“What’s the focus?”
This pop-quiz for the new guy hardly seemed fair. The clues felt bare, though at the same time, all around us. Something he wanted me to see. A truth he thought might be easier if I discovered it myself instead of him breaking the news, which meant something immense was coming again.
Heaven and hell. Two roads leading in fundamentally different directions, supposedly what life led to, a cosmic reward or punishment, but… Frost, an angel incarnate walking on the Earth, seemed to treat all that as irrelevant. What if itwasirrelevant?
“This,” I said. “All this, these arehumanattempts to understand something they saw. Something that doesn’t actually have anything to do with them?”
Frost’s mouth didn’t change. His lips didn’t move up into a smile. Though for a second, it was like I felt his smile anyway.
"Yes. The humans who have seen these places tried to fit their experiences into their understanding of the world when really… none of it comes from this world at all."
"Then where do we, where do angels come from?" I asked, half afraid of the answer.
"Heaven.” Well…duh. “Heaven, Earth, and Hell are all separate places, unrelated and yet closely linked, since we occupy the same corner of this galaxy. These three planets are much closer than neighbors, occasionally even overlapping and sharing the same space."
"The same space?" Planets, angels and demons were…
"Yes,” Frost said. “Give or take a dimension or two. We live in neighboring dimensions and exist in about the same space. Heaven and Hell aren’t intersected, but both share territory with Earth. The space Heaven and Earth share rests a bit over our heads, Earth and Hell, below. "
"So… so…” I looked at the art around us with a new appreciation while my legs felt weak under me. “These paintings are real?”
"Not necessarily.” He frowned at one, seemingly thinking it the most ludicrous and fighting the urge to rip it off the wall. “But there are times when the boundaries separating our worlds weaken. Enough humans have accidentally passed into our worlds that many of their myths and morality tales were crafted to match what they found."
Heaven. A freaking planet. Another planet. I wasn’t just an angel but an… alien?
Frost kept glaring at the painting of Heaven and its serene landscape with disgust. “Heaven never looks remotely close to real. The landscape always depicts what the place is supposed torepresent.A paradise. A marvelous land of beings both grand and like themselves. A place seemingly devoid of pain or sorrow.”
He reached out, only stopping himself from touching the canvas at the last second. “Heaven is actually a beautiful glittering place. A planet made entirely of ice and covered by ice. We’ve carved out some pieces, though we dwell throughout every inch of the world. While inhospitable to most, our essences easily pass through the shards."
"Ice,” I whispered, transported back to the strange landscape in my mind from hypnosis. “That’s, that’s what I saw and felt during hypnosis?"
"Hmm.” Frost thought, then nodded. “I didn’t know if it would really work.”
“It wasn’t cold."
"Of course not. No temperature as a spirit."
The flash of movement we thought was a tail… wings maybe?
Already filled to the brim with his stunning revelations, nothing else could rock me anymore, so I found the courage to voice the question that scared me. "So there are other angels? We aren’t the only ones left?"
"On Earth, yes. Not on Heaven. When the borders between our worlds weakened, humans got lost in Heaven or Hell. But angels and demons crossed through much easier and could navigate between the dimensions. It turned out that interacting with both humans and demons…things went wrong.” An understatement, it seemed. “Such travel isstrictlyprohibited now."
A couple with greying hair navigated around us as they viewed the art. Nobody ran into us or walked through us, but the eyes that lingered on the paintings seemed to skip over us. Like they had an awareness we were here but otherwise ignored us. Frost made sure we wouldn’t be overheard.
The whole ‘aliens’ thing hadn’t totally set in yet. I tried to work through it all from a detached perspective to avoid freaking out, even if nobody else would really register me breaking down in an art museum.
"Angels are forbidden but demons aren’t?” I asked. “The Brokers thought I was one. They’re here on Earth, right?"
"Those demons are distant descendants. No angels or demons from other worlds have visited Earth in centuries. Well, it happens rarely. Those who do only come because they’re desperate or criminals."
"What about you, are you an exception?" Oh, no, I had a better question. “Does that meanI’min danger or a criminal? God, which one should I hope for?”
"I don’t know, but I believe you were in danger. Penetrating your physical form and damaging your spirit shouldn’t be possible with the foreign magic here. However, injuring you is much easier if you werealreadyweakened or hurt. If you were injured and running from something, you might have tried to hide on Earth."
So I’d been desperate and sought shelter on Earth. And then the Brokers caught me and were able to harm me in a vulnerable state. Huh, that fit with the nightmares I’d been having. An explosion haunted my sleep. Obviously some part of me remembered what happened in the past. It fit with Frost’s theory too, that danger brought me here and left me vulnerable.
“This is why you suggested hypnosis and created a cover story,” I said. Because we didn’t know who or what led me here or came after me. We didn’t know if they were still after me. Telling people I was a dragon or something else could offer some security against anyone looking for me.
