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Red. As far as the eye could see. The deep red of the early morning sky loomed over the desert sands. Red and black. Red was the sky and black was the cool silhouette of the sand, the trees were a mere shadow as they danced. Watching the yellow sun rise from its slumber was a church, blackened and blinded by this morning light.
Here in this church, two and a half people could be found slowly rising from a restless night.
CRASH!
“Icky!” Gabriel shouted to the young female, hanging upside down from the banister. “Get down from there!”
“What kind of name is ‘Icky’ for her?” The old reverend sighed. “Surely something more…biblical would be better suited to her.”
Gabriel shot a chilling glance at the old man, bright blue eyes vibrant behind his tinted glasses. The old man stood down and shied away from the lanky fellow, leaving him to coax the girl down. The Reverend simply sighed as he looked over the man as he jumped up and down in nothing but sinfully tight black jeans. Gabriel had come into the church seeking shelter after what the Reverend could only assume was an accident. He was roughly twenty years younger than the Reverend, however he seemed almost equally aged and jaded. The Reverend had noticed that Gabriel spoke much like a scholar; slow but clear, every word demanded to be heard.
Gabriel’s hair was straight and blond, so blond in fact that it could barely be seen on his head or his body. The poor sod looked like he had no eyebrows.
The Reverend couldn’t care about Gabriel. The man was ignorant and arrogant; a deadly mix. Despite the biblical name, he couldn’t care less about his faith nor the faith of others. And yet, Gabriel sought sanctuary in God’s domain, carrying an angel- a messenger- in his arms.
Gabriel panted, leaned forward and attempted to catch his breath. “Ick, could you please come down?
“Seriously. What kind of name is ‘Ick’?” The Reverend groaned.
Gabriel stared daggers at the old man. “What would you prefer, then? I thought Icarus would be rather appropriate given her age and appearance.”
“Could you at least try for something more biblical, please?” The Reverend stepped forward to the man and looked up to the banister where a pair of dark eyes stared down at him. “Come down here, child.”
There was some movement up at the roof of the church. The sound of giant wings flapping filled the church air and the creature gently flew down to the men.
The Reverend smiled to the small, female figure in front of him. She wasn’t quite an adult, not quite a child however she moved with the athleticism of a child but with the grace of a grown woman. She appeared human; she looked like any other young woman. Her hair was a mop of dark browns and black, her frame was slender and yet muscled, especially to her hips and her legs which she used to crouch, crawl and jump at impossible heights.
The Reverend’s eyes slowly traced towards the large, feathered wings which slowly folded to rest behind her. The feathers were pure and white, and in this bright and early morning she truly appeared to be an angel.
“Sleep well…Eve?” The Reverend spoke softly.
The girl nodded, acknowledging his question but unable to truly answer. Gabriel chuckled at the old man.
He knew the Reverend seriously believed that this thing was an angel and Gabriel supposed that he couldn’t help but feel that way. However, he seriously doubted that angels tumbled out of the sky and crashed into people’s cars. Any normal person would say that it was destiny that a winged creature would come crashing into his life when he was desperately trying to escape his old life. A dead-end marriage, no job, no friends, a cynical worldview that ruined absolutely everything for him. Perhaps this creature crashing into his world was some form of miracle.
But Gabriel never believed in miracles. He just couldn’t believe. Gabriel liked everything to have a simple and easy to explain answer. “Just because it is” didn’t cut it and “It’s simply God’s will” definitely never worked.
And yet, faced with a creature far beyond his own comprehension, Gabriel was struggling to find an answer. It was a girl with bird wings, what else could she be?
Certainly not an angel, he believed.
“Eve? Really?” Gabriel groaned. “Have you no imagination?”
The Reverend glared at him. “Can you come up with better, Mister ‘Icarus is a good name for a girl’?”
Gabriel folded his arms and grinned. “Lucy.”
The old man frowned. “Lucy? I-”
“It’s short for Lucifer.” Gabriel snapped. “What’s wrong with Icarus? I happen to think it’s a fine name for a winged child.”
“Clearly she is an angel.” The Reverend turned his gaze to the creature, he smiled warmly at her. “Aren’t you? You’re here to save the faithful, right?”
Gabriel sighed as the old man gently put both hands on the girl’s shoulders and began to speak softly to her, praising her for her mere existence and presence in his church. He had been singing his praises to the creature and chanting his apparent hatred towards Gabriel. He watched as the girl’s eyes slowly drifted away from the Reverend and slowly met his. Her eyes were much softer than his; kind and innocent. Clearly she had little to no understanding of the human language and yet here was this old man lecturing her on how wonderful she was.
