God's Gone AWOL

[1] Fairtrade Hot Cocoa

The sun was setting on Jericho Washington. It had been quite an eventful day for the little town, although the regular citizens did not know this. Nor did they know that Jericho had even more interesting events that were destined to occur before the stroke of midnight. All the normal inhabitants, such as the humans, the pigeons, and the local angel —as opposed to the non-local angels which had entered city limits in the past few hours— were winding down and considering their regular day to be almost over.

Such was the story inside the little white house on Trinity Street. Atticus was busy in the kitchen, preparing a mug of hot chocolate. Not for himself, of course. Rather, for the very distressed human at his kitchen table, whom he considered to be a friend —despite their obvious difference in position in the grand hierarchy of things.

This particular human was named Owen, and he was very much like the town of Jericho in that there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about him in any way shape or form. He had no interests out of the ordinary. He had no skills out of the ordinary. He had no personality quirks out of the ordinary, except perhaps his slightly neglected intelligence. Everything about him was average in every single way. But to Atticus the angel, he was worth making a cup of hot cocoa, which in itself was extraordinary enough, considering all the truly extraordinary individuals out there whom Atticus would not make a cup hot cocoa for.

And so he gently placed the cocoa on the table in front of Owen.

Owen was, at that particular moment, doing something many young men of his age could be seen and heard doing. He was complaining about his girlfriend.

"Thanks man," he said, taking the mug in his hand. "I'm sorry for all this, things have just been so hard lately,"

Gracefully, Atticus took a seat across the table. Most people would assume that a creature so magnificent as he would have little interest in the trivial affairs of humans. However in the past few years, he had discovered that he actually quite enjoyed helping people resolve small matters. This was a surprising development in his character, considering his past, and an occurrence he was quite thankful for.

"It's okay, I understand," he told his mortal friend, "Hazel is a wonderful and complex person. Like all of us, she has her unique set of challenges,"

"Our date at the park today was definitely a challenge,"

"You brought her there because you wanted to break up with her, didn't you?"

Owen hit his head on the table a couple of times.

"Yeah, I was going to. And I still wanna. She's just changed so much lately and there's so much going on in her life." He stopped for a moment to think before continuing, "And I feel so guilty when she spends time with me,"

"You make her happy, Owen. Why do you believe spending time with her is a bad thing?"

"Well she could be spending that time sorting herself out, or at least doing something she wants to do." He began to ramble, "It hurts because I don't really have feelings for her anymore, you know? But I still want her to be happy. It's like she thinks I make her happy but she's really just using me to distract her from everything else,"

Listening to this, Atticus only nodded quietly. Was he a therapist? No. Was he a couples counselor? Also no. Did he know how to do either of these things to a remotely effective level? Not really. Even though he lived the life and wore the face of an every day human, Atticus was anything but. And he was still mostly clueless as to how anybody's mind worked, including himself. However he had learned one thing that was effective at making people feel listened to: looking at them and nodding and not saying anything...