Do you believe in angels?

How long?

You won't hear that question voiced, of course; wrong to think of the past, a gross social breach to mention it, a crime in the eyes of your neighbors to admit to possession of a book. They'll look at you with wide eyes shocked and horrified and concerned for you and they're already calling the nearest police station, lips moving just enough to shape words to their phone-implants, words that you can't hear but it doesn't matter because you know what they're saying. Crazy, she's insane, a danger to herself...

Danger, yes, that's it. Dangerous to think about the past, dangerous to remember. Who wants to remember someone who might die that night, vanish and the next day the world never knows their passing, and those who remember mourn tight-lipped and drown themselves in music from surgically attached head-phones and images flashing on view-screens too fast for comprehension. Don't think. Don't remember. Don't grieve that if you die tomorrow, no one will know.

How do I know?

I haven't been there yet, not quite, not that far; I'd like to say I'm not that stupid but I'm afraid to admit to myself that I'm really not brave enough to step through the door.

But I've read, call me crazy but I have, and maybe I've found the answer to the question that I swear is engraved in my brain, the questions no one's asking.

How long.

If you're lucky enough that they pause to answer, humoring you, and then make the call, they'll say "Always" or "Never" as their own denial suits. Always, say those who remember but try not to, try and try and try until they're successful in losing their minds to the throng of Nevers who don't remember and don't know what they're forgetting and don't care. And you know, I don't know who's right. Would you rather remember and fear your memories and fear that they'll find out and know that you're dying? Is it better, then, never knowing you're alive, forgetting fear and forgetting you ever knew, or maybe never knowing? There's death in the night, but you aren't aware. It doesn't matter. Death has no prejudice, doesn't care if the lives it reaps have not been lived.

But I think I have an answer, The answer, even. And it was born of books and of one book in particular, the books the scholars wrote who realized we were falling. They didn't know, of course, that we'd fall so far that we'd turn from the only source of the answer - or did they? There's a certain irony in that, I guess, because the one piece of knowledge that could save my race is embedded in a place they'd never look. But then, does the answer matter if no one's questioning?

Three thousand years ago, we nailed a man to a tree. His crime? No murderer, no thief; he'd suggested only the unthinkable: that maybe we should try being nice to each other.

He died childless, and the children who could have seen the folly of this time died with him, unborn. But his killers fathered our race. My race.

Am I like them? I'd like to say no, their race, their folly, but my feelings prove that wish untrue. I wouldn't care so much if it was someone else.

Maybe I'm not starting in the right place. This is all so hard...

... no, I have it now.

Do you believe in angels?

Our ancestors were wiser than we; they recognized the presence of the winged ones: messengers, miracle workers, those with the power to save. In this day those who remember tend to lump them in with the demons as equally evil and equally good.

But that can't be right. If they were essentially the same, on the same side, they wouldn't be fighting...

Maybe the man we killed millenia ago was one of them, but I think not. How could you kill an angel, the purest, the unborn? He was human, I think, one of those wise enough to help them. He was their first attempt to bring the world into light.

But they moved a little too boldly, a little too fast, and he attracted more attention than they'd intended. And the demons noticed.

They'd learned from the mistake the angels made; they moved quietly, such a small change that no one noticed until it was far too late. Just a little change, what they did to us - only the will to kill an innocent man...

One action, one life, and it set us irrevocably on this path, slipping into darkness that clouds out the light, into nothing, and not caring. I think we've fallen too far to save ourselves...

Had we been alone, the war would never have continued so long. A century, perhaps, or two? before the demons exterminated the human race.

I don't know what ended the first massacre, but the deaths are fewer now, farther between, and you could almost believe that the threat is gone.

No - but restrained, chained into security that's dangerous because no one remembers to fear.

But each night, a number of lives are claimed by the demons; each night, the angels may choose to save the same number. And if they choose well, no one disappears to darkness in the night...

Difficult to find any place, now, where city and buildings needle-like against the sky have not ground away all memory of earth. But find this place if you can, a patch of grass, maybe, brittle and dying-gold but still of Earth, still real, still true. Look up into white clouded brilliance and cold November wind and let the sky fall around you. And catch a snowflake, crystalline and beautiful and fragile but alone, alone and dying. Your life, or mine - one spark in a storm of uncountable millions.

One snowflake - your life, hinging on the chance that you, you of the billions of Earth will be the one chosen an angel smiles upon. A lone snowflake, and it's melting in your hands into icy water that pools and falls into forever. But before you tilt your hand to brush the water away (suddenly unremarkable, only part of the cold-damp seeping into your body)... do remember that you have lived.

"Cae... Caelis!" Voice soft but insistant, lips brushing her cheek so that she felt rather than heard the words. She reached out blindly, instinctively, fingers entwining in something warm and blessedly real that drew her from the clutches of the dream. She opened her eyes slowly, fighting sleep, and looked up into Sannoen's concerned brown eyes.

