"Can't I just stay here. Spend the rest of my days here"
+1+
I miss you Caden.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
Those are the first thoughts I have every morning. Like a prayer or retribution.
I sit up in bed listening as my Sisters line up for the showers. I don’t want to get up today, I don’t want to get up any day. But I have to.
I’m glad for these 20 minutes where I can be completely alone in the dormitory. It’s when I think of Caden. His wild red hair, his crooked smile. How much hope he had for the future.
I reach into my nightstand and carefully remove his black and white school picture I have taped to the top. I had cut it out from his obituary. The was how I found out he was dead, he had apparently died our last night together. We had fought that night. I’d call him a liar. A creature. I was so cruel.
Our months together had been short and maybe. . . just maybe if I hadn't yelled at him that last night in the orchard he would still be alive. If he just hadn't left so early.
I look up when I hear the click of heels. My eyes focus on Seraphina as she steps into the room. I hide the picture of Caden and lay back down.
I think maybe she is going to comfort me or say something as she approaches. Instead she kneels by the floor at the side of her old bed, next to mine. Her hands hesitates over the floor board.
“Everyone’s in the showers.”, I say
She digs her nails into the floorboard and pulls it up. From the corner of my eyes I can see her remove a gold switchblade from the floor and a circular package of pills from the floorboard.
She sits on her old bed and places a pill between her teeth before swallowing it.
Then she studies me. If you would have told me years ago I’d be sad when she moved out of the dorms I wouldn’t have believed it.
I was a baby during the exodus from Homeland, I have no memory of it. Somedays I'm thankful for that.I don’t remember my first real memory, but I often remember my first impressions of my Sisters.
I used to think Seraphina had been struck dumb. That she was stupid or slow. For a long time I could never recalled hearing her speak or see her express a familiar emotion. She just seemed like this vacant empty thing hovering around at an awkward 6’5
At meals she kept her gaze down and barely ate. No one ever regarded her, Mother never called on her during schooling or asked her to recite poetry . For a while I thought she was a figment of my imagination and I was the only one who could see her.
She was also unfairly beautiful, I think that’s why anyone ever put up with her. That was why the sisters never teased her like they did me for my unusual blonde hair.
When I was 9 ( I’d been 9 for a long time) Mother told Seraphina she had to get married and start a family with a human man. Seraphina argued but Mother gave her no choice.
I was happy to hear the news because it meant I wouldn’t have to sleep next to her anymore. I’d asked for Calliope to move next to me. Callipoe was a few years older than me and we got along so well.
For a few weeks it had been a great. Calliope went from being my friend to my best friend, which seems important when you are 9.
One night after lights out I heard footsteps. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw Seraphina’s tall figure. She had a hand out and was counting the beds. When she reached her bed she seemed confused to see Calliope in it.
Her eyes were wide and red and she looked terrified. She shuffled towards my bed. I thought she was going to kill me, instead she climbed into my bed pulling the blankets around herself. I remember she smelled like smoke and fire, she smelled like Hell.
She was shaking
“Are you alright ?”, I asked, “Did you runaway from your new husband ?”
She nodded her head.
“Why ?”, I asked, “Don’t you want to be in love and have a family?”
“We can’t have families ”, She said., “We will always be alone.”
“Oh”, I said not quite understanding.
“I didn’t mean to kill him”, Her words trembled, “It was an accident.”
“I know”, I said. Though to this day I’m not really sure. The second husband though. . . I'm pretty sure that wasn't an accident.
“Ariel, can I tell you a secret ?”, Seraphina had said back then. She always had a pretty deep voice.
“Yes”
“I think Hippolyta is pretty, I love her”, She closed her eyes and somehow drifted off to sleep.
Seraphina moved back into her old bed after that. I don’t know what happened after that late night confession, somehow our lives just seemed to flow together and we became friends.
She wasn’t chatty like Loren or as gossipy as Stasia, or as friendly as Calliope. Yet, Somehow she became more like my sister and I loved her.
She would braid my hair and taught me how to sneak out of Queen Anne’s when we came to New York. We read the same books, did chores together and she taught me to draw. I knew she would keep me safe from humans when we were allowed outings and she always cared for me when I was sick, in her silent way.
