Earth Angel (Angels and Seers: Book One)

by Stephanie Woods

Chapter 4

  I sleep for 16 hours. Man, I must have been tired. I never sleep that long. Right after Harry died, during my bereavement leave from work, I would sometimes stay in bed that long or longer, but I wasn’t actually sleeping; I just didn’t want to face a world without him in it.

  Sam is still sleeping on the couch, snuggled into the blanket I tucked around him yesterday. I eye his bandaged wing and wonder how long it will take to heal. On a well-rested angel, it would probably be three or four days. As exhausted as Sam is from his brave face-off with Jonathan, it might take longer. But since sleep heals humans, it probably heals angels, too. I’ll let him sleep for as long as he needs to, assuming Jonathan doesn’t appear in my living room. As long as he has the blade with Sam’s blood on it, there’s no good way of hiding him for long, even with the lowered vibrational level. We need a plan in case he shows up.

  Stretching, I stand up, amazed I’m not the slightest bit sore. And I’m hungry! My appetite has kind of sucked recently, for obvious reasons. In normal circumstances, I am an enthusiastic fan of breakfast. I actually feel like cooking today, which is something else I’ve ignored of late. Instead of grabbing a Pop-Tart or a stale donut to beat the emotional pain into submission, I want real food, and I know my body will appreciate the detox. I’m a healthy eater, but crushing sadness kind of strips away your motivation to do anything worthwhile. Today will be different. I feel….renewed.

  I wonder what Sam likes to eat. This question swirls around in my head as I ponder what I actually have available in my kitchen. I’ve been going shopping regularly, out of habit, but not really eating much of what I buy. My brothers and their kids inevitably end up cleaning me out when they come over, which is practically every day now that I live alone. Fortunately, I just went to the store the day before yesterday and Matthew, James, and their boisterous brood haven’t been here since then, in respect of my wish to be alone on my wedding day. That means I’ve actually got fresh food in my refrigerator! Awesome!

  Sam seems like the type who will be fine with whatever I make. With a new sense of purpose, I wander into the kitchen, my clothes from yesterday all wrinkled from sleeping in them, and begin to boil water for green tea.

  My favorite cast iron skillet is where I left it four months ago, in a cabinet under the kitchen island. I grab it and plug in the toaster. Organic eggs scrambled with fresh veggies and chives, tofu bacon, and gluten-free toast with organic butter is what I’m craving, so that’s what’s on the menu. A dedication to clean and compassionate, vegetarian eating was something Harry and I shared, and we cooked for each other all the time, usually taking turns each day. This meal will be a kind of tribute to Harry, I decide. My salute to him, as well as my return to the world of humans. It’s kind of nice to have someone here to celebrate it with me.

  As I wash out our tea mugs from last night and prepare them for the green tea with honey that will accompany our breakfast, I look toward the kitchen window and the gorgeous morning sunlight shining through it. For just a moment, I bask in it, then whisper a barely audible “I love you,” toward the window and out into the universe to wherever Harry now resides, blowing a kiss behind it. I swear I feel a tangible kiss come back at me, full of love from my special guy.

  It’s incredibly comforting, and a balm for my newly healing emotional wounds. Other than the messages conveyed by Aaron yesterday, I’ve had no real communication from Harry since he left. I didn’t really expect it, since I’m not psychic, but I hoped for it. Now there it is, and it feels like both an expression of love and a goodbye, the one we never got to say to each other in person. Having given me his blessing on my new journey, he is now telling me he must begin his. I know he is currently reviewing this most recent life and deciding what he wants for his next one. I get the impression he will be moving on to it sooner rather than later. In this small communication, stolen from a moment of his important spiritual work, he is acknowledging what we had together, and setting me free.

  I love him all the more for it, but I no longer ache for him as I have every moment from his death until now. He’s using whatever influence he still has on this life to heal me, and it is working. Now, instead of begging him to return, as I would have done just yesterday, I silently wish him well as he continues on, and trust we will meet each other again. Souls tend to reincarnate with the same souls in life after life. If someone is important to you in this life, chances are they were in another life, and will be again in a future one. Instead of being sad Harry is gone, I’m now eager to see who he will be when next we meet, and what we will be to each other.

  Just as the glorious feeling of being with Harry once more is beginning to fade, and I know I’ve communed with him for the last time in this life, I hear the angel who is part of my new life stirring behind me. Sam is waking up, changing my path and creating new adventures for me just beyond my front door as he opens his eyes. I’m ready for all of it.

  “What is that wonderful smell?” he asks, sitting up, sounding perfectly alert. The afghan is still around his shoulders and he closes his eyes again to take in the savory aroma.

  “Breakfast!” I declare brightly, as if it’s a national holiday. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, very much.” He opens his eyes and looks my way, head cocked to the side, gazing at me as if I’m a rare curiosity. “You cooked for me?”

