AND ALL HER ANGELS
(Hope remains)
Lightning strikes. That's what it's like. Once I saw a lightning
strike up close, right outside my window. The room shone white,
colorless, and the sound filled the whole world. That's what happens
in my body. All I am and all I know is wiped out in a violent bright
light. I twitch just from fear of the pain but it's over already
before I begin to move.
'Welcome to your new life', says Helena, and I open my eyes. It seems
trite to say the colors are sharper, but they are. Everything is
sharper. Deeper. Helena leans down over me and smiles and her smile
seems two meters wide. I see layers and layers of meanings in it.
Satisfaction. Excitement. Secondary joy – she's happy just for my
sake. Doubt, uncertainty and longing. I see she wants to kiss me, and
I see nothing wrong with that so I touch her cheek, pulling just a
little to show her she may get closer. She blinks in surprise and
bends down against my face while a shadow of something too fleeting
to even call hesitation touches the corner of her mouth. That's
enough for me to remove my hand.
And now I see my hand, which seems to made of dark glass with tiny
stars inside. I hold my hands in front of my face and turn them,
enchanted by comets and galaxies moving in there. I make a laugh. I
make a laugh, and it feels so strange I put my lovely new hands on my
chest without thinking and grip my new soft little breasts, just like
in my dreams, and that's too much. I keep laughing while the tears
run, and Helena lifts me up into her lap and holds me and overwhelms
me even more. I'm being touched for the first time in maybe a year,
and I'm an angel without free will and I look like a photo of space
and I'm starting to think I should have thought this through more
before I said yes, and I've been kidnapped by an insane mass murderer
with magic powers who no one would have guessed really existed, and
my body feels right for the first time since I was ten years old. One
of those things at a time I might have been able to cope with, maybe
even two. But everything happens at the same time and it takes some
minutes before I can speak.
*
Well, you saw how the impulse control works', I say, when we have sat
ourselves properly back in the narrowly upholstered chairs here in
this deserted unadorned oyster gray office room in a city I don't
know, in a pocket of time on our own, and when Helena has shrunk my
clothes to fit my new body better and she can start examining her
handiwork. It seems like an unreasonable thought to sit here and talk
about the change now, first, before I've taken stock of my senses and
feelings or had a proper stretch or even seen a mirror, but I can
feel in my heart this conversation is more urgent. 'Or rather doesn't
work. It can't happen that I do something wrong. Or fail to do
something right. I'm not sure how this lack of judgment works.'
'Let's try a thought experiment', says Helena. 'Can you remember some
time you've been a victim of injustice?'
'Is that a rhetorical question?' I say and immediately think of fifty
things they did to me in fifth grade alone. 'Let's see. Five boys
shut me in a closet once, to make me miss lunch break.'
'That must have been bad. But now, if we say we lived in a perfect
world where this injustice, every injustice must be compensated
somehow, what would you want to happen here?'
'Hm. I think I understand. It was unpleasant, remembering this makes
my hands sweat, but I don't feel any desire to get revenge or
anything. I picture it happening now and I immediately want to fly
there and twist the ears of those little jerks, but when I remember
it's just a memory there's nothing there. No right or wrong.'
'Excellent, better than I could have hoped. And if you meet one of
these knaves today, let's say one of your bullies and a man you've
never seen before are beating each other badly, whose side do you
take?'
'I, ha, I can't say who's in the right. I can just hold them away
from each other. Ask them to leave each other alone, explain what
they want to accomplish. It's bizarre. So specific. I can see Chris
in front of me, I loathe him even now, but I can't. That feeling
can't make me act any different. Can't even tell you the things he's
done specifically because it would unfairly influence your image of
him.'
'Was he one of those who locked you in?'
'No.' The lie comes immediately, and I see she knows I'm lying and
I'm caught. Can't move. There is nothing I can do or not do to not
discredit Chris for something he did twenty years ago to someone
who's never met him.
'Bizarre was the word', says Helena, and stands up. 'Blink if you
want me to try and adjust your sense of fairness to something a
little less absolute.'
I can't even blink. I'm unsure if I still breathe. She puts her hands
on my head and something goes slack. It feels unimportant, a thought
fleeing like a dream in the morning. I breathe in deep and lean back.
It seems safest not to speak.
