Title: Tongues of Men and Angels
Rating: TA for implied?romance.
Summary: Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.
Disclaimer: *obligatory insert*
Interlude: Matins
Awake, my soul! Awake, my harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
Psalm 57:8
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.
Psalm 65:8
Afternoons of driving and flight led to lazy evenings in dusky light, and though the desert seemed unbearably barren to Gabriel, he had grown to appreciate its painted purple shadows, the blue light on Bethany's face, the sharp stars like the glinting points of a thousand burning swords. Sunsets in aqua and lime and rose melted into an endless number of rooftop conversations and Bethany's low, smoky voice, which alternately chattered at him playfully or grew soft and confiding as a flower. Sooner or later, she would creep away to bed, where she slept with Joy. Sometimes he would stay on the eaves, listening to the sound of his own breathing, the steady thud of his heart in his chest.
Each breath, each ebb and flow of the holy fire in his veins, seemed to him like a prayer.
But other times he would linger in the hallway outside whichever room they decided to sleep in, his wings confined, his face constricted with a steady and claustrophobic unease. He had been created large, and meant for open skies and bright wildernesses; the narrowness of these human corridors strained him. Still, some nights, he could not bring himself to leave, focusing instead on heartbeats and breathing patterns that were not his own.
When the morning came, though—when he felt Bethany's pulse quicken, her muscles stretch—he took to the skies for his morning prayers. Cut off from heaven, abandoned by his Father, Gabriel was still determined to not abandon Him. Psalms and sacred devotions poured from his lips in the private, holy places between a stark bruise-colored sky and the cold blue heights of invisible stars. It was not until later, usually, that he rejoined the sisters, generally after Joy finally woke and ate her breakfast and was perched at the side of the road, where he was drawn inevitably to her side.
But this day, he left early, missing his Father with a blind desperation, eager to recapture some semblance of the intimacy he so craved. Though Father seemed unresponsive, Gabriel's morning hosannas at least left him feeling more at ease, if still vaguely melancholic and hollow.
Having left early, he returned early, and he heard laughter, and was suddenly—surprisingly—saddened to find he'd missed the source of it. He rounded the corner, and there they were: breakfast outside this morning, canned fruit left half-eaten in cracked bowls on the patio furniture, most of which looked partially broken. For a moment, it overwhelmed him: this little dying garden, with overturned potted succulents and lopsided furniture, sunbleached cushions, the cracked stepping stones and straggling coarse desert-grasses. And amidst the blanched, bleak scene: two sisters, laughing, playing catch with an old baseball.
"You suck!" Joy crowed when Bethany's throw went wild.
"You suck," her sister called back, sticking out her tongue. "I'm trying to teach you how to dive for it!"
"Right," the younger girl snickered. He folded his wings slowly, but the feathers clicked and chimed against each other like small knives, and both sisters paused to glance at him, Joy raising one hand in a carefree, wholehearted wave.
Her smile was reckless, abandoned, free-spirited—something rare, and so precious that his breath grew still in his lungs. He realized abruptly that she was gleaming: her throat was bedecked with glittering costume jewelry, which caught and reflected the harsh desert sunlight into a million softly-colored shadows on her face, the vulnerable underside of her chin. He had known Joy was partial to ornamentation—her fingers were always shining with metal rings on almost every finger—but he had not seen such garish overindulgence on her before. Bethany, too, had a filmy floral scarf wrapped around her neck, and in the growing heat of the morning she had discarded her fraying sweatshirt. The muscles in her arms were long and lean, and they moved smoothly under skin that he thought might burn easily in the sun. A rogue breeze, hot and dusty, skittered through the air, lifting the long trailing ends of the scarf and winding it through the fluttering burnt-gold banner of her hair.
He stood in silence, soaking in their banter, their called nicknames and playful insults, the steady thwack of the ball—which appeared to be scribbled with signatures—into their mitts. The sun grew higher, and air grew dryer, and the girls finally stopped with laughter still scribbled on their shining, smiling faces.
"We found an extra mitt," Joy told him as they converged on him, still grinning, bumping hips with each other. He marveled at how in tandem they seemed sometimes, how at ease with each other as long as they weren't wrapped in their individual and complementary sorrows.
"I did not know that you had a mitt in the first place," he admitted, and Bethany grinned.
"Gabriel, we have a treasure chest," she said, and her eyes sparkled like new pennies and amber suns. And then the sisters showed him where it was buried—a medium-sized decorative trunk made from something like papier-maché or cardboard, which had been lodged tightly on the floor of the backseat of the truck, underneath their small spare suitcases and a modest pile of blankets. In it were two more scarves, and yet more jewelry; a bottle of something called Old Spice (and it did, Gabriel acknowledged, look old), a small box of baseball cards, some books and postcards and photographs.
"We brought these from home," Joy explained after a moment, touching the scarves lingeringly. "They were…"
"All the things we couldn't bear to part with," Bethany finished for her sister, still smiling. "These scarves are our mother's. Some of the jewelry, too, though the tackier stuff is from when we were kids."
