Could Faye be right about humans? Could they really…change something? But how? And why did I feel it?
That night, I returned to the well alone.
Whispers had spread among the angels like ripples through the garden. About Faye. About the strange feeling. About that cursed forest. Many were keeping their distance now afraid.
Not me.
I had waited long enough to see into the scrying glass without the crowd. Without distraction. Without anyone else breathing around me.
I stood before the well, heart silent, breath calm.
The humans were playing with a strange creature, enormous compared to them. Its skin was gray and smooth, with a hanging, elongated nose that swung side to side. The female threw her head back in delight as she touched it. Her mouth widened unnaturally, exposing her teeth. It wasn’t fear. It was something else. A shape her mouth made when she was…what? What did that sound like?
If Faye were here, maybe she’d know.
Another ripple tore across the surface. Gold shimmered and warped. I leaned forward, pulse quickening.
The petals returned. Blood-red. Falling.
Then the foot.
It pressed delicately into the gold. Bare. Pale.
A sharp thump exploded in my chest—then another. A rhythm, like music trapped inside bone. I gasped and steadied myself.
The leg followed. Slender. Shapely. The smooth curve of a calf and the hint of a thigh. My gaze devoured every inch before the image flickered again.
The heat. The pressure. The strange ache inside me intensified.
I had studied the humans long enough to know that body belonged to a female. But I had never looked at one. Not like this.
The gold of our world never stirred such feelings. I never studied my body, never saw a reason to. But now, something foreign was happening beneath my skin. My thoughts fractured.
Heat pooled low in my belly. A tremor wracked my limbs.
A puff of breath escaped my lips—uninvited, unfamiliar.
I didn’t understand it. But I wanted to.
No… I needed to.
And that terrified me.
I should have turned away.
The pulse hammering through my chest wasn’t normal. The burn spreading low in my body wasn’t normal. Whatever she was—whatever she was doing to me—wasn’t normal.
And yet, I stayed.
Every angel in Heaven could have pried at my shoulders, called my name, dragged me from the scrying glass, and still Iwould not have moved. Not until I saw her. Not until I saw every inch of what was meant for me.
The image was almost coy, draped in mist. A slight fog curled around her hips, veiling the place the humans used to expel waste—like a deliberate choice, as though I wasn’t meant to see but somehow was being shown enough. Each time the gold rippled, the fog shifted, hinting at more without revealing it.
Something about her skin—its softness, its color—was unlike any creation we had ever seen. It was all-consuming. Dangerous. A great change in the air itself.
A violent shudder wracked my body. My hands trembled where they gripped the edge of the well. I sagged against the lip, breath shallow, wishing—no, aching—to smell her. Her stomach appeared next, then the mounds on her chest, also blurred by the strange fog, and yet still…still the shape of her was undeniable. Long blonde hair tumbled like threads of light down her shoulders.
Then the mist parted just enough, and I saw all of her.