  He may as well have asked if I just bought him a barrel of crude oil, he sounds so astonished. Maybe he has servants who cook for him, being royalty. I have no idea. Oh well, moving on! All will be revealed at some point, I’m sure.

  “I did,” I confirm, smiling and waving my hands toward the stove to indicate the cooking food. “I wasn’t sure what you would like and didn’t want to wake you, so I just cooked what I was craving. I hope you like it. If you don’t, I’ll be happy to make you something else.”

  “Oh, no,” Sam quickly assures me. “I like pretty much everything. And I won’t reject hospitality. Being gracious for kindnesses rendered is extremely important among my people. Besides, whatever you’re making smells delicious. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten human food. As I recall, it tastes much more intense than the food we eat at home. I can’t wait to try it.”

  “Well, get ready to give your taste buds an unforgettable experience, Sam, because I’m a good cook,” I brag, grinning. Well, heck, I deserve a little praise after all I’ve been through since yesterday. I don’t mind being the one to give it, either. “My breakfasts have always been in high demand among my friends and family. What I have here has brought a tear of joy to many a man’s eye.”

  I wink at him, and he rewards me with that sunshine-like smile again. Man, if I could carry that smile around with me all the time, I’d always be nice and tan, and could totally do away with the need for lightbulbs.

  “Where should I sit?” he asks, pushing himself up off the couch, grimacing as he does so. The pain in his wing is obviously still pretty strong. There’s pain medicine in the bathroom. If he can eat and drink like a human, surely our pain meds will work on him, too.

  “No, no, you sit where you are,” I insist, indicating the couch. “This morning, we eat in the living room. You’re still too sore to move much, and you really need to keep that arm immobile so you don’t make your wing injury worse. It needs time to heal. I’ll bring the food to you.”

  Sam starts to protest, then promptly sits back down without a word, realizing I’m right. He won’t get any better if he tries to rush it, and he needs to heal soon. Jonathan will find him eventually and he must be able to defend himself.

  I set a table tray up in front of him and place his breakfast plate and tea mug on it, along with a cloth napkin and silverware. Then, I set up the same configuration for myself in front of the comfy chair. I raise my mug to him, wanting to celebrate this moment.

  “To finding each other, to new friends, and to victory!” I declare, smiling brightly. Sam smiles back and surprises me by raising his own mug and clicking it a
gainst mine. I thought I would have to teach him how to toast. He’s apparently been among humans in a social setting at some point in his past. I want to pepper him with questions about his long history, but decide to let it come naturally as we get to know each other. I don’t want to overwhelm him with a barrage of questions like a toddler asking “Why?” about every single thing.

  After toasting, we dig into our meals, starving. I can tell by the look on his face as he chews that he is enjoying the food. Well, I really am a good cook. And, the face of a man in love with his meal is apparently the same among angels as humans. Excellent! Similar expressions to ours will make him easier for me to read. Unspoken communication is so important when people are working together toward a common goal, something else I learned in the Peace Corps. It comes in handy when planning group activities with other Kindergarten teachers at my school, not to mention when I’m trying to get 25 five-year-olds to line up to go to recess or lunch.

  He asks me about the different things on his plate as we eat, and I happily explain them. Eggs, he’s already familiar with, having eaten them a few times before when his duties required him to walk among humans. He tells me the most recent time was about 200 years ago, when he had to interfere in the War of 1812 to keep the forests on the North American east coast safe from being burned by the British. That famous storm that came out of nowhere and beat back the Redcoats when they were trying to burn Washington, D.C. was Sam’s doing, and a seer family took him in while he performed this and other protective work for this continent at the time. My eggs are different than the plain, boiled ones he ate then, though. Mine are scrambled with zucchini, onions, and tomatoes, sprinkled with shredded cheese and chives, and seasoned with smoked salt and white pepper. He swears they are practically heavenly. Of course, he’s never actually been to heaven, so he can’t say for sure. I kind of love how honest and literal he is about everything.

  The tofu bacon and buttered toast are new to him, and his expression changes from happy to positively rapturous as I explain what these things are and how they are made. I’m glad I prepared plenty, because he seems like he’ll want seconds. I’m right. He does.

  Once we’re both done eating, I take the dishes into the kitchen, rinse them off, and put them in the dishwasher, setting it to run a small cycle. Returning to the chair, I see Sam is drifting off again. Aw! He really is worn out from his ordeal.

  “Do you need anything for the pain?” I ask, before he completely falls asleep once more. He nods, not even knowing what I might offer him. Already, he completely trusts me, which is, frankly, endearing. I go to the bathroom and pull a white bottle with a red label out of the medicine cabinet, plopping two oblong pills of aspirin out of it and into my hand. I return to Sam with a glass of water grabbed quickly from the kitchen and hand him everything.