"You're ice cold, Cae," he observed quietly. Unspoken but understood: What's wrong?

"I'm fine," she insisted, shaking her head, but her voice lacked conviction, and she shivered despite herself, icy sweat chilling her skin. He raised a brow, half-smiling, and she added, in an attempt to justify herself, "Only a dream."

He gave her that penetrating look once again, and she looked down through her lashes, wondering whether to feign sleep. A sudden weight beside her startled her from that idea, and she turned unresistingly into his arms, burrowing into his side. His skin was so warm... warm though he'd surely been out for hours. There was rain in his hair.

"You don't have to go back?" she murmured drowsily, willing to chance sleep again if he was beside her. Surely then she'd be free...

"No," he agreed, fingers in her hair. "I told Kethren that I wasn't pulling another all-nighter. I hate never being here - and the police force can manage well enough without me."

A part of her wanted to argue that - loyal, steadfast Sannoen became the backbone of whatever group he joined. She'd wished often that she clicked as well, had Sano's seemingly natural gift of accepting whatever life the world chose for him. Their technology-obsessed society didn't seem to bother him, and again she envied him that - she couldn't understand the people who retreated into a virtual life so absorbing that they never returned to reality, those who refused life, who refused learning. And she knew he'd seen horrible things, the evils that lurked just beneath the veneer of civilization, but he spoke of none of it to her... Very little fazed Sano.

So different, so very different they were... Why hadn't he chosen someone who would fit as he did, who would make him proud?

Because he preferred the one he could love.

She didn't know where the answer had come from, but it rang with the clarity of truth. Sano wasn't quite so easily fitted into stereotypes - not when the perfect product of their society was one who would never flirt with the dangers of love.

And, oh god, she loved him, she needed him...

A sudden wave of panic rose within her and she clung bone-breakingly tightly to him as the memory of just what she'd dreamed crashed over her. "Don't ever leave, Sano," she entreated, throat tight, and he raised himself up to look at her. Her eyes were bright with tears.

"Never," he promised, cupping her chin in his hands and forcing her to meet his eyes. "But Cae-love, what's wrong? You know I wouldn't leave you." Brows drew together beneath dark bangs, puzzled and worried and not at all sure what was wrong. Oh, god, and he expected her to know?

How do you tell the one you love most that you've dreamed every night of their death, that you'll wake to find them gone and never returning...

"Nothing," she whispered chokingly, shaking her head, sending tears trailing across her cheeks, and buried her head in her pillow so he wouldn't see her crying.

It would have been easy just to call, a warbling dial then click and you're talking to not only a voice but a picture, so real that it seems like you could almost reach into the room, maybe a million miles away. But such false clarity made her uncomfortable - and besides, she told herself, it was doubtful that Aislien had even remembered to leave her viewscreen on.

So she'd turned her head up to Sano to be kissed and I'll be back and turned quickly through the door before she could convince herself she didn't really need to go. But she had to be able to do things on her own - she couldn't cling to Sano forever, because what if...

That train of thought was dangerous; she steered her mind sharply away and stared out the window, into smog and dull light streaked by speed. Impossible to see anything the jet-trans passed... but then, you didn't have to see it, because it was always the same: stony grey skyscrapers and a million weaving neverending roads created a stark landscape that would not have looked dissimilar to some barren asteroid.

Maybe her ancestors had realized what their world was becoming and turned sadly away, turning to technology and speed and faster, always faster, until they couldn't see any longer and didn't have to suffer that constant reminder...

But hadn't there been a time when people drove slowly and went for the trip rather than for the destination?

Not now. Not now.

The brilliant lights of the jet carriage cast reflections on the glass, easier to see almost than the real world outside. She had to concentrate to look past the half-transparent images; now, she rested her cheek against the cool glass and studied the reflection.

Her own image in the corner of her vision; wide grey eyes looking inward in a face framed by long dark hair. Not pretty, she decided critically; too childlike, and those big eyes too dark against fair, creamy skin. Unreal.

Unreal because she didn't wear the vivid colors and bright patterns currently in style? Plenty of color in the carriage around her - rainbows glared at her from all corners, their colors softened only slightly in reflection, a stark contrast against the world outside. Was that intentional?

Looking closer, she realized that perhaps they couldn't see it... Nearly all the other passengers, in fact, wore the mirrored visors with view-screens behind them - they could like, if they wished, in a colorful, intriguing, but virtual world.

They didn't have to see anything - or anyone - else, she realized, suddenly sad. And surely that was the point. Don't talk to your neighbor - don't even look, because you might see something that fascinated and made you look again...

Don't care - the watchword of the world.

