t been as diligent as I might have been, because he was the only person in the world who cared whether I lived or died, and I’d loved him without thought or rhyme or reason.
Back then I’d been full of energy, full of life, insatiably curious, always out and about despite my crooked leg.
Tonight?
Tonight I was just morose and pensive.
And so I’d decided to put on my soft fleece tracksuit pants and my Care Bear tee shirt and perch on my balcony… brooding.
I filled my Le Creuset teapot (another silly little vanity) and added leaves to steep. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing on a piano; I wondered who it was but I was far too lazy to take to wing and go find the player. The piece being played was slow and moody. I had no ear for music beyond a basic appreciation, and so wouldn’t have been able to tell you the genre let alone the writer. But the gentle acoustic raindrops fitted my melancholy contemplation, so I embraced it as part of the atmosphere and let my interest fade.
Which naturally meant I went back to thinking of her.
Caitlyn was sleeping, at last. And that at least helped; she’d been awake for well over a day.
And I’d been fretting.
Caitlyn Iona Monroe.
Her parents had chosen beautiful names for her.
Jet black hair, startling green eyes, slightly shorter than me, and thinner, which was impressive, because I’d never had much spare meat on my own bones.
She’d smelled clean, with some faint herbal scent to her that I couldn’t place.
Clean, and… wholesome. Earthy.
Alive.
It had felt so strange to take her in my arms.
I prayed that her dreams were gentle.
I poured my tea and stared blankly at the swirls as the surface of the liquid slowly calmed and the one or two escaped leaf fragments ceased their dance.
The scent surrounded me – Shay, another Ethiopian influence I could blame on my friend. Lucius had a way of rubbing off on me; the trappings of his homeland had become important to me over our decades together, and the tea he’d made for me that first time we’d met had forever become part of me.
I inhaled, closed my eyes, fantasised about distant arid hills under a bright African sun…
I wondered what Caitlyn was dreaming of.
I shifted, crossed my legs, took a slow sip of my tea.
Soft piano music.
A gentle whisper of feathers as someone landed on a nearby balcony of their own.
The soft sigh of the night wind over the truncated spires of the Celestial city, teasing the blossoms of my little pet Lavender shrub in its red-glazed pot.
I lifted my gaze and stared out at the multicoloured lights of the windows laid out around me. I could see others like me, maybe thirty in total.
All of them, without exception, alone.
Loneliness is part of existence up here. We all have internal shadows, things we struggle with. It’s apparently meant to be this way; we’re meant to suffer at least a bit.
We can perhaps steal a moment of bliss and forgetfulness with one another, or in the arms of one of the obliging visitors from Down Under.
But love?
Love is for you people. I don’t think we get to have that.
I put my tea down and wrapped my arms around myself as an aching, yearning need for company took me.
I wondered where Jezebel was, and who she was with.