The Above || Completed

46 Stardust

I kept my eyes on the arrow as it came toward me as sheer and true as Luziel's love for me. I tried not to think, watching it sailed through the air like a battleship on water. Time stopped. I stood suddenly behind the figure of a girl. I had no time to react as the arrow pierced her chest and came through the other end, nearly grazing my own chest. The girl fell and I bent to catch her, breaking my bindings with a newfound strength.

Only when I realised it was Erica did a strangled scream tear through my entire body. This could not be happening.
"Erica, please no. Erica!" I shook her in my arms, almost scared I was holding on too tight.
No response. Desperate, tears burning my eyes, I looked around. There was panic. Angels were being ushered out as Grace and Zachariah burst through the doors with weapons in hand.
I saw Grace mouth my name but I didn't hear her voice, hearing muffled by my grief.
It should have been me, shouldn't it?

The body in my arms shook with a cough and, almost relieved, I saw Erica open her dull blue eyes.
"Maddison," she said weakly.
I sobbed. "Erica. Erica, please don't leave me. Please be okay!"
"Quit blubbering, okay?" She actually smiled.
Then her expression was sad, brooding. "Will I go to Heaven or Hell?"
"I think you're the only demon that truly belongs in Heaven," I said, my heart shattering.
Using her very last breath, she said, "Till then, my angel friend."
I stopped breathing when she did, unable to bear the pain within me. She couldn't be gone. She could not be gone. My hands were glowing against Erica's paper white skin and I felt heat spread over me. I couldn't control it. My emotions demanded control and they insisted on exposing me. Before I knew it, my wings burst forth and behind me lay the device that was supposed to take them away from me. I was free.

But I couldn't bring myself to move. My grief still made me numb. And moving meant eventually letting go. There was no way I could do that now. I cradled Erica's limp body with my wings and let warmth flow into her icy flesh. I ignored the three sets of footsteps I heard running across the hall toward me. But then I felt my father's wings cradle my body as well.

^^^

We didn't bury the dead like humans often did on Earth. Didn't burn them either. Strangely our funerals were more wondrous to watch. My dad flew behind me, carrying Grace and Zachariah as I carried Erica. We were hovering high over the Above. With tears in my eyes , I looked down into Erica's blind open eyes and closed them softly with my fingertips. We waited patiently for it to happen. And when it did, it was the most painful and the most beautiful thing I had ever beheld.

It began at the tips of her onyx hair and at her toes. She started to fade into glittering sand. Her weight no longer rested with me, it rested with the stars. And the last the stars took from her were the scars that decorated her wrists. The scars that made Erica so brave.

When the people of the Above died and their eyes closed for the last time, they turned to stardust.

^^^