THE ANGEL

On the fourth night that the little girl crawled through the vents to meet with the angel, he was eating someone.

Enna fell softly onto the cream coloured floor, bathed in lambent tones of blue and blinking red from the sleepless machines of the laboratory. Her angel usually greeted her in the intonations of shattered glass, like flower vases breaking tenderly across thick rose petals. He knew her from her footfalls, the scent of her person, even from the stirring of her breath. He never sang for anyone but her, and he always sang sweetly when she arrived. But on that day he was quiet.

Enna snaked her way through the long shadows of the research station, dancing the familiar path that kept her just out of sight of the ever watchful security cameras. It was a boldness that only graced her when Dr. Rivera was away; for work, for business, or for study. Dr. Rivera was the only one who checked those feeds meticulously, and would notice the tiny patternings and vacillating shadows that betrayed a child in a place that she very much ought not be. But Dr. Rivera had been gone for many moons; more than enough time for the dapplings of adventure and delight to colour a bond between girl and angel.

Wide blue eyes blurred and caught on the crystalline refractions of beakers and testing vials, her thoughts racing to the beat of her heart. By now she wondered why her angel wasn’t calling out to her. 

He could be angry with her for their argument the other day. She had told him, on no uncertain terms, that she would not see him ever again after he had refused to tell her about where he came from. Enna had been utterly certain of this vow when she made it, her heart fiercely pained at his unwillingness to share his culture after all of the precious things she had shared of her own. 

Books and pictures, stories and knowledge. He had even been afforded the most precious of her advisors; Lilluputian, the stoic looking firedrake crafted from the finest velvets and coloured like a coming storm. Temporarily, of course. As a companion while Enna was away during the day.

But Enna was afraid. 

Every time she visited the angel, before she heard the melodic fracturing of his greeting, her fears played out within her mind. That one day she would enter the laboratory to find that he was gone. That Dr. Rivera would have come and taken him far away, or worse - somewhere close, to the blinking red doors, behind which beautiful things went and never came out again. Not, at least, to places where Enna could find them.

Enna reached out to her angel then, testing the words on her tongue as scarcely more than a whisper.

“... Aeshnidae?”

The only reply was the ambient whirr of a machine gently tilting and rotating vials of glinting amber.

She was getting closer to where Aeshni slept and spent his days. His pod, like all the rest, was nestled in the arms of Archimedes - the giant thinking tree that grew in the heart of the laboratory. Between the geometric roots of pulsing bismuth, the spherical pods were like clear growths of transparent quartz. Soft illuminations, tinged pink and gold, palpitated from the inside of each pod, letting Enna see clearly who - and what - rested within. These days, most of the pods were empty. The beautiful things had been taken away.

Her heart pounded as she approached the pod where Aeshni was supposed to be. The angel didn’t like being startled. It was rare that Enna could - he almost always knew exactly where she was. But on the first day that she had met him, he had been bruised and battered, and his eyes were gone.

Without them, he could not see. Without them, he was scared. And because he had been scared, when Enna had approached him he had tried to scare her. She would never tell him how successful he had been, of course. That tears of terror had rolled down her cheeks, and that she had trembled so violently that she had fallen to the floor. Or, especially, that the first flashes of his face had burned themselves so deeply into her mind that sometimes nightmares of him still strangled sleep out of her sweating body.

He would never know these things. He would, instead, chime his delight softly to her, and speak of how wonderful it was that she was brave and unbothered by what he looked like. He would admire how little she cared that he was so different from her. How unlike all the other humans she was, with her courage and intelligence and her charm.

Naturally, they still only shared a few words in common. But Enna knew with an outstanding confidence that he was praising her when he murmured his delicate little splinters her way. The vastness of his eyes always settled directly on her, the splinters softer and more deliberate. And she would stroke his wings and vehemently express her affirmation right back at him. They understood each other deeply and profoundly. They were, after all, best friends.

But even as best friends, Enna did not want a repeat of their first introduction. All of his eyes had healed, so he would see everything if it happened again.

Enna hesitated behind a familiar grove of raised root formations. She ran her fingertips over a swell of symmetrical layerings of purple and green, warm to the touch. A pulse mirrored her own, synchronizing with her living system. Aeshni should be behind it. He had to be.

“Aeshni?”

This time shivering glass echoed back. Relief washed over her. He was there. He was okay. But something gave her pause. There was a new timbre in his voice. It was a kind of melodic “offness” that was barely perceptible. His words, his music, was muffled, oddly crooning, like Aeshni was calling to her from the back of his throat.

Enna frowned. “Happy?”

She enunciated the question like a musical note. It was one of their shared words. Aeshni sang a high note back. The tension in her drained away.

Aeshni was incredibly happy.

It wasn’t exactly fair that he was that happy without her there. Playing with something that excited him, excluding her to the point where he didn’t even bother to say hello. She huffed. The root formation beneath her nails fluttered and slowed with her inner tempo. But curiosity won the war against jealousy. She needed to know what had her angel so enthusiastic.

The Enna of many years in the future would remember the moment with an odd fondness. That little her, so naive to the nature of the world, could find this simple display to be such a horror. She would laugh at the memory, and at the gentleness and politeness of the friend that ate human skin.

But, right then and there, for the second time in her brief life and their brief friendship, Aeshni would terrify her to tears and nightmares.

It was not a horror at first, but a confusion. As Enna moved around the knot of roots, a few strands clinging and reluctant to let go, she once again alternated from confidence to uncertainty. There was a man laying down with Aeshni. He had his head nestled in Aeshni’s lap, and Aeshni kept leaning down to kiss his head.

As Enna approached, the man made eye contact with her. His eyes went wide then fell halfway shut. He opened his mouth slowly as Aeshni kissed him again. The man garbled at her, a thick tongue like a slug pushing out from his lips. The tongue swished left then right, lips smacking.

A deep discomfort filled her. The man was strange. His face and his sounds made her feel unsafe. The whole situation felt inappropriate in a way that she could not quite put to words.

“Aeshni,” Enna emphasized his name, “What…” She swallowed as the strange man began to gurgle and snort, puttering his lips like he was trying to imitate a horse. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this, Aeshni.”

Her friend paused. She knew that he heard, in her voice, the music of her anxiety. Emotions were a rhythm that flowed between them without need for explanation.

Aeshni raised his head away from the strange man and his strange behaviours, and sang soothing notes for her. Happy notes. There were murmurs of other things too, but Enna was struck by how red his mandibles were. Like he had painted them with casual brushstrokes of red ink, a vivid contrast to the bright blues of his skin.

It took her a few seconds to reorientate the scene in her mind.

His maxillae chewed softly, almost thoughtfully. The stranger stammered and twitched. Unknowing, or perhaps unthinking, Aeshni seemed to make a decision. Like a warped hand tipped in twin claw points, a hard organ extended from the interior of his mouth. It offered, as a gift to her, a small ball of perfectly rounded brain matter from the open cavity in the man’s skull.

The stranger moaned.

Enna didn’t scream. And she would always insist that she didn’t cry, either.

The whole world around her dimmed, hyperfocusing on the man’s head. The bright splash of red blood. Aeshni as he chewed. Clear fluid dripping from the offered brain. A harsh chime of alarm from Aeshni. And the pretty patterns of Archimedes’ roots as the ground rushed up to meet her.