Anael

[offthebeatenpath]

Flying, Em discovered, hadn't lost any of its thrill in the year she'd gone without. It felt every bit as wonderful and natural as it had in Duninnean, only now there was a hint of anxiety too, that she might be seen. She'd flown a few times since Halloween and the new understanding of her powers, but only at night, and usually further out from the city center, over quiet neighborhoods or wooded areas where there would be fewer people to see.

Autumn nights in England weren't exactly warm at ground level, let alone in the air, but she'd found if she bundled up, the warmth of her real clothes was just as real no matter what the projection over herself appeared to wear. So she could enjoy her flights without being too cold on her way back to the squat. Tonight she 'wore' a long, white dress trimmed in gold that matched the golden angel wings lifting her into the sky. The wings were the strangest thing, mostly because they didn't feel strange at all, as much an extension of her thought as they would be on her Knight of Swords. She wanted to fly, so they beat and she flew.

The moon was just past full, making it all the more likely someone could see her, but Em wanted to clear her head, and flying worked even better than Askani meditations sometimes. She could soar on the wind, looking down over the city, heart-free and head-quiet, no distractions, and just be for awhile.

Comments

[whispersoflove]

Anael watched her curiously for a long while, remaining cloaked as he did so. She was not one of them, of that he was certain, not because he would have known all of his brethren (they were many), but because she did not feel like one of them. Some of them might have wings this small, for all he knew, and some of them definitely had golden wings, but she was not angelic, for all that she looked like an angel stepped right out of a picture book. Aside from her eyes. Fully white eyes, everything but angelic.

He reappeared to mortal eyes a little way away, and flew over to her, looking much less the part of the angel in his usual jeans and t-shirt, if it weren't for the large wings protruding from his back and disturbing a lot more air than her smaller ones did, each time they beat. He stopped a few feet from her, hovering in the air and watching her curiously, with no trace of hostility.

"You didn't have wings last time we met," he ended up settling on, and then smiled. "Then again, neither did I."