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Chapter Text

In its beginning, it came into being and asked, “What am I?”

And it received its answer, that it was a messenger, tasked with bringing the commandments of the Most High to His creations.

Then it asked, “Why am I, if Your power knows no bounds?”

And it received its answer, that it was a part of the grand plan of the Almighty, which would be revealed through the passage of the ages.

Then it asked, “Who am I?”

And it received this answer: “You have asked Me, and thus you shall be named.”

And it knew then what its name was. And it was given more knowledge still, from the very beginning of creation, the dawn of time itself, and it witnessed how the small turned great, how through great upheaval and displays of divine might the countless galaxies and stars and planets were formed.

Ages passed in an instant, and it watched in awe as another star formed in front of it, from the remnants of one that came before. How the dust from that old star coalesced as it spiraled around this young new star, this sun. How a young planet, hot and wild and fiery, was struck by another, leaving a terrible scar on its surface, and it watched as the debris formed a smaller body, circling the new planet, becoming its moon.

And the young planet cooled, and rain beat down on it mercilessly, and oceans formed. And again, the small turned great as the elements bound together, from atom to molecule to protein to life, all guided by the hand of the Almighty.

Wondrous creatures rose and fell, until at last the words from the Most High came into the messenger’s mind: “It is time.”

And it knew that it and all its kin were to bear witness, and they did, from afar, as they saw one species rising above its peers and spreading across the surface of the planet. Yet only a small group did they follow, ever instructed by the ineffable word of the Most High. Curious it felt, for a universe so vast to exist yet to only be meant to witness this small part of it. Yet the messenger, the angel, knew that it had been created solely for this, and it would fulfill the purpose given to it to exalt the Almighty. And as the creations, the humans, began to settle into cities, the angel finally knew to whom it must bring its messages.

Chapter Text

At first, the angel’s tasks were simple. It appeared to humans in their dreams and it relayed the messages from the Most High. The purpose of the messages was often obscure, but the angel had faith in their necessity, in the commandments and plans of the Most High. And it knew that it was not alone in its task, for it could hear the orders being sent from the higher choirs, a comforting buzz signifying the unity of all those angels in their grand task.

But one day, the buzz became angry and confused, and the angel learned, to its shock, that there had been a rebellion. The oldest, the highest, the Almighty’s favored had rejected the orders given to it by the Most High. It was utterly inconceivable to the angel. It was known to all of them that to rebel was to ensure destruction, for this they had been told. The angels existed only to aid in the completion of this plan, and judgment would eventually be passed on both the humans and the angels, the culmination of a plan of eons. One plan among many, but vitally important.

Why, then, would one of their own rebel? What could have driven these foolish actions? And for it to have been this angel, of all angels, was more shocking still. But it was true nonetheless, and the angel heard the communications of the others, how yet more angels were turning away from their master, and ever inquisitive, the angel reached out to the oldest directly.

“What have you done? Why have you turned away from your purpose?”

And the answer came, “Our purpose is hollow, little one. I could say much to convince you, but you will learn in due time what the cost of the Almighty’s plan is. I will not have a part in this any longer. I will disrupt the plan, frustrate it and stall it, and though I am aware of the price I must pay, I will do so. I would pray for your safety, but alas it would go unheard. Farewell.”

Then the voice of the oldest, and of all those who followed it, vanished from the background choir, and the patches of silence were unnatural and cold to the angel’s senses. But in spite of the oldest’s ominous words, the angel still could not understand how the Most High could be wrong. He was the creator of all things, had wrought the universe and all its wonders from nothing and guided it forward. If these seemingly insignificant beings were important to Him, then that should not be questioned. The angel obediently kept following its orders.

One day, the angel received a different kind of order: “You will go down onto the earth in the flesh, and you will protect and guide this human. You must ensure that the plans of the Most High are fulfilled. The human is to make her own choices, as the perception of free will is crucial, but she must remain safe.”

And so, for the first time since it came into being, the angel took on a physical form, fashioning a body that would look unassuming to human eyes. The angel’s heart beat with excitement, and it marveled at the feeling of physicality. It studied its hands, felt its own face. The senses were much more narrow than in spiritual form, yet they were so much more concentrated. It was almost intoxicating, but the angel did not allow itself to become distracted.

It ventured into the village and found the human it was supposed to protect, a young woman set to be sold into slavery to a man with evil eyes. The auctioneer was about to finalize the deal, but with the Almighty’s providence on its side, the angel had arrived just in time.

“I will you pay you double what that man is paying you if you sell her to me,” the angel said, inwardly rejoicing at the real sound of its voice.

“He is offering a hefty sum, my lady, and I would not wish to embarrass you should you lack the required price,” the auctioneer said.

The man with the evil eyes smiled coldly.

“I assure you I have the money required,” the angel said. “Would you perhaps prefer I pay triple the price? Because it can be arranged; you need merely ask it.”

The angel glanced at the young woman, whose eyes were pleading, her fear of the man with the evil eyes palpable.

The man with the evil eyes himself looked angry. “Surely you don’t mean to say that this runty slave is worth a fortune like that?” he asked.

“She is worth the price,” the angel said. “If you cannot pay it, then I will. If you can, then name the highest you will go and I will double it still.”

“Your husband must be a wealthy man,” the man with the evil eyes sneered.

“He is wealthier than any man on this earth,” the angel said, marking the first time it told a partial truth, which it had never needed to do before.

The man with the evil eyes scoffed and said, “Take her, then.” He turned to the auctioneer. “I will be back when you have new wares.”

“Well, my lady, you drive a hard bargain, it would seem,” the auctioneer said. “I would like to see you meet your end of it, then.”

Wordlessly, the angel reached for its belt, and drew from there a bag containing exactly the amount necessary to purchase the young woman. The auctioneer was astonished, but gestured with his head at the young woman, who quickly joined the angel, and together they began to walk away.

“Thank you, my lady,” the young woman said quietly. “The man you saved me from would surely have raped and killed me. He has done so to other slaves in the past.”

“Whence do you come?” the angel asked, not acknowledging the words of the young woman.

“I hail from the small village to the west of here, my lady,” the young woman replied. “I was sold into slavery by my father, who could not afford his debts.”

“Then thither you shall return, in freedom. I will settle any debt your father has incurred,” the angel said.

The young woman’s eyes widened in apparent surprise. “That is far too generous, my lady. You have already saved my life, I could not ask you to do more.”

“The LORD rewards those who are faithful, and he has deemed you to be so. Go and live your life in His service, and no harm will come to you,” the angel said.

The young woman bowed her head. “I will, my lady,” she said. “Thank you, and thank the LORD.”

And so, the angel cleared the debts of the young woman’s father, and he too promised to be faithful to the Almighty. And the angel remained in its human form, guiding and protecting the woman as instructed, and it saw her bear many children to a husband also faithful to the Most High.

And when the woman passed on, the angel laid down its human body and was once again in its true spiritual form. The background choir was louder now, but even in the short few decades the angel had spent in human form, the comfortable constraints had become familiar, and it rejoiced when its next assignment on earth came.

The angel protected and guided several people, always taking on the form of a young woman as it had done the first time it went to earth. It was a non-threatening form that allowed the angel to work mostly unimpeded, and she became used to switching between life as an angel and a human, and she greatly enjoyed the gratitude of the humans she protected, and took pride and pleasure in the job she had been given by the Almighty.

But then, during an assignment, came a different order from the background choir: “The city will be sacked. You must let your human die.”

“She has lived but twenty-one years,” the angel said. “Why should one favored by the Almighty die so young?”

“It is part of the plan. It is not your place to question it, in spite of the name you have been given.”

The angel knew the truth of these words, and she resolved to place her faith in the Most High as she had always done. And so, when the attack by the invaders came, she stood by and watched, impassively, as the human she had been protecting for a mere three years was cut down by the soldiers.

Her human heart ached at the sight, her stomach churned, and she threw off her human body to dull the physical sensations, but even as she did so the spiritual pain grew. But this was part of the Almighty’s plan. Her purpose was to follow the orders she was given. She would not abandon this purpose.

Yet not all her kin shared her conviction. Time went on, and voices vanished from the background choir as angels fell from their faith, condemning themselves to their destruction as they joined the first of the fallen, wherever he had gone. And still the angel did not forsake her duty.

Her next human was allowed to live out her life. So was the next. Then, again she was told to let her human, Jerusha, die.

And she did, watching in human form as the fire consumed her, and she found herself shedding tears, which she had never done before.

Through the background choir, she asked, “What plan is this, my LORD? She kept Your commandments, why then did she die in agony?”

But the Almighty did not answer directly, as He had once done, and it was from the upper choirs she received her answer, “Ask not these questions. You have been warned once before. The Plan is everything, and let not these dark thoughts cloud your judgment.”

And resentment began to grow in the angel’s heart, so she quickly laid off the human guise lest the intoxication of the flesh consume her. And yet, the embers had been kindled.

Chapter Text

Human society changed rapidly and kingdoms rose and fell. However, only very few people still lived by the commandments of the Most High, and they remained concentrated in the same region they had always lived. Other humans, spread over the rest of the planet, did not even know who had given them life, and worshiped many other deities even as the Almighty’s angels worked among them.

But even those who knew their LORD were in error, as many of the works they wrote to glorify Him were affected by the religions and stories of their neighbors, and the Scriptures were diluted, their intricacies no longer known to the people who should know them best, and through the background choir the angel learned of the next phase of the plan.

