Clipped Wing

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I wasn’t lost.

I was disoriented. Yes, and with little knowledge of my surroundings or how to return to a familiar place.

Fine, I was lost. And my short temper wasn’t helping things.

Every white passageway looked just like the next. I’d already bumped into and scared the life out of a dozen missionaries. It turns out having red-stained wings makes you an outcast. A few of them were kind enough to give me an elixir concocted for the battlefield to remove blood stains. It worked quite well. Things were looking up until I bid them farewell, bowing multiple times in gratitude and then forgetting to ask for directions.

Finally I realized why Father always met me at the entrance. I thought it was because he couldn’t wait to see me. But now I can see that it’s because I’m the most navigationally challenged angel alive. I groaned in frustration, clutching my hair and losing a few strands in the process. Maybe I’ll invest in a compass or start marking my way with breadcrumbs.

A faint stream of noise curled through the walkway. I followed it.

Deeper in the fluttering tent, the smell of melted wax assaulted my nose. It was heady like a thousand candles all blown out at once. And then I heard them. The sounds of an army. They grew louder and louder with each step, the forceful rain of punches followed by groans followed by punches and the cycle kept repeating.

I was where new missionaries began their training. Tested their bodies’ limits. Prepared for war. Just wonderful.

The sounds came from behind a tent flap. It was opaque, but I noticed the glow of flames and the dark shadows of angels behind the fabric. I lifted the tent back slowly and was assaulted by blasting heat. It reminded me of the furnace we used for baking in the back room at work.

Hot enough to kill a human and probably to set fire to Ives’s over-gelled hair.

“Hurry inside.” A very burly, close to naked man stood in front of me suddenly and ordered.

“E-excuse me?”

I looked around and saw a mini-army of half-naked men and a smattering of more modestly-dressed women. They all stared at me like I was their savior for venting heat from the room.

“Tch, come inside and zip up the tent,” the burly man demanded. He looked like two men smashed together. “You’re letting the heat go, and you’re late.”

Late?

And slowly it hit me. The guard’s poncho I was wearing, the setting of the room, the superiority on the burly man’s face. Although I was honestly congratulating myself for focusing on his face when this was the most I’d ever seen of a man’s body.

He thought I was one of his trainees.

“I’m not a soldier-”  

“Have a little pride, young one,” he interrupted. “With a slogan like ‘I’m not a soldier,’ we would have lost every war.”

A spiky-haired underling grumbled in the background, “…right, our history books are so short because they’re filled with victories…” The burly man with close-shaved hair shot him a glare that had him quivering in his boots.

“As I said,” he continued, “to survive in this world, you need pride in your warrior heart and in the crusade you’re fighting for-”

“Wait just a moment-”

“-It takes the utmost courage to stare into the eyes of something that wants to kill you. To know that death is swift and unglorified. At any moment, your enemy can rise up and steal your existence.” He walked towards me and for a moment I Iost my senses to his abdomen ridged like mountains.