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From: perigryn.removethis@earthlink.net (Rosemerry)
Subject: Fear & Desire Pt 2 (M/F, sci fi, virgin)
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	The lights came back on suddenly, the night light in the
bathroom being the only one she had turned on while sleeping.
There was the hum of the air conditioning picking up and the
digital clock on the bedhead began flashing insistently midnight.
Cassie blinked to adjust her eyes and then turned on the overhead
dimmer very softly so as not to frighten her guest. Colors stole
back into the room, the dim burgundy of the bedspread, the darker
reds of pillows and towels. The angel looked at the globe of white
light shimmering overhead and then lowered his eyes again to hers.

	"Okay?" she said, smiling. "Light will help me do a good job...
great." She opened the box and went to examine the wing.

	When she took hold of it again, the great gray pinions
shivered. The angel caught his breath. "I know," she said
soothingly. "I know." She examined the torn flesh. "No glass," she
said to herself. "And I don't think you broke any bones, though
God knows what kind of little bones you do have in your wings."
Then she bit her lip and looked up, afraid the angel had caught
the blasphemy. He had managed to roll over halfway, his manhood
flopping down on the sheet, and support himself with his elbow. He
gazed at her as if there were nothing whatever unusual about his
nakedness.

	Her cheeks hot, she took out the antiseptic spray and coated
the wounds. The angel hissed  a little between his teeth but the
wing in her hand never moved. He kept it still all through her
ministrations, and when she was done he sat up. His other wing
trailing over the edge of the bed down to the floor, he examined
the bandages carefully. Apparently approving, he twitched the wing
to his back, where it still didn't fold all the way, and held out
a hand to her, fastening the intensity of his gaze on hers again.

	"Well, I... well it was nothing," she said, looking at the hand
in confusion. It was long and thin, a piano player's hand, fine as
porcelain. He was built like an Arabian horse, all compact
lightness, tendons and muscles crafted toward the singleminded
purpose of flight. She looked up, at the androgynous planes of his
ivory face. The hair falling in lank wet trails down his shoulders
was gray as ash, though his face was younger than hers and his
unlined skin was pale. He gave the hand an impatient little
twitch, and Cassie took it with hers. It was warm, hot; she
worried about a fever.

	While she was thinking this, she let herself be drawn to sit
down beside him.

	"I should take your temperature," she said weakly. The angel
looked down at her, frighteningly close, the chiseled line of his
jaw and cheekbone angling up to the enormous clear eyes.

	His mouth opened, and he seemed to be saying all right... but
there was no voice. His almost invisible eyebrows came together.

	"All right?" she said. "Try again." She reached a hand up to
feel his forehead; it too was burning, almost startlingly hot. He
wrapped his own slender hand around her wrist and pulled her hand
down, resting it on the protruding line of his collarbone. Cassie
gulped, her stomach tightening. She had so many questions, and
they all seemed to be dissolving in some kind of hypnotism brought
about by his sheer beauty and closeness.

	The angel did not appear to be thinking along those lines,
however; to him touch and nakedness appeared to be perfectly
ordinary. She wondered if he were puzzled by her robe, and for a
moment dizziness overwhelmed her as she thought it would be polite
to remove it. She shook her head. "Try again," she repeated.

 	He looked at her, his pale lips opening, and again she could
read the words there: try again, he was saying after her, try
again. Almost, this time, in a whisper.

	She blinked, leaning forward as if the sheer pull of her will
could bring words from him. "Again," she breathed, instinctively
lowering her voice to approximate her request. "Just whisper...
try again."

	The elbows of the wings standing over his shoulders flexed, and
the wings rose, feathers brushing the wall on two sides. "Try
again," he whispered, "speak to her, my rescuer." The wings gave a
slow, delighted beat, and he grinned quite brilliantly.

	"There!" she said. "You did it." She was grinning too, less
beautifully, she suspected.

	"Vocal," he breathed, "communicative." He reached out to stroke
her cheek with his long, burning hand. "Lovely," he said, and this
time there was a hint of his voice.

	She blushed and dropped her eyes; not a good move
strategically, as her gaze landed upon his masculinity. Quickly
she looked up again, and returned his gesture. The flat planes of
his cheek felt like stone, like living marble; softness cloaking
an endless immobility. "Lovelier," she said embarassedly.

	He smiled, showing white, even teeth behind his pale thin lips.
Unexpectedly she relaxed a little; the sight of those even flat
teeth gave her a reassurance she hadn't known she was seeking. No
fangs.