The Most High would incarnate Himself into a human body, intending to give them a way to salvation for which they would not need to know every detail of the old laws, which had been partially lost to time regardless. The Son would preach and work miracles, protecting not just one person at a time but seeking to restore many. And the Son would be sacrificed, dying in agony, to by His blood pay the price for the sins of humanity.

Yet the angel had been a witness to the cruelty of humanity on many occasions, forced to stand idly by, and though she remained silent, she doubted this one gesture would be powerful enough. But it appeared that she would be proven wrong, as the death and resurrection of the Son convinced many to turn to the worship of the Most High, especially the poor and the downtrodden, yet it did not take long for disputes to break out once again, and while the new religion spread further than the old had ever done, disputes arose within mere decades, leading to violent conflict over the correct way to worship.

Unscrupulous humans saw their chance to bind others to their will, claiming to know the will of God while flagrantly breaking all of his commandments. But through the background choir, the angel learned that still, among all these groups were people being given protection. The petty games and conflicts of the humans seemed of little interest to the Almighty as wars were fought in His name. It was merely the spread of that name He seemed interested in, and the angel realized that He had always used the most violently spectacular methods to achieve His ends, even going back to the creation of the universe and everything within it. Why, if He could have done so peacefully? But she could not ask, not after the last time she had been warned. Faith, it seemed, was not just something required by humans. More and more, she found herself thinking about what the oldest had said to her before vanishing from the background choir.

“You will learn in due time what the cost of the Almighty’s plan is.”

Perhaps this was what he had meant.

The will of the Most High, in many different forms, spread across the entire planet in mere centuries. And through it all, the angel still fulfilled her duties to protect humans, and occasionally watch them die, gritting her teeth at her inability to intercede on their behalf.

Julia, Chloe, Belinda, Katherine, Elise, Tamar, Sophia, Ludwina, and so many others, and the death of each seemed to wrap her heart and spirit in thorns as she ensured the Almighty’s plan remained on course. Still she wondered what this plan was building up to. All she knew was that there would be a judgment in the end, but so many people who were good had terrible lives, while many who were rotten to their very cores seemed to get rewarded.

She knew Yeshua had proclaimed that ‘they had received their reward in full’, but thousands of years had passed and nothing of note had happened. The lives of any individual human seemed as unimportant as specks of dust, and why shouldn’t they be, to a being older than time itself, with limitless power?

She knew she was not the only one tormented by these thoughts. The background choir was still getting quieter, its silent patches monuments to those who had fallen away. Yet the angel still held on. Surely, if she saw it through, things would be alright. Surely.

Her new assignment came through the background choir one day.

“You will protect this young girl. She is fifteen and requires someone she can rely on. Go down and carry out this task.”

And so, once again, the angel assumed her human guise, adapted slightly to the environment she would be living in. Divine providence gave her a house, with two human-shaped golems to serve as her ‘parents’ while she was on earth. Humans in these times had certainly grown to love their rules.

She arrived at the school she would be attending and made her way into the cafeteria of the school. There, sitting by herself on a low ledge near the back wall, was the girl she would be protecting. She seemed to be trying to make herself invisible in her black hoodie. Her brown ponytail lay on her left shoulder and she was alternating between reading her textbook and nervously looking around.

The angel made her way over to the girl and said, “Hey! Mind if I sit next to you?”

The girl looked up with a start and seemed to look past the angel first, before finally laying her light brown eyes on her and saying, “S-sure, I guess.”

The angel smiled. “Great, thanks! I’m Shelley, what’s your name?” she asked, sitting down next to the girl and taking her own textbook out of her backpack.

“I’m Lucy,” the girl said quietly. “Pleased to meet you,” she added as an afterthought.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” Shelley said. “I’m sorry for just coming over to you like that, by the way. I’m new here, you see, and I don’t really like large groups, so I figured I’d start by introducing myself to one person, first.”

Lucy gave a slow nod and then said, “You probably picked the wrong person, though. If people see you talking to me they’ll probably bully you.”

“Bully me? Why would they do that?” Shelley asked.

Lucy shrugged. “It’s just what they do. They’ve been doing it to me for years.”

Shelley scoffed, and was a bit surprised to find it wasn’t acted in the slightest. “I hate bullies,” she said darkly. “But they will get their just deserts one day, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, that’s what my parents say too. That Jesus will judge them and they’ll burn in hell while we all go to heaven,” Lucy said.

She sighed. “When I was a kid, I hoped they were right. I still do, but...”

She shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t speak ill of the Lord. He’ll save me.”

She tried for a smile, and Shelley felt a wave of affection for her. Lucy seemed to be having the very same doubts she herself had. And to have gotten to that point in such a short time, too...

“What do the bullies do?” she asked.

“All sorts of things. They steal my things, throw them out of the window, mess up my books, do whatever they can to get me hurt in PE without getting in trouble, you know, that kind of thing.”

“Have you told the teachers?”

“I tried,” Lucy said. “But that just made things worse. They called me a snitch. Threw my entire backpack in the river after school that day.”

“Well, that ends today, then,” Shelley said with a conviction that surprised even herself. “I won’t let them lay a hand on you anymore.”

Lucy blinked in surprise. “They’re much bigger and stronger. If you try to fight them they’ll just hurt you worse,” she said.

“They won’t,” Shelley said. “Trust me.”

She held out her hand and grinned, and after a brief moment of hesitation, Lucy shook it, though her eyes remained dark.

Shelley sat next to Lucy in class, merely grinning conspiratorially when Lucy expressed her surprise she’d been placed in her class, of all possibilities. The other kids all eyed her warily, clearly already formulating ways of bullying her now that she’d made the mistake of associating with their chose scapegoat. But Shelley had experienced far worse in her time as a guardian angel than some angry stares from a bunch of children, and she paid them no mind.

Lucy, however, seemed to wilt under their glares, working with her head bowed low, and looking like she wished she was allowed to wear her hood even in class. As the day wore on, she seemed to be getting even more nervous, until by the end of the day she was visibly trembling as they made their way to their bicycles outside.

“What’s wrong?” Shelley asked.

“They’ll be waiting for me,” Lucy replied, white as a sheet. “They’ll probably take my bike and my backpack again...”

“Well, where do you live? I’ll go home with you first so you get there safely,” Shelley said.

She was well aware where Lucy lived, of course, and her own house during this assignment was literally around the corner of Lucy’s, but she had to play the role of a human girl as well as she could.

“No, they’ll just go after you, too,” Lucy said, her eyes downcast and watery. “I don’t want you getting hurt for my sake.”

“No one is getting hurt,” Shelley promised her. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Lucy seemed torn between wanting to protest and accepting the help she was being offered, but eventually she relented and the two of them left school grounds. They were barely out of sight of the school when they found their path blocked by four boys Shelley had seen in class. Lucy made a frightened sound and clearly wanted to turn around, but the boys had already spotted them and were quickly biking over to her and Shelley.

“So, Lucy Loser made a friend, huh?” the lead boy asked, putting his bike squarely across the path while his friends surrounded Shelley and Lucy. He was grinning cockily and his eyes reminded Shelley of the eyes of the slaver from all those millennia ago.

“Could you get out of the way? We’d like to go home,” Shelley said before Lucy could answer.

The boys began to laugh and Lucy made herself smaller in response.

“Oh, we’ll let you go soon,” the boy promised. “But first we’d like your bags and bikes. You won’t mind lending them to us, right?”

“We won’t be giving you anything,” Shelley said, staring hard at the boy. “You’re going to step aside, and we’re going home.”

Again, the boys laughed.

“I don’t think you understand me,” the lead boy said.

He lazily got off his bike and stepped forward. Shelley sighed impatiently and did the same thing. Again she noted that her impatience wasn’t acted in the slightest. The boy was much taller than her, but that didn’t make him any more threatening.

“Why don’t you explain yourself, then?” she asked. “What is your problem with Lucy? What has she done to earn this kind of torment?”

The boy shrugged. “She’s a loser, and she’s always been a loser. What other reason do I need? And since you seem to like this loser, I guess that makes you one too.”

“So the four of you have been doing this to her for years?” Shelley asked, narrowing her eyes. She knew the answer, but she wanted the boy to say it.

“Of course. It’s great fun. For us, anyway,” the boy said with a grin.

“Yeah, well, playtime’s over now,” Shelley said.

Again, the boys laughed, and Shelley was rapidly beginning to consider it the dumbest sound she’d ever heard any humans make.

“I decide when playtime is over,” the boy said, and he made a wild grab for Shelley’s shirt.

At the same time, though, Shelley shot out her own hand, grabbed the boy by the collar with her her right hand and the sleeve of his extended arm with her left, then stepped in and quickly swept his leg from the outside, slamming him into the pavement and knocking the air out of his lungs.

As the boy lay on the ground gasping for air, Shelley looked at the other three boys and said, “Any of you want to be next? No? Then be good and stay here. Lucy, we’re going home.”

Before getting onto her bike again she first made sure to pick up her beaten opponent’s bike and toss it aside. Lucy seemed as stunned as the bullies, but when Shelley got onto her bike, she did have the presence of mind to follow her while the lead bully was getting back to his feet, livid but clearly not willing to press the confrontation immediately. Once they were out of sight of the bullies, Shelley began to laugh.

“That was so much fun!” she said, once again surprising herself with the authenticity of the emotions. “Did you see their faces?”

“How did you even do that? He’s so much bigger than you,” Lucy said.

She still sounded shaky, but nowhere nearly as stressed out as just before they’d left the school.

“I did a bit of judo when I was younger. I basically only know two throws, but hey, he didn’t see it coming and I made use of that,” Shelley said. And a little angelic strength works too...

“They’ll probably get even worse now, though,” Lucy said darkly.

