Story Starters

Angel AU // Dialogue Prompt

    "I don't want to be here," she wailed. "All my guardian angels have gone back home!" Her tears hurt to see. There was a rawness to it, like the pain was still an open wound. I knew she had never learned to cry with style, silently, the pearl-shaped tears rolling down her cheeks from wide luminous eyes, as on the covers of True Love comics, leaving no smears or streaks. I know she wished she had; then she could have done it in front of people, instead of in bathrooms, in darkened movie theatres, shrubberies and empty bedrooms, among the party coats on the bed. 

    "No. They're not." She stopped to look at me, eyes wide with an emptiness that scared me. 

    "Yes," she screamed, "they are! Mom is gone, my best friend is gone, dad is barely here and you," I looked at my little sister, my beautifully broken little sister with an ache in my heart that I couldn't explain. "You," she sneered coldly, "are so busy with your girlfriend you don't have time for me anymore." I pulled her in for a hug, her tears soaking through my hoodie.

    "That's where you're wrong, sweet," I whispered, "your angels are everywhere around us." She looked at me. She blinked briny tears from bloodshot eyes, her thick lashes stuck together in clumps as if she'd been swimming.

    "Really?" I nodded, pulling her closer, gently rocking her like mom used to. 

    "It's easy to spot an angel; you just gotta start telling a story in a group situation when people are too busy talking over each other to hear you. Look for the one person who notices and makes eye contact and smiles encouragingly until you've finished talking - that's the angel. Same genus as that friend who, when everyone else is jokily slagging you off about something, notices that one comment has hit a nerve and subtly changes the conversation or says something in your defence. These people are pure and go straight to heaven. These people are your angels." She looked at me, tears pooling in her eyes again.

    "You're the only one who fits that category for me," she whispered. I looked down at my little sister, heart breaking with every tear that dropped from her cheek.

    "Well then, I suppose I'm your angel." She shook her head, voice cracking.

    "Please don't go home," she whispered, "I don't think I can lose another angel like you."

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As always love, genders may always be reversed.

Cinder ♡