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*

Chapter XXXIX: The Stone Is Rolled Away
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
Isaiah 35: 1-2

It was night when he arrived, and he found her sleeping on a broken porch swing on a storefront in the nearby tourist-town. As though she felt his presence, she stirred and opened her eyes. The wastelands were silvered with nighttime shadows and shivering light; he knew he cut a frighteningly stark and sacred figure of reflecting metal and razored wings.

Even so, he thought of all the things his Father had created, and none were as precious or radiant as Bethany's face when she saw him standing in the starlit sand. Her eyes, her brow, her mouth; her narrow, vivid scar—not ruining her face at all but setting her apart, marking her as infinitely more lovely than he would ever have imagined—and the way her gaze opened to him, vulnerable and wondering, full of longing and a sweet, piercing kind of hope—

"Bethany," he said only, aching with the wanting of her, and she all but tumbled from the swing, leaping over the steps of the porch, her bare feet kicking up small clouds of crystal-bright sand in the moonlight. Her arms reached for him, welcoming him into her embrace, and he lifted her and wondered how he had ever yearned for Heaven instead. "I am here," he told her, when he thought he felt a tear fall on his forearm. And perhaps he had, but he would never know—because the clouds had suddenly rolled in and brought with them silver rain, and thunder, and new life into the desert.

She laughed, and tipped her face up to the falling sky, and the raindrops sparkled on her brow and her lashes. Her arms had somehow wound around his neck as though they were at home there, and her feet swung above the sand. She was gasping with joy, and relief, and thankfulness, and it filled every space inside him.

"Come," he beckoned. "We have other places to be."

"Where will we go?" she asked, breathlessly pleased, her arms still clinging to him.

Where, indeed.

"Everywhere," he told her solemnly, putting her back on her feet—though he did not let her go. "I intend to show you all of my Father's Creation."

She laughed again, with more exuberance than he could bear, and in the rain he pressed his mouth reverently to the place on her brow where her scar began. She grew very, very still, her bright eyes wide and almost frightened-looking—as though to move might shatter the moment. After a brief instant of solemn consideration, he took her stillness as an opportunity, and brushed his mouth against both of her eyelids, and then the place where her scar furrowed her lip. She shuddered in his hands, and he thought of the day her sister had died—but he was very certain that this shudder was wholly different in nature.

"We will leave as soon as you choose," he told her. "There is one place in particular which I wish for you to see before the autumn comes."

Word Count: 504
Completed: June 11th, 2011
****This title refers to the opening of Jesus' tomb on the day of his resurrection. The idea of it—which I hope was echoed by the rain in the desert, and so on—is that life is renewed, and death is overcome: not only of the body but of the spirit and heart. [c. Luke 24, Mark 16, Matthew 28, John 20]