So where were they going, the others who would never have thought to visit someone else?

Would they keep going and going missing stops and never there but where to go anyhow, no difference between one city and the next...

But even this escape wasn't forever...

Doubt stirred in her mind. If she'd been here any other day, would the unseeing faces and mindless colors and the people who were not have been any different?

Maybe they had always been here, maybe they would continue until the bright colors couldn't hide too-white lifeless skin stretching over bone, mockery of life but frightening because was there a difference? and she didn't know, she couldn't be sure...

She glanced doubtfully at the nearest passenger and met death's snarling laughter lurking behind the brilliancy, colors that had ceased to believe even their own denial.

Horror tightened her throat; she couldn't breathe, didn't want to, sure the air would poison her, slow death reaching out to brush her with cold fingers, leeching away her warmth and her energy and her life. The demons didn't exist only in the night, oh no... but their methods must be more subtle when wavering nervous light still filled the far sky. And the danger was greater if no one suspected...

But she knew now, they couldn't take her, don't panic no no no -

She rose unsteadily; a struggle to reach the door when the very air resisted, thick and oppressive with threat and unwilling to let her leave. Only ten feet to go but she collapsed against the cool metal door when she reached it, heart racing, waited for the jet-trans to slow all too aware of the darkness pushing in.

She stepped out into frosty air and shadows before the jet-trans reached a halt and stood watching, hair ruffled by its passing, as it sped away into darkness and forever. Vaguely dark here too, though it couldn't be noon yet; buildings casting overlapping shadows and the whole world must be grey but she could deal with this, and her fear seemed a thing of the past now that the bright and gaudy colors had been born away.

No one in the street, she realized, taking odd comfort from it. There were the everpresent speeders and the roar of copters overhead, of course, but pedestrians were a breed that had gone to their extinction long ago.

She took a deep breath of cold calming air, wrapped her coat more tightly around her body, and began to walk.

She didn't have to look through the listing - she knew the apartment number by heart, and entered it accordingly. The call-screen seemed to take far too long to connect - waiting, she stared into the static and hoped Aislien would hear and accept the connection and let her in soon... She hadn't realized how cold it really was, walking, but now that she stood in the building's open lobby with the wind whipping down the narrow road, the chill was harder to disregard.

The pixels dancing across the screen resolved into a woman's face - grey-haired, but not robbed of its fine features by age, expression quizzical and not quite at recognition. Caelis breathed a sigh of relief and spoke quickly, identifying herself. "It's me, mother - Caelis."

"Caelis," the woman's voice murmured across the speakers, quiet and unhurried. "I didn't know you were coming."

No - there'd been no point in mentioning it when things sieved through Aislien's mind so quickly. "Let me in?" she entreated, and her mother nodded slowly and must have pressed the remote that opened the locked door. Caelis was inside before the buzzer had finished sounding.

She turned automatically to the elevator that carried her with efficient whirring speed to Aislien's floor - she didn't even know which it was, she realized, but probably it had caught the number she'd dialed and been waiting for her. A bit unnerving, that, she thought, then realized that the doors had opened for her, humming pleasantly. She stepped out.

Aislien's door was a clean off-white, rare in that it was completely unornamented; almost before she could knock, it swung open, and she met Aislien's warmly smiling eyes. "Hello, Caelis..."

Her mother felt fragile in her embrace, for all that she was as tall as Caelis; though she'd kept that lovely, dignified face, Aislien couldn't hide that she was growing old. Caelis released her quickly, discomforted at her frailty. It didn't seem right -

Aislien hadn't noticed; she held her daughter at arm's-length, examining her critically. "You're frozen, dear - was it raining? You shouldn't have come, you know, it's awfully far..." She didn't give Caelis a chance to defend herself but swept into the next room over. Her words floated back: "I'll make you some tea..."

"It might have been," Caelis answered, more to herself than to Aislien, who surely couldn't hear her. It must have been, though she hadn't noticed; she brushed the sheen of ice from her clothes - it shattered on the floor to melt into the carpet. She rubbed the dark spot the water formed with the toe of her boot and only succeeded in grinding the ice further into the matting. Slightly guilty, she turned away and followed Aislien into the kitchen, smiling slightly at her own nervousness. She wasn't any better than a child who feared a scolding.

Aislien's kitchen was decorated with old-fashioned simplicity, but welcoming and blessedly warm. She rubbed red fingers tingling as the cold numbness receded, and accepted the mug of tea Aislien offered her. It was also warm with a sweetness that brought back memories of - when? Surely no one else still drank tea - it was, after all, neither carbonated nor intoxicating.

No one but Aislien.

She'd also forgotten, Caelis mused, looking surruptitiously up at her mother through her lashed, that Caelis needn't have walked - there was, after all, that lovely new oh-so-wonderful oh-so-fast jet-trans and myriad other vehicles of every sort... Likely, though, that Aislien was not aware that such things existed - her memories of her own childhood, decades ago, were perfect, but now...

