Angels and Visitations (Angel 2)

I have to stop eating gummibears before bed time. But then again, that might mean that I would stop dreaming of angels.

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Suddenly in the middle of the night the bedroom was feeling different. Like something was in it that was not there before. I lay still, facing the wall, and listened. Nothing. And then some rustling. And then the light shifted.

I turned over slowly, and looked. An angel stood in the room, stretching her wings, apparently to see if they could touch opposite corners at the same time. They could, quite easily. When she saw that, she giggled quietly and then looked at me, folding her great wings slowly behind her.

I had met her before, in a dream of photographing in the park. In a way she was like a very tall, very beautiful woman with no clothes, but with large wings. And in a way she was not, for she seemed not really to reflect the light from the surroundings, but to make her own.

She smiled at me, and stepped closer to my bed. "Hi," she said.

"Hi yourself," I said, feeling good. "Say," I added, "You don't happen to be related to David Bowie, do you?"

"The singer?" she replied, looking a bit amused. "Not that I know. Why?"

"Because you have a green and a blue eye like him," I said.

"Oh," she said, and her hand went to her eyes. "I have had it like this for a few years now. Do you like it?"

"I think you are the most beautiful... anything... that I have ever seen," I said.

"Oh, thank you," she said, and actually blushed. If you have never seen an angel blush, you have missed something.

There were a few minutes of silence. The angel walked to my window and opened the curtains. She looked out, while I looked at her beautiful back. It was nearly dawn.

She turned around and said to me: "Have you ever seen the city from above in the dawn light? Do you want to go for a flight?"

She opened the window, and when I stepped into her space, I was aware that I could fly. We both stepped out of the window and, turning slowly, rose up in the chill morning air.

The sun was just appearing behind the hills beyond Edinburgh castle. We flew in over central city, and it was indeed beautiful in the golden morning light, like she said. The centuries-old rock seemed almost alive in the golden glow.

But only almost, because it was not alive. I was alive, and she was alive. As I looked at her, I realized that no matter how technically advanced physical matter becomes, or how artistically beautiful it is, it will never replace living beings. I looked at her flying, her great wings seeming bigger than was possible, and for a moment it seemed to me that I could directly perceive her life force. The holy force of living beings that make them different from everything else in the entire universe.

When I woke in the morning I closed the window and I had to take a few knee-bends to get the warmth back in my body. But I did not feel quite the same, because somehow I knew that life force is slowly filling the universe, and it is winning.