My Angel of the Dawn (WomanxBoy, ManxBoy, Sci-Fi + Romance)

***29***

In the Aurora's cockpit Nelsa threw herself into the primary pilot's chair and spun around a few times with an air of complete satisfaction. She had no idea how much she had really missed her baby.

Ariel sat in the secondary pilot's chair. He was smiling, apparently feeling the same as she.

"I give us two days to start missing the soft beds of Nergan's villa," she observed.

"I strongly prefer to sleep in my own bed, not in Nergan's," her second pilot echoed.

Wow, the boy is learning how to make lewd jokes! You and Jart have taught him well, be proud.

"Gee, this time I haven't even bought a hell-load of souvenirs."

"Actually I've got a small souvenir for you, from Eldopolis," Ariel said hesitantly. "I thought you would like it. You said you had never had any dolls... Well, here it is."

He rummaged through his bag, took out a small case the size of a palm and proffered it to Nelsa. She opened it and cried out, amazed, "Good gracious! It's an angel! A real angel! They don't do something like that for the last hundred years!"

She took out the doll and examined it from every side, still not able to believe her own eyes. There could be no doubt, the figurine indeed portrayed a little angel — an incredibly cute one at that. The angel had a noble face of a young prince, a shock of golden curls falling down his shoulders, a shiny silver halo complete with silver wings on his back, and a golden harp in his hands. He was dressed in a long snow-white tunic which covered him chastely from neck down to his tiny golden sandals. The tunic could not be lifted, Nelsa tried.

An angel... As a child she would have probably agreed to die just for the opportunity of holding a doll like that for five minutes. It seemed to have come out right from one of the prayers she used to recite after her mother before going to bed. It was like hearing her mother's voice again. The Angel of the Annunciation, the Angel of the Dawn, the Angel of the Wrath of God, the Angel Speaking for the Lord... The Christianity had been an unpopular religion long since, and its naïve symbols were forgotten everywhere except the Outer Rim. Even biblical words and sayings had vanished from the educated people's speech, kept only in the lower classes' vernacular.

Ariel must have searched through every antique shop in Eldopolis for this doll and paid an exorbitant price for it.

She stroked the angel's wing with reverence and looked at the boy. "Ariel, I'm... A simple 'thank you' doesn't cover it, but I'm at a loss for words. Thank you."

A doll like that usually had a magnet in its feet. She placed the little angel on the dashboard — yeah, there was indeed a magnet.

"Here I am before you, O Lord, in the land of the endless night. Will you send me an angel to light up the endless night? Will you send me the Angel of the Dawn?" she recited from memory in a quiet thoughtful voice. "It's from an ancient prayer for the Holy Aid. I haven't remembered it in the last... twenty-five years at least, I think. Well, now we have a talisman against the endless night and other misfortunes, such as a hyperdrive failure, being captured by cops or getting hit in the reactor."

Was it indeed the talisman's effect or just their luck, or maybe Nelsa's professional skills, but they had never run into any trouble from that list. Although Nelsa didn't think of asking protection from people, not only from bad luck. She should have remembered there were plenty of those who wanted to settle the score with the best female smuggler on Cendar. Then again, people she could fight and kill. There was no need for protection other than her blaster.

The angel watched them from the dashboard with his shining blue gaze. On its vigilant watch they had covered a distance of a few parsecs, transported a few thousand tons of cargo, spent a few hundred torpedoes and gun shells and earned twenty thousand credits in hard cash — Nelsa was very precise only about money. According to Ariel's contract his share was ten percent, and the proper amount of money was transferred to his personal account.

Then Tiers happened where Ariel nuked a pirate ship like a pro gunner and saved their arses. Nelsa increased his share up to twenty percent. Then there was that hired killer on Signy which kind of gave away someone was after the Aurora's small crew. That was probably one of Nelsa's rivals who'd found her luck hard to swallow. Nelsa even felt a passing joy: they were famous! Or infamous at least.

Time was passing quickly. Nelsa always paid more attention to following the delivery schedule than the standard galactic calendar. Though she managed not to miss Ariel's next birthday — she'd had enough sense to set up an alert on her terminal before the date. She gave him his first heavy-duty plasma gun — an expensive and handy weapon. The boy loved it.

Turned out Ariel wasn't joking about becoming a Christian. True, he managed to get into a church good three or four months after his twentieth birthday: not easy to find a temple of Christian faith even in the Outer Rim. Now he had a religious affiliation seal on his ID and a cross on a chain around his neck. He carved the cross with his own two hands from a piece of the Aurora's bulkhead. The boy still was a hopeless romantic.