	"Wings," she said, reaching also to touch the arch of feathers
over his shoulder. This move gave her a waft of his dry, spicy
scent. She was also close enough to hear his intake of breath and
see the widening of his pupils, midnight swallowing the granite.
For a moment, drawing her hand back away from the taut feathery
muscle of his wing, she thought she had hurt him. But he did not
seem to be in pain, and he smiled at her as she sat back.

	"Yes, wings," he said breathily, "pinions of the messenger,
gifts for the child of heaven."

	"Child of Heaven?"

	His colorless eyes peered into hers as if he looked there for
his answer. "Seraphim, messenger, angel," he replied in the
softest tenor tones. His voice was like his face, spare, planed,
carven in marble by a loving hand.

	"Angel," she said in wonder.

	Then he was shaking his head, little whips of ashy hair
threshing his jawbones. "Seeker after winds," he said, "child of
the sky; messenger."

	She groped after the hints of meaning she found in this
apparent correction, but failed. "Well, whatever you are," she
said, "you probably need to eat. Right?"

	He greeted this question with a nod. She thought, roughly half
an hour later, that seeing him eat was the most surreal experience
of her life. He sat at her kitchen table, taking his ease with his
elbows planted on the tiled surface, naked as dawn, rarely taking
his water-colored eyes from hers. He consumed a sandwich matter-
of-factly, just as anyone else would have done, and got a milk
moustache. Meanwhile she had to keep stepping over the trailing
soft edges of his wings to get to the refrigerator and the sink.

	"Do you have a name?" she asked him, awkwardly, once she could
find nothing further to potter with. She took the chair opposite
him. Her apartment kitchen had an alcove big enough for a table
and four chairs, and so that was what it had. No one had ever sat
in any of the chairs; she usually carried her food to bed and
vaccuumed the crumbs daily.

	He cocked his head, birdlike, drawing a giggle from her as a
strip of lettuce vanished into his mouth. He swallowed and gave
her a non-answer: "Not for me, no name, identifier of boundary,
limitation."

	"Well, I suppose so," she said. Her eyes dropped to regard her
fingers twisting anxiously over the beige tiles of the tabletop.
"I guess a name limits you. If you're John, you're not George, are
you?"

	He watched her think it through. She gathered quick glimpses of
him through the honey fringe of her bangs.

	"If you're an angel," she said slowly, cautiously, "I suppose
you could be George and John both if you liked. But sometimes
limitations are important. I mean... if you're me, you're not
anybody else. It's hard enough just to be me. For me, anyway."
Cassie looked up in mute apology for the poor sense content, only
to meet warm understanding. How could gray eyes be so warm? she
wondered obliquely.

	"Cassie," he said. It was like a call to arms. She couldn't
imagine anyone ever saying her name that way. It was as if it were
her name for the first time.

	She couldn't think of anything to say, and so she handed him a
napkin and showed him how to use it. The angel managed the trick
well enough, and then sat in contentment on the chair, apparently
thinking of nothing but his desire to look at her.

	Cassie, lost in the confusion of trying to relate to someone
who hadn't the same social programming, fidgeted under his
mercilessly tender gaze. Finally, seeing that he was done, she
took his plate and glass to the sink. It would be rude to wash
them with him right there... not that he would notice it was
rude.. but she'd know.

	At this point in her troubled thoughts, she realized he'd half
turned in the chair to watch her at the sink. If he'd only stop
looking at me! she thought. She turned, her confusion turning
momentarily to anger, but the look on his face stopped her. She'd
fed him and warmed him and bandaged his hurt, actions of care and
providence that she'd never performed for anyone before. The
angel's new comfort and contentment were like miracles on his
face, marvels of human compassion that were as new to him as to
Cassie.

	"Beauty of your gifts," he said softly.

	"You're welcome." Cassie leaned against the counter, looking at
him as he continued to gaze at her. He didn't let her merely look
for long, reaching out and taking both her hands. The heat of his
skin was a shock again. His face was too pale to be fever-flushed,
and his eyes were bright; but she didn't know how he usually
looked, to tell if he were ill. Anyone, she thought, after being
storm-blown onto a thirty-second floor balcony, would be a little
feverish.

	"Better get you back to bed," she said.

