A silvery form floats above the frozen water. Ice-crystals shimmer and shine in the dying light of day as blackness begins to swallow the blue of the sky. Only the sound of dripping water is to be heard, the echoed plip-plopping sounded like a booming symphony to her ears. She lifted her head; this is where it had all happened. This is where he died, cold and alone, lulled to his eternal sleep by the cold kiss of water dripping on his face, with more than just his bones crushed. She sighed, she almost felt a drop of remorse, but after years of doing the same thing, it never made it from her heart to her brain. This was her punishment for showing compassion in a world of hate. Each cycle of the moon she had to find a boy, or a man, whose time was coming to an end, and take them under her wing. Each loved her, as she once could have loved, each meeting his fate in this ice-crystal cave, each dying with more than a broken body. But now she feels nothing, each passing moon has frozen her slow beating heart and turned it to solid ice, surrounded by the steal wall of a promise made long ago. No more would she love, no more would she feel. No more would she stand by the grave of the one she once loved, with salty tears streaming down her face, freezing, and shattering like tiny diamonds on the bare and cold earth. She spread her angel-wings, but still no sound could be heard, except for the infinite plip-plop of droplets. If only she had known before, known that there were reasons why no one knew of female angels, why no angel was supposed to talk to man, why no angel was supposed to fall in love. Now she floats in her cave, surrounded by the souls of her task. Turning cold eyes upon her many victims, some praying, some hoping, but all looking with pleading eyes to be let to rest.
A sound is heard from up above, the first one heard in so, so many years. A bright light pierces the darkness, cutting it apart, to reveal him. The one responsible for it all. The human boy who was supposed to be gone. He called out to her, “This has to stop, you have no right to be doing this.” His voice was the same as she remembered, soft, strong, and ever so willful. “This task wasn’t set upon you, you set it upon yourself. Everything that you have done since I have died, every single death, is your fault. Stop and maybe He will take you back into his ranks.” And with that he faded like sound on the wind. Everything was as silent as the dead. No longer was water dripping, but instead, salty tears leaked out and struck the frozen lake from which she was floating above. A crackling was heard. A huge chunk of the roof of the cave fell onto the lake, shattering the water just has the wall of promise and years of layered ice fell off her heart, leaving it raw, red, and exposed. Faster and faster the ice fell, shattering more and more of her lake, letting even more of her victims free, until every single one was gone, free from their love and their prison. She looked around with near-dead eyes and let her wings fall. Down and down she plummeted, into the inky black lake. The darkness closed in around her, as she was kissed by the icy water, and lulled to sleep by the ever-present sound in her dying mind. “It’s all your fault, it’s all you fault. Everything that has happened, everything that you did, was all your fault.”