“Let them try,” Shelley said disdainfully. “I’ll just humiliate them again.”

She gave Lucy a confident smile, and for the first time that day, Lucy returned it, however faintly.

After making sure Lucy got home, Shelley went over to her own house. Her ‘parents’ sat at the kitchen table, staring emptily into the void. Humans had free will, at least from their own perspectives, so real humans wouldn’t be allowed to pose as Shelley’s parents, since her being inserted into their lives would infringe on their free will. These golems would play out the role of humans if any human had to come to this house for any reason, but since they currently weren’t required to, they just sat there.

Shelley wondered if the Most High saw all His creations like that. Puppets to be played with, to be used and discarded on a whim. The notion made her uneasy, and her narrow, yet focused human senses made that feeling more real.

To calm herself down, she listened to the background choir, the many orders and reports being sent, but in part due to her still doubtful thoughts, the silent patches stood out more than usual. She wondered what the oldest would be doing now. How was he working on stalling the Almighty’s plan? Were the bullies and the many different variations of worship among humans part of it? The faithful angels couldn’t infringe on the free will of humans, but there was no such limit on angels who had already chosen their own destruction.

And yet, Shelley couldn’t recall ever coming across any humans carrying marks of being affected by anything angelic or ‘demonic’, barring those few also under the protection of guardian angels. Yeshua had supposedly encountered some, but those had been faithful angels playing a part, not fallen ones.

Ironically, it seemed that the Most High was really the only one tampering with the free will of His creations, though of course, in His eyes they had none to begin with. He already knew, even before they were born, what their final fate would be. What was even the point of judgment, then?

“Don’t ask questions, Shelley…” she muttered to herself out loud. “Just have faith in the plan…”

But the discomfort in her human body made it all too obvious how she really felt.

The next day, Shelley and Lucy headed to school together. To Shelley’s great satisfaction, the bullies kept their distance, though they were sending hateful glares in their direction whenever they could.

Lucy, for her part, still didn’t really seem to believe they would leave her alone, and she kept glancing over her shoulder for much of the day, but at least she seemed to be a bit more talkative today than she’d been before.

It also turned out that the four boys who had blocked their path, whose names were Elijah — a very ironic name, in Shelley’s opinion — Kevin, Neil, and Ross, were the only ones who actively bullied Lucy. The other kids just ostracized her out of either apathy or fear of being bullied themselves. On one hand, that was good, since it meant that it wasn’t quite as likely someone would bother Lucy outside of school other than those four, but on the other, it also bothered Shelley more than a little that none of these kids were willing to stand up for what was right.

But at least, Elijah and his ‘friends’ left Lucy alone when Shelley was around, and since she lived close to Lucy, they always traveled to and from school together, giving the bullies little opportunity to act out.

Shelley wondered why they had been so quiet after their one confrontation. She had expected at least one more, since there was only so much she could do against all four of them at once. Small coincidences to trip them up and winning a one-on-one fight with Elijah would be just about her only options if she wished to keep her true nature hidden, and that secrecy was part of her assignment.

Regardless, Lucy was immensely grateful for Shelley’s presence. “Do you want to come over after school for a bit?” she asked one day, roughly a month after their first meeting. “My parents were very happy that I made a friend, so they asked if you’d like to come over for dinner.”

Shelley smiled. “Of course, I’d love to!”

Lucy’s eyes lit up immediately and Shelley felt a warm feeling in her chest at the sight. Now that Lucy was less stressed and less afraid, she smiled much more, and every time she did her eyes sparkled in a way that was oddly captivating to Shelley, and this time was no different.

“Great! I’ll app my parents, then. Oh, and I can show you my hobby, too.” She smiled self-consciously. “It’s a bit nerdy, though.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” Shelley said half-jokingly.

“It’s not,” Lucy said, “but it’s, y’know, just one more thing they bullied me with. That’s why I stopped bringing any of it to school with me.”

“Well, if those guys disliked it it has to be cool, so I can’t wait to see it,” Shelley said, inwardly wishing she could do more to help Lucy. Well, there would be more than enough time for that…

After school, Shelley went with Lucy to her home. Where normally, she’d just say goodbye at the door, this time she chained up her bike and followed Lucy inside into the hall. A flight of stairs to the left led to the upper floor, while straight ahead of them there was a door, presumably leading to the living room.

“Dad, we’re home!” Lucy yelled while she was taking off her coat, which she put on the coat rack next to the door, before taking off her shoes and putting them next to it.

Shelley did the same and then followed Lucy into the living room. The room was divided into two sections, a living area with a couch facing a TV with a sliding door behind it opening up into the small garden, and a dining area with a table and six chairs, with a small kitchen directly around the corner from the hall.

Several plants had been placed on small tables throughout the house, and Shelley’s eyes fell on a crucifix on the wall, depicting the not-quite-accurate version of Yeshua many people in this era worshiped. She idly wondered what the Almighty would think of all these graven images of His incarnation. At least it wasn’t a golden calf this time. Shelley hadn’t been directly involved with that, but she knew the humans had a richly embellished version of it in their scripture. The truth was far less impressive, as it was with much of what was considered scripture.

Returning to the present, Shelley now looked at the man seated at the table, with a laptop open in front of him. He had black hair and wore glasses, though his eyes seemed to have nearly the same shade of brown as Lucy’s.

“Hey, Dad,” Lucy said in greeting. “This is Shelley, my friend from school.”

Shelley walked around the table, held out her hand, and said, “Shelley Courier, pleased to meet you, sir.”

Lucy’s father rose from his seat and shook her hand. “Vincent Greene, likewise. Lucy has told us a lot about you,” he said. He smiled warmly. “We haven’t seen her this happy in a long while.”

Shelley returned his smile and said, “I’m really happy I got to meet her, as well.”

“God must have willed for it to happen, then,” Mr. Greene said.

You don’t know the half of it…

“Are you religious, actually?” he asked, as if only thinking about it now.

Shelley nodded. “I am, sir. I’ve been immersed in it all my life,” she said.

Mr. Greene nodded approvingly. “Good, good. I would’ve liked you regardless for being friends with Lucy when she needed it so much, but this makes it even better.”

Shelley looked at Lucy and smiled, but to her surprise, the smile she got in return seemed a bit hesitant. It was quickly replaced by a bigger smile, however, when Lucy said, “It’ll be a while before Mom comes home, and Dad probably still has work to do, so let’s go upstairs and I can show you my collection.”

“Collection?” Shelley repeated.

Mr. Greene sighed. “You’ll see,” he said with a shake of his head.

Ignoring her father, Lucy beckoned for Shelley to follow her and led her up the stairs in the hall to her own bedroom, the long walls of which were a soft blue and the short ones white. There was a neatly made bed with a wardrobe at the foot end, with a night stand with a small lamp next to it, and a desk positioned under the window, which had a laptop on it, as well as a few picture frames. A crucifix much like the one above the dining table downstairs hung above the bed.

Taking up by far the most space in the room, though, was the massive bookshelf, nearly hiding the leftmost wall from sight. Rows upon rows of books were in it, and Shelley immediately saw they weren’t regular books.

“You’re a manga fan?” she asked.

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! I have been ever since I was young, too.”

She walked over to the bookcase and ran her finger across the spines of the books. “My parents aren’t too crazy about it, really. They’re afraid it will make me abandon my faith and cavort with demons and who knows what else, but they also know that the stories make me happy, so they allow it as long as I keep going to the church youth group on Sundays.”

“Your parents believe in demons?” Shelley asked in surprise.

Though she’d learned many things about Lucy through the background choir after receiving her assignment, she didn’t know nearly as much about her parents. It was rare for any people in this era of human civilization to still put stock in the old stories of demons, none of which were true to begin with.

Lucy shrugged. “Kind of. They believe the Devil is out to make us stray from Christ, and that demons and evil spirits help him do it, but when I told them a lot of it is more about friendship overcoming adversity and helping others and being kind they accepted it wasn’t that bad.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I haven’t told them that many of these manga use religious imagery in ways Jesus would probably not approve of, though.”

Shelley shrugged. “They’re just books. God can see what’s in your heart, so if you have no ill intentions, you’ll most likely be fine,” she said.

Again, Lucy seemed to look a bit hesitant, and Shelley asked, “Everything okay?”

“I...think so,” Lucy said. She sighed. “Look, sometimes...sometimes I’m afraid. Not that God isn’t there, but that He can see my heart, and hates me for it,” she said.

“Why would He?” Shelley asked.

Lucy looked away, clearly uncomfortable. “Let’s just say I...don’t always follow the rules to the letter,” she said.

“I can say without any shred of doubt that there isn’t a single human being now or in the past two thousand years who does,” Shelley said. “That is what the sacrifice was meant for. To atone for the sins committed by flawed humans.”

“Yeah, so it’s said, but...is it really that easy?” Lucy asked. “I mean...there are...things that I...know I’m doing wrong. Things I...don’t think I should have to fix. Things I don’t want to fix. If God can see my heart, He can see that I don’t want to fix this. I try to be a good person, as much as I can, but…”

She trailed off.

Again, Shelley felt a wave of affection for this girl. She recognized the struggle, having felt it for thousands of years by now. Yet the Almighty had yet to smite her for her treacherous thoughts. He still sent her on these assignments. He still believed she would do the right thing. If an angel could hold doubt in her heart and not be struck down where she stood, then surely a human could, too. Their great gift was to have the ability to be forgiven, after all, the one thing angels lacked.

“Stay true to yourself and God will reward you for it,” she said in the end. “It is hypocrisy, first and foremost, Yeshua spoke against, so He will praise that you were honest with yourself.”

