Act 1

If I was to talk about what I’m most familiar with, I would have said it was the colour white and the noise of the AC unit.

I sat upon my bed, back against the bed board, not because it was comfortable, but because it was a position that gave me the least amount of pain. My chest heaved against the brace around it as the useless appendages upon my back lay dead and limp.

An angel, huh?

That’s what they told me. Maybe the wings were a cruel, long running joke.

Sometimes I spent that time reading, other times, when my mom decided the show was appropriate, I would watch television. However, most of the time I stared out my window and observed as everything passed me by.

It was preferable, rather than to hear doctors and nurses tell me weekly I would get better or this and that would make the pain go away. Mom and Mama made sure that I didn’t know how much of an expense I was. If I had known I would have lied and said “Yes I’m fine this brace works” or “Yes it doesn’t hurt” just to stop them from losing money on someone who was a burden from the start.

After so many decades without angels, I was what the city of Ilden got, just me.

Outside the window, I saw the things my tutors had shown me in the many books they provided.

Birds, the sky, the sunset, occasional passers-by, all I could do was watch but never interacted with. Something I grew to prefer. People were strange, and I doubted I could ever understand them.

However, the thing that most caught my attention was the Ventis winds, a red smog that, thou did not reach my location, was still pronounced and thick enough for many to see even in the countryside I stayed in.

All I ever knew of it was that it was the output from the Asbjorn cooperation and in its production of, power, water, life for all of Ildens, its suburbs and even its distant countryside, all with the small price of the main city being under a constant smog of Ventis.

There had been many theories of the side effects of the Ventis, but not a single one of them had been concrete. Asbjorn corporations had always existed and thus the Ventis winds have always been a part of life.

Perhaps even the god Orbis and their servants had Ventis during their time, but that would be silly.

I never enjoyed talking to people, the doctors, the nurses, the private tutors, to every one of them I only gave the bare basics. I hated it; it tires me; I don’t get people. Only with my moms, I had gotten any joy in my conversations.

“When I get older and better I’m going to work at Asbjorn and make a lot of money so you and mama can travel the world.”

That day I remembered her reaction just a few words, “You have a bright future and a good head on your shoulders. You can do so much better.”

How ironic, those words were

Once I failed to be the angel society wanted me to be.

As I lost everything I ever thought I could have or worked hard for.

Here I stand over a decade later in the cold and rain, waiting for my ride to the Asbjorn manor, with nothing much left.

I guess I can laugh at that joke.