My popularity faltered because of our relationship, but as I got older I didn’t care. Furthermore no one teased me for my blonde hair, knowing that they would have to deal with Seraphina’s very occasional mean streak.
Our relationship changed a few years ago, since I was becoming less of a child. We had been sitting in the recreation room reading a new Blume novel when I noticed she was distracted by Hippolyta teaching some girl’s a complicated braid while wearing a mini skirt.
“I still love her”, Seraphina said out of the blue
“I know, silly. Everyone does.”
Her eyes widened at that, because she wanted me to always be a naive happy little girl. I was growing up.
Yet, I hadn't told her about Caden. I knew how she hated Demons (according to Aria, she had gauged an eye from one when he called her a bad name not to mention the stories of her murdering one) and anything related to them. I was afraid of what she would do if she found out about him.
It was only now that Caden was dead that I'd confessed everything to her. Her and that very strange Demon Prince were the only ones who knew. I wish I had told Callopie or maybe Aria. . . but no one would understand. Caden and I had been in love.
I’d been unable to sleep the night Seraphina left to live in Mother---Helio’s mansion. I missed her. I always felt safer when she was sleeping next to me. Now I only saw her in the morning, everyday at 7:15.
I moved to sit in Seraphina’s lap and she put her arms around me. It was my fault I wanted to say. It was my fault we had lost the orchard, it was my fault Caden was dead. I’d let him in, I told him our secrets.
“Shhh”, she whispered silencing my tears and and pushing one of the pills into my hand
“You can’t do that. It won’t work properly.”, I was half crying in depression and half laughing at her need to protect me.
“Just in case, Ariel”
She stood up and kissed me as Mr. Helios walked in. I tried to make myself invisible. Seraphina hides the pills under my pillow.
He knows doesn’t he ? He knows I was the one who betrayed the Angels and let the Demons blow up our orchard. He knows about Caden. He has come for me.
“Did you find what you were looking for ?”, Helios asks Seraphina.
“Yes”
She reaches into her dresser and pulls out a small gun I had only seen her with recently. I think she got it from the Demon Prince.
I made myself smaller as Helios walked towards my bed. It was odd being so near to a grown man let alone an Angel. I did some variable math in my head, he was probably too young to have been my father. He could have been my uncle though.
“Is this real”, he touched the roots of my very cornsilk hair.
“Yes, sir. It's . . . weird I know.”
“No. It’ beautiful. . . unique.”
He gently pulls my hair back, tilting my face up towards his. He smells like sandlewood and oddly of vanilla and sugar. So much more mature and masculine compared to Caden.My eyes dart to Seraphina, I knew Helios and SGI would do what was best for us Angels, but this was making me very uncomfortable. I really wanted to like Helios. I don’t know what to do when I feel his lips on my cheek, it’s chaste but too much-
“Helios”, Seraphina snaps, “We’ll be late.”
He smiles at me and lets me go. My face burns but I pretend to be unbothered. Helios turns to leave as the first wave of Sisters return from the showers, some giggle madly at the sight of him.
When Helios and Seraphina leave I lay back in bed and look for my favorite image of Caden in my head. It’s the day we first met. When I saw him lurking by the gates in his dark plum school jacket and shiny shoes.He had a camera and stopped in awe when he saw me peeking around the bushes. He had been sent on a mission to locate and steal the snowfire apples. Instead he had stolen my heart.
I miss you Caden.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.
A/N
So Ariel has the second storyline. I actually did Ariel's story because of a comment that suggested exploring what happens to her. So far I find her very refreshing, because she is a younger character and getting over her first love.
The "variable math" that Ariel does is that the supernatural characters in the story age once every 75 years going back to 809. bc. This is because I wanted their "arrival" to be the origin of Celtic myth and mythology. Which now that I think about it I came up with because I was (re)-researching faeries at the time.
Ariel doesn’t know that Seraphina killed Caden in Chapter 5 of Lux. Also the tiny gold gun Sera has is the one she used to kill him. So. . . drams.
Also as one commenter picked up on, one of the reasons only one Angel is pregnant is because like Seraphina they are on birth control No one is really quite ready to have children with these strange men. . . but no one wants to admit it.