Woolgathering

Angela blinked, unable to comprehend what she saw before her.

"Angelus-Frons!" she jumped, and looked towards the voice, unsure of why the term seemed so familiar to her. Suddenly she leaped into movement, her body moving on it's own will, her arms lashing out, and she realized that it was not dead weight which had kept them at her side before, but the weight of cold, hard steel. She moved at speeds faster than her brain could comprehend, catching only snippets of what went on around her, dual wielding blades the kind of which she'd seen only in classic paintings of the archangels. all was black white and red. Bright red staining the robe she wore. Her eyes briefly shielded from the blinding white by her own ebony hair.

She couldn't understand it, where was she, why did she move the way she did, why did...

"-FRONS!" there it was again, closer this time, behind her, she turned and found herself staring into Jade crystals. She sucked in her breath, she moved to speak her mind, discover where she was, but she couldn't understand her own voice, it sounded nothing like herself, and the dialect was nothing she'd ever before heard. Angela startled herself from her daydream, and looked around her. Finding herself back in the tiny cubicle of her employer she sighed. She never mentioned that she found herself recalling her daydreams to her friends. Angela didn't want to fight through the questions that had plagued her earliest memories with her friends. She picked up her purse, quickly jotted down the phrase that haunted her waking dreams, and left her desk, heading back to her flat.

By the time Angela finished her dinner, cleaned the dishes and let her head rest on her pillow that night, she'd forgotten her earlier reverie. Not even moments after closing her eyes and falling asleep, she was thrust once more into a phantasm, though she could tell, this time she was not herself. She was the man she faced earlier, her reflection in the her gleaming sword revealed.

Fiery mortality rained down caressing the ground as jade eyes fluttered with futile passion. "Angelus-frons," blushing lips parted with the name of their destroyer, whose black hair, with abnormally light eyebrows, was an oddity even among the outcasts of the celestials.

As his body finally descended to the earth, he saw her standing over him, once lover and companion, now enemy and bane. Her face seemed void of the hatred and opposition with which she struck him. Instead it held grief as she turned to return to the final battle.

His head fell to the side as if all he saw was crimson earth saturated with hatred and battle. Then, slightly out of focus as his vision dimmed, he saw purples, blues, pinks and greens. He smiled peacefully.

"Even flowers may grow from the mud."

 

Angela woke from the dream as if fighting through tar, her body heavy and her breathing labored. "I killed him, I killed..." her voice trailed off as she sobbed. Even though she had no idea who the man from her dream was, her heart broke as the realization of her play into his death, even in dream, settled upon her shoulders.

Dropping her head back to stare at the ceiling, it was as if Angela could feel the fiery hands of hell dragging her down through her bed into eternal torment, a searing pain playing at the middle of her back. She cried for hours, and for the first time in  as much of her life as she could recall, she didn't meet her friends for breakfast. She ignored the phone calls, and without knowing it, dragged herself to her door, locking it before slumping against it for support.

As she watched the sun traveled through it's path outside her window, and set into the horizon, her eyes dulled. "Angelus-Frons," she repeated until somehow it seemed to make sense. Angela leaned sideways until she was lying on the floor with her hand placed before her in the same position as the man from her dream, and she spoke, her fingers softly touching her just above her eyes, "Angel Brow."