ArchangelShe glares at the cold, golden chain tied to her wrist. The chain that leads to the watch in her pocket, ticking quietly.
To others, it is a simple matter to suggest she throw the little trinket away, to take it and crush it under her foot. What they don't understand is how much the watch means to her, and yet how much it limits her at she turns it over in her palm.
She is not immortal, nor is she eternal as others would hold her to believe. She is fleeting, a mere speck of light that will soon flicker and blacken in a sea of brilliant suns. Never remembered, nor cared for if she discards the watch. It holds connections, memories... and possibly an invitation to revisit. To reminisce, to play with ghosts that will always welcome her back, yet ghosts that are never quite there anymore.
They offer her to come back to the warmth of the past, at the cost of her future. It is one thing to observe the conflict and tell her to move forward, another to be trapped in her emotional limbo, to remove or to preserve.
"Have I walled myself in?" the question passes by her mind for a moment, as she observes the brown walls of wood around her, her private place. A treehouse, one she had helped build and play in. It had only been a month before the forest fire - a raging inferno that had burnt down all the tree but this one. She was the only one that revisited this place at this time of year, along with the ghosts.
A fleck of white falls through the charred remains of the roof and brushes her nose.
Winter. The herald of the white snow, of a frost that holds her tight and refuses to let go. If she stays this way, her light will disappear, submerged in the endless white of the snow. While the others celebrate and craft their great work and writes their blessed stories, she will wither and die.
She blesses others, but there has never been anyone to bless her. Only the... ghosts.
Ghosts. A brief ticking and peals of laughter brings her back to reality, and she quietly slides out of the wooden box, onto the ground. She sees old faces around the children playing in the snow, adults guiding children to make snow castles, snowmen, and the like. Even if the forest burns down, the people that once played it in have returned, hoping to teach a new generation their joy. She sees one - no, several youngsters standing on the pile of rocks she used to stand on as a child, blessing everyone with a joyous song or witty poem.
The faces may be unfamiliar, but the roles are of a story she's read countless times. Of a person who could never leave, her desire for freedom halted by a gold, glittering chain.
A second passes, yet another drop in the ocean of time, but in that second, her decision is made.
She pockets the watch, but this time, she lets the chain slide off from around her wrist and into the soft darkness of her jacket's pocket as she quietly unfolds her wings and flies away.
Time may call her back to the past, but the past is not where she lives. She keeps the watch as a reminder of what it has made her, but she will never be its prisoner as long as she breathes.
The blizzard begins to intensify, and the ghosts return to their town, back to their ordinary, cyclical lives of venerated tradition and custom. But in the midst of the sheets of white, a burning flame repels the torrent of hail around the angel, as she flies to seek the burning hearts of other travelers moving forward into the unknown.
