Chapter 4 - Angels
Unique opened her eyes. Her head ached and a horrid noise made it worse by the second. She stared at the awful ceiling while Sion was whistling in an off-key tune.
“Please stop,” she whispered. Her mouth was dry. What happened?
“You’re awake!” Sion turned and squatted down beside her. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better now that you’ve stopped making those horrible noises,” she muttered.
“Don’t be like that. I have an idea.”
“Let me wake up properly first. My head hurts.” She groaned and struggled to sit upright. Sion helped her lean against a wall.
“Where are we?” she asked and looked around the room. The faded wallpaper fitted in with the dusty smell that filled her nostrils as she inhaled. Sion ran a hand through his hair and averted his eyes.
“Well, ehm… I think that they called it a hotel? Maybe a motel?” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Apparently, it’s a place where humans pay to stay overnight or something.”
“How’d you pay then?” Unique frowned. They didn’t have any gold or anything similar to offer in exchange. She raised an eyebrow at Sion who remained silent and stared fixated at a point on the floor.
Her mouth dropped open when her thoughts caught up with her mind. “Oh, Sion. Please tell me you didn’t…”
He jerked around to face her. “Didn’t what?”
She glanced from side to side and leaned closer to him. “You didn’t… steal… right?”
Unique widened her eyes when his deep baritone laugh echoed through the room.
“You—“ he tried to talk, but his laughter cut off his words.
“What?”
“I didn’t steal anything, Unique. Don’t be silly,” he said as he calmed.
She frowned. “Then how did you pay for the room?”
That made Sion silent. He looked away and mumbled something incoherent.
“I can’t hear you.”
He scraped his shoe against the faded carpet and stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. “I… Ehm. I paid in another…” he stopped talking, and Unique watched as his face turned beetroot red as he muttered, “You know what? Let’s just forget about it… It’s really not relevant.”
Unique didn’t understand what he was trying to say. Nor did she know why he couldn’t just tell her what he did to pay for the room. But the thoughts of him disappeared when her stomach complained loudly.
“What’s that?” Her hands flew to her abdomen in panic. Was she exploding?
“Don’t worry. It’s the gravity down here.” Sion walked over to a plastic bag with various colorful flowers on the side. He grabbed it and turned to her. “As far as I could tell, it mainly has something to do with the inner functions. Guess we have to live like humans too, huh?”
Unique just stared at his hands. He was rumbling through the bag until he found what he was looking for, he pulled up his hand with a smile. He handed something at her, and she couldn’t see what it was—except that it was something wrapped in foil.
"Eat this." He threw the small package. She scrambled around on the bed, in an attempt to catch it.
"You throw like a girl," she said as she studied the bar. "What is this?"
Sion shrugged. "It tastes delicious, and it'll shut up the dying whale inside you.”
She gasped. “I have a dying whale in my stomach?”
That sounded horrible, whatever a whale might be. She didn’t know, but it was unpleasant to know that something was dying inside her. Her bottom lip quivered at the thought.
Sion sighed. “Just eat it."
Carefully, she turned the bar in her hands. It looked appetizing. She opened the package with cautious hands and surveyed its contents. It looked to be a kind of corn, and a dark brown bottom. Unique shook her head. Don't be silly. What was she afraid would happen? That the bar would attack her? She scoffed at her own stupidity.
With a loud inhale, she took a bite.
A sugar rush like never before took over her body. The sweetness of the dark bottom mixed with the honey flavor of the corn tasted divine. It only took her a few bites until she had devoured the whole thing. "This. Is amazing," she mumbled with her mouth full of the tasty snack.
Sion laughed. "I know, right? You can say a lot about humans—which we already do frequently—but they have an exceptional gift for making life sweeter!"
"Are there more?"
He threw another bar and plopped down beside her. "We need to talk though."
She glanced at him. Uh-oh. That couldn't be good. "About what?"
