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 Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 12:11 pm
Herald 
When you come upon the scene, it is a weak and dying Herald that you find, unable even to stand. A few scattered feathers on the ground are the only remnants of the wings it once possessed. It has come to this place to die...or be saved? That, of course, is up to you.
You are alone when you find the angel. The Heralds have long gone unsaved, and though it appears to you, it does not hold much hope of living on. Near to where the two of you meet rests a grey stone slab that the angel seems desperate to reach. With your help, the Herald climbs upon it, needing something from you to save its life. What will you choose to give it? And what significance does that item hold for you? Is it a family heirloom? Something you happened to have on hand? Something you'd purchased earlier that day? A lucky charm?
You may have noticed that many details have been left off. This is because we want you to have plenty of freedom to develop the scene yourself. Consider time of day, weather, season, etc. when you post.
His alley.
It was a cold January day, the day the teenage boy stumbled across the fallen angel. Too cold, in his opinion. And to make matters worse, it was the first day back to school after the long break. Although they hadn't done much in terms of classes yet, Hez could feel his eyes getting heavy, and a slight ache pounding in the front of his head behind his eyes. By the time school had gotten out, all he wanted to do was shuffle on his way home and get into the warm of his house. That was all that mattered. Warmth, a cozy blanket from his room, and his artwork. Forget about the lessons coming up in the religious school he went to after regular school. Forget about all the cooking his mother wanted him to help with. All he wanted to do was relax. And that was just was on his mind until, however, he stumbled across a rather peculiar sight in the alley at the side of his apartment building.
It was an angel. Not just any sort of angel, either. A dying angel.
Hezekiah knew about angels. When you came from a long line of rabbis like he did, knowing about those sorts of things were almost second nature. Almost, but not quite. The young boy could recall more than a few times about drifting off in his grandfather's sermons about them. The stories of angels were wonderful to hear about, there was no doubt about that. Yet, after listening to them again and again, one got to get a little bored of them after a while. It wasn't just that, either. The angels his grandfather spoke of -- they only seemed to be myths; legends. Most certainly not real! Not like the one lying on the slush covered cement in front of him.
It was at this moment that Hezekiah Spielmann immediately thought the angel was a hoax. Things like this couldn't happen! Not in the real world. Angels didn't exist! As far as he was concerned, they were just made up stories. While his family believed in them wholeheartedly, the young boy was never really sure about their existence. His Jewish background...that wasn't something that the young boy had connected to yet. And if this angel...if it was some sort of an attempt on his family's part to get him to be a believer...well, then that was just wrong! Family's shouldn't toy with the emotions of a thirteen-year-old boy like that!
Only when the fallen angel struggled to get to the stone slab in front of it, did the teenager find himself moving. Poor Hezekiah - he didn't even put any thought in to reaching out to help the dying creature out. His body sort of just worked on its own accord, while his brain was just dumbfounded in disbelief by the whole situation. Mentally, he had no idea what to think. All he knew was that the angel needed help, and that he was the only one there to do it. So what else could he have done? "I-..." the boy stammered, "...I can't believe I just did that.."
Yet the young boy's deed was not done. Not yet.
The angel, or so said the stone it was trying so desperately before to reach, needed something from him in order to live. Wait a second...what? An angel, no -- this angel needed something from him in order to save its life? Since when did angels need anything in order to be saved and continue on living? Hezekiah certainly didn't remember hearing about that in any portion of the Torah. Oh, well, whatever. He'd ask about that later. Instead, the boy did the only thing he could think of:
He took off his red string bracelet.
The bracelet had been given to him only a few days before. It had been a gift, he recalled, from his grandmother and grandfather for his birthday. But not just any typical birthday; it was for his bar mitzvah. Because of that, his grandma said, he needed a special gift. One that would able to protect him from any harm that might come his way. The Evil Eye, she said, was something that she didn't want falling on her grandson. Not when he was so young, and destined to do great things in life for God like his father and grandfather before him. So there Hezekiah was, bracelet in hand, standing over the angel. He didn't even seem to give it so much as a second thought. Despite the fact that the bracelet was a gift, he was willing to part with it. Unlike his grandma, he wasn't so sure he believed in all of that mumbo jumbo. The Evil Eye? Please!
