Lapidary

Two years ago

“We need to talk to you about something,” Kellie told me.

I frowned because I’d never heard my mother sound so serious before. She hardly ever reprimanded me, and we hardly ever fought. I felt slightly nervous as I entered the living room, where my dad was sitting and waiting.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

“No, no, honey,” my mother said quickly. Her lower lip was trembling, and her nervousness rubbed off on me.

“If this is a family meeting, shouldn’t Ava join?” I asked as I sat down.

“It’s not a family meeting,” my father said. “And Ava is at a friend’s house.”

“Okay, then what is this about?” I asked.

Kellie sat down on my left, while Jacob got up to sit on my right, boxing me in. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to comfort me. If anything, I felt claustrophobic.

“There is something we need to tell you, something we should have told you a long time ago,” Kellie said. “We just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“What is it?” My stomach turned. I want them to just tell me, instead of dragging things out like this. Stalling just made everything worse.

“After The Shaking, several volunteers went to Vesea to help save lives and fix the city. Your father and I was among them,” Kellie said.

“That was years ago, I was only three years old. I don’t see why this would matter to me.”

I knew about The Shaking, like everyone else. I had heard how Duras Foreswift used a White Crystal, gifted to him by Ayana, goddess of the elves, to open rifts between different worlds. It had been a disaster, and angels were ripped from Heaven, daimons rose from the Netherworld, and several other creatures also entered. Duras, consumed by guilt, committed suicide, and the White Crystal was lost to Deftones Deep.

“We traveled there and found many wounded and many dead. It was among corpses that we found an archangel. He was dead and holding something tightly. I pried his arms open and moved his stiff wings to the side, and found his daughter,” Kellie said.

My stomach dropped.

“Amazingly, she was alive. She looked so small, so vulnerable, so human. She was breathing, but only just. She was so young, she hadn’t even gotten her wings yet,” Jacob continued.

“We couldn’t leave her,” Kellie said. “So, we took her home and raised her as our own.”

I jumped to my feet. “No fucking way.”

“You fell from Heaven during The Shaking,” Kellie said.

“You’re an angel,” Jacob confirmed.

Tears filled my eyes, and suddenly I realized why I had so many nightmares of the world shaking and of being wrapped in angel wings. It was my memories, trapped in my subconscious.

Kellie reached for me, but I pulled away and backed up several steps. I was a monster. I was one of the creatures humans feared and hated. My kind murdered innocents, preyed on the weak.

I was an angel, a pretty fucking useless, wingless angel, but an angel none the less.

I was unworthy of love and unworthy of this human family. This was a truth so horrible I would never tell anyone. I would simply pretend to be the human, and that the world thought me to be so.

I turned and ran from Kellie and Jacob. I left behind the life I knew, the people I had. I moved to New Peace where I began a new life, hoping that one day I wouldn’t hate what I was anymore.