FicWad

I caught an angel once.

It was impaled upon the iron spires of my fence, pecked by pigeons. I thought it dead before I saw the twitch of achromatic wings.

I pulled it from the fence and carried it up the stairs. Its flesh was translucent like jellyfish. The wing-bones were crushed, so I sawed them off, ignoring the angel’s thin, rippling screams.

I nursed it with bandages and chains, until the back-wounds became shy parentheses. In the mornings, I fed it red roses, de-thorned. On Christmas, I gave it a young green dragon with red eyes.

More Christmases passed. The dragon grew larger. The angel’s skin grew warm and pink — no more /it/, only her.

But her cloudy eyes still longed for the stars.

So I bade the dragon fly me up, and I held my breath in the ozone and sliced down the stars. When I returned home, I strewed them upon her lap and her hair, and our apartment was filled with light. Every day, we left the shades drawn, to better see the light.

But one day I returned early after work and saw the dragon standing wounded at my door and I knew. Its red eyes were calm as I sliced its belly open.

She was facing the open window when I came in. Crystalline angel blood rolled down her back. One hand held needle and thread, and the other shook the last stars from her hair. She said something I could not understand.

And away she flew on dragon wings, leaving me in our apartment filled with starlight.