Fallen Ash

Chapter Six: Remnants

Generally, Heather had the aura of a lethargic and self-centered, albeit sharp, woman in her mid- to late twenties. When she made things happen, it had the appearance of magic - especially to Ash, who barely saw her lift a finger unless it was to tap away mindlessly at her laptop keyboard. Realizing that Heather had achieved all she had in the pursuit of making the person known as Ash seem fully formed without leaving the comfort of her desk only made the bustling human world seem more contrived to her new employee. Clothes could be ordered in an instant, documents could be easily forged, information could be gleamed with the push of a button.

"What is the point of anything?" Ash asked, bewildered.

"Ash, don't get bloody existential on me," Heather chided, her eyes as glassy as crystal balls as she stared at the screen.

Left to do as she pleased while gears turned in her absence, Ash explored the dingy, polluted human world, reveling in the few and far between instances of natural beauty. The place where she had landed smelt different and looked different at night, but she found it hard to imagine a place unlike the bustling, industrial city where she now lived. Grey buildings made up of concrete slabs vastly outnumbered the trees. She remembered the sea but would not be able to recognize the smell of sea air. She constantly crinkled her nose to the point that she had to make a conscious effort to relax it. 

Hunger was new. She initially thought Heather had been giving her tastes of the human world to help her empathize with their gluttony, only to feel her first hunger pangs shortly after. The need for sleep weighed heavily on her. It was wasted time. She slept as little as possible.

Now walking around aimlessly, having slept for only three hours, she crossed the busy intersection and decided to walk out further than she had before. Heather's office was dull - the Archangels, doomed to middle management ennui, ignored her for the most part as they worked. The precise geometry of the room made them seem like mirror images of one another until one stood up and stretched or picked up the phone.

She had been conscious for eons; witnessed centuries of human advancement and been active in the spaces where humanity faltered and stagnated - famines, peasant riots, and wars. She had conceived miracles which, like butterfly wings flapping, paved the way for great accomplishment as the babies she had brought back from the brink of starvation with rain showers during droughts went on to do great things. Her spirit had drifted across oceans with the force of a gale to turn wayward ships in the right direction. However, things were beginning to change rapidly - her celestial conception of time was no longer able to keep up with technological advances and the conveniences that humans had procured for themselves. The world was now interconnected; medicine was deemed miraculous, and like a great machine, civilization did not rest. Only in times of great strife was she needed and surrounded by towering buildings with hundreds of staff propelled by a myth of productivity, Ash was beginning to feel lost and redundant.

She didn't understand new technology. She felt as if trains had only been invented yesterday, but now there were convoluted underground systems and aircrafts in the sky kept afloat by powerful jet engines. Once, she had sliced through cirrus clouds and rocked a smoking commercial aircraft like a new-born baby. That certain fatal accident had been averted, but she had been confused as she released her vapor-like hold - nobody had warned her that humanity had learnt how to fly.

The streets grew wider further out of the city center - many were devoid of people altogether, although she saw individuals peppered about, carrying shopping bags or staring at their phones. She kept walking, looking around with the voyeuristic eye of a tourist, peering down streets where houses lined up, cramped together. Some of them had smashed windows and overgrown front gardens. Only if one really looked did the destitute underbelly of the city reveal itself - self-sufficiency was dead, and these were the remains of its corpse.