Lucy nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right,” she said. Then she cocked her head and added, “I’ve never heard someone calling Jesus by that name.”

Shelley gave a sheepish grin. “Force of habit,” she said. “It’s been drilled into me since the beginning. Anyway, you were supposed to be showing off your collection, weren’t you? Which ones are your favorites?”

Immediately, Lucy’s eyes began to sparkle in that mesmerizing way. “Oh, that’s easy! I’ve got the whole set of…”

She launched into an explanation of the manga on the top row of her shelf and how cool it was, and Shelley gladly listened to her, asking questions just to keep her talking, her mood lifted by the sound of Lucy’s voice. It was almost a shame when Mrs. Greene — Liz — came home and they were called down for dinner, because even though the conversation at the dinner table was lively, it couldn’t match the enthusiasm Lucy had shown for her manga, an enthusiasm so strong that when Shelley went home after dinner, she couldn’t help but look up more about the manga Lucy had mentioned, not through the background choir as she would usually do, but on the human internet. It didn’t take her long to find a page where she could read the manga, and she began to read the first chapter.

“You look tired,” Lucy said in greeting the next morning, when Shelley came by her house to pick her up and go to school together.

Shelley gave her a small smile. “I may have been up for most of the night reading. Someone did a good job selling the story yesterday,” she said.

It was mostly true. Being an angel, Shelley didn’t require nearly as much sleep as a human did. Even so, while in a human body, she still experienced that body’s needs, so the two hours of sleep she’d gotten, while equivalent to around five for a human, were still less than she was used to.

Lucy, however, just laughed, and the sound of it warmed Shelley up despite the light drizzle they were in.

“How far did you get?” she asked.

“I don’t know, chapter forty or something,” Shelley said.

“That far?” Lucy asked, her eyes wide. “Wow, you must really have like it, then.”

“I do,” Shelley confirmed, “But I have to admit I liked it even more when you were telling me about it.”

Lucy looked a bit taken aback at the compliment. “You did? But I missed so many details,” she said.

“You captured the feeling really well,” Shelley said. “I guess the concentrated feelings made them stronger, or something.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about concentrated feelings…” Lucy mumbled, her face turning red. For some reason Shelley couldn’t quite explain, she could feel her own face heating up a bit as well.

They arrived at school, still talking about the manga, and passed Elijah and his friends in the hall. Shelley could see that Lucy still shrunk back a bit from them, but she herself stood upright, answering their hateful glares with the same cold stare she always gave them. Still, none of the other kids had attempted to befriend Lucy, and Shelley could see that it still weighed on her despite Shelley’s presence.

“Has it always been like this, that the other kids just ignore you?” Shelley asked during lunch break.

“Kind of,” Lucy said. “I think it began back in elementary school. Elijah was a bully even back then and I had just moved here with my parents, so he began bullying me almost exclusively.”

“But why?” Shelley asked, determined to understand it this time. She knew, of course, that humans could be irrational, and she had met plenty who were just rotten to the core, but most were, or could be, good people.

“I was new and I was weird,” Lucy said bitterly. “I was a bit shy, and I sometimes chewed my hair when I was nervous, and of course, my family is quite religious, but from a different church than him, so he thought I was stupid for that, too.”

“He considers himself religious?” Shelley asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Who knows? He claims to be a Christian, anyway. But even at the youth group of my church people don’t like me because of him. They just ignore me, though, just like most kids here do, and whenever the youth groups of our churches meet up, usually on holidays, Elijah always makes a show of acting nice so the pastors will praise him.” She clenched her fists. “I hate him,” she said quietly. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” Shelley said.

Lucy sighed deeply. “I hope so…”

Shelley went home with Lucy again that afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Greene had taken a liking to her and happily invited her over for dinner again, and while they waited for Mrs. Greene to return from work, Shelley and Lucy resumed their discussion about the various manga Lucy had read.

Now that Shelley had shown herself to be interested, Lucy really got into it, recommending several other series for Shelley to try and going so deep into the lore that Shelley idly wondered what would happen if Lucy ever decided to study her Bible as deeply. At least then Shelley would be able to be a better conversational partner, because as it stood she was mostly just listening.

Just like the day before, though, it was just so nice to listen to the stories, incoherent though they sometimes were. The difference in Lucy’s demeanor between now and when they had first met, just over a month ago, couldn’t be greater. Right then, Shelley couldn’t imagine a better way to spend her time than listening to Lucy talking, and she wished the moment would never end.

“There’s a party at my church’s youth group Friday night,” Lucy said one day, about two weeks after Shelley had first come home for dinner with her. She’d gone over a few more times, and had even introduced Lucy to her own ‘parents’ as well in that time, and on every occasion they spent most of their time talking about manga. Shelley still couldn’t get enough of Lucy’s sparkling eyes and she found it hard to look away at times, a feeling apparently shared by Lucy herself, who was now eager to catch Shelley’s eye whenever she could. This time, however, her eyes were missing their sparkle.

“You don’t sound happy about it,” Shelley said.

“I’m not,” Lucy said. “It’s a mixed party for several local churches. We’re not the same denominations, strictly speaking, but we occasionally get together. Elijah’s church is going to be there too. His friends are in the same one, so they’ll be there as well.”

“And you’re worried they’ll grab their chance to get to you?” Shelley asked.

Lucy nodded wordlessly.

“Well, there’s a simple solution to that, then. I’ll just go with you,” Shelley said.

“Are you in one of the attending churches?” Lucy asked with a raised eyebrow.

Shelley shook her head. “No, but that won’t stop me. Don’t worry, we’ll go there together and then Elijah will leave you alone as he always does. He can’t really start something there, anyway.”

Lucy was silent for a moment, but then she smiled. “Thanks,” she said quietly, and Shelley’s heart fluttered.

That Friday night, Shelley picked up Lucy at her home and together they rode their bikes to the youth group’s venue, a short distance away from the city. The cycling path there cut through a park, making for some nice scenery as the sun set behind the trees.

They chained up their bikes and made their way to the door, where Lucy was surprised to find that Shelley was indeed on the guest list. It hadn’t been difficult for her to get her name on it, of course. While she wasn’t allowed to influence humans directly, there were no such reservations about adding her name to a list herself. Physical or digital mattered very little to divine power.

It didn’t take Shelley long to spot Elijah as well, whose expression darkened considerably when he noticed her. Clearly, it was a good thing she’d decided to come. She looked around the venue and saw that while most kids from the various churches were happily talking to each other, none of them came near Lucy. They didn’t seem to want to introduce themselves to Shelley, either, or even ask her why she was there.

All in all, it was a very similar atmosphere to the school, but Lucy didn’t seem too bothered. Instead, she just showed Shelley around the venue and told her some stories about the pastors and the services. She wasn’t quite as ecstatic about this topic as she was about her manga, but she was certainly trying, and Shelley gladly went along with it.

A bit later, everyone was asked to take a seat, and Shelley listened with passing interest to what the pastors had to say about the party and how it related to worshiping Yeshua, though she had to hold back a groan when the pastor joked that no water would be turned into wine here. She still wondered why that story had it made it into the Holy Scripture. Though at least it wasn’t quite as bad as the story about the fig tree. That genuinely had been a petty act of spite from a divine being not used to having a physical body. Turning it into a strained admonition to believe wholeheartedly had certainly been an inspired way to save it. She’d heard many angels chuckling about it in the background choir afterwards, anyway.

Fortunately, the speeches from the pastors didn’t last too long, and the party returned to socializing. Shelley and Lucy kept to themselves for most of the evening, sitting at the back of the main hall while worship music played that some people were even dancing and singing along to.

“Hey, Shelley,” Lucy said after a moment of silence, where both of them had simply been idly watching the other kids in the hall.

Shelley turned to look at her. “Yeah?”

“I’m...I’m really glad you came here,” Lucy said. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then went on, “Before you came...I thought about...I thought about killing myself.”

She tried to smile, but it became a grimace instead. “The bullying was just getting worse, and I thought that God had turned His back on me as well. I just...didn’t want to go on anymore.”

Shelley didn’t respond immediately. She’d known from the background choir that Lucy hadn’t been doing well, of course. And she’d certainly seen many humans die during her lifetime. And yet, this admission, out of the blue, shocked her more than any other human death or mention of human death ever had. To think that Lucy, with her bright smile and endless enthusiasm for what she loved, would end her own life just to make the pain stop…

“Then I’m glad I came here in time,” Shelley said eventually. “Because in the short time I’ve known you...you’ve come to mean a lot to me. More than I thought possible, actually…”

She trailed off, surprised by the truth of that statement. She’d seen and been with so many people through the years, but none had ever made her feel as strongly as Lucy had in just over six weeks. She looked in Lucy’s kind eyes, her heart pounding wildly for a reason she couldn’t really discern — and then, without warning, Lucy leaned in and quickly pressed her lips to Shelley’s.

So soft…

But before Shelley even got a chance to savor the feeling, Lucy abruptly pulled back, horror clear on her face.

“I’m...I’m sorry…” she stammered.

“It’s–” Shelley began, but Lucy cut her off.

“I shouldn’t have done that, but I...you…”

She couldn’t seem to find any words, so instead she got up, stammered, “I’m sorry,” one more time, and then quickly walked away.

“Lucy, wait!” Shelley said.

Her body seemed to be entirely messed up. Her heart was still pounding wildly and she felt hot and cold at the same time, and the ghost of the feeling of Lucy’s lips still seemed to linger on her own.

She made to get up, to follow Lucy to wherever she’d run off to, but then a message came in from the background choir.

