Beginning of a First Draft

[butterflydreaming]

I'm a bit tired now, and I don't think I'll get to any more typing for a while, so I thought I'd give you what I've got.  Don't know if anyone's interested...

Title:Un Coeur Ange
Summary: An angel, unable to chose sides, lives a series of mortal lives
Part 1, first draft

Un Coeur Ange

 

         Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles.  Somewhere along the way it was abbreviated to “Los Angeles”.  Object of the preposition, not the subject.  The Queen of Heaven hadn’t minded – she was the most modest human woman ever to have lived, after all – but her Son had made the kind of comment that broadcast to all the angels.  A comment from Jesu, the compassionate aspect of the Trinity, was the kind of thing that led to smiting.

 

         And yet, everyone has gotten used to the earthquakes, thought Ellen, huddling with the other volunteers under the dining hall table.  She was thankful that the shaking had started before they had begun serving; a room full of the destitute and the delusional during an earthquake could have resembled the vestibule to Hell.  Though Marjory, on Ellen’s right side, crouched with eyes tightly shut, Patrick, on her left, was placidly praying in Latin.  Marjory was from the Midwest, and had the rare career of housewife.  Patrick, a native, taught at a magnet school in La Crescenta.  Ellen caught his quiet “mi se re re nobis” – forgive us our sins – and seconded the request in a prayer of her own, knowing that they would be heard.

 

         Time, in heaven, didn’t exist.  Her mind, contained in a mortal body, could not grasp the timelessness that her memories held.  In a dream-like way, she remembered everything from Jesu’s Ascension back through the War, Michael and Lucien and Uriel, the sixth Day when the Host watched the completion of Creation, and Gabriel, glowing with joy, his message delivered.  Ellen couldn’t remember Judgement clearly.  She was not sure yet what side she would stand on, on that Day.

 

         She remembered the pride and despair on Lucien’s face when Michael raised his sword in defense of Him.  Michael had been just as arrogant as the Morning Star, but Michael was an archangel, and obedient without questioning.

 

         The third aftershock was just a shudder through the building, and since it had followed almost a full ten minutes after the last tremor, once it was over the kitchen volunteers left their places of safety and returned to their routines.  There were hungry people still waiting outside, after all.  Despite the shockwave of the intitial quake being strong enough to drop Ellen and some of the others to their knees, none of the waiting homeless had given up their places in line, because the kitchen always ran out of food to distribute before they saw the end of it.  Jesu had made a loaf of bread and two small fish feed an audience of hundreds, but it was all that Ellen could do to stretch their donations to feed one sitting of the hall.

 

         “What do you think?” Patrick asked, extending a hand to help Marjory to her feet as the group crawled out from the cover of the folding table.  “Six-point-seven?  Six-point-eight?  It wasn’t as strong as the last one.”

 

         “Oh, Lord, it was strong enough,” declared Marjory.

 

         “You’ll get used to them,” said a young volunteer as he straightened some toppled chairs.  They had been knocked over in the scramble, not in the quake.  “My guess is six-point-two,” he added, directing his words to the white-haired teacher.

 

         Marjory walked away on unsteady feet.  “I don’t want to get used to it,” she said, shaking her head as she nervously re-tied her apron.

 

         “Are you all right, Miss Kendle?” Patrick asked, concern in his kind blue eyes while he peered over his glasses at Ellen’s wan face.  He insisted on calling anyone under thirty by that person’s surname.  Sometimes, with the boys, he added the preface of “young”.  He turned to the volunteer who was straightening the metal folding chairs and illustrated the tendency with, “young Mr. Grant, could you please bring Miss Kendle a seat?  You’re looking somewhat peaked,” he added to Ellen, his hand protectively hovering near the young woman’s elbow.

 

         “I’m really fine,” Ellen said, waving the assistance away.  In her mind, she made her own guess as to the quake’s strength.  Six-point-six, six, she thought, and the thought gave her an uncontrollable urge to giggle, causing Patrick and Young Mr. Grant to both look at her strangely.  “We had better get the doors open,” she said, moving away briskly to fetch an apron and take her place in the serving line.  “It’s cruel to keep those Sidewalk Angels waiting.”

 

. . .

 

         She volunteered at the soup kitchen twice a week, once on a weekend day – usually Saturday, because the church choir kept her busy on Sunday mornings – and once on whatever weekday that she didn’t work.  She considered it part of her commitment to drive around and pick up donations once the serving hours were over.  She had a car and a trustworthy smile; the combination made her the best candidate for the job.  She left the managers of various local restaurants and bakeries with handwritten reciepts – her own idea – and the feeling that they had done an act of charity by handing over yesterday’s unservable remnants.

