Wingless Bones: The Life of Sauriel, Former Angel

Denial

Her soul twisted through the dark nothingness of infinite space. Sauriel stretched her limbs across the cosmos, dodging her siblings as their energy attempted to push her into the orbits of galaxies.

"And I created this one here," Abiah proudly circled the cool, blue light of a star. "I love the composition, it took me quite a while to get it perfect," she trilled.

"That's a mighty fine one," Marcin said. "But, I have created something else," he encircled another star a stone's throw away. "This is what I have made, behold its brilliance." He cradled the star, pride clear in his celestial light.

"Yes, but has your star been the birthplace of creation," Sauriel bragged. Marcin and Abiah feigned offense through laughter regarding the common exchange.

"Of course, we must pay homage to Sauriel, Mother of Sol," Abiah said. The three flowed back across planes of existence to Heaven's dreamy landscape. They folded their being into small containers of brilliant light, collapsing enormity into manageable pockets of metallic shimmer to join their brother Asa on the riverbanks of Heaven. Asa greeted them with a nod as he sculpted a shell out of the clay of creation.

"Any luck?" Sauriel asked.

Asa hummed, "not quite. I feel as though I'm almost there." She looked at the face of the shell; its form was unique yet organic in nature. "I hope I succeed soon. It's easier to create smaller things when we ourselves are small."

Marcin laughed, "it is not in our nature to be small."

Asa took the jab in kind, "maybe we could do with more humility."

Marcin raised his hands in surrender, "you make a good point, brother. Especially the older among us. I fear that Lucifer and Michael have lost sense of the little things in sacrifice to the bigger picture."

Abiah's nature turned serious at the mention of the Archangels, "hold your voice, Marcin. It is in poor form to speak of our older siblings in this way."

"Yes, our sister Gabriel is far from senseless with the way she sculpted those tuneless cicadas," Sauriel mocked her stoic tone. "I, for one, wish to make the cold-blooded beasts of Lucifer's design smaller and craft for them wings in our image."

"Would that be sacrilege?" Abiah asked.

"Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission," Marcin shrugged.

"I did it!" Asa shouted as he finished the final lines on his carving. With a flash of light, he transferred his soul into the shell of clay, turning the matte grey into sun-tanned skin and golden brown eyes. The other three angels tilted their heads as the corporeal form moved in short, glitchy motions before settling into fluid articulation. They stared in awe as the clay-Asa opened his mouth to speak.

***

"I think you need to go home." A voice cut through the haze of lowlights and dull roar of voices. Sauriel opened her eyes, shaking off the memory several billion years old, and eased her chin off her hand supported by her elbow on the bar top. She focused on the man across from her, the bald barkeep with well-tended facial hair.

"Screw off, Julius. I'm not taking advice from a species that took 130,000 years to invent clothes," she bit back; though, without the ability to perceive the dull glow of angelic halo hovering just above her head, he only laughed at her assertion.

"Good one, Suri, at least I haven't heard it before. Seriously though, go home. I should've cut you off after glass number twelve," he said. Before she could throw back another response, a sharp clash at the other end of the bar caught Julius's attention. He was on top of the commotion in a second, pulling one man off another with a shout. Sauriel tuned out the specifics of the language, too much of something—not drunk, that wasn't an option—to bother with the intricacies of modern human language. After a minute more of fighting, the din of yelling got under her skin. Turning her head, she focused on the man attempting to push past Julius to get to another man dazed on the ground. She stared at him and lifted her fingers to snap.