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

my best not to get my wings soaked up too much. I have discovered that drying your own wings is much harder than drying someone elses, due to well being unable to reach and bending them hurts a lot. I wonder shortly if there is anyway to magically dry your wings, I don´t know maybe using hot air? It doesn´t sound too abstract an idea to me after all the things that I have seen. Michael is nowhere to be seen and there is no note or anything from him in the kitchen, which seems rather strange and a little worrying after last night. I make myself some fruit salad for breakfast and sit at the table with my sketch pad, working over some details on teh drawing I made of Nathaniel. There is an audible groan and the sound of wings dragging over the floor, almost like a sweeping brush. Michael enters the room looking nothing liek himself at all, he looks terrible and not in the way he did coming back from battle. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is standing up in all directions, looking rather shaggy and not in his usual gracefuly, goodlooking messy way. He looks like he barely slept at all and if I didn´t know better I would say it was because he was worried. But Michael isn´t the type to admit that so neither of us says anything about the state of him. It´s a mutual agreement between us, I can understand that and I wouldn´t want him prying into my business. I let him keep up the illusion that he has around himself of always having to be strong, I know he feels responsible and that he does have teh weight of the world on his shoulders. perhaps until this very moment I didn´t really understand the strain all the responsibility and having to push his own feelings aside to be that stronghold has on him. Over the last few days I have begun to understand how much he really does for the angel community and I have seen the hopeful looks they all give him, he´s their hero and their leader. But he would also be the first to blame if anything ever went wrong. I don´t dare to ask wether he is going to tell the other angels about Lucifer being able to reach out, I´m not the only one who is concerned about the implications of it. I know he isn´t supposed to be able to do that, but seeing Michael like that put me in a mirror situation whereas I don´t want to be a burden to him, so I will do what I do best and be strong for someone elses sake. In a way taht was exactly what I needed to get past my own fears and I know taht isn´t going to do away with them, but maybe it will help lessen them. Michael starts soem chatty conversation and lets me know about my training schedule for the day. I´m actually rather excited about my sessions, talking to Lucifer has given me a sort of motivation. I need to be prepared if he is ratteling on the bars of his cage and maybe becoming stronger will help me in other ways as well. I suppose I have finally fully embraced my new nature and the advantages that come with it and I haven´t trained with Gabriel for days now. I barely follow Michaels hollow words and he soon stops talking and he doesn´t look to disappointed at my disinterest in the conversation either. He promises to take me out for a flight in the evening and excuses himself from the table. I leave him to it and make my way out to go for a short walk, some fresh air certainly won´t hurt and I can´t help the urge to just...get out. I put on the leather jacket Michael gave me to protect myself from the weather that seems to be getting colder rapidly as the days grow past. I somewhat suspect that time passes differently here, either that or maybe it´s just liek Ireland and its rather unpredictable weather. I once spent a summer there with my aunt and within one day you could go through several seasons...it would be freezing cold in the morning but by the time noon came around people were parading the twon in short sleeves and hotpants. I smile fondly at the memory, especially thinking back that it was that summer that I got my first kiss from a boy I met there. He was quite cute, stereotypically ginger with a lot of freckles but unlike so many other boys he always kept the conversation going and was exceptionally gentlemanly. He took his sweet time to charm me before he kissed me and I was heartbroken when I had to go back to New Orleans. Sadly like so many things I lost sight of him as the years went on. I walk by myself not exactly lonely, but rather in a state of almost blissful solitude. I usually don´t like the oppressive silence, but for once I like having some space around me to get a clear thought. The cold air makes me feel rather focused and the sound of the grass under my feet seems almost melodic. I walk and walk by myself, not really caring where I am going at all just continueing for the sake of walking in itself. The few other angel I encounter on my walk throw me curious looks but nobody disturbs me in my walk, I supspect tehy are rather curious and taht some day I will go through the town and actually take the time to walk to them. I walk all the way down to teh field and decide that this is far enough and just sit. I stare out at the sea of grass and small wild flowers infront of me and can´t help but remember a line from one of my motehrs favorite poems Poppies in July. "Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns", I muse to myself, reminded of the poppies in the cathedral Lucifer placed me in. The memory isn´t as traumatisingly unpleasant as Michael made it out to be, I would have thought it to scare me much more than it did to meet the devil. Instead I find myself intrigued by his words, the fact taht he so passionatly believed them says something in itself. I wonder why he placed all the flowers in teh cathedral, he doesn´t seem to be the kind of person to do it without some reason or symbolism. The apple served its purpose so I suspect teh flowers did too and the connection to Plaths hellflames suits almost too well. i reach out and pluck one of the poppies in teh field, running my hand along the soft, wrinkeled petals and the waxy stem of them. I am rather lost in the sensation of just touching the flower and staring out into the distance, pleasantly distant from the world and yet strangely present at the same time. It is only reluctantly that I get up to walk back to the house for my training because I can tell from the position of the sun that it is nearly time. I spend a lot more time than I planned here and what felt like half an hour to me was at least four hours in total. I pluck another poppy out of an impulse and stick it behind my ear before I actually begin my walk back.  Lake of fire

