Michael

She met him under the most spectacular fireworks she'd ever dreamed of, where they were so close it was raining ash.

"Do you think it'll be good?" he asked.
"I don't know...You know how when you first see something, when you're like three years old and it's so magical and so new nothing can ever beat it in your mind?"
"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said.
"So I think it might be good. But I'm not three anymore."
He laughed. "Neither am I."
She turned her head up to the sky and smiled as it exploded in color and looked back at him when the smoke started pouring out of the sky and crawling the ground.
"I've never been this close before," she said.
"It's a grand celebration. How else could they do it?"
And then it began to pour. She got soaked and they huddled in the crowd under the few umbrellas there were to be found, but soon she split off and walked through the rain anyway. A little rain wouldn't kill her. And she saw him walk off in the other direction.
She wasn't accustomed to putting faith in anything, so she walked along with the crowd, moving where it took her.
And then he was there.
"Hey."
"I thought you left."
"No. I'm supposed to meet up with a colleague but it's crazy here. We can't find anyone in this."
"You found me."
He smiled and took her arm. And they were two in a crowd instead of one and one.
But somewhere between the shots and the street and midnight and one, the crowd swept them in opposite directions.
To the left and to the right, forward and backward she turned and then the current grabbed her and left her in her room until the morning.
"Are you there?" she asked him even though he wasn't there.
"I'm supposed to find you in this crowd?" he asked.
"You found me once, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"And it's raining ash all the time even though it's not staining our clothes like that night."
But an ocean is far and she thought that nothing could beat that memory of when she was three, but the sky did that night and rained on her.
Anything can be overtaken and even a stone can be weathered away by water.

"Uriel, how do angels fight?"
"We do not."
"You fight for me."
"You are the Living."
"So are you. Only not human."
"There you are."
"You fight for humans?"
"Yes. Now answer the question yourself."
"I still don't know. You make me fight for myself. And I do."
"You know a truth now but there's more to it. Say it aloud."
"I'm too intrigued by you. And since I'm human, I don't really believe yet that there's existence once this life is over. I only want to. So I hope. I keep my eyes open to you."
"Yes, Little Girl. But here I am. Now tell me how we fight."
"You bore into our minds. Right? You show us another way. And when the others are angry with you they lament and they pierce into yours. Your fighting is all inside. They show you another way for the world to be. Or you to be, I guess. Like they fight when they pull you away from me. That's fighting, right?"
"An angelic fight cannot be explained to a human for Heaven is outside of your grasp. If you ask me to show an angel fighting with a fellow of his own, your status of being among the Living will have gone. People have always wondered as we have pierced their minds in more ways than fighting. They explain it in the words they can, in the images. They explain it with swords and metal and fire. But the closest thing I can give to you is this: from every act destruction something is made. The Greater the beings, the greater the destruction, and thus--"
"The greater the creation?"
"Yes, Little Girl. The greater the creation. Imagine the fight for you."
I laughed. "You flatter me to much. Stop it. You know I don't take that from anybody."
"Tell me an act of creation. The greatest kind. The most glorious," he says.
"I was thinking the birth of a star. An end and a beginning all in one. But it takes millions of years."
"In your terms. In mine it takes but a moment. Now. Tell me something greater, I've already given you a clue."
"Than the birth of star? The birth of the universe?"
"No. You are thinking too big now. Imagine the fight for you."
"Aah. I get it."
"Yes, Little Girl. Do you see that fight?"
"Ares and Aphrodite."
The angel smiles. "You let your studies get away with you. But that is the answer."
"It's a shorter one," I laugh at him.
"You are growing up."
"But to make an angelic fight...look...glorious...for people...in...modern day society. How would you do that without really showing it?"
"You couldn't. So, as I have told you, humanity leaves it up to their own imaginations. Use an explosion of two forms, hardly visible. It is neither dark nor light, but the forms disturb the vision just enough to make one doubt as you rub your eyes and think again. They collide and for a moment, merge into one. Then there is a stillness such as you have never seen. Such as you could never imagine. And after that moment, a brilliant light and a sound so loud any mortal there would never hear again. Yet if a mortal were present, he would be gone, not among the Living, and not among the Dead. He would have merged with that creation."
"What happens to you?"
"The fighters?"
"Yes."
"We separate and as it has been more than minds piercing one another, but our forms, we both lost and both won. When we separate, we are somewhat new, and we begin again, our consciousnesses free of opinion."
"And when you start all over, does the same opinion form again and cause the fight again?"
"No. The fight is settled by what you would call the Scattering. There is a mutual understanding, and in warring with each other, we have melded and fall in love with our creation."
"But what if it's more than two of you? What if it's a war, with many ranks all fighting against one another?"
"Then many creations, from a blade of grass to a storm, to a star, to a glaxaxy and on and on. Remember, do not take the world so literally, Little Girl. The greatest of all fights, originate within a human mind. But you are not angelic. Your race is not angelic. Your destruction does not create in this manner. You destroy yourselves. We step in and fight for you, the opinions clash between those of the Living and those of the Higher Beings. Your instict disagrees with us. So what we create is madness."
"Madness causes love and hate."
"Madness causes everything in your world, Little Girl. What would you call our conversations?"

"Are you dying, Little Girl?"
"Aren't we all?"
"Not all."
"I've been dying for a long time. And remember when I was the living dead? I'm back there."
"You will save yourself."
"No. No, I won't."
"Then who will?"
"Nobody. I don't want them to. I'm ready to go on. I can't take this anymore. I can't bear it. I've always tried. I've always tried so hard. And what's it for, Uriel? What's it for? Nothing! It's for nothing! Even if it's extraordinary, that's forgotten in the end. And it hurts too much. It hurts too much. Take me to the World to Come. Take me away from this place. I can't stand the emptiness. I can't stand the prospect of so many years waiting and waiting. What am I waiting for, Uriel? I'm waiting for a retribution that will never come. I'm not waiting anymore. Hope fades eventually. Doesn't it?"
"Aah, Little Girl, you will never grow up."
"I was never a little girl."
"As you wish."
"I was always a hypocrisy, a dichotomy. I was always more than one thing. And it never made sense. It scared everyone away. I don't blame them."
"What shall I do with you?"
"Make me disappear. Make my love count for something. Don't send me one of those faux friends and don't you dare haunt my dreams with the imposters of a soul who doesn't exist."