7.2

 

She nodded, moving forward to wipe a thumbnail’s work or charcoal from the skeleton’s eye socket. "Then it’s still evolving. Half-human, half-angel. Suspended between earth and heaven." Stepping closer, she lowered her voice, as if the room contained spirit who might blab about their conversation and touched his arm lightly. "Would you choose it? To shed the weight of flesh, and transition into symbol and light?"

His eyes flickered toward the rain-veined window. Outside, the world was blurred, indistinct, only the soft glow of other house windows, streetlamps and cars appearing as glowing orbs against the cloud-heavy darkness. He shook his head slowly. “I honestly don’t know. To become an angel would mean losing the physical connection to other human beings, and I get barely enough of that as it is. On the other hand, to remain human is to carry the ache of never being enough. Perhaps the evolution is not a choice, but necessary to achieve both truths at once."

The rain hardened, blurring the outside world further. Roisin reached out, tracing the glass with her fingertip, the warmth of which transferred to the cold surface, distorting the trail of rivulets. The cold bit at her skin, leaving a faint mark, and just for a moment she could see an echo of the bone beneath, trying to escape its prison of flesh and sinew. “What if the angel is not above us, but already inside us—an unfinished pupae, waiting to be summoned and transformed?"

The silence between them deepened, it was charged like the seconds between a bolt of lightning and a thunderclap. Paul crossed to the window and stood beside her. Their reflections mingled in the glass, distorted by the rain beyond. They were fractured by the rivulets and doubled, as though already in the process of transitioning. “You see how the rain obscures the world? It doesn’t destroy it—it veils it. Perhaps that is what becoming an angel is: not leaving, but veiling. A way of being present without influencing those around us."

She let out her breath in a bark of half-despair, half-hope. “But veils can suffocate. They can hide as much as they reveal. What if angelhood is just another mask, another layer thar distances us from whatever the truth might be?" Her words carried a tremor, though she tried to steady them.

Paul turned to her, studying the way her breath clouded against the glass. "I think that maybe truth itself is a distance. Being man is to cling to matter and forever demand closeness. To become an angel means to accept that the closeness dissolves but that meaning suffuses the consciousness."

Roisin pursed her lips, pondering and circling his insight, like an owl tracking the movements of a field mouse, far below. “Meaning without touch sounds like an empty existence, as it it’s not an angel we’re talking about but the spectre of what it means to be human. What is recognition if it cannot warm the skin or steer the heart away from fear?"

Paul reached for the curtains, pulling them closed against the rain and the night. Their reflections vanished from the glass, leaving them facing not the world, but a repeating pattern of cheap fabric. “Look, the reflection no longer fractures us into pieces but having been fractured we are still whole. Perhaps angelhood is like that—being fractured into a thousand tiny aspects but still remaining whole."

Roisin turned away from the windows and stared one again at the drawing on the wall. "But then are we left with an endlessly repeating pattern? At the end of all things, are we all just the same? Angels are supposed to endure for eternity. If we transition into a fractured entity, then aren’t we too fragile to bear the weight of forever?"

Paul smiled faintly, a dimple showing in the crease of his whisker-clad chin. “Perhaps eternity is fragile. Perhaps that is the truth we are unable to see."

The room seemed to contract around them, the rain against the window becoming deafening. Roisin stepped back, her hand brushing against the drawing she’d invested the hours on. “ Your statue is meant to be angel, but it’s only a part of the whole carving. Does that make it less? Or does being an isolated part make it more human?"

Paul’s smile faded as he frowned, deep in thought. "The separation is the truth. Angelhood without fracture would be unbearable. It is the unfinishedness that makes it real."

"Then perhaps we are already angels, in fragments. Not transformed, but transforming. Always in transition."

Paul nodded slowly, his gaze drifting back ward his rom and the bas-relief. "Maybe to be human is to begin the transformation. To be angel is to never finish it."