	He nodded meekly and rose to his feet, the rustling of his
feathers against the floor a soft hushing sound. She marveled
again, walking him back to her bedroom, at the rightness of the
join between human back and bird's wing. It was like, yet unlike
the pictures of angels she'd seen all her life. They had always
seemed awkward, in the pictures. This being looked born for the
sky.

	Seeker after winds, he had named himself. It shone in every
line of him.

	He rested once again on his chest, and she drew the coverlet up
over the curves of his back. He turned his head, soberly regarding
the bandaged wing for a moment, and then swept both of them up and
down once. The breeze of this motion dusted her hair off her
forehead and sounded in her ears, but she didn't miss the wince of
pain that crossed his face.

	"It's all right," she said. "You'll get better. You'll be able
to fly again soon."

	"Yes," he answered in his light voice. "Seeking the wind before
long."

	She nodded, caught and surprised by a sudden pang of nameless
emotion. So many things she was unused to feeling had happened to
her over the last few hours. Cassie wished only for sleep.
Troubled again by the sense of rudeness, she didn't know whether
to stay until he slept, for his reassurance, or if he needed
privacy and she should retire to the couch. This problem he solved
for her, reaching for her hand again. She gave it to him with a
sense of helplessness, and sat down beside his broad shoulders.
The undamaged wing shifted out of her way, and she saw the muscles
in his back flex. The tiny feathers that shaded to skin where the
wings began made her want to touch them.

	He let his head fall to the pillow, his hair dry now and
flourishing outward richly from his narrow face. He rested her
hand on his shoulder, looking as if he'd rather tuck it under her
cheek but was, like her, afraid of offending. Cassie watched his
eyes close, their brightness subsumed in sleep.

	Her thoughts tumbled over one another like water. Messenger,
he'd called himself. What was the message? How could this possibly
have happened, and why was it happening to her? At last her
thoughts turned back to the way she'd walked out onto the
balcony... even rested her back against that deadly barrier,
nothing but indifferently mass-produced wooden balcony between her
and the endless Down. The sense of triumph came back, and she
smiled into the dimness of the room, her hand absently moving on
the hot, smooth skin of the winged man's shoulder.

	She woke in the morning with an unclear sense of things
alarmingly left undone. Memory came back to her in bits and
pieces; first she remembered that she was on the couch because
someone else was in her bed, then she recalled that she'd
forgotten to set the alarm for work this morning. The part about
the wings came back nearly last, and the pleasant sting of
realizing that she'd gone out on the balcony last night was what
brought her all the way awake.

	Eager to test this new fearlessness, she rolled off the couch,
recognized her nakedness, and grabbed up the sheet before turning
to the balcony.

	Her angel was already there, standing outside on the concrete. 
The glass door was shredded all around him, but he was as blithely
naked as he had been last night, and turned to hear her footsteps
stop and start. It wasn't the balcony that stopped her, but the
flash and glitter of thousands of glass shards, a sea of them
between her and the outside.

	The gray feathers tucked against himself, avoiding the wind
that tugged playfully at their tips, he extended his hand to her.
With a mental sigh, she turned back to her couch and grabbed a
blanket. In the chilly breeze from the outside, she laid this over
most of the glass and walked carefully.

	The threshold clung to her, but only for a moment. The next
moment her hand was in his, the startling heat of his fingers
distracting her as she took the one step, then the other and laid
her free hand on the balcony, feeling her heart trying to hammer
its way out of her chest.

	It was a long way down, but she wasn't falling.

	Feathers tickled her cheek on the other side, and she looked
around to realize he had extended his unharmed wing around her
shoulders, cradling her in gray feathers and cutting off the worst
of the wind's bite. She was holding his hand far too tightly, she
sensed vaguely, as she rested more of her weight on the hand on
the cold balcony rail. She leaned over, oh, only fractionally, and
glimpsed the street, far below.

	Cassie understood something then, something terrible, a grim
exchange for the freedom she'd been given. What she realized was
that her fear, her implacable terror of Down, had been only the
natural consequence of desire. Nothing drew her like that sweet
and fatal swoop of gravity, of plummeting. She pulled back from
the edge, without panic, only with regret and understanding. She
pushed the feathers aside easily and walked back over the
crunching blanket into her bedroom.

	He followed her, the nameless angel. Ducking his wings through
the doorway, he stepped unconcernedly along the shimmering pathway
of glass. Cassie curled up on her bed, wondering if she should
call in to work today. Her co-workers would be expecting her. She
didn't really think anyone would take time to call and find out if
she were all right, but she could probably lose the job if she
didn't come in. It seemed frighteningly less important than it
would have yesterday.

