“Just finish her off, Pax.”

“I know, I know,” Pax kneeled forward, at the woman before him, tying her ropes into a bow. Pax liked bows. He tied everything into bows. He tied his spaghetti into bows, his tied ties into bows, his victims intestines into bows, even his tail into bows. Humans had this idea that demons liked all things dark and dirty and horrid, but Pax didn’t think that was true. Pax liked light things. He liked butterflies and ice cream and milk and all sorts of bow ties. He just wasn’t a friend of God.

Adriel knew that. He also knew that Pax was horrible at killing people point blank. He was a worthy ally during the War, but that was mostly because he didn’t care if he was slaying angels or not—he just liked hearing the sound of swords clashing and arrows firing. He didn’t notice the bloodshed he had caused, the bodies he had accumulated. But when he didn’t have the noise and the clatter to distract him, it was hopeless. He couldn’t shoot his own foot.

He turned around, watching Pax sit by the poor woman’s form, looking on. The lady squirmed in her place, trying to push her ropes apart. Pax stared at the revolver in his hands, contemplating his responsibility to the Rebellion.

Adriel sighed. He jumped off of the ledge, snatching the revolver from his partners’ hands. “Get in contact with the Commander, I’ll handle this.”

The other demon nodded, obediently, walking up onto the ledge. Adriel took one last glance at the woman, aiming. She winced, tossing her head aside. Blonde hair cut short flooded his vision, the ends tied into a short cluster. He pressed at the trigger, but stopped for a second or two. He saw something other than a gifted preachers’ daughter, for some time—something other than a prophet, a target, an enemy. He saw an angel.

We’ll always have the stars.

He didn’t feel his finger pushing further, nor did he hear the deafening sound that followed.

Click. Bang. Silence. Adriel let go a breath he hadn’t taken, looking up at the sky. He could hear the corpse fall over in itself, leaving a loud thump on the concrete floor. He didn’t dare look down. He didn’t dare see his wretched creation, the pain and suffering he’d caused. The hair—the damned hair, it looked too much like his. Like—

“Anything out there, Pax?” He shouted, pushing the name out. The past is an angels’ virtue, a demons’ vice. He turned around. The stout, gluttonous demon opened his hands, receiving the crow that dropped into it. It squawked once, spewing venom from its beak. Pax untied the note it cradled in its feet, unrolling it.

“Another mediator.” He replied, turning around. “Chicago’s China Town. Lives in a medicine store, with two other people. White haired, coal eyes, doesn’t say anything about the age.”

“Name?” Adriel asked, marching up onto the ledge.

“Er…Ni…Nai…Nei…” Pax squinted at the words, commonly written in Gothic print. “Nei Li. It’s Chinese.”

Adriel chuckled. “Is it now? Rare. I thought most Chinese were Buddhist.”

“It says here that he is.”

“He’s a Mediator. He can’t talk to God if he doesn’t believe in Him.”
Pax shrugged. “Maybe he’ll change in the future.”

“Or perhaps the Highest Commander screwed up with his source.” Adriel looked out into the city, admiring the falling night, building lights brightening as it grows darker. “Again.”

“He’d be angry with us if we don’t follow, though,” Pax interjected, his tone slightly worried. “Don’t you think?”

Adriel folded his arms, and nodded.

“We’ll check it out. If it’s true, we’ll finish him off.” He turned around, jumping off the ledge, searching his suit pockets for a pack of cigarettes. “Like we always do.”
There were no stars outshining human construction, that night.

He missed the stars.

He longed to go back into the heavens embrace, to sit under a sky full of pale ghosts, footprints of their existence shining into the abyss of space. Humans never got to experience the full extent of what lies beyond the clouds—they don’t know how it feels like to touch history burning in its wake, the air rushing behind your back, the feeling of floating in mid air. Climbing half way to paradise.

To home.

There was no home, for Elijah.

