Angel Wings

Prologue

Overall, it was a quiet day. The usual flurry of lunch break workers had returned to their offices and those who hadn't were huddled comfortably at home.

Down by the quayside, the Winter sun was sitting high in the sky and casting long shadows across the pavements. Long velvet black lines crisscrossed beneath the railings and in between them two small shapes flickered through, one leading the other.

A young girl was running along the pavement; a large grin plastered across her face as the shape behind her, a yellow lab, rushed excitedly to keep up. Her eyes were partially covered by her messy hair and the edges of her oversized pink beanie which had begun to slip. They both ran a little further and came to a stop by a bench.

The girl leant forwards with her hands on her knees to catch her breath and watched as it turned into a misty cloud before her eyes. Next to her, the dog sat down and looked up with its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth while it panted.

"Good girl, Georgie." She whispered and rubbed her gloved hands over the dog's head. Georgie closed her eyes and raised her head in enjoyment. The girl smiled as the tag on Georgie's collar twinkled – she always thought it sounded like a little bell. Especially fitting now, she considered, as Christmas was soon approaching.

After being given permission to walk the dog occasionally, the girl had decided this meant she was now grown up and had thus decided to buy her parents their own presents this year. On their last walk a few days ago she had managed to go into the pet store and buy a new collar for Georgie – one decorated with small candy canes and gingerbread men wearing small little Santa hats. She had found the little gingerbread men amusing and had taken them to the counter to pay. Being small, she had had to go on tiptoes to reach but the kind man behind the counter had carefully taken it off her and wrapped it in a bag.

"Is this a gift?" He had asked, looking down at her through his glasses.

"Yes." She beamed proudly. "For my parents."

As she took a seat next to Georgie she thought about the look of approval the man had given and she smiled to herself, imagining her parents' reactions which would no doubt be ten times that. After paying with a handful of her coins (tuck money she had secretly not spent at Brownies for three weeks straight), she had run home with Georgie by her side and hidden the little bag in her sock drawer. No one would find it there.

She looked out across the pavement and at the river that sloshed hungrily below. It was dark blue with some blackish areas and she imagined what creatures could live there. Wasn't it too cold for the fish?

Although, come to think of it, she hadn't actually seen a fish in the wild before. Her fishy experiences were limited to her family's two resident goldfish – Spot and Buttercup. The latter of which didn't know how to "fish" and spent most of its days stuck in strange places or napping on the gravel.

There was a chill to the air and she wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck. Her brown hair had mostly escaped its plait and stuck out around her head comically. Adding to the effect, her nose had turned bright red – something her mum loved to point out made her look like Rudolph.

Down the street, the lights must have turned green, as a flow of traffic began to crawl along the frosty road before her. She turned her head from the river to stare at the cars passing by. They made a crunching noise as they ran over ice patches and she watched, mesmerised, as each one drove further away out of sight and turned a corner uphill.

As it fell quiet again she stayed staring at the road, zoning out.

Georgie whined.

"Are you ok?" the girl snapped back into reality and turned to face her. She ruffled one of her ears.