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k_a_webbUriel laughed. “It’s an interesting conversation to have,” he replied, even though Caitlyn hadn’t expected an answer.
“You must have the same conversations with all the spirit guides when they first take their place. Surely it gets boring.”
“Every spirit is different, so every conversation, even if it is on the same topic as one I’ve had before, is different.” Uriel sat in one of the seats opposite Caitlyn’s desk. “Of course it helps that the world changes, so even a spirit I’ve met several times already can change their point of view, and I think that’s also very interesting – especially as the longer a spirit spends incarnated the more it learns about both the people around them and themselves.” He smiled. “Spirit guides are one type of spirit I most enjoy spending time around, as you…” For a moment he studied her. “Not all spirits will become a guide, no matter how many lives they live, so those who do are special in some way. Each spirit guide is chosen for a different reason, they have strengths that make the spirit council decide to offer them what can be one of the hardest jobs in the afterlife, and sometimes I do feel sorry for all of you.
“Nothing about being a guide is simple.” Uriel looked at Caitlyn, this time with pity in his eyes. “You stay here when other spirits, spirits you will have incarnated with before, move on, live new lives, and follow a path that you can never really step onto again. By becoming a guide you have changed what you will be in the future, as well as in the present, which is something that a guide doesn’t always truly understand before they take the position that they were offered.”
As their eyes met Caitlyn found herself smiling. “Fortunately I have a friend who was determined that I did truly understand what becoming a guide would do to the rest of my…” She searched for the right word, remembering Richard having used it before. “Existence. Being friends with Death wasn’t something I looked for, but it did help when I was asked to become a guide.”
“You’re friends with Death?” Uriel seemed surprised, which was to be expected, but he looked perplexed at the same time. As though he didn’t expect to be surprised. “Sam didn’t mention you and he could have done if he met you. He knows how important you are to me.” He bit his lip. “Forget that I said that.”
“I’ve seen Richard’s mirror, Uriel, and considering what you are…” She found herself squeezing his shoulder, without thinking about it, as she made her way back to her seat. “You having one isn’t a surprise, but him not mentioning the angels is.” Caitlyn sighed. “Although I guess that’s something he thought I wasn’t ready for, even though he accepted me becoming a spirit guide without arguing as much as I expected him to, for some reason.”
“Sam might have asked him not to.” Uriel brushed a hand through his hair. “I do have a feeling, though, that Richard still doesn’t trust Sam, not after the choice that Sam made.”
“What choice?” Caitlyn asked, wondering if that had something to do with what Richard had said to her when they first met.
“He’d had enough of saying goodbye, so chose to stop getting close to the Deaths, even though it was something he’d done since he awoke.” Uriel shrugged. “I think he hurt too much to carry on, but that didn’t stop him from watching all the Deaths in his mirror, which, to me, was just him being a masochist, and I did try to stop him. Maybe if he’d listened he would have felt ready to talk to one of the Deaths before Richard. Unfortunately it wasn’t until Gabriel convinced him that it was time for them both to move on, or it might have been Sam that convinced Gabe – I’m not entirely certain what happened, because I know the time before that their conversation had ended with Sam screaming at Gabe that he couldn’t possibly understand, and it was a surprise that they actually spoke to each other, let alone made the decision together that it was time for both of them to move on.
“They were right. Neither of them seemed to want to accept that we are, as far as we know, immortal, and we need to do something with the time that we have, even if what we’re doing with it isn’t the reason we exist.” He sighed. “Hekate told me that she thinks we’re tulpas and the more I think about it the more I think she might be right. We woke in what we call the angel’s lounge, Gabriel first, followed by the rest of us, although it wasn’t a quick process, and ever since then we’ve been trying to work out why it happened.”
“You know Hekate?” Caitlyn stared at Uriel. “The old Earth deities are real too?” She shook her head. “I don’t know why, when I’ve just found out that angels exist, I’m surprised that the deities do as well. How about God?”
“According to Hekate he’s just a voice. She thinks it might have something to do with how few people really connect with him, as a deity, rather than anything else, because they all seem to rely on their priests instead, and those priests…” Uriel shook his head. “It’s too easy for them to pretend that they are talking to God, when really they’re making up everything that they’re saying, so God might never be more than a voice on the wind that people hear occasionally.”
“Hekate knows God.” Caitlyn laughed. “I take it Hekate is one of those deities who knows everyone.”
“Pretty much.” Uriel smiled. “We’ve become good friends, now, even though I was scared of her when I first met her. She seemed so knowledgeable and there I am, not even sure that I’m doing the right thing because I have no idea what I am, really, feeling like a total idiot when she’s talking to me about how I might be have woken because of the people that believed in me.” He shook his head. “It was a difficult conversation to have and one I still haven’t shared with all of the others. The only one I felt I could tell, because of the time he was spending with Richard, was Sam, and now Sam wants to meet Hekate, to talk about her idea in more depth, because he thinks it makes a lot of sense.
“She wanted to meet him even before he wanted to meet her, so that isn’t an issue, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea for him to start getting close to the deities as well.” He bit his lip. “I came here thinking that I could act normally, even though I can’t stop thinking about everything, and… Caitlyn, sometimes I can’t help thinking we need more help from you than we can ever give, and yet it’s not something I’ve mentioned to any of the other guides, because I don’t think they’re ready to know that I’m not as certain of the choices that I’ve made as I’ve always seemed to be.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“I wish I knew.” Uriel sighed. “My only theory is that you don’t have any expectations of me, because you didn’t even know that angels were real until I rung you, and that makes me more open.”
