Chapter Text
One time I doubted. One. Single. Time. That's all it took for me to be kicked out of heaven. We were told to cut back on miracles for a while; death was complaining about stealing souls from her. I, like any being with a conscious, asked if this was the right thing to do. The next thing I knew, I was falling from the sky. You would think falling from heaven wouldn't take long. Besides, how far could heaven be? Well, you would be surprised. It takes about 15 minutes to get from heaven to the highest point on earth, going 50 miles per hour. Of course, I wasn't heading to Mount Everest. It took me 45 minutes to fall. Forty-five minutes of free-falling before I hit the ground. I woke up somewhere in Minnesota.
The only person to see anything was a deer who had run away the second I looked at it. I had never been to earth before, I had, of course, learned about it in school as does every angel. But I had never actually been there. The first thing I noticed was how beautiful it was. The second thing I noticed was the blood pooling around me. In replacement of my wings was a gaping wound on my shoulder blade. I wanted to scream for help, for my brothers and sisters, but nothing would come out of my throat. What happened to me?
"You've had the breath knocked out of you." I looked up. A human woman with blonde hair and brown eyes was extending her hand out to me. "Come on; I don't bite."
I reached for her hand as she pulled me up. And I reached for them again, and again, and again, and again.
"This is why you don't fly everywhere. You never learn how to walk right." She said. She quickly picked me up into her arms. "Lord, you're light. Even for an angel."
She carried me off into a path that cut through the dense forest. I wanted to ask her who she was, to ask if she was one of the evil humans that will kill any angel they find that my mom used to tell me about, but I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't speak.
"You can't talk, can you?" The woman asked. I shook my head. "Yeah, figures you haven't been to earth. They all ways send me the difficult ones."
Who's they? What does she mean by send? Difficult ones? I hadn't had a single idea about what she was talking about, but I didn't have much time to think. We approached a house. It was small, made out of wood, well decorated, though.
"It's nice, ain't it? Built it myself. Trust me; it's lots bigger on the inside." She unlocked the door and opened it with her foot. She wasn't lying about the inside being bigger. The whole place was open plan except for a small hallway; I didn't know what was down there, though. She kicked her shoes off and sat me on the couch. She left for a moment then came back with a blanket.
"Don't worry." She said. "I'm not one of those human monsters that all of you seem to be scared of."
I finally managed to get out a sentence, "Then, who are you?"
"You don't need to worry about that right now. All you need to worry about is answering a few questions for me." She said. She reached behind the sofa a pulled out a deck of cards.
"Why should I answer any questions for you?" I asked. I had only just gotten to earth and then kidnapped by this woman, and now she wants me to answer questions for her! She pulled a card out of the deck.
"Because I'm the only person that can or will help you right now." She said. She sat at the end of the couch and turned towards me. She held up a card. It had a photo of a person on it.
"Let's start easy. What's this?" She asked.
"It's a human," I said. What kind of test is this?
"Good job. It's a human. That's what you are now." She said. Wait, what did she just say I was? She pulled out another card. "What is this?" The card had some kind of square-shaped silver thing on it. I had never seen anything like it.
"I don't know," I said, "but what were-"
"Wow! I guess you didn't like school, huh?" She interrupted. She pulled out another card. "It's an oven. You use it for cooking and eating."
"Oh," I said, looking at my hands. The woman smiled at me and pulled out another card. "Let's try another."
We spent an hour going through 100 different cards. Some things I knew, like what color the sky was and how to move my fingers. Others I didn't, like what that thing with all the buttons was called that you could talk to people with or how to move my legs far enough to get somewhere but not so far that I fall. She also pocked and prodded me with different things. Looked down my throat, hit my legs with a stick, shined a piece o sun in a stick in my eye, and looked in places I don't think I had before. But I wasn't paying that much attention. What had she meant about me being human? I must have heard her wrong. Yeah, that's it.
"Well, at least you know how to work a toilet." She said and handed me a glass of water as she sat down. I slowly started to sip on it.
"Well, I got good news and bad news. Good news, you seem healthy enough. Bad news, you have a lot to learn before you leave here. You scored a 13 out of 100, a record low." She said. She didn't seem bothered about my score. Her voice and body were nonchalant. Me, however, I was not. I'll be the first to admit I was nowhere close to a perfect student. But I had never gotten a 13 out of 100 on anything! I was best in class in 4th grade, and I graduated high school with a 3.0 GPA! She had to be wrong! Who is this meat sack to test me?
"You're spilling."
The woman was smirking and looking at my lap.
"What are you- oh, fuck!" I said. My glass was practically upside down, pouring the water into my lap. I grabbed the blanket beside me and tried to wipe it up, but it was no use. I felt something well up in my eye and a lump in my throat. NO! I will not cry in front of this overgrown monkey!
"Oh, honey." I looked up and saw the women cradling my check with her face. Tears were streaming down my face, and I could feel my breath quicken. I don't even know why I was crying. She held my hands and looked into my eyes. The sunset from the window reflected off her eyes and face and gave her an angelic glow. Her eyes caught mine as she wiped the tears from my eyes.
"Come on. You need some sleep." She said. I tried to stand, she picked me up before I hit the ground. She looked like she was about to make some snarky remark, but it was clear from the look on her face that she knew I was embarrassed. She carried me down the hall into the last room on the right. I meant to look around to make sure it wasn't some fucked up torture room, but the second my body hit the bed, I was half asleep. She pulled a blanket over me. It was fluffy and dense, and the mattress felt like it was made out of nothing. She sat down beside me, brushing the hair from out of my face.
"I promise I'll explain it all tomorrow." She said, standing up from the bed. "But for now, you need rest. I'll see you in the morning, Azel." I didn't know how she knew my name. But I didn't care. All that mattered to me was how soft this bed was. And the soft music playing in the background.