The cramped, drab and damp flat he had been living in for the past few years wasn’t home. The city night he’d come to know was nothing compared to the kingdom he’d run among the stars. The chewed mattress he laid in wasn’t the clouds he’d once dominated, resting in for days on end. Elijah had no home on the dry, desolate Earth. His place was in the sky.

But they’d taken his place away a long time ago. The kingdom he owned was taken down the moment he refused to join the War, his wings cut off with fiery twin blades by the Archangel Michael, and his celestial body disconnected from the universal consciousness, exiled into a more grounded position. Exiled into the vagabonds district.

Humanity.

The twenty first day he was trapped in his human form, he jumped off his apartment building and landed on the neighbors car. He woke up the next morning with broken legs and cracked ribs, on a second class hospital in Manitoba.

He couldn’t move at that point, his body numb with the exception of his left leg. He could move his ankle, albeit with difficulty. A searing hot pain shot through him every time he did, bringing him to realize, once more, he was trapped in the physical plane. He was no longer an angel.

There was someone talking to the doctors, back then, the first time he came to. A Hispanic man, his jet black hair pulled back and separated into two halves, in a blue trench coat, donning badges on his left breast. The doctor didn’t seem to realize the importance of them, but Elijah knew it from first glance—they were of the Heavenly Order of the Light Yonder. Heavens’ official representatives on Earth.

“He’s lucky to be alive,” The doctor kept saying, staring at the badges in wonder. He didn’t feel lucky. “One more story and there would be no saving him. I’m telling you, sir, the man’s something special. Supernatural, you could argue.”

“You have no idea.” The other said, smiling. He asked the doctor to leave, then, pulling away the curtain that separated the two of them.

His was a kind face, he remembered. Overwhelming at first, but kinder at second sight. It lacked the usual scars of a soldier, but replaced it with skin tougher than car tires, tanned from nose to cheek. The eyes, though, were a stark difference to the ragged appearance—they were those of a young scholar, bright and welcoming, albeit not innocent. “Elijah Woods,” He said, smile stuck on his face. “Nice meeting you. My name is Ithuriel, I’m--”

“From HOLY.” Elijah interrupted, immediately after. “Were you the one who saved me?”

“Actually, that was Camiel--”

“Tell whoever this Camiel person is to never do it again.” Pause. “The Court of Angels have successfully stripped me of my desire to live, the least they could do is let me lie in my own misery.”

Ithuriel looked on, and sighed. He pulled up a seat by his bedside, hands wrapped neatly on lap. They were riddled, unsurprisingly, with cuts and burns. “I realize you are in an unstable state of mind, Mr. Woods. I’m willing to overlook that.” He leaned forward, taking a calmer approach on the matter. “We received a message from the Higher Powers—seeing that HOLY has had difficulties working in the human world, they’ve assigned a consultant to our cause. You.”

Elijah stared at him, waiting for a punch line to some sick joke. For an explanation. Some sort of dismissive statement. When he realized it would never come, he spit in the angels face.
Ithuriel drew back, rubbing the moisture off of his left eye. He looked at Elijah in contempt, but quickly gained composure. Angels. “I realized my mistake.”

“Did you, now?”

“Yes,” He said, smiling. “I should’ve said please.”

Elijah slammed his left foot on his bed, attempting to push himself onto the angel. “You think this is funny?” He said, his voice dissolving from words to chuckles, solidifying again into verbal abuse. “You think this is funny, you little prick?! You think you can cut off my wings and leave me for dead, then ask me for help?”

“In our defense, it wasn’t a question.” Ithuriel retorted. Elijah spit at him again. He didn’t wipe it off.

“You took away my life.” He said, staring the man down. “You took away everything I’ve loved, everything I ever wanted—what gives you the right to look me in the eye and demand my assistance?”