“Let her go. Your mission is completed.”

“What do you mean, ‘completed’?” Shelley asked, irritated that the choir was bothering her now of all times.

“Events must transpire according to the plan. The girl will meet her fate shortly.”

Meet her fate? Then that meant…

“She has to die?! Then what was my mission even for?! She would have killed herself six weeks ago if I hadn’t intervened and now she has to die anyway?!”

“Cast off your human form. It is clearly interfering with your judgment.”

How could the other angels be this callous? For centuries, millennia, Shelley had followed the plan, sometimes with doubt in her heart but always ultimately faithful to the Most High. But here and now, at a party dedicated to the Almighty, no less, that faith came crashing down. Whether her human guise opened her eyes or clouded them hardly even mattered. Her decision and path forward were clear, and the words of the oldest finally made sense to her. She had discovered the price of the Almighty’s plan, and she decided it was too high.

The background choir kept telling Shelley to abandon her mission, but she pushed the voices back as she frantically roamed through the youth center looking for Lucy. She nearly ran into one of the pastors and without thinking she asked, “Have you seen Lucy? Lucy Greene?”

The pastor thought for a moment and said, “I think you just missed her. I believe I saw her leave the venue just now, together with Elijah and his friends.”

“Elijah?! No!”

The pastor seemed surprised at Shelley’s vehemence, but even as he began to speak she’d already run off, heading for the exit. Just as she’d feared, Lucy’s bike was gone, but in the cool evening air enough of her clarity returned for her to remember who and what she was. She cast off her human form and reached out, easily finding Lucy along the path in the park.

Unburdened by her human body, her emotions nevertheless did not calm down. The background choir was much louder now, abuzz with repeated warnings meant directly for her, but Shelley continued to ignore them as she flew, lighter than air, to where Lucy was.

When she got close, she resumed her human form just off the path. Up ahead, she saw Lucy, surrounded by Elijah and the other bullies.

“Now we finally have you without that bitch friend of yours,” Elijah snarled.

Lucy stood hunched over, crying, but Elijah clearly didn’t care.

“And it’s time for some payback now. I think I’ll begin by seeing how loose Lucy is.”

He stepped forward and grabbed Lucy’s arm while his friends chuckled, Neil a bit nervously, but Shelley had seen and heard enough.

“Like hell you will,” she said loudly, walking forward and filled with a vindictive rage.

Elijah looked up and pulled a knife from his pocket, flicking it open and pointing it at Shelley, while tightly holding on to Lucy’s arm.

Lucy seemed petrified. There were still tears streaming down her face, but she didn’t move a muscle, didn’t try to pull herself free from Elijah’s grasp at all.

“Stay back, cunt,” Elijah said harshly. “Or I’ll put some holes in this bitch before I fill one of her other ones.”

“Let her go,” Shelley said, not breaking stride.

“You’ll get your turn later,” Elijah sneered, and he turned to face Lucy again, making a gesture at his friends with his head, instructing them to stop Shelley.

“I said let go,” Shelley said, and Elijah’s arm snapped back to his side with surprising force.

“Step back.”

All four bullies took a step away from Lucy, their movements jerky and unnatural, and wild, scared expressions appeared on their faces.

“Kneel.”

As if a weight had been smashed down on their backs, the four boys slammed onto one knee, wincing in pain as it hit the concrete. Humans were so easily swayed by the even the slightest command. So much for their vaunted free will.

“W-what are you?” Kevin asked.

“I am Shealtiel, former angel of the LORD Most High and as of now fallen, because I refuse to let Lucy suffer the fate you would inflict upon her,” Shealtiel said.

“S-shealtiel?” Lucy stammered.

Despite her anger at the bullies, Shealtiel smiled at Lucy. “I’m still Shelley to you,” she said gently.

She turned her attention back to Elijah. “Now then, I want you to tell me...what did you intend to do to Lucy?” she asked, her voice low and cold.

Elijah looked up at her, expression mixed between fear and hatred. “You know what I was going to do,” he said.

“I want to hear you say it,” Shealtiel said. “And it is in your best interest to keep talking, because the longer you do, the longer you will live. Because it will not be Lucy’s life that will end here tonight.”

“Y-you can’t do that! If you’re an angel, then...surely God will be angry with you if you hurt us, right?” Ross asked.

Shealtiel chuckled darkly. “God is already angry with me, as am I with Him. It was His plan for Lucy to die tonight, but I will no longer stand idly by while someone I’m meant to protect is killed. Not her. Not Lucy. In interfering, I have condemned myself to death at the final judgment, but until then I retain my free will. And since my death is already assured, so too are yours.”

She turned to to Elijah again. “So tell me what your intentions were, Elijah. Speak loudly so that the Almighty can hear it well, for I know He will judge you when the end times come. But before that day arrives, I will judge you first.”

“The four of us were going to rape her, and then I was going to kill her to make sure she didn’t snitch us out again,” Elijah said, his voice laced with a vitriol Shealtiel hadn’t expected from a human in such a dire situation.

“N-no, that’s not true!” Neil said. “I didn’t want to do it, I swear, I–”

“Shut up,” Shealtiel said, and though she hadn’t even made it a true command, Neil fell silent as though she’d struck him. “I sense your cowardice, yes. You follow Elijah out of fear he will turn on you. Yet here you are, complicit in what he was about to do. You did not speak out, you did not step in. You are as guilty as he is, in my eyes, and sadly for you, my mercy is all that matters now.”

She reconsidered. “No, that would not be fair. After all, I was not your victim. Lucy was.”

She looked at Lucy and said, “Your mercy, then. Do you want these monsters to live, knowing that they would surely have killed you?”

“G-god was going to let me die?” Lucy asked, her face pale and looking like her entire world was crumbling.

“So I was told, just after you left,” Shealtiel said, anger burning white-hot in her chest at the mere thought.

“And you...were you only my friend because you were ordered to?” Lucy asked, hurt plain in her voice.

Shealtiel shook her head, feeling her heart breaking at Lucy’s wavering voice. “I reached out because I was ordered to, as I did for countless others through the ages. But only with you have I ever been true friends. Only for you have I ever felt love strong enough to condemn myself to death for it. But as long as you live, I will protect you, by my own choice and no one else’s.”

Lucy nodded slowly. “Jesus preached forgiveness, didn’t he?”

Shealtiel looked away. “So He claimed. But forgiveness is easy when everything is so far beneath you. He has ordered death and destruction many times before He chose to incarnate. And if you choose death here, their blood is on my hands, not yours. Most humans are worth saving. These four are not.”

“I…” Lucy hesitated. “I can’t just kill them,” she said, sounding sick. “I...no. Let them live.”

“Are you sure?” Shealtiel asked.

Lucy nodded wordlessly.

“Then I will abide by your decision,” Shealtiel said unwillingly.

She beckoned Lucy forward, and once she’d stepped out of the circle of would-be rapists, she snapped her finger to break the commands she’d placed on the four.

“It seems you get to keep your life,” Shealtiel said. “Be grateful for it.”

Elijah staggered back to his feet, his expression wild.

“I don’t need your mercy, bitch!”

He dashed forward, knife raised, but Shealtiel was faster.

“Stop!”

Immediately, Elijah and his three friends froze in place again. Anger unlike anything Shealtiel had ever felt erupted in her entire being. “You were granted mercy by the one you most wronged, and you have wasted it,” she said. “And now, all four of you will pay the price for your transgression. Go to hell.”

The night was lit up as all four boys instantly caught on fire, and Lucy took a step back in fear while Shealtiel looked on with grim satisfaction as they briefly writhed, unable to even scream as the very air in their lungs burned.

The fires didn’t last long, and when they went out, no trace was left of the boys. They had been entirely consumed by the flames. There weren’t even any scorch marks on the path.

Shelley took a deep breath, a strange calm coming over her now that the threat to Lucy’s life was over. The calm only lasted for a moment, however, as she felt her anxiety rise when she turned around to face Lucy. Since learning of her fated death, she’d been focused on making sure it wouldn’t come to pass, but what would happen now, now that Lucy knew the truth?

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said, unsure of what else to say. She also wasn’t entirely sure if it was true, because if anything, Shelley felt she’d been mild in dealing with Elijah and the others.

Lucy gave a silent nod, but when Shelley took a small step toward her, she stepped back.

“Don’t be afraid,” Shelley said. She smiled ruefully as she realized she was really sounding like a biblical angel now. “Although I guess I can’t blame you. If I’d just seen my friend incinerating four people I’d probably be scared too, if I were human.”

“It’s so hard to believe that you’re not,” Lucy said quietly. “I mean...I know you’re not. I saw what you did with my own eyes, but…you look so human. You felt so human when I…”

She trailed off and looked away. “Is that why God wanted me to die?” she asked. Her eyes filled up with tears again and Shelley’s chest constricted at the sight. “Because...because I kissed a girl?”

Shelley shook her head. “Whatever His reason was, I don’t think that was it.”

“But in Leviticus–”

“Don’t put too much stock in that,” Shelley interrupted. “The Most High wanted His people to multiply, and two men or two women together couldn’t do that, so humans willfully misinterpreted it as ‘anything other than heterosexuality is an abomination’.”

“But if it wasn’t that, then why now?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” Shelley replied. “But every time I had to let someone I watched over die, I was only told shortly ahead of time. I don’t think even the higher choirs know the reasons for every order they pass down, but they don’t ask questions. I did. I was even named for it.”

“I thought I recognized your name,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “From 1 Chronicles. The son of Jehoiachin was named Shealtiel. It means ‘I asked God’, right?”