'I've jury-rigged you', says Helena. 'If you're caught in an
unsolvable ethics problem I don't know how that should work, but I've
made it so if all your muscles go stiff for a minute your memory
blends a little. Just a little bit, and mostly your short term
memory. Like rebooting a computer. I'll have to try and work out some
heuristic system that understands priorities degrees of information,
it has to be possible to find a limit for what's meaningful to care
about, it's not a perfect world out there, a perfect sense of justice
doesn't work.'
'I should hope so', I say. 'But yeah there are such things as
unsolvable ethics problems, have you not thought of that?'
'Not enough, apparently. But broadly. There aren't many dilemmas that
can't be solved with unlimited power and an unbending need to choose
if not the right at least the least wrong of your possible options.'
'Sounds a little flippant.'
'It does, but test it. Let's take a typical hypothesis. Six men are
about to rape a child. Deep in the woods where no cops can help you.
You need to incapacitate all six before they can fight back, and
incapacitate them for at least three days to make the child safe. You
have a gun with six bullets. One life is hardly worth more than six
even if they're rapists, so what do you do?'
'I shoot', I say, before I see she's right. Although I want nothing
more than to murder the hypothetical men it would be wrong. There are
better ways. 'Okay, I take the child and fly away from there because
the limitations don't apply to me. I can see your reasoning.'
'There may always be weaknesses but there aren't any rules that say I
can't improve on the system as we go. We should have some way for you
to contact me by the way.'
'Telephone maybe?'
'Haha, I'm not that often in places where signals can reach. But
it'll probably look like a phone.'
'So um I'm starting to feel like we're done here. Can hardly wait to
go out into the world as an invisible helping hand.'
'Wait a little more. You might be able to help me, I'm so grateful
you stepped up like you did, I thought it would take days before I
got a volunteer. But I doubt everyone wants to blindly trust me, even
if I sent home those who admitted as much. I'm thinking if I could
tell my story, and what I want to accomplish here, but I'm scared I
sound like a maniac, so can you hear me out first and say if this is
something to share in public?'
'I don't know if I'm the right person to make that call, but sure.'
So Helena tells me of her life: She loved, was betrayed, took
revenge, broke down, was saved, and then in turn saved Charlotte from
Hell and came back with a plan to save the world, and they blew up
all those dictators and stole Putin's money and started the think
tank that did all those useful things, and Charlotte quit, and Helena
tried to create a few compatriots out of nothing so she wouldn't have
to go through everything alone but they didn't want to be with her,
and now the angels has been her next idea.
'I want a world where everyone can live in dignity', she says. 'Where
everyone can do what they want, be who they want and go where they
want. Where everyone can live forever. Where we can spread across the
stars in peace and harmony, forever. Across the thousand million
stars of the Milky Way and into the galaxy core and out to the
innumerable galaxies, and whatever higher and lower planes may be
behind that, and turn around the heat death of the universe or at
least slow it down so all the beauty in the world can last as long as
possible. I want that and I still think it's possible. Though
overcoming our internal conflicts on this planet is just the very
first step, growing up and become worthy of meeting what waits out
there, and that first step may get pretty chaotic. Radical. We're
going to need all the protection we can get.'
'We"?' I say, curious. 'You still consider yourself part of
humanity?'
'Of course. I have more to offer than most people but it's not like I
know any better. My plan is just, you know, what I can remember of
what Charlotte told me of what she found out that may possibly be
entirely lies. I just choose to hope for the best.'
'Okay, yes, I believe you. I suggest you tell everyone this. To save
time.'
'Yes. And a whole other thing, I wonder if you'd like to go with me
back there. It probably helps if the other candidates can see you.
Make it more concrete. Show what they can expect. And you know
there's nothing stopping you from getting to know each other now
instead of waiting a thousand years until the loneliness gets too
much.'
In a thousand years, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. I feel
the massive strength rush through my glass body and I think, with a
distant chill when I picture the future, I'm never going to die and
us immortals in the long term really have no choice other than
getting along with each other. 'You've thought this through more than
I have', I say. 'I like it. I trust you.'
'I like when you say that'', says Helena and opens a door in the air
with golden light on the other side, laughing, floating in a cloud of
gratitude. Maybe that's how pheromones look to me.
*
Coming back to the gathering of my brothers and sisters (well, mostly
sisters) in the cloud of golden light is disorienting, not just
because the light reminds me I should be hungry and tired by now, but
because everyone is a little taller than when I left them. I'm
shorter. A fair bit shorter. And thinner. And they haven't moved at
all.