Ithuriel blinked. He looked down, pulling out a note stuck in his left pocket. He unfolded it, once, twice, and looked back up at Elijah. “Commander Camiel,” he started, earnestly, “Due to the reported murders of Elizabeth West and Father Brown, two famous Mediators who have settled moral disputes between the angels and demons taking residence on Earth, the Higher Powers have reason to believe that the demons Adriel and Pax are responsible for both deaths. We also believe they are hunting down the Mediators of Earth to cut the bonds between the two factions and the connection to Our Lord Father in Heaven, causing war that will spiral the Earth into chaos. We recruit Elijah Woods, former Dominion, to assist you in searching for the two perpetrators—in return, we will return the formers’ wings when Adriel and Pax have been arrested.”

The two men sat in silence, the angel allowing it to hang heavy on the others’ shoulder. He folded the note once more, tucking it back into his coat. “Mr. Woods, war is cruel and peace is temporary. The Court does not ask for neutrality, it asks for support; our friend or our enemy, it’s your decision. We mean no harm, but we must carry out our orders. And now our orders is to give you another chance.” He said, calmly. “This is your only chance to return to the skies. To your home. Your punishment was not out of spite, and it was not without struggle. And we are now here to lift it.”

Ithuriel opened his mouth to continue, but stopped. Elijah blinked at him, dark, brown eyes narrowed, jaw held tight. Struggle. The angel didn’t know the meaning of the word, he knew. He read of the infamous Elijah Woods in scrolls—the careless aviator who refused his obligations as a soldier in the War, who flew away into time and space, away from the refuge of Heaven. The Court Powers caught up to him in the Milky Way Galaxy, near the planet Earth, and cut off his wings in battle. History called him a ‘coward’, a ‘draft dodger’, but Ithuriel knew better. He was, and still is, a soldier. He’s saw his own on the battlefield. He knew an abundance of angels who tried to escape the task. He knew that only one of them managed to cross the gates of Heaven, and survive from both the journey and the Courts’ judgment. Only one.

There is no neutral ground in war. Not in Heaven, not on Earth.

Elijah rolled his head away, turning back when he felt something cover his fingers. He found the angels hand caressing his, softly, white light glowing onto the reflection of his skin. He could feel his fingers again, moving slowly, then quickening in pace. “We will not treat you as our enemy, Elijah.” The name came out rigid and awkward, but Elijah was too busy gawking at the back of his hand to care. “Just so long as you don’t treat us as yours.”

Elijah lifted his arm, cautiously, stretching his fingers. His mind flashed back into the stars, into the weightlessness of air, the cover of the clouds. Your only chance. He balled his hand into a fist. Your only chance to return to the skies. To home.

There was no home for Elijah Woods. He felt that, walking out of that hospital; he could feel it in the way he called for a cab to pick him up, drive him home. He felt it when he threw his clothing, his earthly possessions into a suitcase. But when Ithuriel brought out the heavy, eagle-like wings from under his coat, when he pulled him in under them, he couldn’t help smell the mountain air from the dew drops on each feather, he couldn’t bear but to feel the liberation of the winds.

Elijah may not have a home; but to him, this was the closest thing to it.

I only ever had three friends in my childhood years—my father, The Man Upstairs That Owns as Many Aliases as There Are Bible Passages, and the stars. I’ve learnt later on in life that it’s better to leave the last two for later conversations and the first in tamed, ordinary description.

The day I was born, my mother locked herself in the hospital closet when the doctors tried to hand little infant me to her, screaming broken curse words when they got the custodian to sledge hammer their way in. She adamantly refused to go home with me, and started spars in the corridors with my father in lightning bolt Chinese. As such my father obediently went home without her, cleaned up the attic while I was laid on the couch, put the baby cradle that was meant for Better-Future-Engineer-Me up there and sang lullabies while he rocked me to sleep. I was at peace the moment my mother began her rampage on my father when she finally came home.

“The child is a demon!” Nelly imitated, waving his arms frantically in illustration. “I birthed a dead infant possessed by a demon, I tell you!” He dropped the act abruptly, shrugging his shoulders. “You’d have a field day with my mother, Dr. Wright. I brought her to several therapists before she died, and some of them needed treatment from their own medical institutes after hearing her banter.”

