Dandelion

Chapter 3-2

The temperature didn’t seem to change in this cursed place. Light didn’t either. To Zeke, this place was a static nothingness stretching out to forever. Which couldn’t be the case if the sun and moon sitting on the edges of Abaddon indicated anything. The dust-sulfur-honey smell was a persistent itch in his nose and lungs as he sat in front of Haziel’s tent, stomach in a riot from hunger.

He kept quiet about his hunger though. From the good view he had of the landscape, there wasn’t anything growing at all, so edible plants he could munch on were out. How was it he sat in a dust bowl of a completely different reality from his home, populated with angels and demons and who knew what else, and he could still be hungry? Biological holdover, maybe? Zeke wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t dead, which meant food might not matter at all, regardless of how much his empty belly howled.

Then his stomach rumbled loud in the quiet and Haziel poked his head out of the lean-to, bronze curls glinting in the eternal light, free of the braiding. The back of Zeke’s neck and the top of his ears burned where his embarrassed blush started as the angel scanned their surroundings. “What was that?”

“Me,” Zeke muttered. He dropped his eyes to the peaks of his knees and rubbed the back of his neck at Haziel’s squinty frown. “I’m hungry.”

“Oh.” Haziel’s confusion was still there when Zeke braved a glance back at him. It cleared into wide-eyed surprise. “Oh! I had forgotten.”

Forgotten?

Haziel ducked back into the shelter, musical voice carrying on from inside and something rustled. “We consume manna, but I remember humans consume and digest organic matter. There is none in the Endless.” When his companion slinked back into the light, he had a glob of vibrant orange stuff in his open hand, about the size of a shooter marble. Zeke’s face scrunched up in disgust at the sight of it. Haziel responded with a small grin that changed his face into a sweet boyish look. “Think of any meal you please and I can force it into the matter you want.”

Apples popped into his head immediately. The sweet Fuji ones that he always had a stockpile of on his counter at home in a purple glass bowl. Haziel pinched off a tiny piece of the orange glob and placed it in the palm of Zeke’s hand, fingertips grazing his skin. As the warmth of Haziel’s touch left with his hand, the glob shifted before Zeke’s eyes, growing and growing. It plumped out and reddened, grew heavier in a couple of breaths until the best apple he’d ever seen rested secure in his grip.

Zeke glanced up, stunned. That little grin Haziel wore deepened. “Try it,” he urged. “It should taste the same as a human apple.”

The shiny red thing in his hand sure looked right and felt right. Zeke lifted it to his mouth and bit out a small circle in the top curve. The flesh gave way in a crispy snap and the juice ran over his tongue. Apple, that was all he tasted. He crunched with a happy sigh through that piece before he dared to ask the question that formed. “How do you know how to do that?”

“Finish your meal and I shall explain as we begin our walk,” Haziel ordered.

“Okay.” Zeke wasn’t about to argue with his rescuer over a trivial thing like this. Instead, he chewed through his apple with gusto as he watched Haziel out of the corner of his eyes. The angel pinched off another small piece and licked it straight off his fingers, as it was. He was almost tempted to ask for a taste of what had to be manna in its natural form, but the sight of it disturbed him. Trying to eat something that looked radioactive wasn’t appealing.

After Haziel swallowed his mouthful, he waited with an unnatural stillness for Zeke to finish his meal. Once Zeke nibbled the last speck of flesh off the core, Haziel stood and fanned his wings out to their full span. The double light shimmered rainbows across the cream feathers. Entranced, Zeke jumped to attention when his companion’s smooth, deep oboe voice cut across his attention.

“We should move on.” Haziel moved to the tent and brought out his pack, along with the blanket he had given Zeke for the night. Well, what passed for the night. He handed those over to Zeke and started on the stakes holding the fabric of the lean-to in place.

“You want some help?” Zeke asked. He hated to dither, holding stuff while someone else did the work. It went against his nature.

But Haziel was already pulling the long pole out of the dirt with a hard yank and strapping it to another hidden set of loops traveling down from his right shoulder to his right hip. The left wing hid the majority of the haft, but the end held his attention. It was the tip of a spear. A broadleaf shape of brilliant silver chased through with new gold. It should have been dirty after its stint in the rust-red ground, but it wasn’t. And s**t, that thing had to be worth a fortune. Why was Haziel using it as a center pole for a tent?

