When Angels Fall In Love

Chapter 3: Bottled Up Questions

Erelah felt giddy as the wind whipped at her unbound hair.  A large smile stretching across her lips as fluffy white clouds surrounded her and she breathed deep the fresh air.  She stretched her wings wide, soaring even higher as the wind caught and carried her in its wicked bellows.  She couldn't remember the last time it had felt this good to take on her physical form, the strain in her wings and feeling of freedom enough to make her feel wild as she flew onward.

Erelah had been sent on a scouting assignment but as much of a task it seemed she was just happy to escape from Heaven for a while.  Yes, it was her home but something made her long to be in this form.  It was also an escape from her brothers and sisters for a while.  Mostly, from Michael and his overbearing personality.  He drove Erelah mad, enough to tear her hair out.  Just the thought of him making her roll her eyes.  He always made a point to remind her about how young she was...Or how inexperienced, how irresponsible!  Just because she wasn't old enough to be there the day of The Fall, didn't mean she was any less important.

Despite her frustrations toward Michael, Erelah knew he was only trying to help.  He was God's right hand, he kept the demons of Hell in check and helped raise the younglings.  Younglings...There was nothing young about them in comparison to human years, the youngest angel she knew of, Yael, was at least 10,000 years old.  Many human civilizations would rise and fall in a thousand years, but time passed different for immortal beings such as herself.  A hundred years for a human was like taking a breath for the angelic choirs.

They were so fragile, the humans.  Unable to survive most mortal wounds, Erelah couldn't imagine what it felt like to be so vulnerable.  Blessed be her God that she would never know that suffering.

Erelah flew on for quite a while, searching through tethers of energy to find signs of corruption that accompanied the presence of demons.  The older demons could hide their energy signatures but the younger and lower born demons couldn't.  They were easier to target and thankfully the elder demons rarely left their stronghold in Hell.

Erelah lost sight of the baby blue sky for a split second before emerging below the cloud cover, lazily drifting on the wind as she gazed at the rolling landscape bellow.  She could pick out small cottages and sprawling settlements marring the green plains.  No matter how loved the humans were by God himself, most of her kind looked down upon the humans with distaste as they fought amongst themselves for superiority and spread their disease.  Erelah was impartial on the subject, finding herself at the center of the tipping scale that was for and against the existence of humans.  Deep down, in the most forbidden part of her being she was envious of what they had...Even if it was so little.

She envied their ambition, their freedom; and she had to admit sometimes she found herself longing for the relationships they had with each other.  Loving and fiery and like her thoughts sometimes forbidden like the tree in the garden of Eden.  Grant it, Erelah knew nothing about the lives humans lived, but that didn't mean she didn't long to learn.  Michael would have her stripped of her halo if he ever found out about the feelings she was harboring, so as much as it pained her, she kept these things bottled up inside.

An air of unease and depression settles upon Erelah's shoulders, her wings drooping before stilling altogether as she glided on the wind.  Questions were buzzing around in her head, unable to assuage the effects that had her mood.  She sighed heavily, feeling helpless.  Was it really so forbidden that she felt these things?  What harm could come from it?  Erelah knew deep down these questions could never be answered, so they too went into the bottle.