"These baseball cards I collected all through second grade," Joy confided. "I had a teacher—she was my favorite—who gave us one with every good grade we got."
"The ball and mitt were our dad's," Bethany added, her fingers caressing the frayed stitches of the ball still held in her hands. "Both autographed, you know. He didn't actually care about them too much, but he kept them on his desk because we thought they were the coolest things ever."
When he touched the edges of the photos, he grew very still. There, on top, a picture taken within the year, and he almost didn't recognize the people in it at first. Unshadowed, unscarred, shining-eyed: two sisters, clearly awake and enraptured with life. From the angle, he supposed that Joy had climbed on her sister's back, though she was clearly too old to be carried. There was so much laughter in them; they were ruddy-cheeked and almost tearful with their mirth. He had often, now, thought them each surprisingly and ineffably beautiful, but in this relic of the past he saw an innocence and hope that made his heart break open and weep inside.
Without thinking, he touched the photo, his finger pressing gently against Bethany's whole and unhurt face.
"It's a good one of her," Joy agreed with a reckless little smile, which he suddenly realized was only a shadow of its former glory. "You can keep it, if you want." There was something teasing in her voice, and he cast a questioning glance at Bethany, but she was busy trying to tug the trunk from the place where it was wedged. "Go on," Joy said lightly, and he hesitated before tucking it inside the edge of his chestplate. It seemed to warm against his skin, and offer his heart some piece of contentment, though he could not say why it was so.
A talisman, he thought only. A holy relic.
And then the trunk popped out, and Bethany stumbled, and Joy laughed at her, and together they showed him a chipped teacup, and they told him laughing stories of each photograph, a small unidentifiable stuffed animal, each book and what it meant (The Cricket in Times Square, and Maniac Magee, and Skellig and Stargirl and The Two Princesses of Bamarre) and a small gold necklace with a tiny shining dove on it. There was a dyed feather from a plastic "dress-up shoe" from when they were children, a little cracked clay bowl full of plastic gems, ticket stubs to a Red Wings game with which they had surprised their father (driving all day and night in order to see it), and an old locked diary covered in stickers.
And there was something else there, too, hidden in the sweet-smelling recesses of the box, which seemed too small to hold all these strangely beautiful and wondrous things. It was invisible, and unnameable, and the sisters didn't seem to know it was there, but Gabriel could pick up the faint comforting fragrance of it, and oh, he could feel it. It was in the bright and holy and sacred way they shared each thing with him, the way they handled each one lovingly and gave it to him, trusting him with their stories and their memories, with the fragile remembered delight that clung to their hearts and eyes like little ghosts.
And even if he couldn't name it, he still understood it, this last remaining thing in the box: something like hope, like devotion, like adoration; something like morning prayers, and coming home.
Word Count: 1,547
Completed: May 12th, 2011
A little bit of sweetness & light to last you through the weekend. I am going to visit my own sisters tomorrow afternoon and Saturday, and I look forward to it so much. I am bringing home all sorts of colored chalk, and scrapbooking stuff, and we will frolic and blow bubbles and fly kites. Maybe. It depends on the weather.
Writing this makes me suddenly realize how very much of my relationship with my little sisters has suffused this fanfiction, especially in this chapter.
The next installment is going to be the longest—and probably most confusing—chapter so far. It's drabbles upon drabbles, flashbacks upon flashbacks. I hope it is some measure of coherent. PREPARE YOURSELVES. :)
Also: each of the books listed here was chosen for a specific reason, many of them symbolic.
The Two Princesses of Bamarre, by Gail Carson Levine, is about two sisters: a brave older sister and a shy, frightened younger one, and essentially: how they both take care of each other.
Skellig, by David Almond, is about a boy who discovers an "owl-man" in an abandoned garage. The owl-man is in need of caretaking; meanwhile, the boy's baby sister is also frighteningly ill. The book touches along themes and questions of freedom.
Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli, was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. It is about a boy whose parents die. He then runs away and sets off essentially across the country, playing baseball and making friends and overcoming prejudice.
Stargirl, also by Spinelli, is about a "new girl" in a desert high school who shakes the world with her nonconformity and unexpected authenticity and friendship.
…I was going to say that The Cricket in Times Square (by George Seldon) was the only book that I chose based entirely on personal whimsy (it was a book my mother read to me when I was a child, and which I in turn read to my sisters) but I realize now that this isn't entirely true. I also read Maniac to my sisters before bed, and The Two Princesses was a gift to my oldest-younger sister, Lisa, while Stargirl was given to Valerie and Skellig to Rosie (and yes, for those of you who read my Octoberverse, there are some very strong parallels). So, while unintentional, I suppose all of these books have deep personal meaning as well.
****Matins refers to the first canonical hour, which generally occurs at daybreak. As a daily prayer service, it often is scheduled for 3:00am. It is generally comprised of psalms and hymns, and I love the idea of Gabriel singing his prayers lowly in the first stretches of dawn.