Gabriel adjusted his position. He unfolded his arms, resting against the side of a seat with a hand on each side of him. The girl tilted her head, leaning away from the talkative old man. Gabriel smiled and she smiled in return.
At that moment, Gabriel came to the conclusion that she was far too plain to be an angel. She seemed to act more like an infant than some greater being of existence. And from Gabriel’s own understanding, angels were meant to be beings of perfection and were the essence of purity. That was his understanding of it at least.
However Icarus, or whatever she would be named, just looked like a normal girl. He felt that she was far too normal-looking to be an angel. Surely a being of high religious significance wouldn’t have slight acne.
Putting himself in the mindset of a religious person, he decided that that was perhaps the true beauty of it.
Then he felt something tug on his arm. Pulling himself back to reality, he saw the creature gently tugging on his arm. He looked down to the soft brown eyes peering into him. He sighed, trying to hide his smile.
“What can I do for you, madam?” Gabriel chuckled. “Do you want to go outside?”
She stared up at him, unblinking.
“Outside?”
She finally blinked at him.
Gabriel pointed to the door. “OUT…SIDE?”
The girl shook her head and threw herself back up into the banister. Gabriel groaned loudly, looking up to the girl as she bounced playfully across the wooden beam.
The Reverend chuckled as he watched on. Gabriel once again, began to jump wildly, screaming and throwing his arms about trying to get the girl’s attention and bring her back down. The old man shook his head as he took a seat.
The relationship between the two strangers was an interesting one to observe, the reverend concluded. According to Gabriel, the girl had flown straight at his car and the two collided. Although he wasn’t totally injured, save for a few bruises, cuts and abrasions, Gabriel recalled to the reverend that he was more concerned about the creature he had hit with his car.
The reverend could only assume that the girl was standing in the middle of the empty road, lost and confused from her journey to Earth from heaven, when a man hit her with his car. Though, for someone who had had a head-on collision with a car, the girl was perfectly fine afterwards.
Gabriel then talked of having to figure out what she was, deal with this revelation and then carry her a mile back to the nearest building. After almost three hours of walking in the plains, having to switch positions every half hour, he finally arrived at the church.
The very second he got close to it, the girl leapt out of his arms and flew towards the top of the building before clawing her way inside.
Gabriel commented that he felt used.
“Get down here!” Gabriel moaned. “Come on, this isn’t funny!”
The reverend wished that he had been in Gabriel’s place instead. He could be the one to boast that in the empty plains, he had discovered an angel. He didn’t think of the possibility of mowing her down with a car for he didn’t own one.
“Would you like me to try again?” The reverend chuckled.
Gabriel pointed a finger. “You stay out of this!”
The old man grinned. “See, I have a way with these Angelic beings. Might have something to do with the fact that I speak with them every day.”
Gabriel frowned. “Oh really? They don’t seem very responsive to me.”
The reverend gently waved his hand at the creature, and she came to him at his command. The reverend glanced over to a slack-jawed Gabriel.
He folded his arms and turned away. Gabriel didn’t get to see the old man carefully hand the girl a cotton candy jelly bean.
“Well, she probably doesn’t associate you with being hit by a car.” Gabriel grunted. The man sighed and headed towards the door.
The creature attempted to follow after him, fighting against herself to decide who she liked more. Gabriel kicked the door open, a sea of brilliant red sunlight burst into the church. The girl’s eyes were glued to the horizon in front of her. She looked back to the reverend who was holding up a single red jelly bean.
The creature licked her pretty pink chops, briefly considering that she was very hungry. However, she shook her head, spread her wings and threw herself out the door. She flew over the top of Gabriel, missing him only by the hairs on his head.
The creature took in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the brisk morning air and letting out the dusty church atmosphere.
Gabriel smiled, squinting and using his hand to shield his eyes as he watched the girl dart and loop high into the air. It was truly a sight to behold and he desperately wished he’d been able to afford a camera to capture this moment.
In the dark room of his brain, the image of a winged girl wearing a tattered white dress was being processed.
Gabriel sighed, finding that his mind was wandering to the question “What are you?” Then, for the first time in his life, he didn’t care nor did he want an explanation. That was it. He had seen everything he needed to.
