“Don’t- say it.” You hold up one finger at the multiple eyes staring down at you from the massive golden coronet that hangs, suspended, from infinite necks above six wings of pure light above a body that holds its arms out to you invitingly.
A voice like liquid gold, which burns and inspires, rings through your mind.
“Be-”
“Don’t!” You cover your ears, but the words are in your head.
“Be Not-” The tone is like a babbling brook, melodic and discordant, loud enough to disrupt and quiet enough to become background noise.
“I said don’t say it! I can’t hear you!” You turn away from the light.
“Be Not Afraid,” the Archangel Michael finally manages to say as you try the door of the Rec Center closet again. It’s still jammed. Because everything you try jams in some way. Gets stuck wrong.
You throw your arms in the air in despair. You couldn’t even sell your soul properly.
“I’m not afraid,” you find yourself sneering at the seething mass of light and shadow that is both everywhere and nowhere, whose jaws open to reveal no teeth but also the endless vastness of existence.
“Child,” the archangel sinks down, becoming before your eyes a blond white guy with long hair and a robe. His eyes glow and a pair of wings have stayed.
“Kind of racist of you, but okay,” you wanted to sell your soul to the fucking devil and if that means getting smitten- smote? smited?- that’s just a fasttrack to your goal anyway. Might as well send yourself to hell. At this rate trying to go to hell will get you sent straight to the pearly gates anyway.
“Forgive me,” the angel becomes a middle eastern woman, her headscarf wrapping around her hair before you can see what color it is. The wings stay. “It is difficult to determine which form humans will respond to best.”
The angel continues to watch you as you try to jimmy the lock again.
“Would you like help?” She’s at your back now, those eyes of pure light somehow managing to be pitying despite her toneless voice. The ethereal chaos of the voice of a literal angel has been replaced by a quiet but polite tone. She has a slight British accent, and at your look the angel shrugs one of the massive wings. “I am borrowing this form,” she explains, “this woman learned this language from someone who speaks in this manner.”
“Stop reading my mind.” You turn back to the door and give it a tug.
“May I help you?” Michael holds a hand out past you and you step to the side angrily. She pulls the door open with ease, and when you sigh she folds her hands in front of her and frowns. “You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry, just disappointed,” you scowl and walk through the door, you can hear her soft footfalls behind you as you move down the quiet hall. “Of all the times I’d needed you, you help now.” You could have used her help when you were trying to get an apartment for yourself, when you had been trying to query your book, when you had been writing your book, when you had tried to make friends, when you had alienated your family. Where had she been then?
“You called for me,” the angel reminds you of your failure again and you find yourself walking faster.
“I wasn’t trying to call you,” you walk through the empty basketball courts, past the administrative offices and finally out onto the quiet street.
It shouldn’t be so quiet.
You look around for the usual suspects, but you’re all alone, and the street is still and silent.
“I’d like to help you anyway.” Michael walks out, picking her way down the chipped stairs and barely skimming the rusted handrail. As her hand touches the rust, it falls away. “Tell me how to meet your expectations.”
And you realize in that moment that she can’t. That there’s no one who can. That you’ve never once met your expectations and you’ve failed over and over and over again.
But there was never any way you couldn’t.
You sit on the cracked stair of the Rec Center and stare out at nothing.
Michael sits next to you. She folds her hands again.
“Perhaps instead,” she begins, glancing sidelong at you, “we can set some more reasonable expectations instead?”
“Where were you when I was the gifted kid in school?” You feel the weight of a lifetime on your shoulders.
“You have me now,” Michael says gently, voice so very human and familiar. Comforting in its comprehensible volume and casual words.
“I want to reset expectations,” you say more to yourself.
“You’re not very good at that,” Michael puts a hand on your knee and squeezes gently. “I will help you.”
“I’m not very good at accepting help.” You aren’t very good at anything, afterall.
“No one is,” Michael agrees kindly. “We’ll start by setting the expectation that that is okay.”
“Okay,” you agree, and it’s a start.