The Curious Condition of Being Human

Chapter 11

Aziraphale woke from a nap to a fist thundering on the front door of the bookshop. Which was not a sound he was used to hearing.

Granted, it was the middle of the day on a weekday, and he was a shop, but customers were still a foreign concept to him. Which made a lot more sense in light of the world-shaking revelation that he was not a human at all, but an angel.

It was a fact Aziraphale had accepted intellectually, given the fact that he trusted Crowley. But emotionally, it still felt a little far-fetched.

The fist pounded on the door again.

"Coming, coming!" Aziraphale had a bit of a hop in his step as he came down the stairs into the shop proper. He was expecting a certain someone once he opened the door, so he prepared himself with a welcoming, but slightly hesitant smile.

There was no demon on the other side of the door.

"Miss Device! I don't imagine you're here for a book, are you?"

"Is he here?" asked Anathema as she stepped inside. She had a large wicker bag precariously balanced on one shoulder. Things sloshed around inside and released a peculiar, sour odour.

Aziraphale held a hand up to his mouth to block the smell, realized that was rather rude, and dropped his hand. "Who?" he chimed, knowing very well who she meant.

He was trying to tell himself that Crowley storming out was just difficulties with the memory situation. But Aziraphale had been dealing with what he perceived as his coldness and evasion for days now. He knew the reason for it, but it still made him feel rather put-out.

Which went back to his logical mind battling with his gut.

Anathema rolled her eyes dramatically and pushed her way into the shop. "I'll take that as a no. That's bad. But he thought this might happen. So he left instructions."

All of Aziraphale's gentle bitchiness and pent-up passive-aggressiveness leeched right out of him, along with most of the colour from his face. "Oh dear. That doesn't sound good at all."

"Nnnnope. If you care about any of the books on this table, you'd better move them. This is going to get a bit messy." Anathema hefted her heavy bag up onto the table.

Aziraphale immediately scrambled to scoop up the precarious stack of random books on the table and gently tucked them up with other precarious stacks of books. "What are you doing, Anathema? And where's Crowley?"

"Fixing you. And he's in Heaven," said Anathema. As soon as she was sure her bag wasn't going to fall over, she headed toward the rear of the shop.

"Pardon me?" said Aziraphale incredulously. "Heaven?"

"Yep. We needed a feather from a cherub to get your memory back."

Aziraphale's face contorted into a look somewhere between confusion and gas caused by eating too much sauerkraut.

Anathema shook her head and started offloading things from her bag. "Just go with it. I promise, that if this works, it'll all make perfect sense."

Aziraphale scrambled to clear off books and papers from the table that Anathema was quickly taking over with mason jars and bundles of weird items. She took a moment to make sure everything was accounted for, then suddenly left and headed toward the back of the shop.

"Em..." Aziraphale took small mincing steps after her. "Where are you going?"

Anathema darted around like a woman on a very specific mission. She found herself at the back of the shop. "He told me where to find it. He said it was under a rug around...ah, this must be it." She reached down and grabbed the corner of the carpet. She flipped it away, revealing a strange symbol etched into the floor.