  “Will human pain medicine work on you?” I ask, realizing he might not even know.

  “Probably,” he says, looking at the pills as if to analyze their contents. I wonder if he can. “Our body chemistry is similar to yours, but with enough differences that I can’t say how effective it will be. But, this wing is so sore. Even when I don’t move it, it hurts.”

  “Then give them a try. You have to swallow them whole. That’s what the water is for…it will help you do it.”

  He regards the water glass and pills in turn, then plunks the pills into his mouth and takes a sip of water. Happily, he’s able to swallow them without incident.

  He’s starting to doze again, so I take the water glass before he can spill it. I rinse it out in the kitchen sink and place it in the dish drainer to dry. While he’s dozing, I wisely use the opportunity to shower and wash my hair, luxuriating in how good it feels to be clean. Who knows when I’ll get a chance again, right?

  After my shower, I brush my teeth and comb out my wet hair, regarding my towel-wrapped self in the mirror as I do. I’m pleased to see I look more alert than I have in a long time. My months of sadness and grief have not aged me as I thought they would. I haven’t looked really closely at myself like this since before Harry died, so it’s kind of interesting to do an inspection.

  My shiny red hair is perfectly straight, as usual. It’s grown a few inches from half-way to my shoulders, where it was when Harry died, to just touching the tops of them. My bangs need trimming, which I quickly remedy, leaving them nice, neat, and just brushing the tops of my eyebrows. I have an oval face, and my grandmother has been fretting about how I’ll grow hollow-cheeked and sallow if I don’t start eating properly. It’s nice to see her prediction hasn’t come true. Even the months of junk food haven’t messed up my skin. It’s still perfectly porcelain and smooth, with a smattering of freckles dotting the bridge of my nose and tops of my cheeks. Harry loved those freckles, and always said they complimented my emerald eyes. The freckles also perfectly match the color of my hair, so my whole face is always color-coordinated.

  My nose is still pert and straight, and my lips are still plump, bright red, and shaped like a bow. All is as it should be. Good. I might even start wearing makeup again, since I seem no worse the wear for my months of slovenliness and self-neglect.

  Finally, I open up the front of the towel to assess the rest of me. It’s all still there and exactly as I left it, thank goodness. A nice, slender frame, skinny hips, flat waist, and average-sized breasts that blessedly still point upward even though I never wear a bra. It seems I’ve neither gained nor lost weight over the past four months. How that is possible, I have no clue. It’s some kind of miracle, but I’ll take it. Being 27 has its benefits, I guess. And I’ll take better care of my body from now on. Harry would want me to, but more importantly, for the first time since I lost him, I want to.

  Going to my room, I pull out some clean clothes. I select a fitted purple t-shirt with a V-neck and a gold elephant’s face on the front, well-fitting jeans with gleaming metal studs on the sides, purple socks, and white sneakers. Comfortable, casual, practical, and tasteful…it is the look my entire wardrobe was designed to achieve, since it reflects my personality so well. I even dress similarly to go to work, the only difference being I leave the tank tops and t-shirts at home and go for tunics and slightly dressy button-up shirts.

  Confident I look presentable, I go back to the living room, only to find Sam deeply asleep. The pain medicine must have helped at least a little. I adjust the blanket around his shoulders to keep him warm, and plump up the pillow under his head. He doesn’t even stir a little.

  It looks like he’ll be out for a while, so I sit down in the comfy chair again and snuggle in with my phone. So many messages to answer, but I just can’t face them all quite yet. Most are from friends who know nothing about my seer abilities, so what am I going to say? I can’t meet you for a movie or lunch right now because I’m taking care of a badly injured angel, and then I need to start building an army with him to fight a war for the freedom of humanity? Yeah, that’s going to go over well. They already think I’m one crayon short of a box over the loss of Harry. No need to give them any more ammunition for an intervention.

  Those messages will have to wait. I do need to respond to one person, though. I start typing a text to the most important person to message me since yesterday….my grandmother. At 79 years old, she is something of a tech whiz. It amazes my brothers and me at how she’s always jumping all over any new gadget as soon as it’s on the market, learning how to master it while other grandmothers sit at home and knit. It’s one of the many cool things about her. My grandmother is, quite simply, awesome.

  My text is simple. All it says is: “I’m fine. Taking care of an injured Earth Angel. I’ll call you later and explain. Love, Lucy.”

  OK, that’s done. Now I have some free time on my hands What to do, what to do? Well, seeing as I don’t know when my work with Sam will begin in earnest, and there is a strong possibility I may not have this kind of free time again for a while, it seems like a good time to read. So, I pull out a book I set aside months ago, before Harry die
d. I was in the middle of it then, and haven’t opened it since. Now, I intend to finish it while Sam sleeps and heals beside me. I need him at full strength. The war can wait, for now.