HaMerkauah

This is frustrating. This is horrible.

"It's not so bad." Another voice called.

"Why does everyone know what I'm thinking?" Kutner shrieked. His voice was not high, but much more pained. He was starting to develop a headache.

A female angel appeared this time, with wings this time. They lingered lightly on her back and heels. It seemed like she's been there for awhile, as her posture was leaning the wrong way into a chair. On the tips of her ankles, there were smaller wings. The light shined through those and they shimmered.

"Are you the daughter of Apollo or something?" Lawrence asked, taken with her beauty. It had always been said that angels were beautiful, but as hard as he could have ever imagined, she was more striking.

She laughed, and her sound was like an earthly woman's sound. "No. I just exist. That's all I could ever ask for."

"Are you here to teach me some sort of lesson? Are you going to leave me here like the Malachim?"

The angel sat up straight. "You mean he already came? I thought I was going to be your first visitor." She paused and lost the disappointed expression that her face had worn. "I guess I have been pretty busy. My superior doesn't normally have time to give me, but I suppose I can't blame him. It isn't as if it's his fault."

"What's your name?" Kutner asked as he took a seat across from the angel. He was more taken with her than the Malachim, but he couldn't be sure if it was the admiration of her beauty or her kindness that made him soften.

She smiled, showing teeth that, while white, were grown in tightly together. Her canines were sharper than they should have been, a sign of a much different diet than modern men had ever eaten. "HaMerkauah, but it seems to me that most people of your time period have trouble pronouncing it. You are not obliged to speak my name in our conversation."

"I can say that." Kutner announced. "Who are you?"

The beautiful, silk-clothed angel stood and approached the man. She kneeled on her knees and touched his face, her eyes blank as if she wasn't looking at him. "You don't know who I am?" Her voice was small.

"No." He said.

"I was the chariot that brought you here."

"You're the angel of death?"

"No. He is my master. I am the one who brought you. He was the one who found you." Her gray eyes were imploring him to remember, but there was nothing that came to mind. He remembered nothing about his death. He just knew that he was dead. Or at least he was pretty sure.

Lawrence looked into the being's eyes, and he was calm, he felt whole again, without the pain his life had granted him before. He felt like now, he belonged, and this feeling that cascaded through the top of his cranium to the tip of his pinkie toe resembled happiness. It had been a long time since Lawrence could have truthfully said "fine" when he was asked how he was. He would have said it then if she had asked how we was feeling. "What are you here for?" He whispered.

He watched as her red lips moved to the sound of her voice. It was not a spectacular voice, but the humanness of it seemed to add to her grace. It was a foil with which to compare. "I am here of my own will to tell you that this is death. I am here to probe my own curiosity. I would have liked to have known you in life, Lawrence."

"Know me in death." He replied, his voice unconsciously mimicking the soft airy appeal of this angel's.

"It could have been possible to know you in life. You were so close. You could have just tried. You could have taken that leap of faith." Her sound covered over with a film that made Lawrence feel nauseous. Her hand quickly fell from his face, and the world began to grow colder.

He sat up. "I did take a leap of faith." He was suddenly furious. "I took a leap of faith!"

HaMerkauah sighed. "But it was death."

"Did you just come here to rub it in my face?" Lawrence's face hardened. "If you're planning on actually doing something to help me, then do it!"

The angel's face hardened to the same point as his. "What could I have done?"

"Then, nothing?"

"You don't deserve anything, you selfish man!" The angel stood, and the wings on her ankles spread wide. "If you had deserved anymore than I gave you, I would have given it to you!"

"What the hell did you give me?" Lawrence demanded.

"I gave you peace!"

"No, you didn't! Does this look like peace?"

"I took you! The Angel of Death reaped life from you, and I kept it! I brought you from the misery that you called your life!" Her voice was tall, strong, and so much less delicate than it had been before. "I carried your soul through wars and tears and brought humanity to the human child that you were born, and you forfeited it, so I appeased you! What else could you expect? The kindness that I took to give that soul to you—the hells that I had to endure first—before I could gift you with a life! You deserve nothing more from me!"

Lawrence was quiet. He had loved the angel, and he now understood now. She had been the nurturer. She had planned out his life. HaMerkauah had given him the good times of his life, and even the bad, but she had lived it first.

"I have lived a thousand lives before. You were one of my sons. You are now another nothing." The angel hovered above the ground, and stared down at the figure that had now crouched on the floor below her.

"Forgive me." He asked, like a child that had asked for one too many toys in one store.

"Explain to me why I should."

He came up empty, but the words found his lips through gentle thought. "Because you are kind, and I am nothing. Because you love me and because I am looking for forgiveness in you."

Her eyes softened, as did her voice and words. "Then it will be, my son." She bent down and kissed his cheek before disintegrating right before his eyes.