It was made clear then that my mother would have nothing to do with me, and my father would be alone in raising his child. I remember him instructing me not to go out in the morning out of fear that my mother would find me in her bad moods, giving me picture books and color pencils to play with until midnight. After that, I became a nocturnal creature, walking about into my home, ransacking the cabinets for biscuits and tea. My father would usually come out by then, with his blue night robes and his baggy eyes, a cracked bowl of rice and some other topping in his wiry hands.

He told me once about the first time he started the tradition, when I started eating solid food. I was a year old then, but he still hadn’t figured out what to call me (my identification card even said ‘Wei Zhi’ or Unknown in English, up until that point). He brought two bowls into the attic, both used and chipped but relatively clean. He laid out some rice and pork, leaving some kale he got from a neighbor inside the chipped bowl. He told me I ‘picked up the bowl, sniffed the kale, and sucked my face into the bowl’.

That was, supposedly, the first time he hurt his sides laughing.

And that was how I got my first name: Kale.

“Don’t you dare laugh.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I saw your face, you were going to laugh.”

Haskell abstained from smiling. “No, I wasn’t.”

“There, there it goes, that little tic of yours.”
“Continue, please, Mr. Nelly.”

After that, I grew closer to my father, but farther away from the community around me. My world consisted of a dusty attic filled with spiders and old books, and the home under those floorboards. Of course I was curious of the outside world. The attic window often put on a show of its own, with kids my age dancing about in the streets, store owners rambling of prices with their customers, all happening while I was trapped inside. But I wasn’t interested in human interaction back then. I wasn’t keen to meet anyone, I wasn’t at all a day time child, and I certainly wasn’t interested in walking by my mother. No, I wasn’t attracted to the daylight happenings of the outside world. I wasn’t intrigued by the adventure the afternoons provided under the safety of the Sun—my home was under the refuge of the stars.

My illicit love affair with the heavens began when I was around seven years old. I was homeschooled then, since neither I nor my father could speak proper English, and spent more time in the attic than ever. For reasons even I don’t know, I kept track of the stars each night, drawing their patterns on worn notebook paper. Those were the only moments my window was open, and each time seemed more magical than the last. The stars became my first friends, my first true companions. I’d shred paper from my notebook, writing down thoughts and questions in hasty, childlike han zi, folding them into long slits and wrapping them into paper stars, putting them in a pickle jar.

All of them had the same question written at the bottom of the letter: Can you hear me?

One morning, I accidentally knock the jar off the window sill, smashing it on the streets below. I cried for a solid five minutes, watching as the paper stars crumpled under passerby’s feet. I slept, continuously, until four AM in the morning, when I realized my throat was dryer than the Sahara desert.

I drank the water my father left on the nightstand, and came back to bed. But altogether, I didn’t. I walked towards the window sill, and found the smashed pickle jar where it was before, all in one piece. There was only one paper star left inside. I unfolded it, and found three words, all written in English: “Yes, I can.”
I somehow understood it.

When I looked back outside, I found a man made entirely of light on the streets, looking up at me. “Can you hear me?” He mimicked, tilting his head.

“Of course I can hear you,” I found myself saying.

“Can you understand me?”

“Well enough.”

He shone a bit brighter, as if flashing a smile. “Good.”

He disappeared, slipping behind me into the attic. He looked around, welcoming himself to the mattress. “Kale, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” He clasped his hands solemnly. “Your letters have been troubling my angels. They don’t know how to store paper stars, nor do they know how to unfold them—they keep tearing them accidentally or losing them to the winds. I swear, fifty percent of this years’ falling stars are caused by your hand--”

“Are you a star?” I asked, dumbly.

“No. Why would I be a star?” The man gawked at me. “I mean, several of the other few Mediators envision me as Leonardo DiCaprio, but I’m certainly not a star. I could be, but that’s not my bravado. I much prefer the title ‘Creator of the Universe’.”