	The winged man settled his light weight on the bed beside her.
Feathers curling behind him, he reached for her hand again. She
took it away automatically. "I'm sorry," she said at once and gave
it back. "I just... I'm so overwhelmed by all this. But it's
hardly your fault." She sighed. "It's clear I'm not going to work
today, anyhow." The idea of leaving a broken-winged angel in her
room and spending the day not telling anyone while she sold
perfumes to strangers was inconceivable.

	The angel's lips were like dry silk on her knuckles. Cassie
smiled slightly, thinking about work, hardly noticing the rustling
of his wings as he curled himself around her. The heat of his skin
against her sheet-wound body recalled her to herself, and just as
she realized his interest in touching her was becoming more
aggressive, it was too late because he had drawn her down to rest
against his chest. "Wait," she said, "I don't..."

	The angel shook his ash-colored hair. "Fear nothing," he said.
If his tone had been reassuring, Cassie wouldn't have believed
him, being raised to automatically distrust men and their wiles.
But his matter-of-factness sabotaged her programming. In so many
ways he was different from everything she knew: the wings were the
least of it. She settled her cheek against his shoulder and simply
closed her eyes, without worry or anxiety. The sense of burdens
lifted was amazing, a thing she hadn't known existed. How much
she'd been carrying, all unawares.

	Still, when his hand slid warmly up her arm, his elbow cupping
her back, she opened her eyes and stiffened up. It occurred to her
to wish she could enjoy his caresses without worrying about what
would happen next, but it was beyond her. She didn't know much
about men, and whatever else he was, he was surely male. When
would she need to stop him, before his desires became too much and
he did something terrible to her?

	Or maybe it wouldn't be terrible. The things she didn't know
crowded in her mind and crippled her.

	But the angel didn't try anything, as her stiffly made up
mother probably would have put it. He merely held her, warming her
from head to foot with his presence, the shifting canopy of his
feathers speaking in whispers to one another overhead. Cassie's
thoughts had been turned inexorably from her own difficulties to
his presence, his nearness and his beauty. Embarassment kept her
still for a long time; it was as if her self-consciousness
extended to the room, the hush of balmy morning wind through the
smashed window, the scent of uneasy sleep upon her breath, the
carelessly heaped pillows that had fallen from the bed.

	But something else grew on her mind, something that made the
stillness brittle. She wanted to touch him. If he would not take
the decision from her hands, the wish to break her silence, her
motionlessness, grew.

	The phone rang in the kitchen, and she leapt from the circle of
his arm. The stalemate shattered, her heart pounding, she scurried
away without looking.

	"Hello?"

	"You're home!" It was David, her boss. "Hey, blue eyes, are you
okay?"

	"I'm sorry, David," she said, nerves making her stammer the
words. "I don't feel very good. I was going to call you... really
I was... I'm so sorry...."

	"Stop now," he said reassuringly. "I've already called Lisa in.
Is it the flu?"

	"Oh no," she said. Her hand was knotted at her throat.
Determined to make the crime of lying to David a minimal one, she
said, "It's only a little stomach thing. I'll be all right. I'll
come in tomorrow, no problem."

	"You're off tomorrow," he said. She could hear the smile in his
voice. Generous David had raised two children her age. For a
moment she wondered if he saw through her, but he sounded warm
enough that it didn't matter either way. "You stay home, come in
Friday, dear. Feel better."

	"Thanks, David." She still felt uncomfortable calling him by
his first name, but he had insisted from the first.

	She stood in the silent kitchen for a minute after the call.
Even now she couldn't properly exercise her hesitation without
wondering what the angel was thinking in the bedroom. Her attempt
to think it through went wildly astray, unable to get past the
confusion in her head. Her mind had divided again, into the
practical part and the meek and mild part her parents would have
recognized. The practical part told her she had an opportunity
here... she had read it in the angel's eyes, in his indrawn breath
when she touched him. Only a fool would pass it up. The meek part
was incoherent with fear, producing transparent arguments like
static. He didn't desire her, he was here to take advantage of
her, the wings were a clever special effect, she was dealing with
a madman and an intruder.

	Practical said she had conquered the balcony. Now look: another
fear had shown up. Meek had been wrong about the heights, which
weren't out to get her. What were the chances it was right now?

	Meek quoted disease and violent crime statistics, took on the
voices of her parents and lectured, ladled guilt about skipping
work on top of that, and stirred well.