Caitlyn smiled. “You obviously need someone to talk to and I don’t mind being that someone, as long as you don’t have a problem with a spirit guide knowing your angelic problems.”
“Of course I don’t mind and the other angels all know that I’m much more likely to talk to you, or one of the deities, than I am to talk to them about whatever my issues are. They might be bothered by it, but they’ve never said anything, so until they do, if they do, I’m going to keep doing what I think is right.” Uriel sighed again and it was then Caitlyn really started to connect with how he was feeling. “You’re much easier to talk to, because we all have our own issues that make talking to each other a chore most of the time. The only one of us who really seems to be friends with all of the angels is Mikhael and I think that’s because he’s different to the rest of us.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it, but he was the second of us to wake and he seemed to assume automatically that he wasn’t going to be the only one, so he waited for us. Unlike Gabe, who ended up in the afterlife without any idea of what he was, where he was, or even who he was. From what he said I believe he was given his name by one of the spirits he became close to, although he doesn’t talk much about that time. One day he might be ready, but I doubt it, because it was hard for him and in the end he lost everyone he’d become close to before one of the angels stumbled across him.”
“Didn’t he have wings?”
“Our wings didn’t start manifesting until there were ten angels and by that point Gabriel had been awake for nearly a century, without knowing that there were others like him. I’m always glad that I wasn’t the first of us, because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, and the spirits he found himself with didn’t truly accept that they were dead, that the time would come when they’d have to move on, in the same way that some spirits even now have difficulty with the idea of this being what death is like.”
Nodding, Caitlyn thought of some of the groups of spirits she’d met in the time she’d been training, who all seemed to think that they were still alive. How could it be death when they were living in houses, and they were feeling emotions, because that was something they didn’t expect, and they were doing the same things they did before they died, including playing games of football at the local sports centre? It was something she couldn’t explain to them, although they had no choice when it was their time to move onto a new life. Then they realised that everything they’d been doing was their way of clinging onto who they were and it was time for them to become someone else, someone new, as well as look back at the lives they had lived before, so they would know what lessons they needed to learn during their next life.
“I’ll be honest, Uriel – I didn’t expect death to be like this either, but I accept that I’m not living.” Caitlyn remembered the first time she’d gone from one part of the afterlife to another, because that was when she realised she had no choice. “Those spirits have never gone from here to the night beach, because they don’t want to believe that they’re dead, that they’ve left Earth behind and they’re somewhere else. While they’re in their town, with the people they were close to during their lives, they can hold onto the belief that they are still alive. It isn’t until they have no other choice that they start thinking that maybe there is something different.”
“Why did you accept that you were dead?”
“Death was the only thing that made sense. I remember going to sleep the last time, knowing that I was close to the end and that I’d done everything I could to prepare my daughters for it, and my granddaughters, although I never doubted that losing me would still hurt. Years ago, when we lost Nathan, it had been a shock. We hadn’t been prepared for his death, but it happened, so we dealt with it the best we could.” Caitlyn glanced down at the desk before looking back at Uriel. “For a while my daughters were angry with me for being able to move on so quickly and I couldn’t seem to explain that I knew some day I would see him again. His death didn’t stop me from caring about him, or realising that marrying him might not have been the best decision I made when I was young and believed marrying him was the right thing to do, and that I was grateful for the chance to be single for the first time in my life. There was so much that they didn’t know about me, as I’d been Mum. I hadn’t talked to them, but I started to after the loss of the man I had been married to for over half my life, because I realised that I was missing out on an important part of our relationship.
“So they came to understand why I could move on. Nathan still meant a lot to me, but I was almost glad that he was gone… and I felt so guilty for that for a long time. At least until my daughters understood that I had made what seemed like the best choice when I was a teenager and it wasn’t until I got older than I started to come to the conclusion that I’d made a mistake. Instead of waiting for love I’d gone with safety.” She shook her head. “I’d never been in love with Nate. He was my best friend and losing him hurt, but it was like losing my arm instead of my heart. As time passed I’d come to love him and I think it was then I knew that there was a difference between being in love and love itself. Love… there are so many types and as I’d never been in love I convinced myself that I was in love with him, because he was in love with me. He always had been. Now that we’ve had a chance to talk about I know that he never felt like he was being short changed, so I must have done something right, even though I was never deliriously happy.”
“Maybe he didn’t expect the from love, because not everyone is deliriously happy when they’re in love with someone. Being in love is something that’s different for everyone and if his parents had that sort of safe love that doesn’t feel so passionate that might well have been what he expected as well.”
“The reason I chose him was his stability, because that was something I never had when I was younger, even though my parents were passionately in love. Sadly, for me, they were just the type of people who cared more for love than they did for money, so I always felt unbalanced, because they never knew where our next meal was coming from. I never had that problem. Nate was careful with money, and I always kept track of what we were spending to make certain that nothing went out that I didn’t know about, so I had what I’d always craved. It just wasn’t… exciting.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
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Date: 2014-03-25 04:20 am (UTC)This is a fascinating study of the relationship between Caitlyn and Nathan.