The Anthem of the Castaway

Rejected

Pain rips through my conscience and all I can concentrate on is the feeling of blood draining into my lungs. I haven't got enough energy left to cough it out, so I'm left laying in the bed of this kind mans cabin, drowning on my own blood. All I can do is wait until the pain is gone, until I can return to Gods grace. Then, just like that, I feel my soul leave my body.

I open my eyes, prepared to be already healed, but for some reason I'm not. Father stands above me, just staring, not saying a word.
His actions frighten me. What did I do wrong? I wonder, as I stay frozen, meeting his gaze. Wolf comes up behind him, looking equally surprised but wary.
I cough slightly, trying to breath, but that doesn't help, so I turn over to help myself to cough it up. Then it hits me.
Quite literally. I am hit with an Angels wing, but at the same time as I feel the sharp edges of the feathers cut across my skin like paper does, I realize I feel pain in an extra, unfamiliar appendage on my body. In response, I turn my head as far as it can go and see two wings on one side.
With an unclear mind, I swing my head to the other side and see two more wings.
I cough harder to clear my lungs before standing up, my legs wobbly and unstable. I reach behind me to feel my wing base, and I find that there is, in fact, another pair growing out of the bottom of the base of the original. These new wings are smooth and fresh, each feather gleaming white. My original are rough and tattered, each white feather dull and frayed.
I begin to wobble on my feet and Father catches me before I can fall off the pathway to heaven. He holds my arms tightly and leans to whisper in my ear.
"Come find me when you learn to fly."
I feel the force of his entire body though his arms as he pushes me backward off the path, then I feel my body sail though the air.
A brief moment of emotional hurt flashes through my mind, but is quickly passed over in my attempt to correct my fall and fly. I try to coordinate my new wings, but they won't straighten like my original, and I'm left tumbling through the air like a rag doll. As I pass through the atmosphere, I feel the searing heat generated between the feathers of my wings, and I give one last ditch effort to slow down my tumble by extending my wings. Within moments of trying, my fresh wings feel like an old, uncoordinated pain in the ass.
I finally correct my fall so that I am shooting straight downward, but the ground is fast approaching. It's in this moment I realize that my new wings will be useless, and I tuck them to my side and use my own wings to slow the fall and glide down.
I spot the cabin of the old man I was staying with before and I aim for an area about 10 miles off so as to not offer any attraction to his area.
I angle my wings to add more drag, but I know I'm going too fast into the forest, so I resort to tucking them in and taking the landing.
My body slams into the ground, causing the trees around to shake. My back and shoulders take most of the damage from the fall, and in this moment I'm glad I don't have the weak bones of a human. I try to sit up to assess the damage, but I double over and cough hard, spitting up clots of blood from my lungs.
After coughing up a good sized pool of blood, I am able to stand up. In my surprise I find that my only pain is in my ribs, and with a tender touch I can tell that one is broken. After coughing for another few minutes, I regain my composure and shift into a werewolf form.
I jog painfully toward the cabin, holding up an odd set of wings that I shouldn't have. A dog with wings. Wonderful.
I follow my nose for miles, knowing the scent of the man. A few times I change my course to avoid hunters, but otherwise it's a straight shot to his cabin.
As I approach the cabin, I notice the odd smell of officers present, and I tuck my black wings against my jet black coat in order to not attract attention, and I linger back in the shadows behind the house.
My nose draws me to the mans meat locker, where I oblige only because it is a good place to hide. I slowly push open the door and lay in the back in the pile of furs. I doze off, waiting for the officers to leave.

It isn't long before an officer slowly open the door and steps in with a flash light. Before he can shine his light my way, I close my eyes and lay still, hoping my body will look like a taxidermy mount. The man strides around the room, looking under tables, then he comes to the fur pile and starts tossing aside hides. Leaving a deer hide over my shoulders to cover my wings, I open my eyes and lunge at the man before he can touch my fur. The man jumps back as expected, but then pulls out his gun and points it at me, his hands shaking. I move before he can pull the trigger, and I hear his bullet lodge into one of the hanging deer carcasses.
Foaming blood spills from my mouth, my red eyes glowing in the light, as I stock toward him. I let out a loud bark and a deep growl, and the man shoots again, this time actually striking my chest. The bullet embeds into my skin, but goes no further due to the armor under my skin. The man, now more frightened than before, turns and runs out of the locker, leaving me standing there, blood dripping from my mouth and a deer hide draped over my back.
As the man joins his group, I hear him say in a smart voice. "You've got a wolf in your meat shed."
The man responds so quietly that I can't understand, then the man and the officer come around. As the man approaches, he does so quietly and timidly, unsure of what wolf the man is talking about. As he gets close, I submissively lay down and rest my chin on the ground, staring up at him. He recognizes me and pats my head before turning to the officer. "That's my dog. You must've done something stupid to piss Lucifer off."
The man walks away with the officer, and it doesn't take long before the officers all leave in their trucks.
"You can come out now." The man tells me, poking his head into the locker. I get up and shake the hide off, allowing my wings to be seen as I follow the man into his house.
As he walks to his kitchen, I split off and change form back to an angel in his living room.
"You came back." He states as he comes in with two cups of tea.
"This is the only place to go at the moment." I reply, which causes him to look up at me. His jaw drops, his eyes staring at my wings.
"You have wings now." He says quietly, showing definite shock in his expression.
"I had them before." I tell him, clearly remembering when I showed him.
"You got twice as many now." He states, still not broken from his trance.
"Yeah, that seems to be the problem. I can't fly." I tell him, annoyed not with him, but at myself for not being able to control my new appendages.
"Hmm. I thought something looked off with you." He replies, breaking out of his shock as he sets down the tea.
I try to speak more, but my lungs force me to cough, which causes more blood to come up and pain to spike through my ribs. I grab the towel nearest to me to keep the blood from getting on anything, but I fail at that and spit up on his floor. Reduced into a coughing fit, I barely am able to sit down before I pass out.