	"Shut up!" she whispered to herself fiercely. "Shut up and let
me think!"

	You're cracking up, girl, Meek advised before dissolving.
Practical only smiled. Then they were both gone.

	Cassie leaned her forehead against the cool tiles of the
kitchen wall. That was when she heard the muted cry from the
bedroom, and the sudden rattle of pained feathers. She dashed down
the brief hall and turned into her bedroom doorway.

	Still seated on her bed, the angel had removed the dressing
she'd put on his wing, the great swoop of its arch stretched out
before him awkwardly so he could reach its elbow.

	"Oh, don't do that," she hastened in, climbing onto the bed on
the other side of the gray wall of his wing. "You'll make it
worse." She chided him, frowning at his unrepentant headshake. The
wound had closed, as far as she could tell through the feathers.
She'd washed it well; no blood crusted the contraption of light
down and wire-tendons. The angel soberly bent the joint, wincing
only slightly, and she saw it tremble. "Please," she said. "Just
bind it up again. It'll be better sooner if you leave it alone!"

	"Where is the wind?" he asked, but resignedly. "As you say,
graceful maiden."

	"Hah," she said, without thinking, as she wound the bandages
most carefully, having to slip the length of the white fabric up
between the same two pinions on every turn.

	He laughed, a silvery light chuckle that shivered his feathers,
so that the sound seemed to run down them like water and vanish
off the ends. She didn't hesitate at all, only followed these
elusive ripples of laughter with her fingertips, thinking vaguely
that she might catch them if she was quick enough. The feathers
bent just slightly, elastically, under her touch.

	The angel's eyes ignited, the pale gray of them sparkling as
his head lifted to look into her face over the quivering barrier
of his wing. He closed it, lifting it over his head with the
other, reaching out to her with both hands. She took them, her
head a whirl of awareness, knowing that nothing now was between
them but the cool material of the sheet. Her resolve certainly had
no power to stop things now, if it ever had.

	Holding her fear and her desire like burning swords in both
hands, she moved awkwardly on her knees closer to him, unable to
look down at his body without dying of embarassment. The colors
his eyes had picked up from the burgundy bedspread, the light rose
walls, were gone, burned away before the assured fire shining
there now. The angel's hands tightened on hers, balancing her as
she wobbled toward him.

	"I'm sorry," she said, not knowing what she was apologizing
for, not liking the changed sound of her voice.

	He shook his head, a trail of his hair falling over his eyes.
Cassie nobly resisted the temptation to put it back. "Fear
nothing," he said softly again. "Gift of beauty, earth's daughter,
hands of the healer."

	"I'm sure you mean someone else," she said with a shaky laugh.
"You know, I think it must be a problem with your English.
Strictly phrases, and no... no sense at all." As she said this, he
was enfolding her in his arms. She settled against the heat of his
chest, feeling quite clearly how her body fit against his. She was
aware of places she hardly ever thought about pressing against
skin of his she hadn't dared dream of. Around her the gray
softness of his wings closed, shutting out the rest of the world.

	Cradled in that feathery embrace, Cassie tried to calm her
heart. "I'm afraid," she said, so softly she could barely hear
herself, fighting her dry throat. "I'm a v-- I'm a virgin."

	She felt him nod, his chin pressing against her forehead, but
the sense of his compassion and desire never faltered. His arms
never lessened their tender crush, and she was growing used to
leaning herself against him.

	Cassie thought that after today she couldn't use that word
anymore, and a quiver of fear ran through her. It was the last,
she decided immediately afterward. Meek and Mild might not realize
it, but she'd made her decision. She wasn't going to push anything
on him, but whatever he wanted of her, he could have. She trusted
the angel.

	As if he felt her reach this conclusion through her skin, he
waited no longer. The dusty velvet curtain of his wings parted as
he straightened, rising to his knees against her. She felt the
shifting firmness of his groin slipping into place at her hip. The
angel's hands stroked down her back, taking the sheet with them,
so that it tugged at her breasts, trying to slide away from
between them. Cassie drew a deep breath and edged back, against
the warm angle of his arm, and the sheet fell away.

	The angel settled his hands on her shoulders and looked gravely
into her face. His eyes followed their natural course, down the
slopes of her breasts and her abdomen, to the fluff of hair that
curled between her legs like a sleeping animal. When his water-
colored gaze met hers again it was alight. Cassie lifted her hand
to his cheekbone, feeling there the unusual heat sinking into her
bones. She had some idea from the movies that this was supposed to
start with a kiss, and so she leaned forward and kissed him--
quailing at the last moment and pressing her lips to his cheek.
This chaste motion nevertheless brought her nakedness and his into
contact, and she twitched back, her breath quick and sharp.

