The Bad Fairy (girlxgirlxgirl)

47. Welcomed home

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They are only half a day away from the goblin cave city capital. Rain is pattering down on the ground, slow, but heavy like hail. Chepi is fast asleep, leaning against a tree with her face in a frown. Anemone can't sleep. Demons rarely sleep anyway. She looks at the fairy, and feels pity and guilt.

Chepi should've been allowed to rest, but because of her stealing her away, she hasn't been able to. Now the blue moon is about to arrive, and Chepi can barely keep her eyes open. Funnily enough, she never even thought to consider the fairy's feelings when she first got to know her. But now, she regrets that she didn't.

Anemone leans over, slowly, and puts her hand over Chepi's face. It shields her from the worst of the rain. It's the best she can do. Most of the frown on Chepi's face fades away, and Anemone feels a little better.

"You told them something, didn't you?"

Startling, Anemone turns her head around to face the voice. She didn't know that Evangeline was still awake, leaning against the tree beside her. The angel is staring at her with an unreadable expression on her face, but Anemone recognises a hint of curiosity in her expression. The demon is taken back. She wasn't expecting Evangeline to have known that. After they left the camp, she didn't tell them anything about it.

She doesn't want to answer. Instead, she thinks about Evangeline.

Ever since the angel appeared in the dungeons, she has been so lost. She doesn't understand why Evangeline is here. Why she left her position as archangel. Why she came back, after swearing that her duty belonged to the angels and to their agenda. Why did she change her mind? They've travelled for days in silence, and Anemone is just as confused about it now as she was when Evangeline first appeared.

With these questions in mind, she turns to look at the archangel.

"Don't you think this is all going a bit far, too quickly? Wasn't leaving your position a bit rash?"

Evangeline doesn't look too surprised by the question. She avoids Anemone's eyes, though, looking out over the horizon instead. They are resting under a large tree on top of the last hill before the road to the cave city appears. Here, despite the heavy rain, they can still see the clear and beautiful path to the capital of the goblin kingdom. Evangeline looks at the view, and speaks as softly and monotonously as she always does. "I had wished to leave it the moment I got it."

Huh, Anemone thinks. It sounds like Evangeline's reasoning for leaving her position as archangel is the same as Anemone's reasoning for leaving her clan. It was a position she was never meant to have in the first place, and a position that she didn't actually want. But it just doesn't make any sense.

it doesn't make any sense for Evangeline, one of the strongest and most disciplined, most perfect archangels, to say that she didn't fit the description. Anemone, and the rest of the world, always saw Evangeline as the picture of an archangel. She was the first archangel that would pop to mind when somebody would mention the entirety of them. Anemone just can't see how Evangeline would think that she didn't fit into the image.

Or, perhaps, she is reading this wrong. Being right for something and liking something are two different things, after all. Maybe Evangeline just didn't enjoy being an archangel. Anemone certainly wouldn't.

"You're being quite honest." She answers after a while, still not being able to wrap her head around it. Anemone was honestly expecting her to turn her head away and not say anything at all. But Evangeline told her everything that she needed to. She didn't like it, and that's why she left. What more of a reason would she need?