He just wanted to get out of the middle of nowhere important.
He remembered the conversation he was having over the phone before the crash. He was talking to his now ex-wife. He was leaving her for his own selfish and stupidly masculine reason. He wanted to be free. He wanted to get out of the cage he was living in. That included leaving his boring job, boring and frankly loveless marriage and finding something more exciting to do.
At that point living as a priest would have been more exciting, if against everything he ever thought and knew.
Never in a million years would he think that would all go to the dogs because he hit some kid with wings with his car.
Gabriel figured it was useless trying to argue whether she was a creation of science or some God. Other arguments were fun but this was ridiculous.
The girl hovered over him and gently lowered herself back down onto the dry, brown soil. The girl looked into Gabriel’s eyes expectantly, smiling very faintly. Gabriel could do nothing more than stare at her, trying to place her, but he simply couldn’t.
He hated how normal-looking she was, but respected it nonetheless. When he was younger, he had a greater opinion of the world around him, he could have believed. He saw beauty in everything which was quite pretentious of a boy his age. Then the crushing understanding that everything he thought was a complete lie made him realise that life was meaningless, despite all of its wonder and glory.
That, and he was a whiny asshole who mistook melancholy for being a sad ass-hat.
“Have fun?” The reverend said from the church door.
Gabriel turned to face the old man. He tried not to smile. “No not really. Not much fun to be had just standing outside in the middle of nowhere, now is there?”
The reverend frowned. “I wasn’t talking to you.” He pointed towards the girl.
“Oh, you were talking to her?” Gabriel hissed. “You know, maybe next time you should make it clearer that you’re going to be talking to the only person here who can’t answer you.”
“Body language, good sir.” The man sighed. “And when did you start calling it a person?”
Gabriel’s eyes widened and he turned back to the creature, she simply stared back at him with eyes equally as wide.
The reverend rolled his eyes and waved to the creature. She came swiftly and watched his hand carefully as he dropped a single red jelly bean into her hands. She smiled sweetly at him. The reverend glared at Gabriel as he stroked her hair.
“Are you going to be staying, Gabriel?” The reverend called out. “You look like you’d rather be elsewhere.”
He sighed. “That’s true…That’s true. However, I don’t have a car so… I’m stuck here.”
“Walking is always an option.” The reverend replied, drawing his eyes to the girl.
Gabriel sighed and walked back into the church to retrieve his things. “Well, since you seem to want me gone all of a sudden, I guess I should get walking then.”
“Did I come off so rude? Sorry about that, Gabriel.” The reverend said bluntly. “But you know, you’ve got to move along some time.”
Gabriel pointed to the girl who was fascinated by the jelly bean’s colour. “I’ll take her with me.”
“And why is that?” The reverend said, pulling the girl closer. “What could you possibly want with this…angel?”
“I hit her with my car. So I suppose she is my responsibility.” Gabriel shrugged.
“Oh, really?” The old man hissed. “Perhaps we should let her choose what she wants.”
Gabriel sighed, pulling on a grey shirt and leather boots. He took up the jacket he used as a blanket and wiped his brow, the scabs peeling off slightly at the touch.
He looked to the girl and walked past her. He spread his arms wide, as if to gesture to the entire plain. She watched him with careful eyes.
“Look, if you come with me, you’ll have this. Freedom. It’s what we all want, right?” Gabriel said with a groan. “Look, do whatever you want, I’ll just be walking away.”
The reverend lightly grabbed her chin and turned her head to face him. He smiled. “You could do that, or you could stay here with me. Here you could…I don’t know…Fulfil your purpose, be safe from harm…I will understand you…I’ll-”
“Feed her nothing but jelly beans? So she’ll obey?” Gabriel shouted at the top of his lungs.
“SHUT IT!” The reverend boomed. He took a moment to regain his composure before smiling pleasantly at the winged girl. “What do you say? ‘Freedom’? Or sanctuary?”
The girl let out a great sigh. She looked between the two men. Her eyes tended to favour the man distancing himself from her, his figure nothing more than an ever-decreasing shadow. She looked to the reverend, his face calm yet impatient.
The girl frowned, looking down at her uneaten jelly bean. She shrugged and popped it into her mouth. Then it hit her like…Gabriel’s car. With a single crunch, her world had completely changed. An eruption of flavour blew up in her mouth and she hated it.
Cinnamon.
