FALLEN ANGEL

          Far away on Paradise's horizon, an amber glow told Conah highlight was approaching. It was dark, although dark was relative here in the pearly glow that constituted lowlight. Conah's eyes auto-adapted to the changing luminosity, catching the faint flash and sparkle of wings in the diffused light.
If you focused, he mused, you could make out the forms of other angels, flitting about on whatever purpose called them.
The heavens were full of the sparkling pinpoints, like fireflies at dusk on the Earth below. But fireflies existed on a different plane of existence, one that Conah could access at will until yesterday. Right now, he couldn't join his kindred in flight because of a mistake he had made down on that other plane. A mistake resulting in his confinement here, in this garden without walls; an island here in Paradise. The garden had no tangible barriers, but he could not leave. His wings were bound so tight it felt like shards of glass were piercing his shoulders every time he forgot and tried to spread them.
He had not intended to do what he did. Assigned as an observer to a hospital on Earth, he was there to help the soul of a little girl transition from her ravaged body to the halls of Paradise's first plane. The girl had terminal cancer and her time on Earth was ending. Conah could see she was suffering as she struggled to breathe, her fragile chest heaving with the effort of filling her collapsing lungs.
A nearby machine made strange rhythmic sounds as it breathed for the girl, making her eyelids appear to flutter in sync with the machine's labors. Conah could not say why he did it, but materializing beside the laboring child he took her hand in his and breathed over her.
The girl's eyes flew open and a smile lit her thin cracked lips as she saw Conah bending over her.
"Have you come to take me?" she said.
"No, little one," he replied, placing his hand over her heart. "I have come to take away the thing that is destroying you."
He leaned over and inhaled the breath from the girl's mouth, exhaling a smoky cloud into the air around them. Pressing his mouth to hers he breathed into her, feeling his breath expand into her diseased airways, the tissue healing as he filled her with his essence. The girl's eyes closed and she reached out to him. He took her hands in his and willed his spirit into her. As he concentrated, the girl's pallor decreased and her face took on a rosy hue. Her body relaxed and she fell into a restful slumber. Conah placed her hands on her chest and leaned back to see Ruhiel standing on the other side of the hospital bed, shaking his head as he looked at him.
Conah stepped away from the sleeping girl and looked at his mentor. The concern in the ageless face and Ruhiel's eyes told Conah the other knew what he had done.
"I'm not sorry," he said. "Will you bring back her suffering?"
"No Conah, it's too late for that," Ruhiel said. "Neither you nor I can reverse what you have done here, but there will be consequences. You know that. For now, cloak yourself before you do any further damage."
Conah realized that he was still materialized while Ruhiel was not. Any one of the dozens of people who attended on the child might walk in, compounding his offense. He re-assumed his non-corporeal form while Ruhiel made a series of strange gestures over the sleeping girl. The machines attached to her beeped and flashed, then settled down into a steady blinking rhythm.
"What did you do?" asked Conah, seeing the girl still breathing.
"She is still asleep, only deeper now, and she will not wake up," Ruhiel said. "I cannot undo your action but I have tried to restore some of the balance you upset. The life you gave back to her she still has, but consciousness is far away and will remain so until her case is re-evaluated. But now," he pointed upwards at the ceiling. "We have to go, Conah. I'm instructed to return with you. I'm sorry, but this is very bad. Not only for this poor soul but for you too. You knew the rules. Why?"
"She was suffering," Conah said. The excuse was lame but he had no better answer to the question, even for himself. "I accept the consequences."
"I know," Ruhiel's face was sad. "That's what I'm afraid of. Time to go now, my friend."
Retribution was swift. Shortly after his return, seven senior angels took Conah to a garden, and there, bound his wings with psychic spells. Conah knew they intended the binding to remind him of his offense at every discomforting turn. They left him there in lowlight's seamless dusk, promising to return for him at next highlight. The implication was clear. His sentence was incomplete and Conah had an inking about what was coming.