 Again most of my session with Gabriel is filled with meditation, but I find myself to be less agitated and distracted as usual. this time it comes easily to me to just let go and follow his voice. He is rather impressed by the flame I can conjure at this point and he ends up showing me a new trick. This new trick includes shaping the fire into all sorts of creatures and shapes. It appears rather useless but nevertheless eyecatching and fascinating. It takes a lot of concentration, but Gabriel is more than patient with me despite all of my intial attemots looking like three legged tennisballs rather than the cat I was attempting to shape. He laughs softly as he sees me create yet another tennisball and conjures up a perfect little fire cat and has it run around me, I am rather surprised taht the grass doesn´t catch fire but I suppose he knows what he is doing. I concentrate very hard and this time my cat looks a little less like a tennisball but rather like a very fat hamster. It vanished immediately as I am distracted by howling laughter from behind me. Gabriel throws a disapproving glare at Nathaniel but he can´t help but join the laughter himself. 

"Nathaniel, it isn´t very kind to laugh at others. Do you want me to tell her how you almost burned down heaven on your first attempts? I am quite glad that you never worked with fire again after that...it just didn´t suit you. It´s more for people liek Raphael and Michael, passionate but yet controlled like the fire itself. I find that air was teh rgiht choice for you, it´s for the free spirits!", Gabriel´s words are awfully poetic for my taste but I don´t comment on it. 

"Do you mind if I join you?", Nathaniel asks and gives Gabriel a charming smile and with a sigh Gabriel agrees. Nathaniel insists to show off his few tricks he picked up when he still thought he had a chance at becoming a fire elemental. Apparently he did have a certain affinity for it, but was just not patient enough to control it. He soon has dozens of fiery birds flying all around us and I can´t help but giggle at his obvious attempt to show off. It seems rather childish but there is a charming boyish quality to it as well. Gabriel sighs heavy and seeing that he is going to ahve a hard time actually teaching me anything else today heads off, leaving me there with Nathaniel. Nathaniel grabs the oppurtunity and immediately repeats Gabriels earlier words in a mocking falsetto. I feel a little pang of guilt for mocking Gabriel, but laughing feels good and incredibly relieveing. Nathaniel eyes the poppy behind my ear with a special interest and bends over as if to take it out of my hair. He is incredibly close and I can feel teh warmth coming off him as he gets closer and closer to me, almost unnecessarily close if it was just to pluck the flower out of my hair. I feel his warm breath on my face and stare into the dark of his eyes, not exactly sure about his intentions. His eyes close and there is a panic like sensation that makes my heart beat faster, but in a not completely unpleasant way. He tilts his face slightly and menacingly slowly closes the excess distance between us. There is a sort of an electric