I didn’t know you could be so snarky. I like it!

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Current Date: October 15, 2022

Character: Helios Iden
Race: Angel – Night
Age: 37, physically about 30
Current residence: Heavens
 

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I am not a social creature. No amount of trying to get someone to change this will do any good. I do better on my own most of the time and, in the same way, I suppose they are means for me to keep my heart and myself at a slight distance from matters that might make me hurt the way things did when Uriel was removed from my life.

It was years upon years ago at this point. I was young, I was naive, I did think there just was something so perfect that clicked between us but then, he got brought back up and, eventually, so did I. I’ve forgiven him, I’ve forgiven the one who forgot him down here, I’ve forgiven everyone that might have had to do with that part of our lives but forgetting is hard, even though it has been as long as it has.

In a way, I suppose I’m that one idiot who just can’t move on and, yeah, being a fair bit of a loner, even through my work, hasn’t helped me. I know that the rare few I call somewhat friends would like me to spend more time with others and open myself up to them, but I just can’t. I don’t even want to dream of taking a chance at things like that.

Now, on our team, certain people come and go. Most don’t last very long because while you might have some semblance of a schedule, seeing as there is a ‘night’ somewhere in the world at all times, you might need to get switched up at times because someone else can’t make it. It isn’t all that common, but it does happen. As someone on the upper echelon of the working team, I’ve covered more of these unexpected shifts than others and I don’t mind so much. It does mean that I come across others that I might not have seen for a while or, you know, newbies who like to complain a whole lot.

Most of the time, I do let them do their things; I’m not there to tell them how to do their job unless they’re doing a terrible, well, job of it. I’m there to supervise a bit and just help as needed. It’s not because I’ve moved up a bit in rank that I don’t do the job myself. The veil of night moves on its own for the most part, at times, it just needs a little nudge to keep moving. It’s hard to explain and, at times, I don’t think explaining really does anything.

So, there are days when my own nights of sleep will be rather short because I have to help out elsewhere, but recently I’ve been overseeing a place where it is night when it’s day where the realm is settled so it mostly works out to my sleeping at night when it’s dark.

A few weeks ago, I was overseeing a few new recruits just making sure the veil moved as it should have. There were a few hiccups due to an eclipse that happened as the day shifted into night and a few arguments, but they resolved themselves without my presence being needed. A few times, I almost did as one of the slightly older workers—someone who’s been changed teams time and again—would pick on a new recruit, teasing almost to the point of bullying but the newbie would have none of it.

In the long run, it was someone else, once the shift was over, who told the newbie that they hadn’t expected him to be so snarky and that it fit them. It made me shake my head a little, but I took note of things and made sure to let those who had to know that keeping these two on the same team was possibly a bad idea. I know for a fact that this is why my older worker never sticks to one team very long. She’s constantly teasing new additions to the team to the point of near bullying, but I can’t even imagine that she understands what she’s doing.

Well, it’s hard to put into words whether or not she understands what she’s doing, I don’t know my way around the mind of others well enough to even think of trying to understand whether or not she does, and I wouldn’t want to know. I still feel as though she might need to talk to someone about it because she makes for a person that no one really wants to work with. No one should be switching teams as often as she does, in the end.

So sure, I was glad to go back to my usual team after a couple of days overseeing that one. Not that my team is perfect, but everyone has been working together for a bit of time at this point and they do so well.

Final Word Count: 823

You turned me into a child. You better be able to turn me back or you’ll face all four feet of my wrath.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Helios Iden
Race: Angel – Night
Age: 36, physically about 30
Current residence: Heavens
Final Word Count: 800 words
 

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It is rare but not unheard of that strange things do happen up here. Newcomers discovering themselves and their gifts is something of an uncommon happening, but it is not unheard of. What is rare and has only happened once in my life so far—that I’ve heard of, at least—is an age reversal. From what few details I have of that, as Seraphiel has never truly spoken of it to others, but some things are hard to ignore when they happen near you, is that it was his body’s own reaction to stress that made it happen. He stayed as a much younger version of himself for a few weeks, that I know of, before he was back to his regular self.

From that little knowledge, I can’t help but wonder about things. I can understand that he was under a tremendous amount of stress, that’s one of those things. He’s part of the council and for a while, he seemed to be the only one actively doing anything in that council. That is so much weight to be had on another’s shoulders. I’m always in awe over how Seraphiel just is, if you would. He’s strong, he’s confident, he’s a good person and many look up to him.

Can you imagine, however, just waking up, one morning, and you’re a child again? Four feet tall, wondering what happened and when you’re going to turn back? If you live on your own, that has to be a terrifying experience. You don’t know for certain what’s going on, you might be able to turn to your friends for support, but it’s still frightening.