'Okay', says Helena, in an easy, happy voice filling every ear in the
sky. 'We have an angel. Ellinor and I have had a long and educational
day while we were gone and we have barely begun here. Anyone feeling
curious?'
I'm wearing a mask, and I can see they're not impressed. Few of them
care or remember or even had a chance to see me before, so they only
see a short, nervous, ordinary white girl with dirty blonde hair and
pale skin and a t-shirt with holes and jeans made for sitting down.
Very ordinary. Almost everyone's curiosity fades quickly. Helena can
see it too, and nods encouragement to me.
So I raise the mask with a wave over my face and turn to dark glass
with little twinkling stars in it. I spread out my arms and my
"wings", two wide bundles of thin threads or tentacles
growing out of my back, through the shirt. First time I stretch them
out. Wonderful. Like feelers, three meters long, bending and
straightening after my wishes. The light plays and mirrors and
splinters in the deep dark within them and shadows and rainbows dance
around each other. I think they're thousands of threads. I think
about it for a moment and count them: seven thousand and seven on
each side. They wave like hair in the wind and in fact make a little
breeze around me that moves the shorter, looser threads on my head,
and I lean against them and let them carry me up in the air.
The humans look smaller than before, from above. So small and
vulnerable. I want to protect them, or at least show them what in
their lives may be possible. In a near future specifically even. So I
swoop around in the air over them, try to show them all the speed and
grace and strength I can summon. But it just turns into a few circles
and loops and a dart off to the horizon (or a couple of hundred
meters away in the flat golden fog until I get worried I won't find
the way back) and then I lower myself to the ground again before it
looks all too awkward and unimaginative.
That precise moment, when I slowly sink down on my feet in front of
the crowd, feels like you expect it would feel to fly in front of
several hundred people, surprisingly. Strange things happen in my
stomach. Everyone watches me. They step forward as if to meet me,
without thought. Beatrice is the one stepping up front, the one
putting hands on my shoulders, the one meeting my eye with a look of
wonder and curiosity and concern.
'You', she says, stumbling. 'You. It. Is it. Who are you?'
'Right, we didn't get introduced before. I'm Ellinor. You're
Beatrice.' I speak loud enough for everyone present to hear, although
I can't seem to take my eyes from her. 'I'm the same person as
before. More or less. Just a little prettier.' People laugh, some
nervously but most of them easily. 'Don't be afraid.'
'I'm not afraid', says Beatrice. I can see she wants to come closer
to me but doesn't dare because people are watching. I want to take
her hand again, and this time I do. She looks surprised at the hand
that doesn't look like it would feels oft and warm, and then at me,
with joy and anticipation and curiosity and hesitation.
'So to repeat myself a bit', says Helena, after telling her life's
story for the second time in fifteen minutes, while Beatrice leans on
my shoulder. 'I have not chosen you because you are especially
upright or smart. A certain grasp of ethics and ability to consider
consequences helps a little. But I have chosen you mostly because you
have very little to lose. It's not a gift I want to give you, it's a
sacrifice I'm asking of you. I have faith that you know what's right
and wrong and want to choose what I'm offering, because you're the
most lonely, most hurt people in the world and that makes you the
wisest, kindest, most considerate. And those of you still here are
those who trust me even though you know what I've done, who trust my
intentions and my ability to make this world better for everyone and
you want to be part of that. And if you want to step up I'm going to
make you strong and fast and immortal and all that to make you better
equipped to protect this world, and I'm going to take your humanity.
Your life. Your friends and family won't recognize you. Your
judgment, your own will I'm going to take away from you.
'"What?! My will? What even is that?" It's something I have
given a lot of thought to, so listen carefully please. How should I
stop anyone from abusing the cosmic powers I want to give you? You
must judge people's actions, right or wrong. And there's no power in
the universe that can decide for you what you think is right or
wrong. But I can make it so you judge only what you see, and not what
you believe. Everything you think someone's going to do, everything
you think you know based on experience, that's what I'll take from
you. You will be without bias, without judgment. And with it goes the
ability to separate belief and action. That's where the free will
comes in. What you see as the right thing to do you're going to do.
You can't elect not to do it. I think this will help, will avoid any
situation where I have to stop you. But this is an experiment. So,
anyone else want to volunteer so far?
'I', says Beatrice, in a small voice, but very quickly. 'But I want
to ask for a private talk first. With Ellinor.'