Ironic that honest, true Aislien was one of the few who couldn't be blamed for failing to live in the real world.

She finished her tea and didn't allow herself to be resentful that she couldn't turn to her parent for help. What sort of world did she think she was living in, anyway?

"I knew that would help. You don't look so white now." Aislien smiled at her as if she was five, still naive enough that something sweet and warm inside her would make the world right. "What did you say you came over for?"

"I didn't," Caelis corrected her quietly. "I just wanted to see how you were doing." She glanced up at Aislien, suspicion roused. "Have you been taking your medicine, mother?"

Aislien's blue eyes clouded; she shook her head, obviously upset. "I don't know - I can't recall..." She must have noticed her daughter's concern; she donned a bright smile. "But Caelis, don't worry."

But I do.

"An angel watching over me."

That startled her; she looked up quickly, but her mother's smile held nothing. Just an old woman invoking a good-luck charm.

God, if there was such a thing, wouldn't she pay the world for it?

"Do you believe in angels?" she asked, words never intended to leave her lips.

Aislien smiled. "I never told you of them? They're beautiful creatures, Caelis - white robed and white winged and watching over the world. Their city's in the mountains, farthest from our world - and they could stay there, but they love our people... and there's a guardian angel watching for you, too."

A fairy-tale dream, but...

An angel watching over you.

"There was one other thing," she added, voiced raised for her own benefit as much as Aislien's - it had to be too late to think better of it now.

Insane, but...

"I'm going away for a while" - on vacation, inspiration nudged, but she couldn't bring herself to lie to Aislien. "Don't worry. But if Sannoen calls - you've met Sano, you know him... tell him you've seen me. Tell him I'm safe."

Goodbye, mother.

She was still warmed by the tea when the wind whispered through her - a weak but welcome buffer against the cold.

She had to leave, after all, before she could think about this.

How?

How, she hadn't thought, couldn't think now. She dropped a handful of plastic coins into the ticket-printer and reached automatically to take the resulting slip from the machine. It was still warm from the printing; it smelled like ink. Suddenly precious, she held it like glass, almost fearing to touch it. If it smudged... she couldn't go on nor back. She'd spent all the money she carried on this.

Suddenly she felt like crying.

The exorbitant price she'd paid without question ensured her a ride to the end of the line, as far as the 'jets went, and a compartment to herself on an express. She hadn't wanted to get back on a jet at all, ever, but realistically it was the only way. She couldn't have even walked home; it would have gotten dark long before she reached the safety of her home with Sano, and she knew that she could never have done that. Shadows she accepted - she'd always lived in them. But she couldn't face the long winter dark.

The compartment, when she saw it, did something to alleviate her fears. It wasn't particularly large - in the city-world, space was the rarest of luxuries - but it was unassumingly grey and pleasantly cool and hers for a day. The doors locked; she'd be as safe as she was anywhere.

She sprawled full-length across the bench by the window, her elbows on the plush cover and her chin cupped in her hands. None of this had seemed real before - but as the cityscape accelerated into a blur of grey, she found herself suddenly crystal-conscious. She'd made a decision - she couldn't hide from it any longer. Welcome to the real world, Caelis.

Sano - his memory had infilterated every corner of her consciousness. He would worry if she didn't come back - he'd never expect her to do something like this.

At least she was still capable of surprising someone.

She had asked Aislien to reassure Sano if he called - and he would, knowing where she'd been going. Did she really believe that her mother hadn't already forgotten her visit?

She didn't.

She had to.

Guilt shot through her with almost physical pain. Oh - he would worry.

But she was doing this for him, dammit! Why was this so hard?

She rested her cheek against the seat of the bench, closed her eyes, but couldn't quite escape the warm tears trapped behind her lashes.

Hadn't some ancient religion placed the home of the gods on a mountaintop that reached the heavens? Easy to believe such a thing, now she'd seen the realm of the angels...

Impossible to see the mountain's peak from where she stood, but she'd seen enough during the jet's approach that her imagination could construct the slender needles of stone, the highest towers of a graceful citadel, lost in clouds that never left the mountain - the smoky garments fashioned by the angels to hide their home. Her fancy would have added a narrow wind-worn staircase spiraling into eternity, but she wasn't so entranced that the fallacy of such a detail wasn't apparent. No way to reach those peaks but on white wings.

A sudden gale swept down from hidden heights, rushing through her, stealing her body's heat. It was snowing lightly, she realized, and a gleaming glaze of ice coated each stone. Beautiful - treacherous. No way she could have reached the city of the angels even had there been a staircase to pave her way.

