Earthbound Angel

Her first couldn't see it, I couldn't understand how, even though he was a faithless piece of garbage that knows no God (aside from him self that egotistical—) She should not have left me alone. Not now. Not when my own mind is attacking me…

"Baby?"

I turn to look into big, brown almond-shaped eyes, shivering under her touch. Almost as instantly as I turned to meet her, I pulled her still steaming, still dripping body (covered only by a fuzzy white towel) against me. She releases me abruptly to take a step back and stare into my eyes, breaking out a smile onto my face with her own.

For a while, we stayed like that. Her focus rests on my eyes—in them as if delving within me. My eyes were on her entire portrait: the contours of her body, and every other detail that tells her stories. With my eyes I learned to see her translucent wings rising and falling with her every breath, scars and bruises of the past imprinted on her skin and finally (fragile and willful all at once) she wears on her sleeve. For all of this—for all of her, I had love.

She's an angel. Right from when we met, I believed. She approached me with pre-determined trust, even before she gave me her name. Her name… it is music to my ears and sugar on my tongue.

Gwendolyn Minerva Hiram.

Just like that, she introduced her self. Her entire name! From then on there was… trust. Unbreakable.

"I love you," I whisper to her, nuzzling against her neck.

Her skin is like lava on my lips, and butterflies surge through stomach when I hear her airy laugh, almost a sigh. She kisses my cheek and frees one hand tracing first my face and then the right side of her face, which I did not occupy. I take a peek from the corners of my eyes noticing the black symbols embellished on her flesh. They hid most of the time, unlike the past marks I sometimes could see with my trained eyes.

The symbols on her neck represented a deeply rooted past and love. They were permanent tattoos that sometimes burned. She told me about them, but when I had just started to see them, I still could not believe.

"What is that?" I remember asking.

"I've been marked by a wolf," she replied with a smile, a small forced laugh that was followed by silence… and violent sobs as she burst into tears.

I remember holding her as I am now. I felt helpless and inside my heart the words 'I love you' wanted to burst forth. I did not know it then, so I kept the words inside. I ran my fingers through Gwen's hair and inhale the scent of lavender. She like it as do I. It's comforting. It's so funny how such small details such as hair makes one remember.

Her hair was blowing in the salty air, a sea of ebony, imitating the rhythm of the sea.

"Do you want to hear the story?"

I said nothing. Under the heat of the sun, smoothness of sand and the rolling of waves, I could not really focus.

"I failed him…"

"Who?"

"My little wolf."

She went on about him. Thus I learned of her 'first.' In the process she explained the angel she is. There are different kinds of angels. There are those that spend eternity praising God, glorifying God, being messengers of God…There is the high court of angels and of course the guardian angels… Finally, there are angels like her.

Angels like her are both blessed and cursed.

God picks a handful of angels and sends them to Earth to be born of flesh. Being incarnated as a human, they experience all the joys and pains of being human, they become more susceptible to sin and unlike most angels a riskier change of being pulled into hell.

"I felt he needed someone. I felt he needed me."

She looked in the ocean, but she was really starring beyond. It was her mistake, she admitted. Then again, she blamed almost everything that went wrong on her self. She was always too much or not enough of something. In the case with the wolf, she let curiosity kill her, in a way, completely ignoring her feelings and intuition.

"He told me he was going to corrupt me. I didn't take it seriously then, but now…"

She bit her bottom lip, closed her eyes and leaned against me. I need no words to identify those so-called corruptions. Gwen is chatty and spoke all the time of her past. She revealed much of the effects of 'corruption' in her actions.

I take her hand in mine and kiss it before turning it over the palm. Ah, one day she said,

"I get new marks everyday—everyone does, your body records your experiences you know?"

That day she was so full of energy, like a little child. She looked as such physically (and she hated it), although; I like her as she is.

"See?" she put her hands only centimeters from my face with the biggest grin I had ever seen in my life on her face. I couldn't stop laughing and it took a kick to my shin for me to calm down and listen. Indeed I had seen two or three lines more etched in her hands that weren't there the day before.

I enjoyed listening to her ramble on about the meaning of every curve or wave. She liked to talk about how she could feel the shifts in her life before it happens. Were she not to be human, she could probably tell her life. But she was given only so much properties of an angel.

That was her biggest flaw: the fact that she is angel. She has the innate ability to feel beyond what should and is felt by humans. Her mission as with others like her self is to grant salvation to others, and to stay as pure as they can.

It took much time between us before she could put into words and even mention her 'failure' since she first mentioned it. Angels who lived as humans were they to dedicate at anytime their life to anyone were supposed to make it work as much as possible. Gwen had to choose 'him.' She had not only chosen to support him, she became a lover as well.

Those marks on her neck binds her to him, so much that even if she tried to get away, he would some how still be around. It also went the other way around. As such a thought, I embraced her tighter, lips curving into a smile at her surprised gasp and despite the bitterness that swelled in my chest over her past.

"You're crushing me!" she chimes playfully.

"I'm here for you," As I say this, I press my lips to her hair.

I'm going to protect her She will no longer put the blame on her self. I will be the guy she wished her first was, and the guy she thought those other losers were who just played with her emotions.

"I know."

Gwen's muffled words quelled my mind just as her lips sealed mine.