Jealousy
"I can explain. Really, I can. Well, just a little. I don’t know. This hurts too much to think straight, and I…”
“It will hurt much more if you don’t explain to me what you meant by…” Camael’s hot breath blows on my face.
“Jealous. I know. I know. Truly, honestly, I know it sounds bad. There was no other word that came to mind at that particular moment. I promise you, Camael. I promise that I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it the way that…”
Camael waves his hands, and I am released from whatever it was that held me in place. He shakes his head, bewildered. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t… “I know you weren’t thinking straight,” he answers my internal dialog, “but that’s what bothers me so.”
“So, I was daydreaming?”
“Yes. Very much so. But it was beyond a daydream; it was beyond what your functions should be capable of at this point in time. Pondering. That should happen after you reach your subject on Earth.”
“Pondering,” I repeat. “Ponder. To weigh carefully and thoughtfully in the mind.”
Camael strokes my blonde hair away from my face and smiles. “Yes. Very good.” Then his face darkens, and I feel that feeling again. Fear. I don’t like it. It feels strange to me—makes me feel off balance… makes me feel sick. Suddenly, I’m afraid Camael doesn’t love me anymore, and I’ve done something so irreparably wrong that… “Quiet, child,” he says and smiles again. “There isn’t anything that you could do or say that would make my love for you any less. I am proud of you for embracing the true extent of the human condition. You have advanced so much, and I know you will be a good Guardian in time. But I worry that you’ve grown too quickly, and I worry that you will be more inclined to succumb to the human experience all too soon.”
“But I thought we were supposed to immerse ourselves in their ways, to be more genuine in our mannerisms and interactions.”
“Yes, but…” He trails off. It’s not really fair that he has access to all my thoughts and emotions, but to me, he’s a blank canvas. “It’s just that…” He’s fumbling. Trying to make sense of everything and to reassure me of my goodness at the same time. “You know why I repeat the same things every day, right?”
I tilt my head to the side. “For emphasis? To make sure we know your teachings, as the humans would say, inside and out?”
“Correct. Well, partially. See, Aestra, the repetition is…”
“Multi-pronged?”
“Exactly. It serves many purposes. Of course, to emphasize the importance of your calling, of staying safe, of warding off temptations and other evils, but the repetition creates something else in you. A boredom if you will. Boredom is a feeling that is only specific to the human race. The state of being bored.”
“To weary by dullness, tedious repetition.”
“Yes. And this state of being bored, boredom, is something that can be used for or against people. Out of boredom, people can dream up fabulous things. People can take their humdrum scenarios and ponder the unknown, formulate theorems, imagine unbelievable feats, create poetry.” He pauses and glares hard into my eyes again.
“Boredom can open the mind?”
“Precisely.”
“And you think that’s what happened to me? That’s why I was able to think the way I did?”
Camael nods. I consciously try to shield my thoughts from him. Once I am on Earth, he will not be able to tap into my mind, but maybe if I imagine a giant wall… “No, that won’t work. We need to have this discussion, Aestra. Don’t try to fight it.”
My cheeks flush with heat. Embarrassment, again! “Sorry,” I say.
Unexpectedly, the classroom is back, and with his glowing hand, he motions for me to sit at a desk. “Jealousy. What do you know of jealousy?”
My feathers tense up as I sit at the desk. “Just the definition. How to use the word in the sentence. I can say it in hundreds of languages.”
“Do you know what it feels like?”
“No.”
“Because, Aestra, the one who knew what jealousy felt like was the first to fall.”
He’s talking about Lucifer. The Morning Star. The one that was so loved by the Creator until humankind came into existence. The Morning Star gave everything to the Creator, but he felt ignored at the dawn of the human race. Over time, he resented the Lord and grew jealous of His people. I know the story. The story of Lucifer is the example by which we live, or rather, how not to live. I couldn’t do that though. I see the beauty in everything the Creator has made, and I’ve never once felt like I was slighted or ignored or less than perfect in His eyes. Lucifer committed the ultimate affront to the Creator and the entire angelic order.
“I promise you, Camael, that the word was just a word, used for lack of a better one. I could never do what Lucifer has done.”
He shakes his head. “He was most loved by the Creator. He was called the Morning Star. When he fell, it was like lightning piercing the center of the Earth for the first time. You are Aestra. My Star. And you are most loved by me. Do you understand?” The light in his eyes brightens again, turning that preternatural shade of blue to an iridescent white. They look like two glittering diamonds inside human eye sockets.
My heart swells again. I do understand. His love for me is beyond anything I could comprehend, and he is worried about me like a father would worry about a daughter. I rise and approach him, throwing my angel-winged arms around his neck. My blonde hair falls over his shoulder, shrouding us in cascades of gold.
“Go home,” he whispers. “We will meet again tomorrow.”
I prefer floating to walking, but Camael says I need to get adjusted to using my legs. When he told me to go “home,” he was referring to the mirage of an apartment complex The Powers That Be assembled for us fledgling Guardians. It’s a place where we can all be together: socialize, work on our human traits, experience a home with a kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room—foreign objects and concepts to our ethereal presence. I really want to walk back to the complex, but I’m feeling a little dejected after my incident with Camael that my full attention is not concentrated on the motion of each leg going in front of the other. When I approach the front door, I realize I’ve glided the entire way to my building.
