Falling For The Fallen

Pale (Prologue)

This story is inspired by the Hush, Hush series by Becca Fitzpatrick, which I absolutely love! There are a few similarities but the storyline is completely different. If you enjoy reading this I can guarantee these books are for you. I love the relationships between characters and love triangles and the fantasy element. I found Hush, Hush fascinating and I could not put the books down all throughout the series. Please go check them out!

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The dull white cloud fogged his vision and left a foul stench as it pushed past. It was able to see him, of course. It just didn’t want to. It drifted from side to side as it made its way to the strange circle. The shape gave a dull glow in the faint light from the bulb that swung loosely above a worn wooden chair. The chair stood in the middle of the room and was splintered. A crack ran through one of its withered legs. Duct tape wound tightly at various areas revealed just how many times the chair had been beaten by weight. Damien didn’t trust it one bit. At one corner of the small room was a small bookshelf cramped with books. All of the books looked foreign with strange writing and symbols like the authors had to write with their eyes closed and the pen in their mouths. Damien had to look harder to strip them of their glamour. Although he’d been trained by one of the best and was the better student out of the five, he was falling behind on glamour arts.

 Like all angels, he was taller than average and naturally muscular and toned. He had sharp senses and reflexes so fast he could act before there was any sign of danger and had always relied heavily on his superior skills until he found the sixth sense of mind reading. This was only given to a few of his kind while others had to do without. When the angel is born they are prayed for to have The Gift. Any parent of the Gifted angel will feels overwhelmed with joy as it is a sign of good. The Gift has sparked many wars between angels and other creatures unknown to the human kind. Some say it isn’t fair on others to have their minds read by Gifted. (But that is debateable because they can only read when the person has a thought that they are speaking in their heads and sometimes they just can’t read a thought at all)  A gift is given only to those whose existence shall somehow anticipate the fate of a certain something. For each fate that is changeable, an angel is Gifted.  Many have tried to find a way to determine What’s fate lies in a Gifted’s hands. Which brings them to the ultimate question: Who’s or What’s fate is that Gifted able to change? Nobody knows the answer to this repeatedly asked question and most just give up. All they know is that the Gifted will change the fate of something, whether they know it or not.

On another side of the room, sat a desk with paper and notes strewn across it. A pen lay across the inky paper and Damien could see it had just finished writing a something that seemed to be scrawled hurriedly in a mad rush to write it down. This observation instantly tweaked Damien’s curiosity. As did the smashed photo frame that lay face down on the creaky wooden floor boards approximately one foot from the desk. The distance proved it wasn’t accidentally knocked off the desk; this photo frame was given quite a push to fall. Glass was scattered around the frame meaning that it had come from the frame itself. Damien felt a strong urge to read the notes and turn over the frame to get a good look at the photo.

“Why have you summoned me here?” asked Damien tearing his eyes away from the desk, thinking better than to do an act of pure foolishness.

“I don’t like you. I don’t want you here, but I need your help. There are humans downstairs,” The cloud that was a Pale, paused as if to plan his words carefully. Damien smiled inwardly at the Pale’s asking for help. They prided themselves on being able to go just about anywhere just by stretching their fog, that somehow made a very delicate body, they could thin out and be invisible. The only give-away that they were still there was the repellent odour that lingered on them. The advantage of being a Pale was that they could hide invisibly from anyone who wasn’t all too familiar with the stench, slip into the smallest of spaces because they’re mostly just a gas, blend in with real fog or other Pales to make a fake but very convincing revolting fog and they didn’t have to worry about making themselves unheard. There were many downsides though like smelling so horribly of damp, moss, earth, mould and rot all together in one big cloud of gas that they have been known to make untrained stomachs ill, having a bad reputation for being brutal natured like starting wars and ending wars with the start of another one, having more enemies than possible through lack of consideration and idle threats during arguments and debates that were not so idle if the Pales lost, being more stuck up and self important than a peacock, having no trust whatsoever from other creatures because Pales can be so unintentionally hurtful that nobody wants to think about the damage they can do when they mean to be. The list is never ending.

Finally, when the pause had lasted long enough for Damien to get bored, the Pale spoke the words to his mind again, “There is the young girl whom I often see down there. Once, I went into her chambers and...,” Another pause, “When I appeared...,” He sighed and then spoke reluctantly, “She stared at me. I know when I think someone can see me it often turns out that they haven’t, but this time....she saw me. I can feel it. She looked shocked and confused. I hid and escaped before she could say or do anything.”

“Then what? Did you scare her? Will it blow our cover?” Damien was worried now. He shouldn’t be. It was probably just a trick that the Pale thought was funny. The high pitched fright and panic that was clear in the Pale’s raspy voice was the thing that made Damien think again. What did it mean if she had actually seen him? There were stories of such happenings when a human has seen a creature, but they were all caused by lack of cautiousness and unfortunately, in order to keep all creatures a secret, the witnesses had to be killed and so did the creature to avoid more carelessness in the future. Damien knew this particular Pale well and knew that he would never be so foolish.

“Am I safe?” But Damien was too panicked to answer the frightened Pale. Was any creature safe now?