Water and Fire

Chapter 1

She wasn't surprised that the shared kitchen was still empty. Her alarm had gone off half an hour ago, but in the rest of the house everything was still quiet. It seemed she was the only one being nervous for the very first day of the semester. Maybe she could surprise the others by frying them eggs. Everyone on earth liked eggs, right?

She grabbed the pan and the eggs and turned the fire on. The last few days she had tried to adjust to her new life. She had watched some television to get a grip on what people were watching over here. She had read a couple of books that seemed to be very popular and she had read the newspapers to know better what was going on and what people were worrying about.

Most of the things weren't that different from heaven. Of course, no one would read books with explicit scenes in heaven. There was also no reason to be afraid of guys putting something in your drink while going out. Not that people in heaven actually liked going out. Their going out consisted of reading clubs and once in a while they threw a small tea party to celebrate a special milestone in someone's life. 

Her parents had wanted to throw her a tea party when she had been assigned to her first mission, but she had thought that was a little bit too soon. All she had done was graduating school and turning twenty-one. In her eyes that wasn't an accomplishment. Therefore she had asked her parents not to throw the party until she would come back. If she had succeeded, she would allow herself to celebrate a little.

"Good morning." The door next to hers opened and a pretty girl with short, curly brown hair leaned against the doorpost. "Are you making breakfast for all of us?" She raised her eyebrows and Lena nodded. 

"Yes, I was awake early. I thought you guys would like it." She smiled and washed her hands before she held one of them out. "I'm Lena." She introduced herself. Not that she needed the girl to introduce herself too. She already knew who she was.

"I'm Maria, it's nice to meet you", she answered before turning around and closing the door again. "I'll be there in five minutes", she yelled from behind the door.

Maria Mitchell. A straight A student and one of the many people that could become president one day. If she wouldn't mess up. And that was exactly why Lena was here. 

All Lena had to do was becoming friends with her, making sure that she would follow the path she was walking right now, onto her destiny. As she had expected, it wasn't the hardest mission she had ever heard of.

So far Maria had been an excellent example of perfect behavior. She had never cheated on any of her tests. While her friends had been drunk, she had been studying and she was one of the few girls on this campus that had never messed around with guys. 

If Lena had not known that Maria had been human, she had believed that she was actually an angel.
It wasn't the heroic kind of mission her parents had always talked about.

Her parents had told her about people that had to be kept from doing horrible things. They had been sent to earth to get people of drugs, of alcohol. Once her father had even been sent to earth to talk sense into an army officer that was about to order his compartment to kill innocent citizens of the city they were trying to protect.

If she compared her own mission to the stories she had always been told, she knew that for the more experienced guardian angels, this was nothing but routine. 

She just had to make sure that Maria would stay the girl she had always been. 

"Seriously, are you frying eggs for an entire family or something?"

Lena looked up and she coughed a few times when she smelled the smoke that was clearly surrounding the brown haired boy standing in front of her. "Yes, unless you don't like eggs?" She put the smile back on her face and held out her hand again. "Lena, english literature major", she introduced herself. Again. 

He grabbed her hand and shook it firmly. He was a little taller than she was and he smiled while his dark brown eyes stared at her. "Brian, and I don't even know what I'm studying." 

Lena raised her eyebrows, but she let his hand go and focussed on her eggs again. "I hope you're not planning on smoking in the kitchen?", she spoke softly. The last thing she wanted was judging him. She had been taught that there were a lot of reasons people smoked or did drugs or drank alcohol.
Maybe he had had to deal with abusive parents, maybe he had been bullied at school, maybe he had lost his parents and had not had authority figures to correct his behavior. Maybe he had been surrounded by wrong friends. Most likely he was far from hopeless and could still be saved. 

"O, I smell like cigarettes again?" He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, I only smoke outside the house. It was in the rules." He winked at her. "And I do like eggs. Could you make me three of them?", he asked before he turned around to walk away.

Lena smiled and looked from the door from Maria to the door that had just been closed by Brian. She knew that she was only here to help Maria, but if she could get Brian to stop smoking, she would make an even better impression when she came back in heaven. Because, wasn't helping two people better than helping just one person? She grabbed three more eggs and broke them. Although Maria would always been her priority, she would see what she could do for Brian. If there was something she had learned, it was that everything that was broken could be fixed. Everyone who was broken could be fixed.

"I'm full and ready for the day." Brian leaned back in his chair, his hands resting on his stomach.
For a short moment Lena and Maria exchanged a look, before they started laughing. 

"Did you figure out what you're studying already?", Lena asked while she took the last bite of her toast. Much to her surprise everyone had eventually showed up for breakfast, although most of the students had already left again.

Some had murmured something about needing to buy pencils and notebooks. Most of them had simply gone back to bed, saying that missing the first day wasn't too bad.

Lena had simply raised her eyebrows, but had not said anything about it. All those years at school she had been warned for this. For her it had been normal to show up in class in time, fully prepared. 

For humans things were different. If they weren't graded for being there, they preferred spending half of the semester doing nothing, while hurrying during the other half of the semester to get everything done. 

"Yeah, that English literature thing you mentioned sounds good." Brian smiled at her again and then looked at Maria. "You're studying literature too, right?", he asked and Maria nodded. 

The entire time she had not said a word. She had looked around, as if she was intimidated. Or maybe she was just shy. 

"Well, great! We'll have our own little house study group!", Lena said excited while she stood up to clean the table. Most of all it would mean that she didn't have to be at two spots at once. She could just keep an eye on the two of them. Two birds with one stone. She would make sure that as soon as she would come back in heaven, her parents would finally have a real reason to be proud of her. She would change the lives of two people in a positive way and if Maria would become president one day, she would have been the one guiding her. And who knew what Brian would be able to reach when he was surrounded by the right people? Maybe Maria would get some unexpected concurrence on her road to the white house. 

"At what time do our classed start?", Brian asked and without even thinking about it Lena answered. 

"Half past nine, which means that we have forty-five minutes to get there." She placed the last plate in the sink and decided to do the dishes later. She had to make a plan on how to make all of this work.
If things would go as she had learned at school, most of her roommates wouldn't bother to clean the house. 

Although she would be okay with doing it all herself, she didn't want to stand out too much. She would already stand out enough by just being herself. Maybe she should try to let some things slip. On purpose. To fit in. 

"I'm gonna get my stuff and then I'll be ready to go." She swallowed. "I hope I can find the new notebook. I think I placed it on my desk." On moments like this she wished she could lie. But she couldn't. She knew that she was allowed to break some rules to blend in, but lying was crossing a line she didn't want to cross.