The fabric didn’t go into the pack. Haziel flung it in a wide arc and settled it across the top arches of his wings, like a shroud. From a distance, Haziel must look like he was part of the waste around them. Zeke glanced at the fabric the angel had thrust in his hands moments before and back at the covered wings. It was a good idea to follow and Zeke shook out the large dirt red square. He had to gather up the side in his hands a little bit before he twisted it over his shoulders, the thing would’ve dragged along the ground and tattered otherwise, but it covered the obnoxious lime green of his scrubs. Mostly. The cloth was weightless and fluttered around his ankles like an old cloak.

His companion had bundled up the deconstructed tent in a tight roll while Zeke fidgeted with his new covering, and he disappeared it into the knapsack. The pack didn’t bulge with the addition. Magical, maybe? Did angels know how to create Mary Poppins’ carpetbag, or had she learned it from them?

“Ready?” Haziel asked, eyebrows raised with the question. Staring at his bag must have unnerved the angel.

“Is this a good way to wear this?” Zeke countered as he spread his arms out to either side. The fabric split down the middle of his front and the lime green peeked through. With his arms close to his body, he was pretty sure he was covered from neck to his white work sneakers. Those probably wouldn’t survive this adventure.

Haziel gave him a slow once-over, from head to toe. Eventually, he nodded, bronze curls bouncing a little. “Unless a kittim or luminary comes close, yes.”

That…didn’t sound good. Another run-in with a demon was bad, Zeke knew that without having to ask, but was it also bad to run into another angel? Before he had a chance to ask, Haziel shouldered the pack on his right side and it sort of nestled under the wing, Zeke assumed.

The angel did a quick check of their surroundings with a slow spin and came to a stop facing the sunward side of this strange landscape. Haziel’s wings drew close and raised enough to keep feathers out of the dust, and they were off.

At first, Zeke kept a few steps behind. Haziel knew the area and he should be content to follow the angel wherever he led. The walk was going to take days, Zeke got the feeling, maybe weeks. He didn’t relish a long walk in silence with a practical stranger. A quarter-mile was all he was able to tolerate before he jogged to catch up on Haziel’s right side, a couple of feet separated, in case his companion had to pull out that wicked spear or sword in a hurry.

There he floundered for a while. Haziel darted a look his way and then went back to watching the path they were on. The expression on his face was inscrutable. Zeke had an inkling the regular questions used to become familiar with someone wouldn’t work here. His companion wasn’t a patient or even another human. Tell me about your family might end with a blank stare at the crazy human. Or the answer might turn into a long-winded dissertation on every angel in existence. Asking about this war Haziel was fighting might turn into the same.

“You were going to explain about the apple?” Zeke prompted in the end. That had to be a safe enough topic. And Zeke was curious about Haziel’s knowledge of humans.

“The apple, yes,” Haziel murmured. Bright jade flash as the angel darted a glance over at Zeke. He took that as an invitation and shuffled a few quick steps until he was even with Haziel’s shoulder. There was a smirk hovering around the edges to Haziel’s lips when Zeke looked at him in anticipation.

Feathers rustled in the background of their footsteps on the hard, gritty ground. It was almost like the angel was settling into a good walking pace. Zeke tried to match his steps for the first dozen but gave up after that. Haziel’s stride was too long.

“If I understand the human concept of time,” Haziel began, “I am epochs old.” That smirk was still there when he glanced over at Zeke again, and Zeke got the impression he was trying to gauge the shock value of what he was telling the human. It didn’t shock Zeke, not really, though the word epochs brought to mind the true scope of Haziel’s life. “In the understanding of a luminary’s life, I am barely into adulthood.”

“You’re serious?” Zeke’s mouth popped open in surprise. That was unexpected. He thought angels came to be not long after the universe was created. God’s soldiers, here to guard against all kinds of evil stuff.

“Luminaries require a great deal of time and effort to create.” Haziel waved off the explanation Zeke was expecting with a curt hand. “As part of a luminary’s entrance into their full duties, we are required to spend a length of time on Earth. The sabbatical helps us connect to what we are supposed to be protecting.”

Questions started spinning cartwheels in Zeke’s mind. “Where did you go?” That one spilled out first, but then Zeke thought better of it and tacked on another, more pertinent one. “When did you go?” And did he go as he looks to Zeke, or in some other body? There were oodles more he wanted to know. This one topic might get him enough questions to ask until they got to Zion. Wow.

