Chapter One — Part 2

One day, while Tiffany scrubbed the wood floors in the business room, Mother Tester called me away from my post. The second avatar of the angels, Tester was a creature of dark skin, black horns, and I’d never seen her wearing clothes. I’d been worried that I might be put on another assignment. I dreaded that thought. Tiffany was my girl, and nobody was going to take her from me.

As if sensing I was in a bad temper, Tester was late. She left me waiting by a tree in the woods while she tended to other business. She’d called me from Tiffany’s side, and now she had me waiting for her. I sat down for close to an hour, for her to finally come back and tell me what was so important that I had to wait for her for so long. Of course, by the time she finally did show up, I’d fallen asleep in a patch of sunlight.

“Why, if it isn’t my little Buddha, thinking away the day under such an old tree.” Tester said, waking me up with a gentle nudge of her big toe.

I looked up from my catnap. Mother smiled savagely, her eyes studying me in ways that always left me wondering if she weren’t mentally dissecting me. Tester was something to envy, with her long, silken legs with muscles both feminine and fully developed. Such was her nature, to test the ethics and dignities of humankind. But she didn’t test me like the other angels. Being the daughter of the avatars did have some perks. She was still pushing me gently with her toes when I finally looked away.

“I’m awake already, you can stop with the kicking. What’s so important that you’d dirty your hands coming to Earth just to talk to me?”

“Can’t a woman visit her own daughter without a reason?”

“You never have before.” I said.

“Well then, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you. You’re growing fat and lazy watching that little concubine. So I’m giving you a task worthy of a higher angel–one that will knock a few pounds off that plump body of yours. Hope you’ve enjoyed your vacation, because your new assignment is a serious one.

You have to stop a war.”

I flexed my wings, trying to puff them out in the humid, stagnant air.

They were dark folds of hairless skin. Nothing could make them look like the feathered wings of the transcendent angels.

“Why can’t one of the older angels do this job and leave me to the simple tasks?”

I made one more wasted effort at trying to look imposing, finding it hopeless. I just wasn’t like my mother. I let my wings sag and met Tester’s gaze, my own eyes defiant. Her breasts, like mine, were small, her body a little more ideal than my own–and her horns actually exposed above her hair. Some angels, by the way, do have horns, because sometimes people need nightmares. She seemed to be thinking of the appropriate answer.

“They’ve sealed their fates already. It’s up to you to determine your personal destiny now.”

I wanted to scream out that nothing could be more important than taking care of Tiffany. The thought of having to do something that might separate me from the girl I’d spent so much time with made me angry. I bit my lip, frustrated, then realized that even Tiffany’s one life might have less value than thousands of lives lost in battle.

“What war?” I asked, humbled.

“Father can explain it to you much better than me.” Tester smiled, and I chilled about thirty degrees. “Go to Otherspace and speak to him. He’ll explain the severity of this mission.”

I felt myself shift reality and when my senses cleared, I was in the city of Transcendence, located at the heart of Otherspace. Otherspace, the home of the angels, is said to have been created by the merging of conscious thought and children’s dreams. Though my native home, I’d had little chance to visit it since I grew up big enough to be put to work. The laws of physics shifted slightly, and I resisted the urge to puke.

Otherspace was a beautiful cosmic plane, where time was relative to the evolution of a person’s thoughts, and gravity was a vector relative to what way your feet were pointing. Transcendence, the city of all Angel-kind, seemed carved of silver, gold, and glass. In Transcendence a lower angel such as myself was rare, and a young child such as myself practically nonexistent.

My body, covered only by my leathery wings, was out of place. With my dark skin and kinky crown of hair, I was in direct contrast to most of the transcendent angels. With their white robes and feathery wings, they looked and acted so smug. A reflective aurora passed by me, a spirit of some deceased soul about to merge with Wisdom’s consciousness.

I could see by my reflection in that pristine soul that I wasn’t the only one who felt I was out of place. From behind me it reflected the arrogant stares of my fellow angels, though they were so uniform in appearance and dress that they blended into their surroundings. It also pointed out another commonality among the upper echelon of angels: They were all a bunch of stuffy bureaucrats.

With the other angels staring down their noses at me, I felt my confidence dwindle. I felt like my namesake, something tiny drifting through an unfathomed, infinite heaven. I was out of place but stuck in the middle. I moved through Transcendence at a quick pace, waiting impatiently for Father to notice me.

Being such an infinitesimally small Bit in an Otherspace full of ancient, powerful angels far older and more experienced than myself, I doubted I would come to his attention any time soon. The force that created the entire universe and all of its intricacies could easily lose track of me, even if I was his daughter.

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