Image credit: Kuznetcov_Konstantin

How simply it begins, this fall from grace. I wonder if it was thus for Lucifer, most beautiful of the angels (and how could I presume to understand that?), but still, happening upon the thought of power – new, unbidden but complete – and therefore having to stretch, to reach, following the nature and the knowledge no matter where it led. We become complicit with our own ideas. I do not think we can escape that.

I could not have escaped. I do not offer this as an excuse – well, not entirely. It is also just a fact. The next day I began to see what I could be. I had not even imagined this, I would not have known where to begin, and besides, at first, there was always the possibility of coincidence, no matter how extreme. It had to be tested, scientifically, and if it fell away, then it was a chimera, nothing more. If it stayed, if it grew, then it was something else entirely.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Forgive me. I am ever like this, my thoughts have for so long been my only true companions, I race with them, thoughtless of whether any other person attempts to keep pace with us. You do not yet know, but have you guessed? Has my reverie given you a clue?

Before you judge all that follows, think of me at this pivotal moment – place yourself there – and then ask honestly if you would have felt differently, if your inclinations would have been so very alien to mine.

It was almost five past ten in the morning without sight of my angel. Sometimes he does not come, I wait till ten fifteen and then can bear no longer the empty (of him) piazza below (and being empty of him it is barren of all beauty to me now). Other times he is a little late and I forgive him this as an indulgent father might his errant son.

And then he appeared and my heart stopped in my chest, a silence in the cavern, a deathly hush of shock. For he came rushing up the pavement dressed exactly as I had painted him – as he drew closer the completeness of the transformation was wholly apparent. He waved to a waitress in the café and I saw the rings on the fingers, as painted, the flick of the saucy red scarf, and he reached and freed his lovely blonde locks from the red cap as he sat down.

What was this? I felt outrage at first, as though someone, somehow had breached the fortress of my apartment and reported to him in some dark and cruel complicity the painting I had so lovingly created. But that was impossible. I sleep too light for an intruder in the night and I have not left the apartment, even for food, in the past twenty four hours. And we know no-one in common from what I can tell, no-one who would take such an interest in my work and in him as to recognise and alert him and so quickly achieve such a hideous ruse.

I had spoken to no-one of him, let alone of my painting of him. It was my special secret. Not to be shared.

There could be no ulterior trick at my expense. It was not possible. My mind lurched from this truly repulsive concept with relief. I felt my heart again beating in my chest. The despair, fear and shame receded back like a tidal wave stopped just before impact. Dark clouds on the horizon receded. I could breathe again. I had not realized I had stopped.

So, how to explain? Could this be coincidence? The skeptic in me insisted it must be, but the equally pragmatic but more open side of my nature – the artist perhaps – could not accept this. It was too much. A red scarf perhaps, or the rings, or any other singular part of the ensemble may have been coincidence, no matter how strikingly different each was to his usual attire. But all combined? For this to occur must surely stretch the bounds of statistical probability to ridiculous levels.

So, how did this come to be? Had he heard me on some spiritual level – were we tied now at soul level so that the desires of my heart telegraphed to him and he complied, a willing lover in answer to my love? Did he read my mind? Was he really an angel, or some creature from another world, another place, showing his ability to me? But how could that be, for he did not look up at me, there was no hint of acknowledgement, or of mutual understanding. If he did this in answer to me he did not even seek my response. It was also impossible. If we communed on that level and he had sought to show me this, it would be inconceivable that he would not then seek to see the message received.

My beloved did not know of my painting or my desires or even of me. He did not respond consciously to the call of my heart. So what then?

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved