Under Heaven's Lights

chapter two: cras es noster

Simon stayed in the warm bedsheets until his wings began to feel squished under their weight. Then, relunctantly, he threw them off and sat up, letting them stretch one more time. There were the faintest hints of sunshine beneath the closed curtains. Morning had arrived hours ago to this new city.

He wondered if breakfast time had long past-- reaching for the alarm clock on the nightstand, he managed to bump into the lamp. He caught it and his hand landed on the lightbulb, hot from being on all night. He pulled his hand away and rebalanced it with his other. The alarm read eight and some; still plenty of time to make it down to the first floor, where there was probably some kind of meager continental breakfast awaiting him. That was the way with most of the places he stayed at: there would be toast and a little packet of jam, a peeled orange, a yogurt, and if he was really lucky or shoveled out a few extra dollars, a strong coffee and a can of pears.

It would be strange to show up for breakfast wearing a heavy parka to hide his wings, so Simon folded them under his shirt and a sweater, just casual enough to be a getting breakfast meal while still disguising the lump on his back. They wouldn't lay flat no matter how he tried to arrange them. It was the most difficult part of being an angel on Earth. Everything else was easily hidden or transformed with a simple prayer, but the wings. The wings were the constant reminder of his real home, of the starlit cities in Heaven that he belonged to.

"Sorry," he told himself before folding his wings again. It wasn't painful to hide them all the time but it wasn't comfortable, either. Simon would never feel free as long as he had to hide them.

He pulled himself to a standing position and dug through his backpack to find clothes, until he was fully dressed in a mismatched apparel of flannel he'd picked up during a trip through the Midwest and winter clothing from the northern world. The whole emsemble made him look like a traveling musician, which suited his needs perfectly well.

The door protested when he tried to open it, groaning under the weight of his pull. Finally it gave out, and with his keycard tucked in his pocket, Simon set off in search of the promised breakfast. The hallway was no less inviting in the daylight than it had been at night. Every crumbling piece of wood in the ceiling and all the exposed wires were brightly illuminated now by the sun beaming through from all the windows that lined one side of the building. There were more than he'd seen the night before, all buzzing and humming with electricity being carried to different unoccupied rooms. 

It was a safety hazard. The whole building was. Sketchy, too, with an owner who smoked like his life depended on it, if the smell rising in the stairwell was anything to judge by. The odor of cigarettes carried through the whole building, clinging to Simon and his clothes as he passed by the empty halls and stairs and rooms like a ghost visiting their haunt for the first time.

Breakfast was even more meager than he expected but the owner was beaming down at him proudly as he mixed his oatmeal with a cheap packet of brown sugar and Simon didn't have the heart to make him feel bad for the effort he put in making the food look presentable. There was a white bowl layered over a folded napkin and a blue porcelain plate and the little packets of brown sugar were lined around it. He put two more in and smiled wildly to the owner, who finally left the room to go back to smoking at the front desk.

Simon shoveled the rest of the oatmeal into his mouth as fast as he can, resisting the urge to gag at the texture. It wasn't that the oatmeal wasn't perfectly decent food, evenly cooked and not too slimy, but Simon detested oatmeal more than any other human meal. The way it felt in his mouth was unsettling and made every bone in his body crawl with revulsion. Still, he succesfully swallowed the last bite and and folded his napkin over the bowl. He would spend a few other dollars later on something more appetizing, he decided. There was coffee too, black and bitter and scalding hot. He used it to wash away the taste of the food and burnt his tongue in the process. Once the cup was drained, he stood up and pushed his chair back into the table.