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

current jolting through my body as our lips touch and for a long moment I juste njyo taht jolting heightened awareness of my lips on his. He gives me time to adjust before he moves his hand up and softly places it on the left side of my face. He doesn´t push it any farther than that and it appears he is pleasantly surprised when I kiss him back. The current settles into a soft mellow feeling rather than fiery passion and I am glad for it. We just stay there like that for what seems liek an eternity before he pulls back to breathe. He looks at me almost expectantly, waiting for me to say soemthing, anything. if I didn´t know better i woudl go as far as to suggest he is nervous.

"Ok...you gotta give me something here...anything. I´m sorry if that was a bit out of the blue but I´ve been wanting to do this for a while now. It´s been driving me crazy and I swear I wanted to give you space, the last thing I want to do is force myself on you...", his voice is hasty and he is rushing the words. I smile a little, the ever mysterious and untouchable Nathaniel is as nervous as any guy could be. It gives the moment a wonderfully mundane and rodinary quality without ruining it. He bgins tio fret with his hair as he waits for an answer from me.

"I have to admit I really didn´t expect that but the fact that I kissed you back should tell you enough", I grin at him and he sighs in relief. He pouts a little at the vagueness of my answer but the pout is soon replaced by a smirk. I do admit there is something insanely hot about that smirk. I roll my eyes at myself, I am excatly doing what I swore not to. Getting attracted to him is probably not a great idea, but I have quite a hard time telling myself that after the kiss.

"Now how did I do?", it seems an almost vain question to ask. Almost as if he is looking for approval, but then I see the slight quiver in his lip. He is nervous! I smirk evily, deliberately stalling. 

"I´d say you did rather well, but I think I may need some more input to give a better review", I fail at seductively winking at him and he almost falls over howling with laughter. I glare at him but join him when he starts tickeling me. It all feels so normal, not something I would have seen myself doing at all but  decide not to spoil the moment by asking where all this is going to go at all. Perhaps it doesn´t matter at all. 

 

 I walk home still high on the sweet carefreeness that comes with kissing someone you like, but haven´t exactly fallen deeply for yet. There is no promise in those kinds of kisses and it feels rather nice that I can choose wether or not they are going to have a meaning or not. For all we both know we could just go back to being the way we were tomorrow, there is no haste for anything. I know that as soon as I walk in through Michael´s door I am going to be in trouble for missing training with Raphael. On the other hand I did also miss my flying lesson with Michael so he can´t exactly hand that out as a punishment either. I stall deliberately as we reach the door, suddendly rather nervous again. I lean against teh doorframe and look at him, my heart beating a lot faster than it should. He places his arms over my head and leans down dreadfully slowly. To my great disappointment the kiss is dreadfully short, leaving me all flustered and the short warm rush is immediately replaced by teh harsher cold of the evening as he moves back. I am suddendly overly aware of the fact that I don´t want him to leave at all, but I know that he has to. He smiles down at me and can´t resist but reach up and ruffle his hair a bit more, leaving a little mark of me on him in a way. He smiles again and turns to leave, I watch him walk over to Gabriel´s house before I take a deep breath and quickly try to order my hair and clothes a bit before knocking. Michael opens the door and gives me a scolding look, but says nothing. He walks back inside and leaves me standing there rather confused. i would ahve expected him to get angry again, to shout or in any way voice his anger. I am rather confused but I don´t really mind not having to argue with him. He turns only to give me a look of utter disappointment and says: "You missed your training today, if you´re not serious about this maybe you should consider letting me know about it and I will find you a place with a mentor that is more laid back about your training"

"I´m sorry I got carried away and forgot the time", I try weakly. I don´t really like him being disappointed with me any more than his anger. Somehow it cuts a lot deeper to see taht he is just giving up on me like that. He is all too calm, unnervingly so.

"Don´t give me excuses, Felice. I know exactly what you were busy with and I can´t say I approve. And I will have you know that if you continue to miss your lessons for taht sort of thing I am inclined to ask you to move out", ouch...