Helena raises her eyebrows and shrugs her shoulders and then we're
standing in the office again, all three.
'Oh', says Beatrice, stiffening, still with a hand on my shoulder.
'Take a slow breath', says Helena, slowly, turned to the window.
'You've got something on your heart, no rush. I have stopped time
outside this room.'
'Actually I was hoping, I'm sure we have a lot to talk about you and
me but I wanted to talk to Ellinor here. If you want.' She turns to
me for the last part, and I nod.
'Oh, sure', says Helena. 'I figured you meant that but it seemed best
to cover all eventualities. Hm. Give me a second.' Helena's forehead
starts glowing with a light that clouds my vision and she radiates
decisiveness, concentration, obsession, and then she raises her hands
and holds two small cellphones. 'Take these so you can reach me. I
want you to understand, you both, you should not feel you're shutting
me out or interrupting me. You can tell me to take off, as I'm
going to right now, and you can call or write me any time. I'll stay
in this time pocket but I'm going to bed, but call whenever you want,
if you wake me I'll just have to do some magic.'
'Good night?' says Beatrice, and Helena nods and chuckles and
vanishes.
*
'So', I say.
'I'll say', says Beatrice.
'So, I'm glad you wanted to continue our conversation that had barely
started. Glad for your unquestioning support in general.
Unhesitating. But, did you have something in particular in mind?'
'So many things. I'm terribly curious. But, you shouldn't think it's
just about your, um, transformation.'
'The medical term is transition.'
'Ah. But no I'm curious if. If I may touch your cheek.'
I take her hand and lead it to my face. She touches my neck, and my
hair, and my wings. It feels so sweet, so right, I start wondering if
my own pleasure can be strong enough to interfere with my new
unclouded sense. I try to explain how I feel to Beatrice when she
brings up all the problems with consent that happen when I can't say
no, and we decide she can't trust me when I say yes. And we talk
about how she wants to be turned into an angel like me and I find I
can't say anything to influence her decision. No matter how much I
want to encourage her so she can still be here in fifty years, and
five hundred, and five thousand. One of the few things we seem able
to talk about is her reasons to be angelified.
'I've had hard times. Of course. Helena did say, ha, it's a little
satisfying to hear you're one of the most damaged, most vulnerable
people in the world. Though it is hard to believe I'm so special. I'm
just a porno actor, one of millions.
She stops there and looks at me with something hard and hopeless in
her eye and I can see how lonely her life has been in the lines of
her face, can see the hate and disdain she's subjected to, the
carelessness, the sense of being used, like a toilet. After a few
seconds I throw my arms and wings around her and make a low keening
sound. She sighs, at first reluctantly tolerating me, but then she
collapses and pushes closer to me and shivers like she was trying not
to cry.
'Nobody cares. I had one friend. I got her hooked on heroin. She
killed herself. She was twenty. And I tell this to everyone I dare to
and nobody cares. So. Of course I want magic powers and be able to
help other people having a bad time. Of course I can afford the cost.
And being able to talk properly with you, yeah, it's not unimportant,
but it's a small bonus.'
'Of course. Your reasons are probably better than mine. I, I don't
know anything but it must be horrible.'
'Mm. Can you tell me, with your angel senses, is it a sin to have sex
for money?'
'It's a poor thing, maybe, but no, there's nothing wrong in doing it,
there's nothing wrong with you.'
'Nice to hear. You feel so dirty sometimes. It doesn't help to say,
I'm not hurting anyone.'
'The real evil is our prejudices', I say. 'Or the society which
teaches us them.'
For a while we sit still, half embraced in the stiff office chairs,
until it feels like the sun ought to rise out there. I hope Helena
also gives herself time to do nothing, wherever she now is. Time to
process everything happening.
'This is nice', says Beatrice. 'But I should probably have some
sensible questions. How is it, not having free will? Those are real
words I just said in reality when trying especially to sound
sensible.'
'It's frustrating sometimes. But mostly it's a relief. It, it doesn't
really feel different. When I do something, it just feels like
something I wanted to do. The only difference is I have the nerve to
do it now. And the things I want to do but can't, those are things
you understand ethically you shouldn't do. The difference now is I'm
not tempted to do it. I'll never again sit at home and drink for a
whole day to get away from myself. Never again see someone struggle
with a wheelchair on the bus and sit silently because I'm scared
they'll think I'm getting in the way if I ask to help. There, there's
a clarity in lacking options. I think I'm going to be able to live
with it.'