	"Cassie," the angel said suddenly. The word came out harsh, not
in tone but in timbre. It had cost him effort to say it. She
looked at him helplessly.

	"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just I'm so afraid."

	I'm ruining this, she thought. A flicker of annoyance went
through her. If he'd only take her, without all this care... stop
wondering if she were all right and take what he wanted. She'd
find it much easier. Knowing it was a lunatic thought, she lowered
her head lest he read it in her eyes.

	The rustle of his wings made her raise her glance. He was
extending the hurt one again, without looking away from her, the
faint shadows of pain crossing his marble face. It flicked
smoothly back into position, with almost the same birdlike speed
as the healthy wing.

	"Come," he said, letting his leg extend off the bed, then
standing up. He kept her shoulders in his hands, drawing her after
him. She followed him meekly, thinking that she owed him something
after messing things up. If only her parents would shut up in her
head, she could think. Propriety was a garotte, and with loving
hands they had tied it around her neck.

	That thought collided with the one about fear and desire being
like swords she held, swords of fire that burned her hands, yet
saved her life. If she could use the one somehow to cut the
other....

	Cassie's thoughts were interrupted by the slice of glass into
the ball of her foot as the angel led her toward the broken
window. She hissed and stopped, his hand drifting off her
shoulder, and balanced on the other foot to pull the sliver from
her skin. A bead of blood followed, but it didn't look too
serious. Picking her way more carefully, she stepped onto the
blanket and followed the gray-winged angel onto her balcony.

	The wind tossed her hair about cheerfully, blonde streamers
passing her eyes and tickling her nose. She was cheered simply by
being out here, by letting the wind touch her and knowing it had
no power to pick her up and fling her off. Her nipples hardened
immediately in its relative chill, and she thought how silly it
was to be out here naked. Why wasn't she screaming and running
indoors for some clothing?

	The angel had gotten her used to nakedness, her mind answered.
Besides, Practical quipped, surfacing momentarily, there's a naked
man with huge gray wings standing next to you. Who's going to look
at YOU?

	She laughed into the wind. The angel turned to her, his ashy
hair blowing around his face just as hers did. His face was
serenely amused, as if he'd heard Practical's joke. Cassie shook
her head and leaned her elbows on the balcony. If the view down to
the street made her slightly dizzy, it was a natural reaction. 
Fear and desire balanced evenly, tugging in different directions.
She wasn't falling.

	The angel's hands slid over her shoulders again, and he pressed
against her from behind, wrapping her in his arms. His wings
extended toward her, cutting off much of the wind with their
ship's-rigging creak and ripple. He leaned over her, resting his
chin against her ear, holding her with the heat of his body. She
closed her eyes, the wind and his touch blending together. His
hands cupped her breasts suddenly, touching where nobody had ever
touched. Her nipples, tight with cold, burned against his palms.

	She had made some sound, not knowing what it was. His touch
drew away a little, his hands moving to her shoulders, his arms
still wrapped warmly around hers. She leaned back against him,
wanting only comfort. But he was going, pulling back from her,
making her stand on his own and letting the cool wind back against
her skin. She turned to look at him.

	The angel leapt catlike, balanced his feet for one instant on
the rails of the balcony, and flung himself off into the air.

	Cassie shouted incoherently, grabbing after him, her heart
instantly turning into a sickened pounding thing in her chest.
Suicide!

	But the angel had changed utterly. No longer a grounded thing
with incongruous feathers, he had become a bird that looked like a
man. His wings had opened into a sweetly natural position,
carrying him already far off into the wind, horizontal. He wasn't
falling either.

	The white patch of bandage showed on his wing joint as he
curved his flight, swooping upward, over her head. She heard his
delighted silvery laughter from far away, brought to her by the
wind. Then he was gone behind the building.

	Alone, Cassie suddenly felt her nakedness. She crossed her arms
over her breasts, but couldn't bear to go back inside, not yet,
and admit that her bird had flown. Surely he would come back...?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rosemerry
perigryn@earthlink.net

Each star now knows your name
I've wished upon them all
Each answer is the same:
"Not 'til the heavens fall."

http://home.earthlink.net/~perigryn/




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