If you have someone in your life, I can only imagine how disquieting it has to be, too. You two go to bed as normal and when you wake up, you’re cuddled up to what seems like a giant or, you know, it’s the other way around and you’re the one curled close to a child who clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near your bed.

Now, if that change happened because of someone else, the feisty ones would be all up in their faces, telling them to turn them right back or so help them, they’d turn all four feet of their wrath up on that person and just, the thought does amuse me a little, but I know that it is no laughing matter. The idea of being turned into a child, even if temporary, is honestly pretty frightening. I don’t know how I would handle things, myself. I’d probably lock myself away until it was fixed but I’m pretty much just a keep-to-myself sort of guy.

Thinking about some of the others that I’ve been near now and again, a few come to mind who would likely put up such a fuss about things that it would be hard to ignore the happenings.

I think that thoughts of this have mostly come to the surface recently because there was one rebirth who came to us and things just, it was a whole mess. Somehow, the young girl—she came to us as a young girl who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine physically—claimed that she had been much older before and that she wanted to know who had just turned her into a child. Though I don’t have much experience with the reborn ones, as they are far from my usual fare, I know that for the most part, memories kept from the life you had before your death are rare. Those who are reborn tend to be blank slates though they have some sense of things they’d known before.

It’s hard to explain, at least for me, but that’s how I see it. There are those who are truly born up here who are new and fresh and those who are reborn who seem to know that there was something before but that’s all there is. So that this claim, who claimed to have been a mature woman, came with supposedly as clear memories as before, did not go unheard through the realm.

I think that the part that mostly caused a stir was the fact that she seemed to not understand where she was and that she had passed on. That, I think, is usually the thing with those who are reborn. They tend to not remember their past lives, only that there was something, so that they don’t have to wonder as to just where they are too much.

At this point, I don’t know what they did with her, as I said, that’s very far out of my usual realm of things and it wasn’t my place to ask for more questions. I just heard the gossip all the way down to my end of things, in the long run.

It’s amazing that you decide to walk right towards the source of your fear. Most people run—they should, at least.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Helios Iden
Race: Angel – Night
Age: 35, physically about 30
Final Word Count: 696 words
 

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Would someone kindly tell my heart that after more than fifteen years, it should be the fuck over the guy that stole his heart and then unwillingly broke it? I have forgiven Uriel for all that has happened, it was beyond his control and I understand this. A break from heaven that should have been a month long, that stretched out into years, it felt like, is something I cannot take lightly. It was in no way his fault and I know this but my heart is a stubborn mule and no one comes close to what it felt like when I was with him.

So to keep myself from even still thinking about any of these things, I tend to throw myself into work just so completely that I have little time for myself. I come home, I eat, I shower, I collapse into bed and I still repeat the process every day. Or, well, that’s how I used to work until there were enough people on the team that even I got days off. It wasn’t an option I was pleased with but I know what excess work can do to someone. I mean, after all, that was what led Uriel to his break down on earth. It’s what had led to mine, too.

We had a recent addition to the team, however, that managed to make me smile a little. When I was introduced to them, the first thing they noticed was just how dark my wings were, the bare little spotting of the stars on them near invisible in the late afternoon. I told them that it was attached to the fact that I was one of the keepers of the night and their eyes just got so much rounder than they’d already been when I first stepped up to them. I’m not used to having that kind of effect on anyone.

In a whispered tone, they told me they were afraid of the dark and that made me pause. How was I supposed to teach someone about how we helped the night roll along if they were afraid of the dark? We sat down as I told them that they’d been chosen to join my group and I truly thought that they would just run. I mean, most people run when the source of their fear is brought in as something they would have to deal with on a daily basis but not them, no.

All it seemed to take, was a split second before their back were rigid and their head held high, they told me that they were honoured to have been selected to be part of the Night Angels team and would do their best to not disappoint. On the first night—newbies are usually given a week or three to adapt to their new environments—I had them with me to begin the training and they just faced that incoming darkness head-on. It was amazing in its own way and I told them as much.

There was a tremble to their smile but, just the same, there was pride in those pale eyes. I don’t know that confronting your fear so quickly head-on is the best way to go about it but so far, they’ve been doing a good job of things and I still work at their side. They haven’t slowed me down, there have been few mishaps—which has otherwise happened often with other newcomers that just didn’t last on the team—but all in all, working with them has been a charm.

I can see the change in them. It’s gradual. Little by little, each night, I can see the tension just ebb a little more out of their shoulders as we begin our ‘shift’. I know that their fear of the dark isn’t just going to disappear without a warning, that’s not how anything works and I should know that nothing just goes randomly ‘poof, no more!’ it’s not the way of things.

Still, as best as I can, I’ll be with them to help ease them into things and that’s all there really is to it, in the long run.