'And flying? What's that like?'
'Powerful. It, I guess that is power, what power is, it always feels
like freedom. Same principle as having a car. Or an inclined surface.
If we don't let ourselves get used to it. It's a new way to look at
the world, and it's enormously different, and it's lovely. I think
I'll never get tired of it, but that seems unlikely.'
'Hm. What else. Your body, how does it work, I think I'd miss having
a heartbeat.'
'Ha, I doubt I have a heart, yes, but it feels normal. Or, better
than the best day I've ever had health-wise. Feel for yourself.'
Beatrice puts her hand on my chest, and the thing that's probably not
my heart beats faster. 'What you're not asking, and I realize it's
not something you'd easily think to ask, is my sensory inputs. I see
so, so much now. I experience your nervousness, your confusion.
You're worried that you want to do this to be with me more than
because it's right, and you're changing your mind back and forth. The
right choice is putting off the choice until you're sure, you can
always do it later if you find that best but you can't undo it.'
'Hmm. If I do it now, so I don't have to waffle anymore, because I
want to be courageous and do it even though I'm not sure, then would
you feel compelled to stop me?'
'I don't think so. Standing in the way of somebody's will is hardly
the right thing, not when you have no obviously bad intentions to
anyone.'
'Even if you think I might hurt myself?'
'No, then that would be a later problem.'
'Alright, we better get it over with.' Beatrice picks her phone up,
flips it opens and laughs. On the screen is a list with two names:
"Helena, your Lord and God" and "Ellinor, angel of the
cosmos".
'News to me', I say.
'I think it's humor', says Beatrice and turns to the phone. 'My Lord?
Yes. That's good to hear. No, just thinking it over. I want to do it.
Yes.' She turns to me again with a nervous smile and then Helena is
there rubbing her eyes.
'So. Bea. Do you want to do this privately, or would you consider
letting everyone watch? Might be easier for people to make up their
minds if they can see it happening.'
'When you mention it, sure', says Beatrice. She scratches her hair,
worried that she should be more shy. 'Not like I'm not used to
showing everything to the audience. Only. Hm. Does it hurt, and can
Ellinor hold my hand?'
We go over the procedure and Helena takes us back to the golden light
and we stand up on a floating podium and everyone watches as Helena
rubs her hands and the blinding light pours out of her head again.
I'm fascinated by what my new eyes can see when I really look. The
light comes from a microscopic point a centimeter away from Helena's
forehead, just over the hairline. It's painfully strong, without
heat, without color, but tangibly white. It occurs to me that what
radiates from her is a thin field of bright particles, or something
like particles, too small for me to see at all. But the truly
fascinating part is Helena's attitude. An absolute determination. An
angry god bending the universe to her will by pure conviction.
Ignored pain. She may be sacrificing as much as we do to make this
happen.
And Beatrice's body turns to light. At first the same blinding white
light as Helena's head, but it fades rapidly while she pinches my
hand when her body twitches. Fades and scatters. Light in all the
colors of the rainbow run and mix and shine in her face and bare arms
and belly. She sits up and her wings flower like clouds, like drops
of paint in water, shifting in shining bright colors, and she turns
her head to see them and laughs, and I think this moment is when I
fall in love.
'I want you all to see this', says Helena, and stands up. 'See these
girls' happy faces. This is serious business, life altering business
we're doing today, but it doesn't have to be any dour old testamental
business. I think we're getting somewhere. Now if everyone who wants
to consider talking in detail about becoming angels could raise their
hand? Just talk about it, no commitments, these two eager ladies
aside.'
I turns around and see many raised hands. Not everyone. Maybe half.
But everyone is thinking about it.
'Okay, we may have to form a line. Or I get an idea. Everyone who
would like to talk it over in small groups or pairs, or just sit and
think it over by themselves?'
This time everyone present raises their hand. About three quarters of
the group wants to be alone to think and are teleported away by
Helena, and we spend a moment arranging group discussions for most of
the rest, and we form three short lines to let people speak privately
with Helena, with Beatrice and with me. And the lines grow bit by
bit.
I have definitely reached my limit for getting to know new people
today, or possibly this year. But I have no choice but to help those
who need me. I sit and talk about the transformation with about a
hundred people whose names I can't remember, one by one, and I barely
care to listen when they tell their sad stories and tell me why they
want to be heroes and ask how it feels.