“But you got my letters, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It was meant for me, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Are you the stars father?”
“Well, technically yes. But then again, I’m also your father.”

“You don’t look like my father.”

“No, no, not in a literal sense--”

“Kale, what’s going on?” The words came out in Chinese, echoing from the staircase. My father came up from downstairs, a torch in one hand and another rubbing his left eye.

I pointed at the shining man. “He thinks He’s you.”

My father widened his eyes, staring at me for a moment. He didn’t seem to notice the living torch sitting on my bed. “What did you say?”

“He says He’s you, baba.” I repeat. “I don’t know what He means, though. He doesn’t look anything like you. Look at him, baba.”

Father closed his open jaw, eyes narrowing in confusion. He walked towards me, sitting beside the shining man on the mattress, pressing my cheek. His hair was whitened by age, wise eyes tired and resting under sagging skin, but other than that he looked like any other storeowner in Chinatown. “Where did you learn that from, Kale?” He asked, again in Chinese.

“Learn what?”

“Kale, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Speak Chinese.”

I thought over his sentence, before realizing something I should’ve from the beginning—I was speaking English.
Father rested his hand against my shoulder, and asked: “How did you learn?”

I opened my mouth, looking back at the shining man. The shining man shook his head, crossing his arms. I closed my mouth again. “I don’t know.”

The shining man grew a little brighter. He touched my fathers’ back while he was distracted, dipping his hand into the space between his two shoulder blades. “What do you mean you don’t know?”  My father said, incredulously. The shining man fished out a glowing tea leaf, waving it about in front of my face.
I gaped at him, eyes wide. Father followed my gaze, but saw nothing. Felt nothing. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m tired, baba. I’d like to go to sleep now.”

“But why were you--”

“I’d like to sleep.”

Father turned back to me, dropping his head. He nodded, standing up. “Alright then.” He walked towards the stairs, leaving the room. His voice echoed from the floor below; “Take care.”

I looked back to the shining man, staring curiously. “What did you take from him? You didn’t hurt my baba, did you?” I bent down, studying the tea leaf in the man’s pale hands. “What is that?”

“His soul.” The shining man wriggled a bit on the mattress, leaning to face me. “A piece of it, at least. Don’t worry, he’s not hurt. I’m just taking a little sample of his thoughts is all—his inner most desire.” He reaches for my hand, prying the fingers apart. He lays the leaf on my palm, rubbing it against my skin. It felt like calm breezes in the spring, medicinal herbs, faded memories. It was all that my father wanted in life. All that was taken from him.

I rubbed the leaf between my thumb and index finger, not noticing the hand protruding into my ribcage. The shining man shrunk a bit, taking a form of something more…human. Back then, I didn’t notice what he had become; the bleach haired man with bloodshot eyes, fragrant with the smell of coffee beans and hospital corridors. It was only twenty years later I realized who he had become.

He was me.

“You imagined yourself grown up?” Haskell asked, noting the incident down.
Nei Li shook his head. “I must’ve been a psychic if I had.”

He opened his hand, letting the paper star inside bawl out into mine. I unfolded the paper, unrolling the message inside: ‘Hope’.

“What’s Hope?” I asked, sitting down beside Older Me.

“Your greatest desire.” Older Me replied, blankly. “The one thing you want the most in the world. From now, until forever.”

“But what is it for?”

He smiled. He stole the paper from my hand, folding it back to its paper star form. “You’ll know,” He said, enigmatically. He pushed the star back inside, patting me gently on the chest. “One of these days, you will.”

I clutched my chest, trying to feel the nonexistent dent inside caused by the star, to feel the life underneath the bones and muscle. “Will I ever get it?” I asked, looking up to him again.

“Now, that would be ruining the surprise, wouldn’t it?” He smirked. “And I’ve always loved surprises.”

And that was the first time I ever talked to God.