Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:49:11 -0400
From: Carlos Moreno <angelusc@gmail.com>
Subject: Fallen Angel Chapter 3

    My arms ached from being in the same position for so long. My warden
was half asleep; the lower feathers of her wings brushed the floor of the
dungeon. She was pale and half bald.  Her skin was whiter than ivory,
except for two nearly black circles under her eyes. Was it night, or was
she just taking a nap? I didn't know. I personally didn't care anymore. I
looked at my water plate on the shelf next to my face and leaned down into
it to drink some water. It was warm and dusty; Azra hadn't changed it in a
few days.
    Azra was my warden, the only being I had had contact with in over a
century. I had even stopped hating her. She was a soldier, reduced to a
simple babysitter; I guess I was a threat for their plans if they assigned
her to look after me. She was a peculiar angel indeed. Even for a fallen
angel she looked battered. Her wings had been ripped off at some point and
they were now attached by metal plates coming out of her shoulder blades.
Her arms had been replaced by two mechanical hooks that she must have had
since the Middle Ages; at least they looked that old. She wore a black
leather suit that covered her whole body, and all of her scars I
suspected. She was a soldier, but for some reason she chose to have a
female form on earth. Odd. Azra had a faint aura of ancient beauty, of the
ancient purity after which she was named.

    "What are you looking at Camilla?" Azra said to me, her eyes still
closed and her wings batting just a little bit.
    "It never ceases to amaze me how you never sleep, Azra," I said to her,
as if we were friends instead of me the prisoner and her the warden.
    "I don't need to sleep; unlike you I don't have human blood." She
grunted as she opened her eyes. They were a pale silvery gray, almost
white, but not quite.
    "Ah yes, I keep forgetting you are `Pure.'  One of the very last ones.
No wonder you are so ugly, all that inbreeding," I said, as if I had just
come to the answer of an ancient mystery. My words did not go unpunished,
however. She looked at the chains attached to my wings and used her mind to
pull them up. I had to stand on the tips of my toes so my wings wouldn't
get ripped off.
    "Do not forget who has the power in this room," said Azra with a
whisper, which would have gone unnoticed if my hearing wasn't so used to
it. "I could kill you if I wanted to."
    "I'm sure my Father would love to know you killed me," I laughed at
her.
    "Your Father was the one who put you here, remember?" she said, and
closed her eyes again. "I'm going back to sleep. I don't need it, but it
kills time; be good your highness." And then she let go of my chain and my
feet were flat on the floor again; my arms in the same position above my
head as they were when I got to this place over two centuries ago.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Gabriel walked in front of me, and if I didn't know he was a boy I
couldn't be sure. He was so androgynous that I had a hard time figuring out
if I liked him because he was a boy, or because he looked like a girl. His
hips kept moving from one side to the other like rushing winds as he walked
seemingly over clouds to the same mute tune that secretly played behind
those green lagoons he called eyes. His figure itself wasn't feminine but
the way he moved was. It gave his whole being a gender confusion that would
have tricked God Himself.
    I got lost admiring his frame and didn't notice when he turned around.
I looked up, expecting to see the back of his head, and found two green
eyes smiling at me.

    "We have most of our classes together.  If you are going to look at me
like that all the time you are going to fail them all" He smiled, and then
turned around and kept walking in front of me. At this, I hurried and
caught up with him.
    "How do you know what classes we have together?" I asked, completely
ignoring the rest of his comment.
   "Well," he stopped dead in his tracks and started looking for something
in his book bag.  He came up with a bunch of papers that were stapled
together and handed them to me.  "These helped some."

    I looked at the half dozen or so sheets he had given me and discovered
the seating charts for what seemed to be all of Gabriel's classes. Under
each name there was a picture of the student who had that name. I appeared
in six of the seven charts, and I apparently now sat behind Gabriel in
every class we has together, including Theology, to which we were headed. I
handed the papers back to him and looked at him quizzically.

    "So this is how you knew my name?" I asked.
    "Well, duh!" He said in a very boyish tone. "How else could I? Magic?
C'mon dude, we are gonna be late!"

