Behind These Wings

The Unsaid Words

Izzy shoved her way down the corridors, passing from one to the next as she negotiated the maze like Palace with practiced ease, not pausing to observe the wreckage that she was leaving in her wake.

No, her mind only held one thought at the moment.

A thought that had overcome all the lessons of decorum and etiquette that had been drilled into her, exposing a whisper of her past self now evident to all who looked into her glistening eyes.

A thought that had rendered all logical thought processes completely useless. She couldn't stop, she couldn't convince herself that Drew hadn't seen her all day as he was most likely busy with some other tasks. To her, his absence must be due to something that she had done. She must have upset him. She must have disappointed him.

She heard the murmurs of the staff as she fled through the corridors but she couldn't register the meanings of their words. Panic twisted through her veins causing a blurred rush to seek the one thing that would satisfy her half crazed mind.

Through the alarm, she did however manage to hold onto some of her sense as she held her protesting wings from breaking through their many restraints and giving the Palace something to really talk about. She could handle the gossip currently circulating; she could handle a lot worse than that. It had all been said before.

Naïve.

Irresponsible.

Nothing original, nothing imaginative but it still pleased them to whisper as she passed. The words caused her pain but she dealt with these injuries for she knew that if this secret were to leak it would destroy her. The papers alone would rip her to shreds leaving little more that the already battered girl who exited now.

When she had left she hadn't run off the face of the earth, or heavens in this case. She had seen the headlines, the quotes and the interviews. Over time she had learnt what people really thought of her behind all the polite curtsies and greetings. People were all the same, their faces deceptive and their voices hesitant to speak how they truly felt to the face of their victim.

Even Drew, the person she so anxiously sought now, had abandoned her. If he had looked it would have been fairly easy to find his lost wife, hiding as the highest ranking angel in heaven is not the simplest objective to achieve.

He obviously hadn't even tried.

But at this moment that didn't matter.

The sense of panic that she was currently enduring had crept up on her quickly but it was building in strength and she knew of only one thing that could halt it. She wanted, no needed, to see Drew. She had to understand the mistake that she must have made and apologise before it was too late. She couldn't afford for Him to find out.

In her hurrying state Izzy did not pay great attention to her surrounding until she crashed into a table that lined the edge of one of the many corridors that she was rushing through. This in itself would not have been too much of a problem, a hefty bruise on her thigh perhaps, but apart from that not too much of a debt to pay.

The problem came when the priceless vase upon the table started to teeter on the edges of its rim. Izzy tried, and failed, to correct her mistake but her lunge was far too early and left her grasping nothing but air. To make matters worse her body weight had been flung forward leaving her sprawled on the floor, exposed to the falling piece of sculpted china.

She braced herself for the impact, reflexively curling tightly into a ball and placing her hands over her head, but when none came she cautiously opened an eye only to find another pair of eyes looking directly back at her.