Wingless Bones: The Life of Sauriel, Former Angel

Acceptance

Heaven was never the same, and she took that knowledge in stride, at first. After the dead were disposed of, the remaining angels submitted to their new assignments. When Michael got around to assigning tasks to Abiah and Sauriel, he gave Abiah a harp and told her to contribute to the song of the universe; to Sauriel, he gave her the task of listening to the prayers of humanity and delivering them to their proper place.

    She dove into her new work with the same fire she fought with by sword. She zoomed across the fields of Heaven with prayers, delegating the tasks and directing rivers of grace upon both the faithful and the sinners. Millions of years passed with little fanfare, and when she could, she danced to the song of creation that wove with the words of mortal hope. Civilization was where it all went wrong.

    Once humanity acquired more, they prayed for more. They shouted into the void and screamed when their wonders crumbled, when their loved ones passed, when they wanted someone dead. The prayers grew in sweetness and in vitriol. She heard their highest highs and their most devious lows. She heard wretched things, disgusting perversions that should have been sent to the darkest depths of Hell, never to reach her being. She had heard a million years worth of prayers, but the prayers of the final few thousand were what broke her.

    It was with a heavy soul that she went to Gabriel, the patron saint of messengers like her, for help. Sauriel found her at an airport on Earth, observing planes as they took off and landed from a small cafe near the gates. She took the seat opposite of her, willing the voice of prayers to settle for a moment before she attempted to bash her head in on the terminal walls.

    "They're also mine, you know," Gabriel gestured to the mail and parcel planes. "As long as they bear one piece of mail, they're messengers, and that puts them under my protection; though I can't always protect them all, I do the best I can."

    Unsure of what to say, Sauriel opted to listen. Sensing this, Gabriel stretched her legs out, resting them on the knee-high windowsill and continued, "don't forget you're under my protection too. What's wrong, sister?"

    Sauriel searched for the words. "I'm tired, sister," she said.

    Gabriel reached over and ruffled her hair, "take a break then." She made it sound so simple.

    "Michael would never approve."

    "Fuck 'em, he's not God," she said. Sauriel's face must've shown her shock, and Gabriel laughed. "Go on, I'll cover for you, take all the time you need." Sauriel paused for only a moment before she thanked Gabriel and left.

    She took her leave outside a little-known town somewhere in Southern Africa where birds of paradise grew native. She wasn't there nearly long enough before Michael showed his face and dragged her by her soul back to Heaven.

    "Sauriel, you are charged with abandoning your post," Michael said, cold and calculated as Gabriel stood off to the side, her face unreadable. "Have you anything to say in your defense?"

    She stood there dumbfounded until she gave the slightest shake of her head, "I have nothing, brother."

    "You are the first to abandon your post since the war," he said. "Sauriel, I wish there were another way, but I cannot bend the rules for one obstinate angel." He approached her with steely resolve and pushed one shoulder to spin her around. She saw Abiah had stood behind her, eyes wide in horror as Michael pressed a hand against her back, between the joints that connected her wings to her shell. Sauriel felt the burn of energy shredding part of her core. Her wings fell to the ground in charred heaps. She didn't scream, the pain froze her thoughts. She heard Michael somewhere in the distance giving her a new mission, a punishment as recompense.

    She closed her eyes for a brief reprieve, but when she opened them again, she sat at a familiar airport cafe, a cup of coffee in hand with a simple note written on the outside: take all the time you need.

***

    Sauriel woke up lighter than she had the day before. After a pleasant stop at Omran Cafe and a brief stop at Julien's bar for brunch, she decided to take a stroll through Forest Lawn Cemetery. Though she could feel her essence burning and her skin cracking, she felt free of burdens or sorrow.

    She found a secluded spot at the edge of a pond and took off her boots, feeling the cold grass underfoot. It soothed the burn within her despite the cracks in her skin progressing down her legs and leaking blue into the earth. She leaned back on the ground and waited. A flock of geese settled next to her, basking in the warmth of a dying star.

    She was ready to sink into oblivion when she felt the appearance of two overwhelming presences. She used what little strength she had left to sit up and turn. The geese scattered when the newcomers began speaking.

    "I don't know what you're planning, sister, but you will not go against the divine plan," an enraged and flustered Michael warned Gabriel.

    "Sauriel is a messenger, and as the patron saint of messengers, I am merely exercising that which will be my God-given domain until I blow my horn and signal the end of days," she replied.

    "Do you think yourself clever, sister? Abiah said she wouldn't return of her own volition, and you would dare bend the rules so carelessly—"

    "Perhaps, I am tired of seeing the rules work for some in this family and not for others," her assertion took less of her carefree nature and revealed the archangel beneath, the one who felled legions.

    "Congratulations, sister, you've won yet again," he said.

    "I never had any interest in playing," her words silenced him, and in a flash, he was gone. Gabriel approached Sauriel's weakened form and knelt down to her level. "That freedom will taste much sweeter once you're whole again."

    "I won't go back," Sauriel remained firm in her resolve.

    "Never," Gabriel said. "I will never make you go back." She reached over and cradled Sauriel's face in her hands. "Consider this my apology, and my gift to you, Sauriel, Mother of Sol, Sculptor of Birds, Messenger of Prayers." Her eyes shone gold and silver as the cracks in Sauriel's shell healed. When the light dulled, Gabriel was gone

    Sauriel felt the sun on her face for the first time since her fall, and it felt as it had during her days in Eden. Life flowed through her as she snapped her fingers, and, in the cold Buffalo afternoon, a bird of paradise bloomed beside the pond.