Revalia and I share a unit in the building. We each have our own bedrooms, which is nice for privacy, but every other room is shared, and that’s nice too. Revalia and I have always been bonded, meaning there is a special connection between her and me. Someone once said that if angels had true families, Revalia and I would be sisters. She is a good sister… if that’s what I’m to call her. Or best friend. I’m not fully sure about the technical aspects. I do know sometimes girls and women view their best friends as they would view their sisters, so I guess it’s all the same. From the beginning of my existence, there has always been Revalia. I think the simile most often used is “two peas in a pod,” yet we’re not peas, and we certainly did not form in a pod!
I walk into the apartment and see her sitting on the couch. Her legs are tucked to her chest, and her face is resting on the tops of her knees. Her wings are completely folded behind her back, and she looks so human with an unfamiliar expression on her face. I can’t define that emotion. It doesn’t register with me.
I sit down beside her and reach out to touch her shoulder; she flinches when I make contact, so lost in her thoughts that she’s startled to see me there. “Aestra,” she says, “are you okay?”
I guess she’s referring to the way Camael dismissed everyone from class. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just a misunderstanding, I suppose.”
“Are you in major trouble with Cam, or what?”
I shake my head. “No. No. I straightened it out.”
She sighs heavily with relief, “Oh, good. I was worried there for a while.”
“No worries. Not about me at least. But I am worried about you.” I reach out to brush a piece of her chestnut hair from her face, but she pulls away from me, like recoiling from a venomous sting. I stiffen, alarmed, but I manage to force a smile. “Where are your wings, beautiful star?”
“Oh, they’re here … resting.” A small grin creeps on her cheeks, but there’s a timbre to her voice that is so far away, so far gone.
I fold in my wings as well, hoping to mirror her aura, to make her feel more comfortable so she’ll open up to me. My heart wants to cry because I take one look at her face and know something is not right. I realize the limitations of my human shell because I can’t hear her, can’t heal her, and it’s driving me mad on the inside, and I don’t have a vocabulary word to define what I’m feeling.
“Rage?” she whispers. “No. Helplessness.”
“Huh? How did you? You can’t…”
“It doesn’t take a mind reader to read what’s on your face! You should practice in the mirror a little bit more on how to mask your feelings.” She chuckles quietly.
“Well, you’re one to talk! You’re certainly not hiding how you’re feeling. Well, maybe you are ’cause I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly, but you’ve been acting so strangely all day, and if I didn’t have this body I would engulf you in pink light to make you smile and laugh, and…”
She lowers her legs to the floor and dips her head onto my shoulder. “You know pink is my favorite color.”
“So, are you going to talk to me now? Stop making me feel this…”
“Rage? Helplessness?”
“Both!” I shout, and she begins to laugh.
She strokes my hair down my back in a loving way. “Oh, Aestra,” she sighs. “I’ll be going soon. It’s getting close, I can tell. I felt it when I woke up this morning. It was like the last time when I had to go. Camael will be giving me my final instructions shortly, and I’ll have to start the process all over again.”
“So, are you sad about going? Mad? Scared? Why are you moping and acting all weird?”
She stops and stares at me for a few seconds. She’s looking at me, looking through me, penetrating my core. There’s a sadness in her eyes, and I think, This isn’t right, angels should never feel like this!
“That’s the problem, Aestra. I don’t feel anything. No joy, no sorrow, no anticipation about my new calling. Nothing.”
I’m confused. I’ve never felt nothing. Never had an absence of feeling. The only emotions I ever knew were joy, and happiness, and love, and devotion, but they weren’t emotions, per se. It was me. It was my essence, my being, my willingness to do good, my existence. It wasn’t until I was placed in this body that I had a whole other range of emotions to deal with and adjust to.
“Nothing?” I repeat.
“Nothing. Not a single feeling.”
I stand up, perplexed. The weight of my retracted wings bothers me, so I quickly unfold them to alleviate some of the pressure off my back. My feathers rustle with a loudness that fills the room; the sound echoes the clamoring thoughts rushing through my mind. I race through all my teachings with Camael—all the words and their meanings, all the languages and their origins, all the traditions and nations of the people we are to serve—and nothing registers, nothing clicks. I remember today and my discussion about shame and guilt and jealousy and…
“Boredom?” I ask as I turn on my heel.
She shakes her head and smirks. She gingerly folds her hands in her lap, and I notice her wings behind her are struggling to retract more tightly. “Cam gave you the ‘boredom’ speech, didn’t he?”
I nod as she stands up to meet me. Her height is equal to mine, but she does not flare out her wings. Why doesn’t she flare out her wings? That is our angelic greeting to each other, our sign of fellowship and good faith. Sometimes when our wings brush up against each other, it sends bolts of electricity throughout our bodies, infusing us with each other’s grace. And now, she stands before me, angel to angel, and she denies me our angelic embrace?
“Revalia, I don’t understand. I’m just too new at this.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s late, and I’m fine. Truly. Stop worrying about me. You have your own issues to attend to! Go to bed. Try to have that dream.”
She leans over and kisses me on the cheek before retiring to her room.