"It´s not going to happen again", I say in a small voice. He has managed to make me feel guilty beyond measure. he is quite right in what he is saying, I shouldn´t miss important lessons...but on the other hand I don´t even know why everyone is so damn pushed on training me to fight and all that. When will I ever have to fight and what? I don´t want to fight demons like Michael, I would run scared. I´m not brave like him, never have been. Michael just leaves me standing there and turns his back on me. I realise I would much rather an outburst of anger than this sort of indifference toward me. If he got angyr that would show he cared...I feel rather liek a hypocrite saying that but it is true. 

 

I lie in bed, aware of the soft hands of sleep reaching out to me but not quite able to embrace them. I stare at my ceiling, reliving todays events in my mind with a smile. I wrap my arms around myself comfortably, trying to picture what it would be like if I decided to keep this going. Do I really want to attach myself to Nathaniel...that would mean losing him as a friend for sure and I know that Michael wouldn´t be happy about it either. On that rather negative turn of thoughts I decide that maybe going to sleep is the better option. I can worry about it all some other day. I give in to the sort pull and glide into the darker depths of night. My dream begins with me standing in a field of poppies, a lot like the one I visited in the morning. Exept taht thsi field is entirely made out of poppies and regardless of where I look there is nothing but more poppies from one horizon to the other. There is a soft gleam of sunlight in the distance and I see a figure descending from the sky. I recognise him immediately and he walks over slowly, watching me with great interest. I cross my arms infront of my chest and keep my eyes on him carefully. He stands infront of me and gives me a once over.

"You look good", he remarks, a rather odd thing to say. I can cross chit chatting with the devil off my bucket list, I think to myself and he smiles with an amused expression. Can´t any of these winged bastards keep out of my head?, I think deliberately loud and can´t help to smirk at his almost pained expression.

"I am rather intrigued at your bravery, does Michael not teach you to be respectful?", his voice is almost condescending but there is a trace of humours beneath the layers.

"He tries. I thought you weren´t particularly fond of his teachings?", I could slap myself...talking to the most powerful being in creation loike thsi can´t possibly be a great idea. I am one of the greatest cowards alive, scared of a demon but brave enough to stand up to the devil. And probably only beacuse I am pretty certain that he can´t hurt me in this dream world. At least i presume it is a dream world, i could be wrong entirely. But something tells me I am right, a subtle voice...the same voice also points out to me that if this is a dream world there must eb a way to force myself to wake up from it. In a rather pathetic attempt I rach and pinch myself, off course nothing happens but Lucifer raising a questioning eyebrow. In this simple little motion I can see the realtion to Michael almost painfully clearly. 

"You caught me there.I must say I find you quite to my liking, you´ve got a fire to you. Humour me, what´s your elemental link?", the question seems a bit out of the blue. But yet again chatting with Lucifer is not exactly an ordinary sort of thing either. I decide that maybe it´s best not to tell him the truth, afterall you never know what he is after. He isn´t known as the biggest sinner for nothing.

"Air, I can talk to birds and stuff...", the lie comes easier than I would have expected. 

"Liar", he says and shakes his head in what I can only call disappointment. "That means you must be a fire elemental like him, because of the fact that you felt you needed to lie to me I somewhat doubt the other two. Both earth and water elementals are rather truthful, only fire elementals harbour taht sort of sceptiscism. You know that you´re going to have to trust someone sooner or later, don´t you?"

"That´s pretty rich coming from you to be fair. You´re expecting me to trust you?, my tone is full of accusation and I feel a flare of anger in me. Who is he to be giving me taht sort of advice?

"Never heard of the phrase sympathy for the devil? Trusting me could be quite worth your while, when I get out of here you should know where you stand and I can guarantee you I will not stand on the loosing side again. The question is whose side will you be on?", he seems dead serious, all traces of humour gone from his voice. He stares at me out of his piercing grey eyes, a flame burning in them brightly and I can see his wings appear to glow oh so slightly as his mood intensifies. 

"You´re using a Rolling Stones song to justify yourself?", did he really think I was going to let that one slide. As an outsider i got my fare share of musical knowledge trying to avoid having to talk to people. 

"I need no justification, what I did was not for me alone but for all of you. Like it or not, I am not the bad guy they want you to view me as. Where is that god they all speak about, where is my father? I for one have not heard a word uttered by him ever since that son of his walked the earth! I will take his place and rule over the heavenly courts, all angels and all humans will have their choice. I will rule fair and justly...can´t you see I only seek the best for