He was not the first of his kind to make a similar mistake. It must be a flaw in angel makeup that caused angels to break this very rule so many times. The logical outcome was banishment to Earth for a human lifetime, something trivial by his own immortal lifespan. But he would be unable to communicate with others of his kind during that time, wouldn't even be able to see and hear them. It was a far heavier burden than the pinioning of his wings.
Conah tried to contemplate the immensity of such a sentence and could not conceive it. No fellowship, no rhapsody, none of the glories of highlight or the subtle beauty of lowlight. He would not see his brothers and sisters unless they chose to reveal themselves to him, a forbidden action. He would fall behind his contemporaries along the sublimation path, returning a novice while they moved on to higher planes.
The only light at the end of his tunnel of misery was that his sentence was not permanent. There was no permanent sentence for an angel other than eternal banishment, and in all angelic history, only one had suffered that fate. He would return, diminished.
The susurration of many wings told him it was time. They had come for him. Around him, the seven elders materialized, their great pinions sweeping the air and folding into near invisibility as they took up positions around him. Geburatiel, the leader of the group spoke, his words shaping themselves inside Conah's mind. Around him, he felt the agreement of the others.
"We have decided," Geburatiel said. "Conah, you will return to Earth for a time to restore the balance you disturbed. You will exchange your immortal form for a human one and as a human, you will endure all mortal hopes and fears, losing all knowledge of your previous existence. This will prevail until you have redeemed yourself. Then, we will come for you, but, of the when and the where, you will have no knowledge or understanding."
Conah felt numb, even though it was what he had been expecting. He bowed his head, even that small gesture sending stabbing pains through his shoulders. "When do I leave and who am I to be?" he asked.
"The who is not for you to know. The when is now," Geburatiel said. "The ladder is ready. Come."
Like a single entity, the seven elders surrounded Conah and he felt levitated amidst them as they rose as a group and departed the garden. Ahead, a rolling featureless plain ended in a bright line of light that was not the coming highlight. As they approached, Conah saw the head of an elaborate staircase looming at the edge of the plain. A radiance so bright that it washed out all visual perspective bathed the surrounding stairs. The stairs seemed to be floating in the light, disappearing down into it.
The group alighted at the head of the stairs and Geburatiel motioned for Conah to step forward.
Behind him, he felt a gentle push, although no-one actually touched him. He found himself on the first step as Geburatiel murmured something in his ear. A feeling of intense cold washed over him. It was an alien sensation in this place, at odds with the surrounding light and the warmth from the auras of the elder angels. Conah felt something falling away from him as if his garments were dissolving about him, though he wore none. Without any effort on his part, he found himself descending the stairs. The pain in his shoulders was gone. Around him, gossamer fragments materialized and disappeared. His wings were going too. Through the light, away from his kindred he descended, down into a soupy mist that seemed infused with sparkling dust motes. The feeling of downwardness disappeared as the luminescence around him thinned out. Below, he could discern features of a landscape.
He knew that landscape. He had left it with Ruhiel only the previous night. Disembodied and permeable, he drifted down towards a group of buildings set within manicured lawns. One building, in particular, seemed to be his destination. A feeling of dread came over him; a feeling outside his angelic experience; a mortal feeling.
The building was the very one from which Ruhiel had extracted him.
Unhindered, Conah slipped through the roof of the building, his permeable self sifting through the atoms and molecules of the building's structure like water through a sieve. He passed through walls, floors, machinery and devices with the same ease as his entry into the building. Finally, he entered a room, feeling his form begin to coalesce. A bright stream of material from his core reached out like a tendril, extending towards a still form on a bed. Many machines connected to the figure and he knew her without having to look. It was the little girl he had wrenched back from destiny last night.
At last, he understood the irony of the balance the elders had spoken about. This was his doom then. To enter into this little girl, become her, endure her nothingness as the machines breathed and functioned for her until her cycle and his ran to completion. Only then would he be free again. Conah felt no regrets as he settled into the girl's consciousness; became that consciousness. The infinite nothingness reached out to envelope him and Conah ceased to exist.