Chapter Text
A small sound. Almost like a breathless wheeze.
A small crowd around a small ball of feathers and light, hooking its talons desperately into the floor of a room that felt too small.
Small voices. Small pupils. Small hand movements and turns of heads and shifting of wing hues.
Everything was so small, but at the same time, the world felt so impossibly big.
He didn’t know what it’d feel like to be alive, but all he knew was that he was alive and it hurt. A searing feeling, like his downy wings were being burnt from his back.
The newborn angel let out a cry and writhed helplessly.
“Oh, oh Immanuel,” he heard a voice. Two arms scooped him up, the figure carrying him whisking around to face the rest of the few.
There was a daunting silence for a few moments, before another figure spoke very quietly.
“It didn’t work.”
Immanuel could cry; he wasn’t fully sure if he was crying. What could they mean? What cruelty, o, what malevolent force had forbidden him his fate?
The angel holding him writhed with barely restrained anger, inhaling deeply.
“It didn’t,” he confirmed. “He’s still here.”
“What do we do now?” An unfamiliar voice.
“Get him away from Gabriel. He’s too young to see this. Get the Father,” the angel who embraced him ordered. “Stay with me, Raphael. I trust you.”
“Duly.” A hushed, sweet voice.
Two figures moved away quickly, leaving the two archangels clutching the small ball of downy feathers and light.
“They look like I once did,” he heard a voice near his ear, a large hand gently pulling at his wings. “Nothing more than fur. Not a single flight feather to their name.”
“They have a name, though,” hummed the other angel, a little further away. “You have the right to say it, Michael.”
“Immanuel,” the archangel said, the name sounding foreign yet strikingly beautiful with the way he pronounced it. “God with us. God in the world, but not.”
“Not,” the other angel echoed, reaching out a devastatingly human hand to hold Immanuel’s face. “And that is where we fail.”
“We don’t fail,” Michael seethed, a small twinge of anger bubbling up from him. “We simply make due with what we have, Raphael. For Heaven to fail is ironic. All under the Father’s love do not fail, especially not his direct creations. Not angels.”
Immanuel’s eyelids fluttered.
“You’re right,” Raphael said quietly, pulling his hand away from the smaller angel. “I’m sure this one would be able to tell Heaven this: we didn’t fail.”
“We could tell them he was always supposed to be for the audience of Heaven and not Earth,” Michael suggested.
“We could reattempt his rebirth on Earth,” Raphael countered.
“No, no.” The older archangel shook his head. “What makes you think it’d work? He burnt up in the atmosphere. He’s too young to go down there yet.”
“And that ‘yet,’” Raphael began with a subtle urgency in his tone, almost trembling. Through Immanuel’s newborn and blurry vision he saw the light of the room shift to a deep blue. “You want to send him back down there?”
“We will see what Father makes of the situation,” Michael muttered. “For the time being, we wait.”
“And?” Raphael prompted.
…
“Hope,” he whispered. “Hope for my little kingfisher.”
Immanuel’s head shifted to stare at the arms of Raphael. They were folded, a thick wool blanket draped over them. He was itching at his cinnamon colored arms incessantly.
“Do you know what kingfishers symbolize?” Raphael asked.
“Do you?” Michael echoed.
The younger archangel shook his head silently.
“I think they symbolize something great,” Michael said sweetly, petting the light teal fur on Immanuel’s head that glimmered with holy light. “Rebirth. Reverence. Glory. Solemnity. A superior bird. One to be marveled by others. To love. To assure.”
“You look highly upon this one,” Raphael acknowledged. “And he isn’t even an archangel.”
“But they possess the strength to rival one, Raphael. And that is where I show my reverence to Immanuel. He truly is the best of us.”
The other archangel’s gaze flickered down to the small angel, and the fidgeting he performed at the hems of his blanket ceased.
Raphael hummed, “Duly, I shall too.”
Uriel stood a length away from the Father, standing in the weighty gloom. Gabriel hadn’t come along, opting to stay behind outside while the older archangel dealt with God’s despair.
His head was lowered, waiting patiently as he heard a mournful, ethereal wail, limbs slamming down upon the ground as God’s body twisted about to face Uriel.
“It failed,” Uriel whispered quietly. “Immanuel didn’t make it down there.”
Another hopeless shriek. Uriel felt so, so terribly small.
“I think,” he whispered quietly, more to himself than to the speechless Father. “I think we should send down another. I don’t think the others would agree.”
Wordless confirmation. Pure, raw information given to Uriel. God would want this.
The archangel nodded, bid him a quiet farewell, and scurried away from the formless figure.
(Writhing and seething and making and destroying all. Small lights without vessels hanging like rendered stars in the blackness. Understandable without understanding. To create and eliminate, like useless variables. Worship.)