It occurred to her that the beings she sought weren't looking for visitors. They needed no contact with the human world to fight the quiet rebellion against the dark - and what better vantage point from which to observe success or failure than this high untouchable keep?

Why open your door to your enemy?

Why did the jets even run this far? she wondered, hope freezing in the icy wind. Why even give me that?

Because the human race did still retain some vestige of free will.

Free will, or simply greed, and the desire to colonize all the earth?

Gift or fault, it had thrown that one cog in the workings of the divine ones' plans. So she hadn't had to face this hopelessness until now - she had at least gotten farther than the city-world.

Did it matter if she couldn't go any further now? Did it help that she had hoped?

Yes, she decided, with sudden determination. She'd escaped the city - she didn't have to go back. She'd be free, and where safer than at the foot of the kingdom of the angels?

Except...

Sannoen.

So she couldn't stay here.

She closed her eyes against the glare of light-on-ice, against the sting of the wind, against despair that she couldn't feel, couldn't-couldn't-couldn't because she had to do this. If Aislien's right, if an angel watches me... If you love me, help me now.

Silence but she couldn't believe that no no no no had to hope had to believe if you love me...

And feathered wings shivered behind her and an alien thought entered her mind: Love has nothing to do with it.

She turned slowly, hardly daring to hope, knowing that she couldn't face disappointment this time, and gasped at light so brilliant it burned even through closed eyes, stinging and so gloriously pure it hurt...

And the presence she had felt in her mind spoke aloud: "It has been longer than you have words for since humans dealt with the asthalei. What do you seek?"

She forced herself to open her eyes even against the brightness, raised a hand to her eyes and found that through the pale, draping fabric of her sleeve she could stand to look into the light. And, when the dazzle cleared from her vision, an answer to the question asked her came to mind.

Only to look upon an angel...

White wings wavered half-tensed half-folded, feathers trailing almost to brush the ground. He might have had only one pair of wings, might have had more; he relaxed them slowly to drape around his body like a cloak, and they blended into the shimmer-white of his clothes. Difficult to look directly at his face even through the veil of fabric, but she made out high cheekbones and fine features, silver-blond hair loose around his shoulders. His skin seemed to glow with moonbright luminescence; blue eyes shone with a deep light. Pure and brilliant and very very beautiful; she felt awkward and painfully inadequate but couldn't seem to look away.

He returned her look for a moment, frowning slightly, eyebrows arched, and then nodded as if in realization; the light that emanated from skin, wings, clothing, dimmed. "Forgive me; I forget that you're only human. Your race is more accustomed to shadows and darkness, aren't they?"

Beautiful as snow and just as icy.

She lowered her arm slowly, also frowning; the cool, impersonal tone of his voice stung her as deeply as his words. Only human I am, I know. Do you think that I wouldn't give anything and everything to change that? How could you think I have chosen this?

"What quest is yours, human?" A touch of impatience in his voice.

She lifted her head resolutely, forced herself to meet his eyes. "I know that the angels have the power to save one life from the demons each night. I ask of you - give me this gift for just one night. I only ask for the life of one person." I only ask for one night as an angel.

A raised eyebrow told her that he knew the immensity of what she asked, and knew that she knew, and had asked anyway. For a sudden breathless moment she feared he'd dismiss her outright, not even stay to honor her with an answer... but though his snowy wings whispered with tense movement, he stood still, calm and focused on her. If one emotion did slip through his icy facade, it was - not annoyance, not contempt, but - curiosity.

"Why do you ask this of me?"

She had to take a deep breath; it took an conscious effort to speak, even to breathe, because she'd felt him enter her body and her mind, his presence rushing like water, swift as thought, knowing her answer before she did herself. She should have felt violated but the only feeling that penetrated the flood of cool calm esctasy was a sense that he was dangerous, that she was in danger, because it'd be so easy just to surrender to such a wonderful intruder and forget to live...

Live! to live! why else had she come? some inner force insisted, a thin piercing scream of protest at the angel's intrusion. Couldn't die couldn't give up had to go back because she loved...

Loved?

Sannoen.

"Because I'd know what to do," she whispered, and her mind was once more her own.

"Would you?" His expression was unreadable; she felt more than ever how inhuman he was. He didn't elaborate, merely watched her with those unfathomable eyes that looked past shielding skin and humanity. The air almost crackled with uncertain questions, she felt, a light-speed tension that rose and rose and broke finally into stunning silence cold as ice.

When he finally looked to her, to her-Caelis-human rather than her thoughts alone, his eyes were disturbingly clear. "Yes," he agreed, softly, and she had to try on several names for the emotion he exuded: half-amused curiousity and annoyance not directed at her and uncertain surety. She didn't understand; too many answers to the question - why - but none seemed to make sense. An overwhelming knowledge that she couldn't possibly ever see the entire picture.

