Wings To The World

10.

'Run away with me, TLC.'

Hours passed. The sky had scraped to a darker shade, night enveloping everything. And as trusted as angels were after dark, not all are fearless. So stumbling, tired, and one less member involved, we fell back into our car seats.

"She's... gone," Isael breathed out in a slow manner when she finally managed to pull her driver's seatbelt on. "Just like that. She's nowhere. She's gone."

Saraiel glances over to me and back to Isael. "Isael, are you okay?"

She doesn't turn to face us. For a moment, her aura flickers with something I don't remember, some smell I seem to have never smelt. She looks lost in something, distant. Like reliving something that passed so quick she didn't have time to process it the first time around.

"I..." She places her hands on the steering wheel. "I don't know."

I was never close to Haphaes. I never got to know her aura in every aspect, never read her face the way I've read other angels. But we shared jokes, we laughed, and in that way, she was a part of this family. And she was lively, like a horse, in the way she liked to trot around and smile.

If one rock in a pile breaks away, the whole thing comes tumbling down. It feels like that's what's happening. I don't want that to happen, I cry out to the void that's never listening.

The drive is quiet. It's not as slow as I wished it was. Isael doesn't speak, neither does Saraiel. Our eyes seemed glued to our respective windows. We look out them like we'll find Haphaes walking down the path outside.

-*-

We pile into one room. Isael glances around, anxious, fiddling with her fingers. Greys dust her face. The shades of it settle on her cheeks and eyes, lining her lips. It's calming, distant, unlike the colouring of the sunset.
Her eyes look heavy, her body following. Her shoulders sag, fingers picking at grime underneath and pressing the pads of her thumb to each one. Her hair's wisps fall from her ponytail and rest in the space in front and around her face.

She looks the way a sketch would be if it were still a sketch when coloured.

Faint smudges of fair skin peer between the greys and whites. All this, yet thunderstorm takes over the picture. She breathes as if she might stop; distant and unsure of how to.
Her aura feels the same. It's still a friend's pat on the back, still a comforting blanket on a cold night. But there's something else now. A flicker of something that licks at the tips of the spark below my ribs and burns, something angry.

Something angry surrounded by cold, icy, empty sadness.

"I'm worried," She says in the way she spoke to me before like one of her words might be the one to break everything down. "Humans- they aren't saints, we know that. If they have Haphaes, she... we could..."

"Haphaes would call out," I say. "If a human got her."

"I'd rather it were a human than an angel," Isael mutters, eyes cast towards the window of our motel room. "Imagine what an angel might do to another."

Something in the spark flairs out at that, something fiery beneath the tips. It tingles my skin and makes it run with a pounding beat, a fire lapping at the edges of my skin and the seas of my flesh. I cough, and my lungs ache like smoke is flooding them.

I must be dying.

Isael remains quiet.

-*-

"My offer still stands," Mihael chimes as Naphalie takes a seat next to her. "Run away with us."

"Are you actually going to do it or are you going to nothing but rub it in that I can't spend that much time in nature?" Naphalie snaps. "If you're going to do it, get on with it. I'm sick of hearing about it."