Guardians and Angels | Chapter Three (Part 11)

“They aren’t angel wings,” I said, our lips no longer touching. “They are just regular wings.”

He looked into my eyes, smiling slightly, his eye black and swollen. “There is no such thing as regular wings, Christopher. Anyone with wings is special, whether they are angel wings or not.”

I didn't argue. He was right.

He was right about so many things.

“How do you think the story ends?” I asked, curious.

He looked up to the sky. His upturned face glowing with a soft hue in the moonlight. He spoke with confidence, a teller of tales himself, I was realizing.

“I think you can’t see me. You are trying so hard to see me. So you keep going higher. You are hardheaded, so hardheaded. You never listen to anyone. Anyways, you think you should’ve seen me by now… you're sure of it. Always so sure of yourself. No doubt in your mind. You keep thinking, you just need to get a little higher. Flapping your wings. The clouds, they are in your way. Sometimes they break, and you can see perfectly through them, but you don’t see me. So you keep going higher. You're way further up than you should be, and you think of your father’s warnings finally, maybe he was right, and then you think of me, and you keep going higher. Finally, you feel the wings start to falter. To wobble, and your stomach drops a bit as you begin to descend. You are falling. Feathers unraveling, you descend into the sea.”

I turn from him, brow furrowed. He takes this as our cue to continue our journey to the Boonies. My secrets waiting on the other side of the Highway 101 bridge, out upon the adobe fields of Sonoma Valley, toward the edge of town, on top of the San Andreas Fault. Waiting to shake my world apart.

“So I just die?” I ask as we begin to head back down the creek trail. Brown cattails poking through the fog, stepping stones peppering the dry creek bed.

“No… I’d never let you die, Christopher.” He was speaking softly, as if remembering a dream. “I promise.”

"What do you mean?"

“I’m your Guardian. From here on out. This night forward, until God turns the lights out. I’m going to always guard you, from everyone and everything. No one is going to harm you. I promise you, under this Moon.”

I felt my chest tightening. He was poetic in ways I was only just uncovering. He was one of those boys that could say words that lingered when they left his lips. His words hovered, humming all around you.

The way he walked beside me in the moonlight, pledging his loyalty that night, is burned into my thoughts, my dreams, my random splashes of memory — millions of in-between moments, a piece of my life-path, forever sparkling.

He was taking an oath to me. Chest out. Head high. Arms to his side swinging as we marched to our destiny. If he were an angel, his wings would be flayed out, spread to show their glory. Pointed feather-tipped wings, like daggers flayed out into the night. Ready for liftoff.

I didn’t say anything at first, afraid my words would cause my tears to release and tumble. I couldn’t just walk beside him silently forever though. I turned my hardhead toward him, ignoring his oath apparently.

“So I don’t die?”

He followed by my side diligently, his left hand swinging by my right hand as we headed into the fog. He continued with his version of the final two pages of my story. A knowing smirk crossing his face. He knew I heard him and couldn't respond; he saw my deflection for what it was. His blond tips falling perfectly across his brow, catching the moonlight, gold with silver lines in the nighttime.

“I see you from afar… high up in the sky. Pumping your wings, hard, going higher than ever before. I knew you’d find me one day. I'd watched for you on the horizon, trying to guess the time of day you'd choose. Sometime after noon, you'd never go first thing in the morning. Anyways, I see you flying higher and higher, above the clouds. I’m waving, screaming, trying to help you find me. Making so much noise. But you are too far away. We aren’t able to… synchronize. And I see you fall into the sea.”

Did he just say synchronize?

Does he read my mind somehow?

“What then? What does he… (Pause) What does Kai do?” I say to him, unknowing where he is going with his version of my ending.

“I save your life.”

Pause.

He's so confident

“I dive into the sea and swim and swim until I’m almost burning with pain. My lungs and my muscles, aflame. I swim as fast as I can. Searching, I can sense you. I know you are among the froth and feathers, below the sea. Still falling, but now without breath. So I dive. And I search. And I find you, and I save you.”

I looked at him. Tears filling my eyes now, unable to be restrained. Knowing it’s the perfect ending. Maybe I can add something to make it sound a bit more poetic and pretty, but it’s the way it should end. His two pages win.

He wins.

“I love everything about it,” I said.

I reached over to his hand. Fully awake. Breathing fire from my lungs as I headed through the autumn night among the edges of my hometown, and I grasped it. A small seek, a subtle find. A gentle grasp. Ahead of us the lights from my childhood home twinkled in the October fog, ready for my big reveal.

We marched forward.

“I think I love you, Kai Cooper,” I said.

Confidently.