"Well. Something occurred to me yesterday when I watched you take care of the sudden war zone—“
“Sudden?” She cocked an eyebrow.
”As I was saying…” He cleared his throat. “When you took care of the sudden and mysterious war zone from yesterday…”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Just continue.”
He interlaced his fingers and rolled his left thumb around the other. "When I watched that, I was thinking that perhaps we could combine my amazing powers with your great looks to catch the attention of the Origins?"
He snickered at his own joke. “Yeah... I like that. We could be known as the number one, which would be me. And number two, well… Guess who…” He rolled on the bed laughing.
“You really are an idiot, Sion.” She glared at him. If only eyes could kill…
He clenched his stomach. “Or how about—“
His chuckle interrupted his speech. Tears were visible in his eyes. “Team one and a half.”
She didn’t respond, just waited it out. He gasped for air, and within a few breaths, managed to calm down his breathing. “Are you done?”
He chuckled again. “Sure. But what do you think about combining our strengths?”
"How do you figure we do that?"
He rolled his eyes. “That’s your job. I can’t be expected to have all the power, looks, ideas, and the ability to figure out the puny details. I mean, seriously, Unique. You need to take some responsibility here too. Give a man some respect!”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Of course I am—we should share the workload, right?”
Unique thought about it. It would make sense for them to work together. It also made sense that her father would discover her disappearance sooner if they combined their powers. "We don't know much about humans, though."
"Come on…" He rolled over on his side, facing her. "We all descend from Mother Lif, right? It can't be that different."
She hated to admit it, but he had a point. Although, her concern wasn’t the difference between Gods and humans—it was whether they had the ability to understand enough to get back to Haims.
Her voice was doubt-filled when she spoke. “How would we even obtain the knowledge required to do that, Sion?”
“Well. There’s this incredible thing called reading—wait, you do know how to read, right?”
“Dumbass…”
Sion snickered and reached for his flowery bag. He rummaged through it and pulled out a large book. Holding it up as if it were an advertisement, he pointed to the title. “This is ‘Gods and beliefs throughout the world’, for all your questions about human mythology.”
Unique looked at the picture. A man with wings and folded hands adorned the cover in golden glitter. She scoffed. “That’s not about human mythology.”
Sion looked at the book with a frown. “What do you mean?”
She sighed. How dumb could he be? “Well. For starters, humans don’t have wings. Nor are they golden or glittery.”
He sputtered and broke out in laughter. “Oh, Unique. You kill me.”
Heat flared to her cheeks. "I'd like it if you stopped laughing at me all the time."
“You did walk into that one though.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “The picture is just another fancy way of selling something. Humans like sparkly things, apparently.”
“So it’s not for winged people?”
“No, it’s about winged people though.” He opened the book and scanned the page. “Listen to this; An Angel is believed to be of divine entity. It is a common belief that the Angels are a being that falls in between Heaven and Earth.”
He showed her the book, and she read the paragraph:
'An Angel is defined in mythology as the following:
In Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, Angels are believed to be a typical benevolent celestial being, which acts as media between humans and God.
Often in the Angel is portrayed in the image of a human figure with a halo and wings.’
She stopped reading. “That’s blasphemy, and really strange.”
Her mouth chewed the last of her snack bar, and she leaned on her elbows while looking at the book. Sion handed it over, and she flipped through the pages.
With every turn, her scoff increased. “This is the stupidest thing, I’ve ever read.”
“Mm?” Sion leaned back and peered over her arm.
“Listen to this: ‘Sacrifices are a well-known way to appease a deity.’ We don’t have that.” She frowned. “Why would anyone do that?”
“To get on good terms with the Gods, maybe?”
“Yeah. But that’s just stupid.” Unique closed the book. “We protect and serve the human race. It is our duty. It’s not a normal paid job, so why would anyone try to buy our attention?”
Sion shrugged.
“It’s downright degrading even to suggest that.” Nausea spread through her. She felt sick and tainted, just touching that ignorant book was enough to make her wish to scrub her skin all over with a rough brush.