When it's over Helena has three hundred and thirty three angels –
surely just a coincidence – angels with wings of stone and fire and
leaves and steel, angels in more shapes and colors than I ever
thought existed, and I want to sleep for a week. I just close my eyes
for five seconds and then I'm not tired anymore, but I still want to
sleep. But the work has only begun. Now Helena opens doors to some
regular, white clouds and Beatrice (angel of light, according to my
machine that looks like a phone) and I step through one of them
together to try being angels out there in the real world.
*
We float in the air, a thick wet mist, tumbling in a strong wind. It
feels like I should be scared, but it's just an opportunity to try
our wings. They touch, I can feel Beatrice's rainbows push against my
threads. A little like shaking hands. We twirl around each other in a
stormy dance and plow through the air with small light motions much
faster than should be possible, out of the clouds and toward space
and down to the Earth, to the sea and sweeping across the land.
Making ourselves invisible to mortal eyes is almost a reflex. I just
think about hiding and feel my contour blur, and Beatrice does the
same. I can't quite see through her, but it looks like she's not
really there. Vague as a sight you see when you've just woken up,
something you want to blink away.
We glide through the shadows of a large city – I don't know where
we are at all but Beatrice is pretty sure it's somewhere in west
Alter – and right wrongs. I hold back a car driving against a red
light, Beatrice steadies a pregnant woman stumbling off a bus, almost
lifts her, all the way home. A cat being chased through an alleyway
by some teenage boys I lift gently in my hands and hold against the
face of the biggest boy. It gives me an unholy joy to see him get
scratched to pieces and I wonder if I'm a bad angel. His friends
abandon him and he sinks to the ground, without fighting back – the
suddenly flying, very angry cat must be shocking. I let it go and I
caress the worst of the wounds from the boy's face while it keeps
running. Not that he doesn't deserve some scars.
And we go on meting out an endless stream of justice. Nothing
glamorous, except for one time when we stop an armed robbery in a
grocery store, but hundreds of little things. Maybe thousands. I
can't keep count. Everywhere we see someone does something wrong. An
ignoprant old lady feeds bread crumbs to birds. An unattended child
eats lead paint. People throw trash on the ground. A team of workers
saw down a healthy young tree. (All we can do about that is
destroying their equipment. Everything is there in their body
language: They know there is no reason to kill the tree, but they
can't speak against their boss.) Cyclists won't stop to let a
pedestrian cross the street and they keep going in an unceasing mass
and we can only lift her across.
We glide through the homes of the city and there we find everyone
doing their worst. One woman is about to set fire to a man, passed
out in a bath tub full of gasoline. It's easy to see what he has done
to her, but still we put her matches out and push her down on the
floor. What we don't see with our own eyes we cannot judge. Beatrice
embraces her and weeps with her and it's certainly very strange for
the woman. To be comforted by someone who isn't there. But all that
happens is her strength grows. Her resolution. She feels she isn't
alone, and it lets her stand up and walk away. The man only gets a
cold shower to wake him up before the gas hurts his skin.
And we see worse after that, but easier to judge. We feel no fatigue,
no hunger. The night is cold but the cold doesn't bother us, and the
darkness doesn't hide anything from our sight, and we act without
pause, without thought, without any weight on our hearts. But after a
time, when we see the sun rise and I realize it's not the first time,
we find another kind of tiredness. Call it exhaustion of the soul.
'I need a vacation', says Beatrice, with a flatness in her voice I
haven't heard before. 'I see nothing to do right now but how long
can, how many seconds.' We stand among the trees in a park, with no
humans in sight, but it doesn't give us any peace. We can't relax.
Any moment anything could happen to force our bodies into motion.
'Close your eyes', I say, and close mine. So nice. And blindly I put
my arms around Beatrice and pull her close and rise into the air.
High, until we can open our eyes and see nothing more of the city
than a brown spot. And we go down to a green spot and sit in the moss
in the woods far away from all humans.
'So much', says Beatrice, and sinks down onto her back, with her
hands over her eyes.
'Mm. It never ends. But we'll have to think we're in a prototype
state, she's got to be able to fine tune our, uh, anglicity?, so we
can live.'
'Or we just have to get used to it.'
'I need. Hm. Stillness. I mean generally. I'd like to sleep for a
month to recover from today. But I'm not even tired.'
