Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 5

quick and ready power that came before, but there was something so deeply profound about it that Renat shied away from looking too close.
    What he did manage to gather was that he wouldn't be walking through walls any longer. Renat examined the glass surface, running his fingers down the sides until they caught on a small indentation. A latch, perhaps. Like nothing he had ever seen himself, but some of the damned had, and he had been inside their minds. He clumsily inserted his fingers into the groove and pulled. The glass wall slid smoothly aside, and the wet, moist air touched Renat's bare skin like a caress. He stepped out onto the deck and heard the quiet susurration of water lapping against the wood that he stood upon, and felt the mist blanket him.
    The wood was rougher out here, and a little harsh on his feet. Renat walked as though he were in a trance, right to the edge of the deck on which he stood. He knelt there and stared over the edge into the water below. A face stared back at him. It was his face, it must have been, but it looked unlike anything he had ever seen before. His eyes were brown, with a thin ring of green around the pupil. His hair was still long and black, but the razor's edge that had defined every strand had vanished, leaving it a somewhat disheveled whole. His face was pale, thin, not ethereally beautiful. He looked…human. He looked like a human.
    Tiny ripples spread out from where the salty drops fell, distorting his reflection. After a moment Renat realized they were coming from his eyes. Tears. He was crying water, making something simple and pure, and it didn't hurt, it didn't burn. It was a strange sort of beautiful, the ability to do something so elemental. He stared at himself and wept in the chill, rain-touched air. His body, so foreign and frail now, started to tremble from the cold, and a moment later he felt something soft drape over his shoulders, followed by a pair of warm arms holding him tight. Renat turned blindly into Emiel's embrace, gripping his lover too tight but unable to stop himself. He was shaking so hard he thought this body might break, and his breaths came out fast and shallow.
    "It's all right," Emiel murmured in his ear. "It's all right. I have you, my love. I have you."
    "What…how…" He couldn't get the words out, and fortunately he didn't have to.
    "We could not go straight back to Heaven," Emiel said, filling Renat with a new and sudden grief. It wasn't that he had truly expected to be let back into the Kingdom of God, but that he hadn't was still painful. At least Emiel was with him. He could bear whatever this was, if Emiel was with him.
    "This is our new home. I searched for the right place for a century, and spent the last ten years making it ready for us to live here, and learning to be human," Emiel continued.
    To be human? Renat pulled back slightly, just enough space so that he could get a look at Emiel. The angel was wearing clothes, thin pants that clung to his skin and a simple blue shirt that buttoned down the front. His feet were bare, and his face was the same, but…different. His hair was still short, and brown, and his eyes were blue but not glowing with the grace of God. He had lost his grace. Emiel was no longer an angel.
    "No," Renat whispered desperately. "You must not lose your grace for me."
    "There is no lack," Emiel promised him. "We have a new grace now. We have souls, my love."
    "Souls?"
    "Human souls. That's what we are now, Renat, mostly human." Emiel lifted his hands to cup Renat's face. They felt the same as they always had, warm and loving. Renat leaned into the touch and let gentle fingers brush away his tears. "It was the only way we could be together again. We will live as humans, and if our lives are honorable then we both will be welcomed back into Heaven when these mortal forms have reached their end. We will go on forever, my love. This is only the next step." He leaned in and kissed Renat's cheek soothingly, and then his lips. "After all, what is one lifetime when we have already waited for so long?" he whispered into Renat's mouth. "One lifetime here on Earth, and then eternity together."
    "Emiel…" Renat leaned into the kiss, wanting to deepen it, but he forced himself to pull away as all those things he hadn't wanted to think about came rushing back. "I don't know how to do this."
    "I will teach you," Emiel promised him. "Our home is fairly isolated, so we don't need to worry about interruptions, or seeing