 

         She started off on her rounds in her little fuel efficient car feeling hopeful.  It was a shame that after all her lives, her many incarnations into a mortal body, that she still hadn’t learned to check the intersection before driving through a new green light.  If she had been wearing her seatbelt when the other car broadsided her, she would have lived.

 

. . .

 

         It was impossible to tell if Peter was pleased or disappointed to see her.  When he was like this, he resembled his name most – a stone – though when she had known him before, he had been loud and boisterous and very human.  The foremost Apostle met her at Heaven’s Gate with a severe expression that was no expression at all, and a silence that was a reprimand in itself.

 

         “Tell me where I am to go next,” she said in an attempt to circumvent the discussion that she and Peter had each time she began a new life.  Spirits, souls of mortals who believed that they had lived good lives, swirled around her and through the gateway in the way that iridescence moves over the curving surface of a pearl.  She felt His presence so closely and so purely; it tested her will; it was a battle not to sing out the Gloria.  Once she began singing Hoseannas, she would be chosing her side, and it was not something that she was ready to do.  She had already spent millenia on earth in human form to avoid that choice.

 

         “You have done so well,” said Peter.  “Admit that you belong here, and come home.” 

 

         “Peter,” she replied, her voice so tight with restrained emotion that the first apostle yeilded.

 

         He may have been taking pity on her for reasons beyond the apparent pain of her struggle.  “You have to go to Hell for this one,” he said.

 

         “Why Hell?” she asked with anguish that was shifting in another direction.   “In spite of what they say on earth, those who take their own lives aren’t condemned.”

 

         “This one believes that he is,” replied Peter.  “To ask permission for his life, you will have to seek him out in the Pit.”

 

         In a habit developed from living in flesh, the angel buried her face in her hands.  When the War had ended, the angelic host were told to choose: remain obedient in heaven, or fall with the Morning Star into the Pit of Hell.  Of all the angels, she alone could not make a choice; as much as she wanted to run to the defeated Lucien, all of her being cried out to say with her Lord.  Her heart had been evenly split, and she had been paralyzed with indecision. 

 

         Lucien, once called the Adversary, now called Lucifer, had suggested the angel’s current state: she could live among mortals, as a mortal, until her choice was made.  The Trinity had granted this to her, with one stipulation: she would continue the lives of those who had commited suicide.

 

         She had been no closer to Him than heaven’s gates since her time on earth began.  She had also kept an equal distance from Lucifer.  The Lord of Hosts chose each of her successive lives; he was forcing her, with this one, to enter Lucifer’s realm.  Perhaps he was pushing her to choose.  Perhaps Judgement was closer than the angel could accept.

 

         Wordlessly, she left Peter and the gates of heaven, and went to seek out the one who had discarded the life that she had been directed to take.  Like a servant begging to wear the unwanted rags of her Master’s children, she would take up the mantle of a life cut short and continue it.  These were always lives of paing and sadness, but she welcomed them.

 

. . . (to be continued). . .

 

So, that's what I've got.  I'm still not overjoyed with the title, but "An Angel's Heart" sound so stupid in English.  Peter isn't quite right either, and I think there really should be an arguement there, but I wasn't up to it.  Okay, well, there will be more whether anyone reads it or not, but I don't know if I can get it typed for a few days.  Then I've got to do the revisions before I even think about putting it up on fictionpress or plugging it anywhere.

Comments

Nothing to do with anything

[wookborm.livejournal.com]

HI.
Heheh erm sorry I check my lj rarely because....no one talks back. Soooo hey! Tanya Huff fan....kewlllll wait are you listening to Sarah Brightman as in......I fell in love with a starship trooper???
-Rie

[cygna-hime.livejournal.com]

...That's a very interesting idea, and I'd steal it from you if I thought I could write it half so well.

I'm no good at reviewing original work, so I'll stick with: the main character is interesting. I want to know more about...her? It? Blast these genderless beings!

[dkellis.livejournal.com]

Very interesting concept. Haven't seen enough to make a judgement on execution, but so far, it's certainly readable. Enough such that I'm looking forward to more.

[baka-deshi.livejournal.com]

Mmm...really fascinating concept. I like the idea of someone picking up where a mortal's life left off prematurely--and the concept of an angel torn between heaven and hell. The only thing I took pause at was the pacing...I don't know how long you have this planned for, though, and that really matters. I was almost hoping you'd leave us in the dark a little longer, so to speak -- you could almost drop that information over the course of a chapter, and then use the descent into hell as the beginning of a much longer story... but well, it all depends on your pacing. I'm definitely interested in reading more; thanks for sharing!

[elihice.livejournal.com]

Very interesting start. I've also noticed that your writing flows better here than it does in fanfiction (not that it flows wrong there)... maybe because this is your world and not a borrowed one.