'Maybe we can work on that', says Beatrice, and pushes me to the
ground, with gentle hands. She lies next to me and wraps her wings
around us like a blanket. The light she emits dampens, the colors
stop moving and fade and the wings are barely visible and her skin
color from before comes back. I've never particularly liked my
warning beacon-bright white skin, instead I make myself darker, until
my wings look like the night sky. I try to breathe evenly with my
stomach, and Beatrice starts mimicking me. And in time our hearts
slow down and I'm fascinated by how I can be so close to another
human being I can feel her heartbeat without being the littlest bit
nervous.
And I'm scared to open my eyes. Or say anything.
But I can sleep. It happens just by wanting it, like everything else
our strange new bodies do. I imagine my eyelids are too heavy to open
even if I wanted, my arms to sluggish to lift, my thoughts too slow
to move. I'm aware of the moment it happens, and then I'm sleeping. I
dream of children being hurt, a mishmash of violence and screams and
uneven fights.
*
'It seems like we've skipped multiple steps in between meeting and
sleeping together', I say.
When we wake up in the middle of the night again and sit by ourselves
in the dark woods, still as water, surrounded by butterflies that
must have been attracted by our lights.
'Are you talking about sex? I wouldn't say no.'
'Oh, no, I'm thinking, I mean, maybe later.' What am I saying? 'I was
thinking. How do people usually get to know each other. What are we
supposed to talk about.'
'Small talk right, yeah I bet a lot of us wish we knew how that
works. How about this weather we're having huh?'
'Yes, it seems to be raining butterflies.' We laugh, but the
butterflies are mesmerizing when we look at them closer. I don't know
if they're nocturnal butterflies unique to these woods or if it's our
special eyes but they seem to have more colors than, well, than
Beatrice, and it's so beautiful I can't breathe, and the forest lays
claim on the conversation.
'But', says Beatrice, some time later. 'I do wonder who you were. If
you want to talk about it.'
So I talk about my life, though I warn her it hasn't been as exciting
as some others. How I grew up with just my mother, turned out
unemployable, went on disability when I was twenty-two and then after
my mother did have just been. Alone. Alone and poor and failed as a
writer. Found out I was transgender and was too scared of bothering
anyone to do much about it. I tell her about how I didn't take her
hand, the first time.
'It was of course pretty symbolic. For a thousand thousand times I
have failed to dare doing things. But we can look at it like you
inspired me to say yes, to become an angel.'
'The most romantic thing anyone has said to me.'
'Ha, well, I can't say I'm anything other than hopelessly romantic.
Which reminds me, I wanted to clear something up about. Eh. Sex.'
'You're terribly flattered and don't know how you're going to say no,
especially to not make me think it has to do with my unflattering
history, but you're saving yourself for the chosen one?'
'Almost entirely correct.' I pause for effect, like a hopeless
romantic. 'Except I don't think about "the chosen one". Not
anymore.' A slightly longer pause. 'More the chosen moment.'
'You know', says Beatrice, resting her head on my shoulder, without
warning. 'I'll try to say this without sarcasm. Give me a minute, I
don't remember how that works.'
I watch the butterflies and wait, and lean my head against hers.
'This is, honestly, the most romantic moment of my life. And I'm not
saying that just to get to sleep with you. I don't think I even want
to do that, it wouldn't be as good as this.'
'That works for me', I say. 'I, I'm glad that you're here. That we're
here. Together. It might be the first time I do something together
with someone, rather than next to. How did this happen? Maybe a
meaningless question. People like you and me, we only need the
tiniest chance to become friends for life. But how did we end up
here?'
'Let me see, I was in a strange place surrounded by strange people,
you were a big strong white man, or that was what I saw anyway, so I
thought you would either know what was going on or have the best
chance to find out.'
'Haha, and they lived happily ever after.'
We find a small, modest waterfall when the sky pales, with a
comfortable puddle to bathe in. And we do, shameless, as curious of
each other's strange new bodies as our own. We play for hours just
letting the water run over clear glass skin, letting the light shine
through the water, letting our lights and clear skins and the clean
water mix.
Some time soon we will take contact, continue with Helena's mad plan.
Continue helping the weak and the powerless We will teach them to be
angels. I will tell them it's hard, but it's worth it. Just as long
as you're not alone.
I will tell them none of us has to be alone anymore.
We can stay alone here, in paradise, a while longer. But some time.
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