Angel Dust by Aurora Morgenstern (summer beach reads .TXT) 📕

"I think you have the wrong idea..Nathaniel and I are just friends", I try to explain to her. She pouts at first but then a smile replaces the pout and she winks at me. 

"Sure, friends. It´s fine with me if you don´t want Michael to know, you´re secret´s safe with me! I wouldn´t rank your chances with Michael very highly though, he hasn´t taken a consort since the last one ran off with Lucifer!", now that´s interesting! I wasn´t aware of that fact at all, but then again Michael and I haven´t exactly been discussing our private lives. I cast aside her argument and decide that any attempt to convince her taht me and Nathaniel are actually just friends is probably fruitless.

"What do you mean she ran off with Lucifer? What happened?", she immediately realises her mistake.

"Oops, I probabyl shouldn´t have mentioned that and whatever you do,  don´t say anything to Michael about it. Now that I started it I might as well tell you the rest of the story!", she puts on a pensive face and I node encouragingly. My biggest sin, my curiosity shining through. As if it hasn´t gotten me into enough trouble! 

"Alright, so all this happened before I was even born, ergo before the fall. Michael had taken this angel as a consort, I can´t seem to be able to recall her name, I think it was Liv...anyhow...she was beautiful and I mean really beautiful. Raphael showed me an old portrait of her and damn I would hit that!", the expression sounds so strange coming from her, too casually mundane. In general she acts very humana nd I find myself warming up to her bubbly personality. She must have had a really bad day the first time I met her and I was probably annoying her with all my questions then.

"Off course they were quite happy together and Raguel was planning to perform a bonding ceremony on them, however Michael was not the only one who had an eye on her and she certainly didn´t mind the attention Lucifer was giving her. I hear he was quite persuasively charming and at least twice as handsome as Michael and you know Michael", I blush slightly as she talks about my mentor like a normal woman our age might talk about some man she saw at the bar the other day.  "She ended up taking the fall with him, it changed Michael. He not only had to face his brothers betrayal but hers", there is a deep empathic tone to her voice and I feel as though I understand Michael better already. Pain is something I can understand. That brings the conversation to a new downpoint and we both shuffle uncomfortably. 

"Right, I´ll get you home then!", she says and forces a smile. Unlike the archangels and Nathaniel she makes it clear that due to her rather slender figure she is unable to carry me and the only way to get off the mountain top and down to the plateau is to fly. Now that´s what Michael gets for insisiting Shekinah pick me up. After a lot of pep talking from Shekinah I feel ready to attempt the short flight, the difference is that I will have to land by myself for the first time. Shekinah flies ahead with the promise to show me how to do it properly and taht she will do the best humanly possible (I sense the irony) to not let me die horribly. I follow her almost reluctantly and we reach teh pleateau within two minutes, this is where the tricky part comes in. She flies over the pleateau and out towards the town and I follow her slightly starteled, but as she takes a wide U-turn I begin to see the tactic behind it. As she gets closer to the pleateau she seems to cup her wings almost against the wind, slowing down and finally lands safely. She gives me a thumbs up and with a poundig heart I try to copy her actions. The closer I get the more nervous I grow and I try my best to cup my wings like she did, bit it is much harder than it looks. The wind resistance is strong so it takes me much longer and instead of her graceful stepping toward the ground I do more of a crash landing that ends with scraped knees and me breaking my fall with my hands. I let out a couple of curses as she helps me up, she smiles reassuringly and says: "Takes a while to learn, you did well for a first timer!"

"I don´t think I want to do that again to be honest", I joke still breathing rather heavily as I brush the dust off my clothing. 

"Oh don´t be so negative! You´ll get the hang of it in no time, believe me!", she walks me up to the house and quickly hugs me goodbye. I find that while she is rather...strange, she is also quite likeable. I should ask her to ahng out with me some time, it wouldn´t hurt to have more than one friend. I find myself humming the little rythm that Chamuel was tapping during the meeting as I make my way up to my room, recaping on the council meeting in itself. I wonder what they were talking about that I am not supposed to hear. My curiosity will be the end of me eventually. For some strange reason I feel more confident being by myself now, the knowledge that Michael can and has fought demons of a bigger calibre than whatever I encountered gives me a sense of security. I suppose the memories and the sudden, looming possibility of the monsters I was so scared of for so many years being real was what got to me in the first place. As I walk into my room I notice that Michael never closed the window thsi morning and there is a small bundle lying on my windowstill. On closer examination it turns out to be a small leather pouch. I carefully open it and out of it falls a small dreamcatcher. The strings at the bottom of it hold a mixture of feathers in all sorts of different patterns and colours and even sizes taht are held in place by multi coloured beads and pearly on the strings. The dreamcatcher itself is an intricately knotted pattern that remind me of a spiderweb with one bigger obsidian coloured stone in the middle, upon closer inspection i can see that there are golden veins running through the stone. It is an incredibly beautiful and thoughtful work of art and I can tell that he must have spend a lot of time on it, I know immediately who it is from but I pick up the small note next to the pouch nevertheless. His hand writing is elegant, but masculine as always and in his usual manner he has left me an extract from a poem with it. 

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream" 

In the hope that this might help with your nightmares... -Nate

I find it quite curious to see him sign off with a nickname, especially considering it was what his fiancée used to call him. I carefully pick the small dreamcatcher up and after I spend half an hour searching for something to put it up on the wall with, I give up and just tie it to one of the bedposts. 

"Where do bad folks go when they die?

They don't go to heaven where the angels fly

They go to a lake of fire and fry"

Lake of Fire, the Meat Puppets

As I lie down that evening I am hit by a sharp pain that feels as though a lightening bolt went through me. I feel myself unable to move, almost as if I was glued to the bed, my limbs paralyzed. My heart pumps in shock and the fact that i can´t move adds to my panic and the searing pain. Then after what seems like an agonising eternity I decide to try and calm down by breathing slowly and deliberately. I close my eyes and focus soley on my breath and find that the pain begins to subside. Then another bright flash of lightening, momentarily I see stars dancing infront of my eyelids, then darkness. I open my eyes again, but instead of the library I find myself in a different place. I am standing in what looks like an underground cathedral, a big altar like slab of stone on an elevated are and there are candles everywhere illuminating what must be a mountain cavern because the walls are solid stone. The altar is covered in ivy and lustrous red roses, almost too red to bear, the colour of blood. Their scent hangs heavy in the air and only mixes with a small undertone from the smell of an abundance of poppies strewn all around the cavern floor. The only other thing on the altar is one bright apple that is held up by two hands made out of solid silver. The hands encase the apple like an athelete might present a trophy he has won and upon closer inspection I see that around one of the hands there is a silver snake with eyes made out of ruby. Its tongue is out giving it the impression of hissing. The statue looks like a symbol of victory almost in a rather crude contrast to what it is depicting. 

"Fascinating, isn´t it? How much one little apple caused to happen...", I turn around in shock as I hear the deep voice behind me. Out of the shadow a figure emerges, a figure with wings even more radiantly white than Michael´s and platinum blonde hair so fair it is almost white. His eyes are a piercingly light shade of grey and his face is all hard angels and edges, I can see the resemblence to Michael in his hard jaw and cheekbones and in the way he carries himself. His light coloured, radiant features are in sharp contrast to the black armor like clothes he is clad in. I can see the hilt of a sword taht is sheathed behind his back and take a cuatious step back. He is strikingly, mesmerizingly beautiful, perhaps the most beuatiful being I have ever seen and it is hard not to succumb to the easy charm