Haziel’s laugh was magnificent. The angel held back nothing and the deep boom of it echoed a little bit between them in a beautiful cascade of sound. The air might have shimmered from the force of it, but Zeke sure he saw the dust red fabric hiding Haziel’s wings ripple in sympathy with the sound.

Bronze curls bounced like an amateur’s pendulum as Haziel shook his head. “One at a time please, and I will happily answer all you have to ask.”

Zeke was pretty sure the strange tint in the double light covered for the faint pink across his face. “Just…Ah…” Zeke wanted to kick his own ass for stumbling in front of a literal angel. He felt like such a doofus. “Start from the beginning?”

Haziel nodded and let his gaze settle on an unknown point in the middle distance. Keeping an eye on their surroundings, maybe. But he started to relay the story all the same and Zeke basked in the melodic sound of his unearthly voice.

“There was a large civilization in a great desert, straddling one of the great rivers carved in the Earth. I was assigned among the people for my turn with humanity,” Haziel began.

“Egypt,” Zeke interrupted. “I think you’re talking about ancient Egypt.”

“Is that the name?” Haziel seemed serious about it, the same as Zeke was about his story.

“It is now. I don’t know if that’s the name it had way back when.” Probably couldn’t pronounce it if he did know. Zeke was terrible with other languages.

“Well, at the time, the foundation stones were being laid for great pyramid structures. Trade was beginning to flourish between these Egypt peoples and others from farther places.” The drape over Haziel’s wings rose and fell in a shrug. “We were ordered to blend in with the humans, which meant we had to consume our nourishment in a manner you would recognize.”

“You took manna with you from Zion?” Zeke took a stab at that question. It was possible angels didn’t originate from the city they were heading toward.

“Not at all,” Haziel answered. “In all planes of existence, manna has its naturally occurring springs. Such a spring was in the heart of the massive valley they used to bury their rulers.”

The Valley of the Kings, if Zeke remembered his high school history classes right. It weirded Zeke out to think about it. His only source of food was in the middle of a big damned cemetery? Nope. Goosebumps crawled across the back of his neck and shoulders. Gross. Haziel didn’t act like it bothered him though. With a life that spanned billions of years, death might not mean the same thing to him. Zeke’s was barely a speck of sand compared to that.

Haziel carried on, talking like he had no clue about Zeke’s sudden existential crisis. “I made a lot of errors when I first attempted to recreate human food from manna. Too large or too small, the wrong shade. Sometimes the wrong taste. The taste was important.”

“Why?” Zeke asked. He was going through the motions with the question, still trying to wrap his brain around the length of Haziel’s life. Around his own life.

“In case a human took the item to eat for themselves.” The cloak rustled again. “Thieves were common enough at the time for it to be a concern. One small girl managed to take a half loaf of bread from my pack once. She returned it within ten minutes, complaining it tasted of copper.” Haziel chuckled, sharing a joke.

Zeke did laugh about that. The scene came to mind with easy clarity, this little sprite of a child with big brown eyes and a riot of black ringlets. A dusty dress covered her pale brown body. Handing a hunk of perfect bread back to the astonished Haziel with those words in her petite bell voice. It was the exact thing he needed to distract him from the wild spin of his thoughts.

“After that humiliating lesson in taste, I made sure to eat as much actual human food as I could. The newest delicacy among the populace were apples.” A confused note came into Haziel’s words. “While human food gives me no sustenance, I find I miss some of the sweeter things.”

“I love peanut butter, but I’m allergic to it,” Zeke offered. There was a chance it was the same kind of deal. “It won’t kill me or anything, but I can’t digest it. Instead, I break out in itchy hives.”

“You still eat it when you have forgotten how uncomfortable the aftermath is.” The angel chuckled again, this time at Zeke. How the angel knew about his secret peanut butter habit was a mystery but Zeke had the good grace to hang his head in embarrassment. “I simply have no reason to eat human food. Sometimes though, I change my manna into bread or figs for the enjoyment of it.”

The personal detail made Zeke smile. Another question came to mind. “You don’t use much of that stuff.” Well, okay, it didn’t come out as a question.

“You need far less to sustain your life than I do. I am rationing,” Haziel continued. “A piece of manna the size of a small pearl will feed me for six hours and you for a whole cycle.”