Her face contorted and she spat the candy into her hands before throwing it to the ground. The reverend looked down at her with a wide-eyed and horrified look. As amazing as the lovely bright-pink jelly beans were before, in their candy floss-y wonder, all of those wonderful jelly bean memories had been burnt from her mind by the searing taste of cinnamon in her mouth.
The girl looked back to Gabriel, he was only a dozen feet away but it felt a lot further for her, she was desperate to get away from the sour taste in her mouth. She looked back to the reverend, giving him a polite smile before taking off, up into the air. She was in the air for roughly ten seconds, needing to flap her wings five time during the flight, and standing a few feet in front of Gabriel before the reverend’s shouting could be heard.
He smiled when he saw her and shrugged. “Birds need to fly. Spread their wings and what not.”
The girl smiled in return, she looked back to the church, now visible with a shade of grey and wooden boards. She saw the reverend standing alone, a few steps further from the door as before. Gabriel turned his head as well.
“Please! What’s her name?” the reverend shouted in desperation. “Tell me her name!”
Gabriel rolled his eyes and looked to the winged girl, scanning her and trying to think of a name.
“Eva!” He shouted at last before continuing down the long and empty road.
Soon, the church was a distant as their memory of it. Gabriel couldn’t stop smiling to himself as the newly dubbed Eva flew overhead, completely bored with Gabriel’s slow pace.
Time went by slowly. Despite her best efforts, Gabriel couldn’t walk much faster than he was able. Even her attempts to carry him and fly failed. He was simply too heavy for the young creature.
Finally, she took a stand, or flight.
Eva put her arms under Gabriel’s armpits, linking her hands together and with all her might proceeded to drag him along the road. Gabriel groaned, she was going to ruin his shoes and it wasn’t an effective technique at all. However, she kept trying. Eva put her feet against his tail bone.
Gabriel took this time to relax, using Eva to his advantage, and looked up to the sky. The sky’s previous crimson form was slowly starting to fade into a calm blue sky. There were no clouds in sight, hardly any trees, a small grey speck and the long, straight road in front of him.
He scanned the skies, watching as tiny black shadows above swiftly flew by. He found himself wondering if that was another winged child, perhaps even Eva’s mother. Surely one other winged person wasn’t so far-fetched if there existed a winged child.
Gabriel rolled his eyes as the words “science experiment” had invaded his thoughts.
Eva adjusted her grip on the much larger man. She had assumed he would be light given how skinny he was, that he would be light. She had pictured in her mind that she would simply carry him high up into the air and be at the car within thirty seconds. She opted to pretend that this is what she wanted.
Eva didn’t know much. She didn’t know what a car was for example, however, she knew that it belonged to Gabriel. On that note, she didn’t call him by his name, instead he was “Man with pretty eyes”. (And on that, she had no way of truly communicating, so she didn’t know much English; but for the sake of the page, that’s how it goes.)
Eva did know a few thing, however. She knew that the bright pink candies tasted the best and that spicy red candies were not. She knew that Gabriel was nice to her. He looked to her with kind soft eyes, as opposed to the old man who he looked at with sharp and cruel eyes. Gabriel’s distrust in the reverend made Eva very confused.
She didn’t understand what they were saying at all. She assumed Gabriel was jumping and shouting at her because he simply liked jumping and shouting. She knew to go to the reverend when he waved, because every time he waved at her, she got candy.
Eva also began to understand what pain and exertion was like. Her wings flapped wildly and with all her might, and yet it barely moved them an inch. She had briefly considered dumping Gabriel and flying off to wait for him at the car. She knew he would be there eventually. Then she realised she’d get bored…and lonely.
Eva adjusted her grip once more and in one mad dash, began to flap her wings faster and harder. She was seriously hoping that there would be some pink candies as reward for her efforts.
As uncomfortable as this situation was for him, it certainly gave Gabriel plenty of time to think. He seemed to find himself dwelling on why he chose the name ‘Eva’ after every other dumb thought had run dry. It was a pretty name, indeed but it didn’t make all that much sense to give that name to a winged girl.
He thought Icarus was still the better name.
Then, as the first hour of their trip together had passed, it had occurred to him. Eva, sore and fatigued, dropped Gabriel to the floor and panted heavily on the road’s hot surface.
Gabriel smiled to himself, proud of his discovery. “Eva is short for evolution.” He said.
Eva noticed the statement he had made and let out a loud groan before grabbing his wrists and attempting to drag him once more.