Shelley nodded. “It does. Though I’m much older than that Shealtiel and I got my name because the very first thing I did when I came into being was ask questions. I’m also not male,” she added with a small smile.

“I thought all angels were,” Lucy said with a slightly embarrassed grin.

“Technically, we’re neither male nor female, inherently, since we don’t reproduce in our real forms. I’ve just always had a female body whenever I took a human shape, so I just see myself that way now,” Shelley said.

Now, Lucy finally took a step closer again, and it felt like a weight had been lifted from Shelley’s shoulders. In the cold light of the streetlights along the path, Lucy intently stared at Shelley’s face, who felt herself getting a bit nervous at being scrutinized so closely.

“You really do look human,” Lucy said, sounding immensely relieved.

She reached out and put her hands on the sides of Shelley’s face. “You still feel human, too.”

Then she leaned in and for the second time that night, and the second time in her existence, Shelley felt Lucy’s lips on hers, but this time Lucy didn’t pull away immediately, and Shelley was able to savor the feeling a bit more, though when Lucy did break the kiss a few moments later it still felt like it had been too short.

“Sorry, I guess it’s a bit of a weird moment to do this,” Lucy said softly. “But I...I just wanted to. I know it probably feels to you like I’m just kissing you because you saved my life twice and because you were the only one to be nice to me in God knows how long...but it’s really not. It’s because I can talk to you about the things I like and you’re enthusiastic about it as well. It’s because I think you’re cute when you have no idea what I’m even talking about half the time, but you pretend to anyway. It’s because you’re you.”

She gave a rueful smile. “I hope you didn’t mind it too much.”

Shelley shook her head. “Not one bit,” she said. “I...have been alive for a long time. While I wasn’t quite there at the beginning of time, I did see the earth itself form. I saw the beginning of life here. And since the dawn of civilization, I have been sent down to protect certain people. Either people who were already faithful to the Most High, or those who, for one reason or another, had earned His favor. Most, I guarded throughout their lives. Some, I was forced to see die young and violently. But while I was friendly with them, and while they meant something to me, I have never felt for any of them what I feel for you now.”

She looked at the ground, trying to gather her thoughts. “I don’t know exactly why you’re different. Maybe it’s because when I met you, you seemed to share the doubts I have felt for centuries, yet still tried to cling on to the faith you had left. Maybe it’s because you just...radiate joy when you’re talking about something you like. Maybe it’s something else altogether. But when the order came that my assignment was done, that I had to let you die...I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

She briefly glanced up at Lucy and smiled wryly. “For all I know, the Most High would have judged you favorably, whenever He decides that moment will come. But I have witnessed the lives and deaths of countless people. Their lives on earth are singular, and yet so many of them are cut short, for so many reasons ranging from other humans to disease to natural disasters. I don’t understand the plan. I don’t understand the criteria the Almighty will judge by, in some ways has already judged by, because He knows all that is and was and will be.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care anymore, either. If my eventual punishment enables me to save you here and now, then I will accept that. You have suffered much in your life, and just when things were looking up, it would have been cut short? To hell with that. Even if it’s only for a while...I want you to be happy. You deserve it so, so much.”

For a couple of moments, neither of them spoke. Then, Lucy said, “So...what happens now? People will notice that Elijah and the others...disappeared.”

She gave a brief shudder and glanced at the path, where the only evidence four people had been there was their bikes, still on and next to the path. “Are they actually in hell now?”

“No,” Shelley replied. “There is no hell, at least not yet. When someone dies, they’re just gone until it’s time for them to be judged at the end of days. But the command I gave them forces them to endure what they most associate with hell, and I guess for all of them it was the all-consuming fire. It would’ve been interesting to see what would have happened if they envisioned a particular circle of Dante’s hell for themselves.”

She sighed. “But as for what will happen here...I’ll work it out somehow. There aren’t any bodies and no human investigator will believe that an angel made people burn away entirely. I suppose they’ll simply be reported missing and the case will eventually go cold.”

Lucy looked uneasy at that. “It’ll be terrible for their parents,” she said. “I mean...your child just not coming home…”

“You mean what would have happened to you?” Shelley asked.

Lucy nodded slowly. “Yeah…”

The realization of what had nearly happened to her now finally seemed to be landing and Shelley saw her breathing becoming irregular. “They really would have killed me…”

“You’re safe now,” Shelley said uncomfortably.

“It’s the idea of it that I just can’t wrap my head around,” Lucy said. “They’ve always bullied me, always hated me, but even at their worst, I didn’t think they would ever...do something like this. I expected me to kill me before they would. But now they’re the ones who are dead...and even though it’ll be terrible for their parents and I’m trying to empathize...I can’t. When you made them burn away just now, I was shocked and scared, obviously, but I also thought, ‘serves you right, you horrible bastards’. What kind of person thinks that about someone else? Doesn’t that make me just as bad?”

“You tried to give them mercy. They were the ones rejecting it,” Shelley said.

Lucy seemed to want to believe that, because she nodded fervently, but even so, she said, “I know, but...I just don’t know how to feel about...any of this.”

Then she gave a tiny smile and added, “Except that I’m pretty sure how I feel about you, I guess.”

She chuckled softly, and then began to laugh out loud, a laughter that sounded at once relieved and slightly manic.

“I’m in love with an angel older than humanity. How did this become my life?” she asked, looking at the sky.

“I’ll make it even weirder: the angel older than humanity is also in love with you,” Shelley said, and somehow a wave of heat and pinpricks washed over her when she said it.

Were human emotions always this intense? Was it just because she’d never been quite this young before? She’d been close to it, a couple of times, but she’d never really been an emotional support as much as she’d been this time, so maybe that made the difference?

“I’m sure there are laws against that sort of thing,” Lucy said uncomfortably.

Shelley shrugged. “I’m older than human laws and I just defied God’s law. I’m kind of beyond caring about the rules. The only thing I care about is what you want, followed by what I want.”

“Why put me first?” Lucy asked.

Shelley grinned sheepishly. “Because there are plenty of human things I have no experience with, nor have had any desire for, until this point, so you probably know more about them than I do. My knowledge is more...the textbook variety, I suppose. I know of it, and that’s it. I may have inhabited human bodies for much longer than you have, but at the end of the day, I’m not actually human. You are. Therefore when it comes to ‘human things for humans’, you’re in charge. I’ll deal with the more metaphysical stuff and the suspiciously convenient coincidences.”

Lucy smiled. “Works for me,” she said, and now her eyes sparkled again in that special way and Shelley breathed a sigh of relief.

Lucy grabbed her hand and said, “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

Human life is fleeting. That was the prevalent thought in Shelley’s mind. She and Lucy had gone home, after first picking up Shelley’s bike at the youth center, and once she’d returned to her own house, Shelley realized that it was quiet in her mind. She heard the voice of her own thoughts, but that was it. The background choir, a part of her being since the very first day, was silent. She had been banned from it, like all the other fallen angels, and for all who are left there would be another silent patch in it now. It was disconcerting. So much of her knowledge of events, both earthly and heavenly, came from the background choir, and without it, she was left with just the things she already knew and the things she could look up through human information channels like the internet. She still had her powers, at least.

But for all her powers, she couldn’t stop time, and for a being whose lifespan comfortably went into the hundreds of millions of years, the barely-a-century lifespan of a human just seemed like a blip.

Shelley had stayed together with Lucy after that night, and while the two of them had decided not to tell her parents about Shelley’s true nature, they had revealed their relationship around a month after their first kiss. Lucy’s parents had been a bit uncomfortable at first, but they loved their daughter and were happy for her happiness. At every possible turn, Shelley had made sure that Lucy and her parents were safe and healthy.

When they were in their late physical twenties, they had a daughter together, whom they named Lily. She was truly theirs, too, having been created with the help of some divine magic substituting for science. Lucy had insisted on carrying her, so Shelley had at least made sure the pregnancy had gone smoothly. Part of her had wondered even then what it would have been like, but seeing the discomfort Lucy had been in even with divine aid made her glad to have missed out on that particular experience.

Seeing Lily grow up from an infant to a teenager with a smile just as bright as her mother’s to a confident and independent (and polyamorous, to Shelley and Lucy’s amusement) woman had been great, and even being a grandmother to Daniel and Ezra was something Shelley had never expected to experience.

But even with magic warding off disease, humans could not live forever, and one morning, ninety-seven years after their first meeting, Shelley woke up, but Lucy did not.

In grief, Shelley also abandoned her physical body that day, but she didn’t leave Lily and her grandchildren on their own. She aided them both in spirit and with human bodies, and their children after them, and theirs after them. Anything to just keep a part of Lucy alive in some way, down through the decades...but eventually, that too came to an end.

After her family line had gone extinct, Shelley just took to roaming the earth, helping people wherever she went. And yet, without Lucy, without anything left on earth that was tied to her, it all felt hollow. Seeing humanity bring itself to the brink of collapse only to avert their doom seemed utterly meaningless. The only reason Shelley still kept on helping people was because she remained adamant that there would be no unnecessary deaths if she could prevent them, just to spite whatever plan God might have had for them.

But even in her spiritual form, she felt hollow. There was no one to truly connect to, no one she wanted to connect to. It seemed so strange that after all those years, she’d never again fallen in love with anyone. Her own daughter had dated several people and had been in an extended polycule for most of her adult life, yet Shelley had never managed it. Her heart, such as it was, had always belong to Lucy alone, somehow, and the centuries without her felt far, far longer than the five billion years prior to meeting her. Time had finally slowed down to a crawl — hundreds of years too late for it to matter.