Well, what right did a human have to the blessed-knowledge of the angels?

And then the wall snapped back up so firmly that she couldn't be sure she'd really seen, and before her stood only the ice angel - not only, but so far above her and such a world of difference between them that it seemed ridiculously futile to attribute any human quality to him. "You will have what you ask," he informed her, beautifully painfully distant once again, and a frosty gaze forbade her to ask why. She didn't.

"One life will be saved for the night you choose," he continued, quiet but infinitely regal, a lord conferring an amazing gift. "I do not know why you ask this, Caelis of the humans, but you will have it. This and no less and no more." A marble hand touched her lightly, a pattern traced across her brow almost too delicate for comprehension, and he nodded, repeating, almost to himself: "I shall watch, and you will have it. Go now."

Snow fell from the city of the angels, silent as pure white wings.

She could tell even as she pressed her thumb to the lock and pulled their door open with tense excited speed that he was not there, but she ran through all of the three rooms they possessed anyway, nearly dancing. She'd have ran to Sano and clung and laughed until she couldn't breathe if he'd been there; he would have held her patiently and waited until she could calm herself enough to speak. He wasn't there, so she hugged her arms to her chest and couldn't stop smiling and would not have been scared by anything and wondered if she was crazy.

Later, when the shadows crept in, eluding even the persistant fluorescent light, and chased away her hysterical happiness, she changed the viewscreen to a temporary archaic window and sat by it on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest and chin cupped in her hands. She watched the dim street until the last vestiges of sulky half-light fled and shadows roamed through the darkness. Eleven turned to twelve turned to one, and he wasn't home. She fetched a pillow, just to lean on for a moment, and curled catlike with her cheek laid on it. It smelled like Sannoen and precious, wonderful safety.

She must have slept, for the slight noise of Sano creeping in startled her just into semi-consciousness. Vaguely she could hear him moving through the house, and then he stood over her, brow furrowed but the worry-lines fading, smiling to see her. "Caelis, what have you been doing..."

She shrugged sleepily and he laughed in soft relief and half-lead half-carried her to the bed. "More comfortable here, hmm?" he asked, and she murmured something that made the last traces of concern retreat to the back of his mind and he chuckled and kissed her.

"I did it, Sano'," she murmured, a little later, slipping into comfortable calming warmth but remembering something that had been importent, hadn't it? she should tell him... "I did it, it's okay now. You'll live, Sano, love you."

He stirred at her side, and raised his head slightly in the all-but-darkness, a darker silhouette among the already-present shadows. "Of course I will, Cae'. Of course," he agreed, soothingly. But though her eyes were closed, she could feel him lean over to look at her, quietly curious, questioning. She didn't respond, too close already to sleep.

"... You can tell me in the morning," he whispered, the last thing that she heard before she slipped into finally peaceful dreams.

"Don't do that again, Cae-love, please." Sano was quiet but firm, standing over her like an adult rebuking a child, and she smiled and nodded into her breakfast. She could afford to, happy in secret knowledge of security. She hadn't told Sano why she'd vanished those - how many days ago? but she didn't need to, really... He wouldn't understand, and he might not approve - Sano she loved but he didn't understand all the things she did. He wouldn't, couldn't comprehend and believe the angel who would have been only an wonderful doubtful thought if she didn't know and feel that she held his promise.

And some things, some things like the touch of an angel, shouldn't be shared.

"I called Aislien, but she didn't know where you'd gone," Sano continued, and that made her grimace regretfully. She'd forgotten Aislien in her elation - she'd forgotten how Sano must have worried and how her mother must have when she'd heard from a distraught Sannoen that her daughter was missing... She looked up to Sano with nervous guilt in her eyes. "I am sorry. I'll go see her - let her know I'm okay."

She doubted, silently, that Aislien would even have remembered the incident; her mother's emotions were whole-hearted but fleeting. But it'd ease her conscience, certainly. And she thought she could go back on the jet-trans, even, when she'd spoken with an angel.

Sannoen must have read her face; he hugged her to him with one arm, gentle but protective. "No, you don't, Cae' - can't you stay here for just a day, at least? I can drop by - I'll tell her for you."

Tempting, tempting suggestion to mute her nagging guilt... She bit her lip, uncertain, and he smiled at her. "Look, Cae, it'll be okay, promise. Just stay safe today, please."

She'd really wanted to be convinced all along, she decided, watching the door hiss closed behind him.

The viewscreen's alert was sounding for the sixth time when she finally decided that her would-be caller wasn't going to just give up. She was as wary of answering calls as she was of initiating them herself - but she recognized Aislien's callsign in a glance and quickly tapped the button that would accept the call. It was rare indeed that her mother would think to call.