Loving you leaves me hurt.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Helios Iden
Race: Angel – Night
Age: 33, physically about 30
Final Word Count: 666 words
 

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At times, I wish I could say that I have found my one, my pair, my everything but I haven’t yet. I wonder if this is about chance or luck or if maybe it’d predestined? I’ve never made up my mind about whether or not I was in the group that believed that everything happened for a reason or not. It’s not that I’m on the fence; it’s just that it’s a convenient excuse now and again. That’s not a good excuse, I know. It’s just an easy way out.

For as long as I had Uriel at my side, I thought he had been mine but when that came to an end—that story is long and frustrating—I realized that there always been someone else at his side and that he never would be mine. This is more than a simple ‘cheating’ story, it is far more than that as it involves loss of memories and I hold no blame over him and his beautiful songbird, none.

There still is an uncomfortable tightness in my heart whenever I hear of him or his companion and I wish it wasn’t so. I wish I had forgotten what it is like to love him but I feel as though he still is the one holding open the cover to the box that holds my heart. It hurts.

There have been other attempts at relationships, a small handful in the decade or so since we’ve had to part ways but none have worked out. It was why I was so happy when our team was short on people and I had to work much longer hours to ensure that the night drifted on by throughout the world without any issues. It made sure that I worked myself to exhaustion, could come home, sleep, eat, wash up and essentially repeat.

Now that the team has a good number of members, to the point where I even can have days off, I don’t know what to do with myself.

When we get new blood, I usually am the one showing them the ropes since I’ve been with them the longest. I am not the oldest Night Keeper but our very oldest member is no longer up here with us. It took some getting used to, the idea that Haniel could and would go but that’s all right. Like any and all, we’re allowed to ask to be transferred elsewhere if we believe that we’re not meant for our work. Haniel’s departure wasn’t quite like that but it essentially ends up being the same thing.

I do my best to be friendly with our newcomers, chasing them off wouldn’t do us any good. Of the four who have come in over the last two or so years, only one has remained. One claimed that he was afraid of the dark, a somewhat problematic fear in our line of sky-care. Another said that she was afraid of height—again, problematic but not unheard of—and last I heard of her, she worked in the gardens. Our final trainee who left did so in the way I wish none of them ever did. He went rogue. He saw someone he thought he’d known in his previous life and that became his everything.

We can’t force them to stay with us but it’s rare that those who try to go back to the ground ever manage to do so rightly. Angels are not unheard of down on the earth but they’re not as common as they could be and I’m sure that cropping back up into your old life after you were dead for a while is never easy on anyone you’ve ever been near.

Most everyone else on the team simply seems to look up to me for the fact that I’m the so-called leader. It’s not anywhere in my title, I’m just the one with the most seniority and experience. I suppose it gives me something else to focus on.

You have my full attention.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Helios Iden
Race: Angel – Night
Age: 31
Final Word Count: 544 words

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The two years he had had at Uriel’s side had been memorable. From the start, however, he had been able to tell there was something different about him, something magnetic. The accident that had taken his life and brought him back to the sky had wrecked his emotions in a way he hadn’t expected, so when his time down on the mortal plane had also come to an end, though not through death, Helios had almost felt relieved that he could leave the ache behind, start anew and focus on his work.

So learning that Uriel had been sent down for a break himself, a break that should have only been a month but stretched out far longer did nothing to relieve him of the aching heart that had been his since the man’s death.

Or at least, it had at first, the knowledge that just perhaps what they had shared would not have to really come to an end had given him hope, but learning that there already was, and already had been someone in that particular role deflated him utterly and he could not even bring himself to approach the other in hopes of friendship.

Instead, Helios threw himself completely into his work, keeping the nights rolling as smoothly as possible. It left him exhausted and unable to even really think about a potential partner at all, it was perfect.

Of course, he was not alone on his team and he spent more hours away than resting due to shortage but after a few months, there finally were enough of them to cover the night over the globe without any incident, a mock-eight hour shift giving him the rest of his day to sleep, eat, be. He wished he could go back to the more work-filled days; they kept his mind from wandering, despite the fact that it had been a decade already.

There had been others, he had tried. All had failed in relationships and no one tugged at his attention in any way at all, not the way Uriel had but he knew that was a lost cause and he refused to even entertain the thought of stepping in between them. That was not something he could do.

“-ios?”

He startled out of his staring off, turning his gaze to the young man standing just a few feet away from him. He offered a tired smile and a tip of his head.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Helios. We have someone new on the team and I was hoping you would be able to show them around? As the one of us who has been doing this the longest, you’re best placed to know the proper ways to do it all…”

“That’s fine, I’ll take him with me tonight when we start our rounds, teach him the ways and everything else.”

“Thank you!”

Every new soul who entered their gates was usually gifted in some way, given a role. Not all took it up, not all appreciated what they were expected to do but that was fine, in the end. He just hoped that whoever this newbie one, they would prove to be a distraction enough from the frustration his heart still was, even after a decade. It seemed unfair.