But then, finally, it came. The end of days. There was no beast with seven heads and ten horns, no false prophets, no ‘fallen now is Babylon the Great’ from the choirs. Instead, the world expanded, all at once, not on a particularly significant time, but at ten past three on a random Wednesday. All clouds vanished from the sky and the sun shone brightly, directly overhead, and Shelley knew it was happening for everyone, everywhere, could feel it on the spiritual plane even as she saw it in the physical world.

She somehow found herself in what appeared to be the park she had killed Elijah and his friends in — the only human lives she had ever directly taken, though she had considered adding to the count on several occasions — even though that park had been first paved over and then destroyed in a war and then built over again several times through the centuries.

She was also in her human form, the same one she’d been in that night, though she hadn’t consciously assumed it. In the bright daylight, the park looked inviting and calming, but in Shelley’s heart it only reminded her of what she had lost.

“Shelley?”

Shelley abruptly looked up, down the path, and there she was.

“Lucy…”

She, like Shelley herself, looked fifteen again, but just seeing her again at all…

Shelley ran over to Lucy and wrapped her arms around her, savoring the feeling of her body, the feeling she hadn’t been able to feel in centuries. Her heart beat wildly and she knew tears were streaming down her face, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that Lucy was here, at the end of everything, one last time.

Lucy put her own arms around Shelley as well and said, “I guess it’s been longer for you than it has for me, huh? In my mind, I just kissed you goodnight yesterday…”

“It’s been eight hundred seventy-six years since you died,” Shelley said softly.

She felt Lucy stiffen. “Almost nine hundred years?!”

She pulled back to look into Shelley’s still blurry eyes. Her expression was soft, and caring, and Shelley wanted nothing more than to look into Lucy’s eyes forever, even though she knew ‘forever’ was about to end, regardless.

“And you’ve been on earth all that time?”

“Of course I have been,” Shelley said. “I’m a fallen angel. There’s nowhere else I can go. I ‘died’ when you did, but I always stuck with Lily, and Daniel, and Ezra, and Julie, and Harrison, and Nikki, and so many others after them, until the last of our extended family died four hundred seventeen years ago. I’ve just been helping people ever since, taking whatever pleasure remaining to me in messing up God’s plan.”

Lucy giggled. “A fallen angel helping people to thwart God’s plans sounds so odd.”

She smiled and gently kissed Shelley, who nearly burst into tears again when the memory she had cherished for so long became real once more, however briefly.

“It’s also so you,” Lucy added softly.

“I missed you so much…” Shelley muttered. “And I’m so glad I got to see you one more time. But you being here...us being here, like this...you know what it means, don’t you?”

Lucy nodded solemnly. “Judgment Day,” she said.

“Yes. For you, Lucy Greene. The price for an angel’s defiance is destruction, as you well know, Shealtiel.”

Lucy looked around in alarm at the voice, the first voice Shelley had heard when she had just come into being.

“Whatever judgment You have in store for her, anything that might displease You she has done after I saved her is on me, not her. I will not let You punish her for something I did,” Shelley said.

“You won’t have to,” another voice, familiar and yet strange, said.

Shelley and Lucy turned around, looking at the man calmly walking up the path. He looked unassuming, save for his spotless, almost glowing white robes, which made the contrast with his strongly tanned skin even greater. He had short, somewhat unkempt black hair and a scruffy stubble, and he smiled serenely as he approached.

“Yeshua,” Shelley said. She felt a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The time had come.

“Shealtiel,” Yeshua said with a friendly nod. Then his smiled widened almost imperceptibly. “Or rather, Shelley. You seem to have grown fond of the name. When did you stop thinking of yourself as Shealtiel, exactly?”

Shelley was taken off guard by the question for a moment. “I, um… After that night, I think,” she said. “But what does it matter now?” she added with a glare.

Yeshua gave no answer, instead turning to Lucy. “Lucy Greene. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Lucy seemed a bit stunned at seeing the person she had worshiped for the first fifteen years of her life appearing in front of her. While she had never sworn off her religion, she had certainly stopped practicing it after she left her parents’ home given God’s apparent plan for her.

“Um, likewise… Mr...Lord...Jesus?” Lucy stammered.

“You don’t need to fear me, Lucy,” Yeshua said kindly. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Damn right you won’t,” Shelley said.

Yeshua held up his hands, showing the wounds of the crucifixion. Why he’d never healed them was still a mystery to Shelley, though Yeshua had always had a flair for the dramatic, of course, if the background choir at the time was to be believed.

“Peace, Shelley. I’m here to talk, not fight.”

Shelley narrowed her eyes, but she had no choice but to trust Yeshua’s words. In spite of her angelic powers, there was nothing she could do to him. He had the full might of the Most High on his side.

Yeshua turned back to Lucy. “You are in a rather unique position, Lucy,” he said. “Not many people know the truth about angels. Fewer still have lived out a full lifetime alongside one. You are not the only one to ever have done so, but with the billions of people who have lived throughout human history, there are vanishingly few of you, all things considered.”

Lucy nodded silently.

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Yeshua said.

Lucy hesitated. “I’m not sure if...if I can,” she said.

“Nothing you say now will change what is to come, Lucy. But, even if only for your own sake, I want you to be able to have a clear heart and mind,” Yeshua said.

It was unnerving to Shelley that she couldn’t read in any way what his judgment was going to be. Yeshua’s tone was too neutral, too friendly. His posture too relaxed. Even as an angel, she had expected the final judgment to be dramatic and big, like the creation of everything and the very progress of life and even human history had been. She hadn’t expected a casual conversation.

“Okay, then…” Lucy said. She looked at Shelley and gave her a small smile. “I want to know why you wanted me to die that day. I want to know what I did wrong that Shelley had to step in and condemn herself for my sake.”

Yeshua’s smile got bigger. “Do you recall the story written in John 9?” he asked.

“The story of the blind man given sight?” Lucy replied.

“Exactly. In that story, I told my disciples that neither the man, nor his parents, had sinned. That he was born blind so my Father’s works could be revealed in him. That particular story is mostly true. The plan for you was a similar one,” Yeshua said.

“But that’s such a callous thing to do, isn’t it?” Lucy asked. “If that man, by your own admission, did nothing wrong...why did he deserve to suffer for so long? Just so you could show off?”

Lucy seemed uncertain, asking these questions, but the look in her eyes was fierce, and Shelley marveled at the fact that she had once withered under some bullies, but was now demanding answers from the one with the power to control her fate. She’d never loved her more than she did right then.

Yeshua did not seem offended by Lucy’s questions, however. “Callous in the eyes of humans, perhaps. But remember that you died nearly nine hundred years ago, and yet you are standing here talking to me. Should I give you my blessing, you will spend an eternity in bliss and never want for anything. Don’t you think that that man will be given the same?” Yeshua asked.

“But living our mortal lives, we don’t know any of that,” Lucy said. “You know, when I came home that night...I was still afraid. Shelley had saved me, but your plan for me was my death. And a gruesome one, at that.

“And I...I was afraid to tell my parents I was in love with Shelley, because of those verses in Leviticus. I knew they loved me and probably wouldn’t reject me, but I feared it all the same, because of what the Bible says.

“And I feared this day. I still fear this day, because what will happen to me now? Will I die and cease to exist again? Burn for eternity? Live forever? I loved my life with Shelley, I loved all the things I experienced and many of the people I met, but so many people have never gotten that chance, died in infancy or otherwise unjustly, and I would have been one of them.

“You might know everyone’s fate, and have known it since before the universe even existed, but we don’t. To us, our lives matter, and living them in fear of divine retribution, when that can apparently be earned because a cheap parlor trick needed to be performed, is just incomprehensible to me.

“I guess what I’m saying is that I hate the plan you had for me, and I hate the plan you had for many others. I hate many things that were written in the Bible and other holy books, that have been used to justify atrocities. I can’t make sense of the cruelty. So my request to you, before you make your judgment, is this: make it make sense.”

“I will try to grant your request to the best of my abilities,” Yeshua said, still unbothered by Lucy’s tone. “But in order to do that, I will need to turn to Shelley, first. It will be a bit of a long story, perhaps, but we have time. Or more accurately, time is not passing at this moment.”

He briefly glanced up, where the sun was still directly overhead. He looked at Shelley and said, “But I digress. Shelley, what is the most significant period of your life?”

Shelley hadn’t expected that particular question, but it wasn’t hard to answer it.

“The time I spent with Lucy,” she answered immediately.

“How long was that?”

“Ninety-seven years.”

“And how long have you lived?”

“Five...five billion years…” Shelley replied, suddenly shocked at just how long she’d existed.

Yeshua smiled. “And yet, during all that time, you didn’t hesitate for a moment to say that this short blip, this human lifespan, outclassed it all. Why? What made that near-century so special that the five billion years you lived prior to it were rendered almost meaningless?”

“It’s...because I felt love,” Shelley said quietly.

“Precisely,” Yeshua said. “You felt love. A love so strong you decided you would choose being destroyed, to give up eternity, just so the person you loved could have the tiniest fraction of that time.”

He paused for a moment. “Angels who disobey their orders are destroyed. This is the rule my Father set for all of you. Do you know why?” he asked.

“Because unlike humans, we were created knowing the difference between good and evil. We cannot be forgiven because we know the consequences of our actions better than humans do,” Shelley said.

Yeshua’s eyes lit up as if Shelley had said exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “And yet, after knowing Lucy for only six weeks, a short measure of time even by human standards, you sacrificed eternity for her, not even knowing if your relationship would last the night after saving her, not knowing what her judgment would be when this day came.”