Sannoen's face displayed in the viewscreen she was unprepared for - but it made more sense, when she considered it, that he would have dialed the call for Aislien. "Hey," she greeted him, but his expression made her brief smile fade away. "Sano? Something wrong?"

There was more worry in his eyes than she'd ever seen; and when he spoke his words were slow and disjointed, as if he didn't quite believe himself. "Cae, Cae-love - Aislien's gone."

Gone? What - where? Aislien hadn't been one to go out often even when she'd been - fully in control of herself. She couldn't think what Sano was trying to tell her; the words drifted over her meaninglessly, failing to click.

"She's dead, Caelis."

She might have stared at him for seconds or hours, disbelieving uncomprehending unable to speak. Couldn't be true - couldn't be true but Sano didn't lie, it must be - no no no no no...

Silently, she cut the connection and ignored the near-immediate request for a reconnection. She let it ring, and didn't let herself think until she'd disabled the viewscreen with fumbling but silent fingers. Perhaps it quieted then but she couldn't tell; her ears rung with the rush of her blood and her own heartbeat, now excruciatingly deafeningly loud and at once not loud enough to silence the screaming terrified pain that lurked in her mind and dogged every thought.

She couldn't talk to Sannoen. Wouldn't even try or let him because how could she when she'd fought fear and disbelief for the gift of an angel - to save him, to keep for Sano for the time of his need but in the midst of the numbing joy last night they'd killed Aislien. And she'd failed, she'd failed - she'd tried to protect the one she thought she'd loved and her mother was dead dead dead dead the one who'd promised her an angel's guardianship and hope and believe was dead.

But even through this one thought penetrated - she had to go, she had to go because clearly she wasn't fit to live, not when people died because she'd wanted to save, not when she killed by misplaced longing. So she'd go, she'd leave and Sano could have the house and have his life, and then -

- and then maybe she could find where pain ending and hurting ceased and there was silence and peace. And if not in life -

Standing on the stairs with the door locked behind her, she realized that she didn't even know how to die.

Well...

The thought was sudden and surprising and more so because it had a certain logic that pierced even despair-numbness: she'd read and believed in good and evil, in the angels and the demons who fought for the world. And if she'd spoken to an angel...

She'd pick an alleyway at random and walk until all sense of location left her and seek out the shadows and wait for the demons and when she saw the dark shapes moving towards her she'd wish for Sano's life. The angel's gift would not be wasted, though she hadn't known when to use it, though such a mistake had already been made. She'd wanted it for Sano and he'd have a night of protection for what good it did him.

Maybe she still loved, but love seemed a dim and unreal thing. Maybe the angel's spell was still on her...

And that seemed most likely, for as she walked into shadow, looking for death, she couldn't fear for the first time in her life and she saw only pure and beautiful light.

Why had she ever feared the demons? Why - why, when they did not touch her even when she went willingly to them - why, when she looked for death? Did disaster lurk behind fear and worry - if you could stop caring, did that make you safe?

She had no room in her any long to care about anything but the end that eluded her, the quiet eternal darkness without need of thought that surely surely surely she deserved - but she'd walked for a minute or an hour or a century and they hadn't touched her. Unfair! unfair.

Perhaps she'd been deluding herself, an unpleasant voice suggested. Perhaps all those people she'd dismissed as blind had been right and there was no danger and death an illusion and all pretense, pretense and lies for a purpose unknown. Lies...

Just when that cruelly rebellious thought had begun to insinuate itself into her belief, her straining ears caught the unmistakeable beat of wings.

Tense against her will, she spun, seeking the source of the sound - and gasped when she found it. She should make her choice now, she knew, speak for Sano's life but she couldn't seem to do it. And as the shadow advanced on her with slow purposeful strides, her world seemed to close around her. She saw and understood nothing, nothing, nothing -

Nothing but snow-white wings.

"Caelis. Caelis..."

It echoed in her mind, resounding and reverbating and refusing to let her go. She would have liked to sleep but it wouldn't let her, this word, this name - her name.

Her name?

She opened her eyes slowly and a world of light intruded on her senses, light and color beyond imagination, beautiful and brilliant and - was she dead?

Dead? Why would she be?

"You're not dead," the speaker reassured her, quiet amusement in its voice. His voice, she rather thought - though he sounds like no one she'd ever spoken to. Unhuman as an angel, but...

He slipped into her vision and she stared and closed her eyes and opened them again, slowly, just enough that she could peer through her lashes. Something beautiful and unreal before her - something with a wedge-shaped, bearded head crowned in gold, with a scaled body that shone silver-white and blue, blue eyes. And wings - broad wings pinioned in white.

What was he?

"Nor are you still asleep," he added, eyes gleaming. "I saw you wake, Caelis. You're listening."

Well. She opened her eyes fully, and looked up to meet his. "You're not an angel," she pronounced, quietly.