    At this, he grabbed my hand and I felt electric sparks going through
it.  I almost wanted to pull away, but he was running and I was attached to
his hand. After a few seconds he stopped and looked at me.

    "Err... where is the classroom?" he said, blushing just a little. It
seemed that my little angel boy was just that, a regular boy; all the magic
was in my head.
    "I thought `you' would know your way around here Mr. Angelo" I giggled
and he punched me on the arm.  "OUCH! What was that for?"
    "For being a smartass" he said half angry half laughing.
    "Just follow me" I said gesturing with my hand towards the staircase at
the end of the hall.

    We were talking all the way to the classroom and I found out his dad
wanted him to finish school under his watchful eye, since he had been more
than a handful at every single boarding school he had been put into so
far. We approached the door, finally, and I opened it, still talking to
him.
    As I opened the door, twenty nine heads turned around; twenty eight
curious students and one very angry Sister Lourdes...

"Joze Carlos Andrade Ferreira! Where have you been?! You skipped mass and,
not content with that, you are twenty five minutes late for class..." Then
she looked at Gabriel behind me and fell quiet. "Mr. Angelo... how glad to
finally meet you... I'm sorry about what you had to witness but `this',"
she said looking at me with badly hidden rage, "gentleman right here is
always late and..."
    "And he was helping me to find my way around the school, which is quite
big as you might know" He finished up for her with a voice I couldn't
believe possible for a boy like him. It was cold, distant; nothing like the
happy go lucky boy I had been talking to. "Now, we've missed enough class
as it is, let's just skip all the trouble" "Yes, you are right; you've
missed enough class as it is, let's skip all the trouble..." Sister Lourdes
said, looking down a bit confused, and motioned to the two empty seats
which belonged to Gabriel and me. We sat down, and the class began as
usual, even though something told me nothing was going to go as "usual"
anymore.


    I opened my eyes and found that Azra was gone. That was odd; she hadn't
left me alone for, I thought, two or three years. I closed my eyes and
tried to find her in the building, but the protective walls of the dungeon
made my searching pointless. I couldn't get through them.
    I looked at my side and found my food plate full of a pasty white
substance, probably Pegasus' heart. They fed me every half century or so,
with something like this, or something like cherubs wings, that would give
me energy for a while. I looked at it for a second and then I closed my
eyes and dived into it, eating until there wasn't anything left, my face
covered by the thick liquid when I was done.

    "It's nice to see you act like the animal you are, dirt blood," said a
voice behind me that I recognized as Akuji's voice. He was the head of my
Father's Army, and just as cruel as Him. "The Princess of Humanity, reduced
to nothing but a prisoner. This is the stuff that should make the Bible,
don't you think?"
    "The Bible is not known for reporting too many valid facts, so why
would it report this one in particular?" I retorted. At this he walked up
to me and pulled my hair back. It felt as if he had ripped it out.
    "Do not dare talk to me like that.  I'm better than you in every sense,
dirt blood." And then he let go.
    "Except for the soulless part... or do you honestly think I don't know
my Father has it, and that's the only reason you lead His army?" As I
finished this I closed my eyes, expecting another pull on my hair, but he
just stood where he was and spoke.
    "Why do I need one? So I can be like you? I'd rather have power than a
useless piece of nothingness."
    "Akuji... if it is so useless, then why did you destroy the village in
which the demon who stole your mother's soul was hidden?" I looked at the
mirror in front of me and could see a faint presence of pain in his black
eyes.
    "Fuck you Camilla, you deserve to be here." At that he stormed out
leaving the door open. Leaving me smiling to myself. A second later Azra
walked in and closed the door.
    "You say you are better than us Camilla, but you can be much more cruel
than we could ever imagine." And with that my smile faded and I looked at
myself in the mirror to see a patch of hair missing from my head, and blood
rushing out through the wound. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the spot,
and felt the wound closing and the hair growing back.
    "You are proud of having a soul Camilla. I don't know why, because it
is completely black."