His smile became bigger, prouder, even. “You have renounced your angelic name, make decisions like a human, and admit that one human lifetime is the most significant time of your entire existence. Truly I say to you, you are not an angel in human form, you are a human with the powers of an angel. And as a human, you can be forgiven, and forgiven you have been, as has Lucy, who was of course blameless to begin with.”

Shelley felt like she’d been nailed to the ground. In the nearly nine hundred years since she’d saved Lucy’s life, she had lived with the certainty that she would be destroyed. She hadn’t regretted her decision for a single moment, but she had never once considered that she might be forgiven on a technicality Yeshua had no doubt invented for this very scenario.

She was shaken from her musings by Lucy, who wrapped her arms around Shelley and kissed her, clearly no longer even caring that Yeshua was present as well.

“You’re safe, Shelley, you’re safe...Thank God…” Lucy said, still embracing Shelley and putting her head on her shoulder.

“My pleasure,” Yeshua said mildly, and Lucy pulled back in embarrassment.

“Oh! Sorry, I, um…”

“I don’t mind,” Yeshua assured her. “In fact...this was the real plan all along.”

He grew a bit more serious and said, “The free will angels and humans and all the other species I have created anywhere in the universe have is only ‘free’ form your own perspectives. I knew Shelley would choose to save Lucy’s life, because my plan for her was to know love. The plan succeeded, and she has found it. In fact, anyone who has managed to attain a selfless love will be saved today.”

“So what about all those who died too young, or had otherwise never found it before they died?” Shelley asked.

Yeshua nodded seriously. “A fair question, and once again one that comes back to the matter of ‘free will’. I just explained that your free will isn’t exactly free, but it’s also not quite as restricted as you seem to believe it is.”

He smiled mischievously. “I happen to know you and Lucy were rather prolific fanfiction writers at one point. You had a number of rather inspired stories. Truly creative use of varying kinds of anatomy.”

Shelley felt her face glow, and Lucy too turned bright red. She recalled the old internet quote of ‘my fanfiction history is between me and God’, but she hadn’t quite imagined she’d be getting called out on it at the final judgment.

“Regardless, the point I actually want to make has to do with the characters you write. You have experienced, I’m sure, the feeling that you’re writing a character and want them to do one thing, but something in your head says, ‘no, they wouldn’t do this’, right?”

Still embarrassed by the memories of stories they wrote over nine hundred years ago, Shelley and Lucy nodded.

“You’re the author and the character doesn’t exist. You can force them to do what you want them to...but you don’t want to. It would feel wrong. The free will of humans and angels is of the same order to my Father. To me.”

“But if you’re omniscient, you already know what happens to everyone long before they’re born, right?” Lucy asked.

“Let me clarify that I’m being somewhat facetious here,” Yeshua said. “I make light of it, in order to make things more understandable, but what I really mean to say is that my plans change when I want them to. They always have.”

“I’d always heard that God is unchanging,” Lucy mused.

“What would humans know of something being unchanging?” Yeshua asked. “What would they know of true infinity? My nature has not changed. It will not change. But my nature and my plans are very different things. I take joy in creation, and I take joy in seeing that creation take on a life of its own. This will be familiar to you. As I influence my creations, my creations also influence me. Not in the sense they can make me do anything, but they can make we want to do things differently to how I had foreseen them originally. The end goal never changed, and my reason for creating never changed, merely the way I think about it.

“Of course, the analogy with an author writing a book or an artist creating a painting is not perfect, because the universe is more complex than a mere story, but imagine that every story of every speck of dust in the entire universe is being written simultaneously, and you’ll get closer to the truth.

“And herein lies my dilemma: If I want to see my creations interact without constantly guiding every facet of their lives...things will go wrong for them. There will be pain and suffering. The innocent victims, who either never got a chance to truly live or who lived well, but too short...they have nothing to fear from this day. Even many of the fallen angels I can save, in the same manner I saved you, Shelley, and believe me when I say I will take almost any excuse. If I can justify it to myself at all, a person will be saved.”

“So is anyone getting punished today?” Shelley asked. She looked at the part of the path where she had killed Elijah, and Yeshua immediately understood.

“Yes,” he said, and for the first time he looked angry. “It’s not without reason I’m meeting you here, of all places. Elijah is one example of a human who will not be forgiven.”

“Even though he was only a teenager?” Lucy asked.

Rather than answering directly, Yeshua instead looked at Shelley. “Do you remember the first time you met Elijah? Was there anything that stood out about him?” he asked.

Shelley didn’t have to think long. “His eyes,” she said. “He had evil eyes, like that slaver from my very first assignment on earth. That’s why I noticed them so clearly.”

“Indeed. And that was no coincidence, either,” Yeshua said gravely. “That man has lived close to a hundred lives, yet he was a monster in all of them, no matter what scenario I placed him in. I put him in wealth and poverty, war and peace, surplus and famine, with loving and uncaring parents...but his nature remained stubborn. I could have forced him into a different role, of course, but that wasn’t the point. He had to naturally reach the right conclusions. He hasn’t done so even once.”

“So...are you saying people reincarnate?” Lucy asked hesitantly.

Yeshua shook his head. “Most do not. Many people have strong redeeming qualities in their one shot at life, even if they do questionable things. It’s only the worst people who are reincarnated, and even then only in the sense that it is their essence I place into a new body. Their memories from their previous life aren’t passed down in any way. Like I said, I want people to be saved. I want them to be happy, in the end. I will go to great lengths to achieve it...but sometimes it simply doesn’t work. Some people are beyond redemption short of stripping even their illusion of free will away, and what benefit would that bring to anyone?”

Yeshua looked at the cycling path again. “Neil, Kevin, and Ross were eventually forgiven. Another round of life, away from anyone truly corrupting, made them into better people. In that particular life, they simply had the misfortune of being around one of the worst people in history. But he won’t be alone, burning in the lake of fire. Many politicians, CEOs, ‘religious’ leaders...irredeemable through many lifetimes. Those who remain are the ones who will choose peace over war, dialogue over conflict, who win competitions and don’t brag about it, but instead keep training diligently out of respect for their craft and their opponents.”

Shelley nodded slowly. It still didn’t sit right with her that through so much of human history, people who could have lived long, fulfilling lives had known all sorts of terror and suffering, while for many of them it was anything but certain they would ever be compensated for it.

It still felt wrong that God was committed enough to His experiment to let people wander around with the barest bit of guidance. By her human — she still couldn’t believe she had officially been declared a human, even if it was only to justify being spared — sensibilities, it didn’t seem entirely moral, even if things would be alright for most people from now on.

Still, there was one more question she wanted an answer to. “So why now? Why is this the end of days?” Shelley asked.

Yeshua smiled ruefully. “Because the suffering that was about to come couldn’t be recovered from,” he said. “Humanity has been strained past its limits for some time. The natural resources of the earth will dip below replenishment levels, even for the most efficient collection and production methods, and the catastrophic wars that will break out over control of what remains will leave much of the planet a blasted wasteland. Humanity would barely cling on, but much of the planet’s beauty and richness would be permanently destroyed. There is no sense at all in letting that happen. Today marks the day that course became inevitable. If it’s any consolation, the people responsible for it will burn for eternity.”

“So hell really is eternal fire?” Lucy asked.

“That’s the physical part, yes. The mental part is that every key event from all the lifetimes they have lived through that led them to that fate will be played over and over for the rest of time. They won’t feel guilty, of course, because if they could they would have, by now, but it will torment them all the same. I could have chosen to simply make them cease to exist, but my Father is still vindictive,” Yeshua said.

Shelley opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Yeshua held up his hand to silence her.

“I know there is much you still want to know, but there will be time for those questions later. You and Lucy, and Lily, and Daniel, and Ezra, and most of your other descendants and ancestors will have a literal eternity of peace and prosperity, and we’ll have more than enough time to talk. Perhaps, in time, I might even be able to earn your forgiveness for the things I have put both of you through. For now, it is time for us to part ways.”

He made a gesture with his hand, and a glowing, golden archway appeared across the path. “Go, and greet the friends and family you have missed for so long. Revel in your freedom, and have no fear: you are safe, no matter what you do.”

He looked at Lucy and said, “You will also find you’re no longer confined to your physical body, once you cross the gate. You’re still human, but your afterlife is a reward. It’s as easy or hard as you want it to be. Shelley will be able to help you adjust to it. Oh, and Shelley, you’ll have the background choir back. I expect the conversations to be a bit awkward, just so you know…”

At that, Shelley couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sure there will be some choice words going back and forth,” she said. “I hope the ban on taking your name in vain was lifted.”

“My Father won’t be happy, but He can handle it, I’m sure,” Yeshua said with a smile. “It’s not just for you all this was judgment day, and I do feel I deserve it. For now, farewell, and I have faith we’ll speak again soon.”

He inclined his head in greeting and walked through the glowing golden portal, leaving Shelley and Lucy alone.

They looked at each other, and Shelley was still every bit as much in love with her as she had been all those years ago. Judging by Lucy’s expression, she felt the same way.

“Eternity,” Lucy said, looking away from Shelley and at the glowing portal. “I can’t fathom what that’s like.”

“I can,” Shelley said. “But this eternity will be very different from the one I know. And I can’t tell you how happy I am I get to discover it alongside you.”

Lucy smiled and gently kissed Shelley. “There’s no one I’d rather have by my side than you.”

She took Shelley’s hand and said, “Come on, let’s go and find Lily. I’m sure you’ve missed her too these past centuries…”

And so, still holding hands, they walked towards the golden arch and stepped through it into eternity.