She didn't stop crying when she heard the rustle of his wings behind her. "Go away," she sniffed. "Angels are out of my league."
"You might say I've fallen." His voice was chocolate, bells, a baby's laugh. Without looking, she knew he glowed, a body-halo of pure celestial energy. "For you, if you'll pardon the pun."
At that, she had to chuckle past the tightness in her throat. "Really, an angel who makes such bad jokes is sure to get drummed out of heaven." She turned, then sprang from her seat. "Your wings! What- ?"
Around him fluttered falling feathers, the last vestiges of his wings. They seemed to melt as they came to land, though when she looked closely, it was more as if they receded to... elsewhere, a place she was unable to see with mortal eyes. His angelic aura receded, too, leaving him, by degrees, a man.
Just a man.
But oh, what a man. Wings had been but added glory in his angelic state. She told herself that flesh was now merely a means by which she could see the spirit before her. But there was no doubt that the hand that crafted this clay was a master's.
Here was heaven's warrior, the wielder of a righteous sword, every nuance of his face proof that he had looked boldly upon a power beyond her knowing. Here, too, was the joyful, protective and nurturing father holding his newborn babe, and that innocent child at the same time. He was power and passion and pure, sweet gentleness incarnate. Nothing could have kept her from him, and yet, she stopped with her hand a breath away from his chest.
"Fallen?" What had she brought upon him?
He bridged the tiny gap between them, in that mere movement leaping from one plane of existence to another. The spark of their coming together gave her, for the briefest of instants, a knowing of a Love so vast it defied reason. A Love that could only be answered with Love. And so she gave it, with all her heart.
"There's something of rising in it, too," he murmured as his lips met hers. "If you'll pardon the pun."
Even without the guidance of a guardian angel, the typical woman's life is a wildly-woven fabric of internal and external needs and forces. The external issues that form the visible patterns and substance of this fabric can usually be fairly easily identified, though not always easily dealt with.
