Fallen Angels

Chapter 2-Hariel

~~~Start~~~

Slowly, the figure crouched down on the cold kitchen floor and raised one of its hands to pet the cat that lay on the floor. It looked almost human, the best way to describe it would be if a human were to do everything in their power to become something else. Its thick white hair, while it first appeared flawless, had a noticeable amount of dirt in it and it didn't seem to be in order at all, instead it appeared as if the being had simply let it fall wherever it wanted. Its clothes were of a matching colour to his hair, blindingly white, the only colour on them at all being thin rings of gold fabric attached to the ends of both sleeves and the collar. But the most fascinating part of the creature was its face, its eyes were not of a natural human colour, in the light they appeared to shine a bright silver and its face seemed to have been structured to have no imperfections whatsoever there were no marks on it at all, as if this creature had spent its entire existence not living a day.

At hearing the sound of the front door of the house open again, Lucky the cat ran away from the creature. He laughed to himself.

"I shall take that, as my cue to leave." With that, he stood up once again. He stretched out his arm in front of him and opened his hand, creating a bright light only perceptible to himself certain species of animals. He walked calmly through it and instead of simply ending up in the other room as any mortal would have done, he re-emerged in a completely new place, somewhere that appeared to have no other colour available to it other than the whitest white, somewhere with an almost disturbing sense of calm and order, somewhere mortals called Heaven.

Heaven was filled with Angels doing their best to keep working with the unexpected arrival of the new being. The creature from the Dawson house was now trying to make his way through the crowds of people staring at him without running into someone that would actually bother to ask where he'd been. He was doing quite well until, when he wasn't paying much attention to how much of a disturbance the crowd he had summoned would be, he heard an all too familiar angry voice.

"Hariel!"

"Azrael... How are you doing on this fine day?" Hariel asked awkwardly, not intending to stick around to wait for his answer.

"Do not even think about it!" The other Angel replied, grabbing hold of the back of Hariel's collar preventing him from walking away.

"Away with you all!" He ordered to the ever-growing crowd of Angels, they obeyed him without question.

Azrael was one of the Angels that had been chosen by the three Archangels: Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, to make sure that all the other Angels did everything by the book and punished those who didn't.

"Why am I not surprised to find that this disturbance was caused by you?" While most Angles the Archangels had chosen to keep the order weren't all that harsh, Azrael was different. He took pride in his job and did everything he could to make Michael proud of his performance in hope he would be given another promotion, this was bad news for Hariel who was, an infamous rule-breaker.

"What are you doing away from your post, Hariel?"

"I was going back now." Hariel responded, trying once again to escape Azrael's grip.

"That does not answer my question"

"I needed to fix something for Felix" Hariel admitted. "Can I go do my job now?"

"What were you fixing?"

"Well... there was a cat in a box and they'd wrapped the box up and it could not breath, so I-" Hariel had spoken quickly so his story would not have been interrupted by his interrogator, however Azrael didn't seem to approve of Hariel's excuses and interrupted him anyway.

"You wanted to save the life of a cat? That is why you chose to leave your post? That is why you went down to the surface?"

"Yes" Hariel said confidently this time He wasn't lying, Hariel had originally gone down to prevent Felix from opening his gift to find Lucky's remains... he had just chosen to stay with Felix and his family a little bit longer that Azrael would have wanted him to.

"Did you have a good reason for doing so?" Azrael asked, still not satisfied with the answer Hariel was giving him.

"Well..."

"So, what you are saying is that, you left your post, to save a cat, and then tried to steak back up undetected, for no reason at all?"

"Yes, but-"

"Hariel, you would think that after the amount of time you have spent in Heaven's prison, you would know not to break the rules." Hariel had never been particularly fond of Heaven's rules and had so far been put in Heavens jail on twenty-three separate occasions but had been released each time after another Angel proved him innocent or, on one occasion, Gabriel had argued with Michael on his behalf that his 'crime' was not worth imprisonment in the first place.

"Y-You are not going to put me back there, are you?"

"I have no choice, Hariel. One day you will learn that if you break the rules, you will be punished. You are lucky to have lasted as long as you have without Michael personally paying you a visit."

Azrael found great pleasure in being the one to catch Hariel doing something that would land him in prison and he wore a huge grin as he pushed Hariel down towards his new home in Heavens jail.

"Azrael!" Someone called from behind them.

"What is it now, Evangelina? Can you not see that I am busy? If you have lost your script again, it is not my problem, take Hariel's and leave me alone"

"You can't take him to prison" the new Angel said, gesturing to Hariel, "He's innocent" Evangelina was the only Angel to work in Hariel's vicinity and the two had become good friends over the centuries. Evangelina had come to Hariel's rescue every time he'd been caught rule-breaking with the exception of one incident which had been dealt with by the Archangels.

Evangelina was a small Angel, her white hair and silver eyes were identical to all other Angels, but there was something different about her. She looked as if she could do no wrong and she had remarkable influence over important decisions made around her, her opinions were treated as law in many circles which was very useful for getting Hariel out of trouble every other week.

"You say that every time, you do not even know his crime"

"He went down to the surface earlier today, he told me he was going. It concerned his humans cat, it was dying so Hariel saved it"

"I am aware of this" Azrael said, getting bored.

"If you were as smart as you claim to be then you would know that he had good reason to. The script clearly states that this cat is crucial later on in his humans' story, see for yourself" She concluded, in her left hand she held out a bulky stack of what appeared to be paper. Azrael read over it in less than a second, his face changed from pride to anger in the same amount of time.

"You are correct. Have him" Azrael threw Hariel towards Evangelina and walked away vowing that he would imprison Hariel one day, even if he needed Michaels help to do it.

"Thank you, Evangelina" Hariel said, smiling at his friend.

"Honestly Hariel, where would you be without me?"

"Prison, most likely." Evangelina laughed and they both went back to work. 

"Or worse" He added quietly.

~~~End~~~