"An angel? No. I should be flattered, though, I suppose - the angels are a beautiful race on your world, aren't they?" His smile was toothy but not frightening; he shook his head once again. "No, I'm a dragon - though I suppose that wouldn't mean much to you. My name would do better, wouldn't it? - it's Rindel-Syaess. Call me Rindel if you like."

Dragon. He'd been right; the word meant nothing to her, but then he too was completely outside her experience. "Rindel," she tried, and rather liked it. "Rindel. How - how do you know me?"

"Well..." He looked suddenly embarrassed and a little guilty; he shifted his wings uncomfortably, and the feathers rustled. "I'm afraid I looked into your mind, Caelis. I had to - I had to be sure you were over feeling suicidal." Here he tilted his head to regard her from one eye. "You are, aren't you?"

"Yes. I am."

"You remember, then, too - oh, I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't ask..."

"It's okay," she assured him, and was surprised to find that she meant it. Though she knew nothing of his race or their standards, she decided that for all his size and beauty, he was still relatively young. "I wanted to die," she agreed, "but I don't now. Would you let me if I did?"

"No," he admitted, but he smiled at her. "But Caelis, you wouldn't have died that way even if I hadn't come, I don't think..." A clear light mind touched hers, and she found herself reminded forcibly of the angel - because Rindel-Syaess was so alike, because he was so infinitely different. "Do you want to see?" he asked, and she nodded.

Her perspective shifted almost instantly for a moment and an image: a girl standing dwarfed between skyscraping monoliths - but standing in light, as if the shadows feared to touch her. "Me?" she wondered, staring up at Rindel as the image faded, and he nodded, serious.

"Yes. You were almost glowing, you see - I don't think the darkness would have touched you." He shrugged in an oddly human gesture. "I don't know why - I don't understand your world."

It might be difficult, she considered, smiling wrily, to understand less than she did - strange thought, to realize that you could spend your life on a world and fail to understand - but true and perhaps especially true of her world... or of her. The thought sparked a memory and she searched automatically for the feeling that meant she still had the angel's gift - she did, she decided, though... "It couldn't do anything here." Rindel looked at her and didn't question.

"Where is here?" she asked finally, and thought the dragon looked rather relieved, maybe because she wasn't going to want to discuss good and evil and the answer to life with him.

"We're in Ryslen," he told her - "and you'll be a Novo when you've recovered, Caelis."

"I'm recovered," she protested, if only mildly. "A Novo?"

"Means 'new', I believe," he explained. "But a candidate, basically - to bond with a dragon."

'New' she liked, she decided - 'new' she needed. But... "No," she whispered, a sudden fear rearing its head within her. "No. No bonds, no friends - I can't do that." Her voice sounded bleak even to herself, melodramatic, but she meant it - he had to understand. "Rindel, someone died because of me..."

Perhaps he didn't listen, perhaps he didn't care, but he shook his head definitely. "No, Caelis, you don't understand. You can."

"I can't make promises either," she argued but it felt futile already.

"That's okay. Just try," he insisted, and she knew that even if she regretted agreeing later, she couldn't argue any longer with him, now - because there was forgiveness in his eyes.

The time between awakening and searching and hatching blurred in Caelis' eyes until it might have been a day or a month that she walked with Rindel and argued and didn't win. There was the tense unease, always, of the healing injury with new guilt laid on - she shouldn't be here, should she? Out of her world but it didn't feel as if she'd earned the escape, when - Sano.

She learned not to ponder that but didn't always remember.

Rindel pushed her through sudden returning doubt when the beginning of the hatching was announced, all the way to the sands to congregate with the other Novos. He couldn't stay with her on the sands, of course, and she slipped perversely to the back - just to watch. Watching was wonderful; watching entailed no obligation and no danger.

And it would have been difficult not to watch and to wonder and to gasp with the crowd at the many and beautiful offspring of this clutch.

Only as the burst and shatter of the eggs began to slow did a spectator's role become less than enough. One golden-bright hatchling caught Caelis' eyes; she watched as the youngling righted herself and untangled a double pair of wings, and her breath caught as, calm and certain, the dragonet walked to her - to her -

Pause and perhaps the world stopped while rainbow eyes turned up to Caelis' and a whisper came. Caelis, my name is Jesyranle...

And she sounded like the angels but not so, like music and choice and freedom and insistance and - Cae-love, don't fear.

And she knew Sano's laughing-loving name for her and spoke it with the same love and the same promises. I won't leave you, Caelis!

And kneeling by Jesyranle's side and whispering and trying the name that sounds like melody on her lips, Caelis took in light-gold skin dappled in brilliant snow and long-sparred wings rich royal gold, and knew and was glad that her Jesyranle looked nothing like an angel.

Ryslen's Flurry 2003