"Humans... They're so perfectly imperfect." Sion took the book and skimmed through it. "Some of this must have started somewhere though. You know that, right?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Well. We've been around for a long time. And the Origins before us. They must have affected the earth in a way."
"How so?"
"Well, for starters, I don't believe that Aunt Sage, would allow humans to live in ignorance for long." He turned the page and smiled. "She's the Goddess of Wisdom after all. Look at this."
Unique moved over and read the page. It told of a Goddess named Athena. In ancient Greece, she was considered the Goddess of wisdom. Unique’s eyes widened as she read over the text and looked at the picture. "It even looks like Aunt Sage, although, that bird is terrible."
"Apparently, it’s the mascot for knowledge. Who would have guessed?” Sion stretched his back. “Humans are odd beings.”
Amen to that. Unique pondered about this new information. If the Gods of Haims had affected the world, why hadn’t they made sure that the humans used their real names? To her, it seemed silly that any of the Origins would allow this.
"I personally think that parts of this also make more sense than what we have in Haims," Sion said.
"What?"
"Well… Down here they seem to think that men are superior.” He smirked and met her eyes. “That makes much more sense to me.”
"You are such a—“
"Ah-ah. Don't get too caught up with name-calling, love. We're a team now, remember?" he interrupted.
Unique groaned. Jerk. She wasn't even going to reply. She rose from the bed, and walked to something that resembled a door. When she opened it up, she found nothing but empty rags. She turned on her heel and faced Sion. "Is there somewhere I can take a bath?"
He nodded behind him to a small corner, which she hadn't noticed.
"Thanks." With a determined expression, she walked over there and looked inside the room. She screeched at the sight. "What's this supposed to mean?"
Sion popped up behind her. "What?"
She glanced up at him. "Where are the oils, not to mention the obvious lack of a tub to bathe in? And that horrible stench. You cannot seriously think that these facilities are appropriate in any way at all."
The tiled room was dark, and a horrid scent of toxic filled her nostrils. She was about to gag. The discolored tiles disgusted her alongside the steel that appeared to be rusty.
"Don't be a baby. This is fine." Sion pushed past her and walked over to turn a handle on the wall. She watched with fascination as water spilled from a small device attached to the tiles.
"Wow."
"I know, right? It's like a private waterfall." Sion beamed. "You just jump under it. And then wash yourself as you would do in a bath, except this will continuously wash you clean."
Unique nodded. Okay, she could live with this. The water seemed clean enough. She'd even gotten used to the scent by now. Perhaps this wasn't so miserable after all.
The pep talk helped a bit, but she was still hesitant as she stepped into the room.
She bit her lip as her hands found the hem on the shirt that she'd borrowed from Mrs. Smith. The sense of being watched made goose bumps appear on her skin, and she looked up to see Sion surveying her.
"You don't have to stop for my sake," he said with a wink.
She gritted her teeth. "Get. Out."
He smirked and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Unbelievable… Just, unbelievable. She had no other words to describe him.
The clothes dropped to the floor quickly after that. She sighed in content as she stepped under the hot water.
Her mind was in a frenzy. Thoughts of Gods and men with wings flared around in her head. There had to be an idea somewhere in between that. If humans believed that Angels was divine, then perhaps they should use that to their advantage.
Unique liked that idea; the only problem was that neither she nor Sion had wings. Even if, she came up with a way to use the belief, then it wouldn’t do them any good. Especially since neither of them had the ability to fly.
She groaned. Why did it have to be so hard? Her thoughts went back to the idea of sacrifices. Even though, the idea was neat, it wasn’t anything they could use. Gods didn’t pay attention to gifts like that. The hard rays of water massaged her shoulders, and she leaned back against the tiles. She could get used to this; she didn’t even want to step out to dry herself.
In an instant, her eyes opened. Oh, no.
She turned off the water and peered out into the room.
Arr. Crap.
There were no towels.