Touched by a Seraph

I used to believe angels were gentle creatures, like my mother. But on the night Seraphiel and I locked eyes, with fireflies drifting like embers in the dark, I learned how easily light could resemble fire.

The air was thick and the cold breeze touches my bare skin, and fireflies drifted through the darkness like a stars above, glowing and fading without urgency. I was watching them while laying on the grass when I felt the sudden awareness of being watched. When I get up and turned, a tall handsome six-winged angel stood among the trees, his presence seems so divine. Our eyes locked, and in that moment, the world seemed to narrow to the space between us.

He did not speak at first. He only watched, his gaze calm, deliberate, almost reverent. There was no threat in it, yet my chest tightened as though something unseen had wrapped itself around my breath. I remembered my mother's voice then, gentle and warm, and wondered why this angel looks at me with such gaze as if he's telling me that I'm his.

When Seraphiel finally stepped forward, the fireflies scattered, their light trembling.

"I have been watching you for a long time from afar," he said, and the way he said he's watching me made it sound like a blessing.

I did not yet understand that this was how it began, not with command or cruelty, but with attention. With the quiet certainty of an angel who believed he had every right to look at me as though I already belonged to him.