“Only six hours?” It seemed kind of stingy to Zeke. If his companion had to fight a lot, that took energy, rationing or not.

“Under normal conditions, the portion would fill me for half a cycle. Abaddon eats at power though.” Haziel turned a hard stare in Zeke’s direction for a few moments, but he wasn’t looking at Zeke at all. He turned his head, trying to find what had caught the angel’s attention past Zeke, but he didn’t see anything. Haziel must not have either, because he gave Zeke a reassuring nod before he faced forward again. “Between that and this war, luminaries have doubled our consumption rate.”

Geez, every word that came from his companion fueled more questions. Haziel did say he was willing to answer, but Zeke thought he should say something. “If my questions start bothering you, I’ll stop. All you have to do is say so.”

This got another chuckle out of the angel. “Do you believe I feel obligated to answer you?”

“Well, no,” Zeke stammered. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind you that you don’t have to explain things to me.”

“Politeness is part of your nature,” Haziel guessed. It had to have been a guess because they’ve known each other less than a whole day. What constituted for a day here.

“Yes?” Zeke shook his head and decided to give a piece of his personal history in return. That was the right thing to do. “My mom was a stickler for politeness. She’s always on me about it, and I suppose it helped me in the long run. It’s gotten me through a few dicey encounters with patients over the years.”

Haziel frowned, the crinkles around the right eye a loud tell. “Dicey? And you are a healer?” Haziel took a second to frown directly at him.

Zeke swallowed down a laugh at the last moment. Dicey wasn’t an expression Haziel had heard before, more than likely. “Dicey means an unknown situation that might become dangerous.” Zeke shrugged as he thought on how to answer the second part. “Sort of. I do most of the regular parts of healing, but the special stuff is left for, uh, differently trained healers.” That’s the best answer he had and it was accurate in the general sense.

“I assume humans have advanced great lengths in healing since I last walked the Earth,” Haziel offered. He might have noticed the way Zeke tried to word his response in a way the angel would understand. It eased a tense knot in his stomach. Glossing over things felt too much like lying for Zeke’s comfort, but he was at a loss on how to explain complex medical science to someone who didn’t have the faintest idea how humans were now.

“Not far enough, in my opinion, but we’re working on it.” Zeke flapped a hand in the air to break his mental spin out. “Anyway, how do angels,” and he backtracked with a quick verbal step when his companion shot him a quelling look, “sorry, luminaries heal?”

“Power,” Haziel said. Which, now that Zeke knew, he felt stupid for the question. Of course, they used power, but Haziel didn’t offer any further explanation on the matter, so Zeke didn’t press for more.

Something else came to mind though. “How far do we have to go, anyway?”

Haziel eased to a stop and waited until Zeke stepped right up next to him. He raised his left hand and pointed off to the far sunward horizon, to a tiny black speck at the base of the perched sun. “There. If I still had the power to fly, the distance would be three human weeks as I can fly.”

“More on foot.” Zeke nodded as he eyed the tiny black dot.

“Depending on how many kittim we come across, the time may reach into two of your months or more.” Haziel lowered his arm and they shared a look of exhaustion. The thought of all that walking tired him before they have even begun if he was honest, and who knew how long Haziel had been on the road.

Haziel drooped a little with his next admission. “We must also cross the frontlines.”

“What?” Zeke squawked.

“This is the battlefield, and the kittim are between us and the luminary frontline. Sneaking through undetected will take considerable cunning and skill.” Haziel started again, steps heavier than they were, from what Zeke could tell. He scrambled after the angel.

Great. That was just f*****g great. He’d never seen a war zone anywhere except on TV, but the few times he had seen where two forces met to fight, it reminded him of a meat grinder. “Is there any other way around this frontline?”

“No.” Short, simple. Final.

With Haziel’s definitive response, Zeke sighed. Cosmic powers at war, so who knew how big these armies were, or what kind of nasty things might be guarding the edges, if there were edges to the armies. “And how far are we until we hit this kittim army?”

Haziel ignored the defeated note in his words. “A fortnight, I estimate.”

Zeke kept his groan of dismay buried deep. Only two weeks to prepare for sneaking past an army. At least he had Haziel with him. He didn’t know about the other angels, if they were as dutiful as Haziel was, but he had a little faith in this one, at least. He’d saved Zeke from Maba and was escorting him to help.

He hoped his companion knew what he was doing. This wasn’t home.