Besides...by the looks of things, the angel needed its protection a whole lot more than he did.
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Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:52 pm
Quote: You sit inside, protected and comfortable as the weather rages outside. The evening meal is on the table, and you're filled with an intense feeling of well-being.
Your mind veers, against your will, to the dying creature that you had come across. It certainly wouldn?t be comfortable tonight. What are you thinking? It's probably already long gone. But...what if it isn't?
What's it actually like outside? Do you go in search of the Herald? What do you bring to make it more comfortable, if so? Do you even find it?
Everyone, that was, except Hezekiah.
Friday night dinners were the worst, in his opinion. The dinners were entirely too long, and a whole day affair. From the early morning on Friday to most of the early evening, his mother and grandmother would be spending all day in the kitchen. Cooking and baking, stewing and chopping. Everything. Everything in the dinner had to be homemade from scratch from the customary challah bread to the latkes usually served on holidays. Not that there was anything wrong with homemade meals – there wasn’t. Hezekiah just thought the women within his family spent entirely too much time cooking, when they could be spending it doing other, more important things to them. Then came the ritual part of the dinner. All of the prayers said before and after the meals. Every time his grandfather and the other family members of his family chanted along, the thirteen-year-old could feel himself squirming.
This wasn’t want dinners were for. Dinners were for eating and socializing.
Leave the Big Guy Upstairs out of this for once.
Halfway through the evening meal, Hezekiah found his thoughts drifting to the angel he had helped out just the other day. How was she doing? Was she okay? Did she make it somewhere safe? Perhaps someone else had found her and taken her to shelter, thinking that she was just some girl in a costume. Here he was, sitting at the dinner table with warm food, good company and beautiful candles to light the mood, and there was the angel…probably outside, cold and alone. This wasn’t right! This wasn’t right at all! With a frown, Hez shifted in his seat and cast his gaze to the window. Huge beads of rain were coming down outside, and the wind seemed to howl like a monster. He couldn’t help but shudder at that thought and think to himself how scared the angel must be. She must be terrified out there all alone.
”What if…” he found himself saying at the table to no one in his family in particular, ”what if…one found an angel outside. Just lying there on the ground, and dying. What should one do?”
It was his grandmother who answered this question of his. After Hezekiah had finished speaking, she looked at him with a smile. That was one thing he loved about his grandma – she had the kindest, most gentle smile of any woman around. Not to mention, the look in her eyes was soft enough to melt the hearts of anyone, so he knew she would give him a good answer. She was spiritual like that, just like his grandpa. ”Angels test us in many ways, Hezekiah,” she said gently, placing her hands on the table. ”Just think of Lot and his family. The angels tested him. Lot invited them into his house, and even convinced them to stay for a second night, even when they said they wanted to spend it on the streets. Then all of the people in Sodom wanted to know the angels, but instead of just giving them to the people, Lot offers his daughters instead, though the angels were not interested. In the end, Lot and his family were saved – so you see, they are testing us. Always. One must always be kind to others, since after all…you never know if someone may be an angel in disguise.”
That was all the boy needed to hear. His grandmother made a convincing enough argument. Finished with his dinner, Hezekiah pushed away from the table, politely excused himself, and dashed up the stairs to his room. A second later he was back down again, blanket in hand, and rushing out the back door to the alley. Just as he got outside, a relief washed over him. There, in the alley, just like the day he had found her, was the angel. She was more alive than last time, though still wasn’t close enough to being back to normal health. That could be fixed, however. All she needed was a little love and care.
”C’mon,” the boy said, scooping up the frail angel in his blanket and carrying her back inside and up to his room, ”we need to get you out of this weather. Angel or not, no one needs to be outside like this, and I’m going to take care of you until you get better. Though whether or not you’re just a test for me, or some sort of “guide”…we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2010 6:25 pm
Herald 1.17.10
Time has passed, and your Herald is becoming fond of you and beginning to show affection. You two have grown closer, but that's not the only aspect of growing.
The Herald is maturing into a young child before your eyes. No longer dying and weak and no longer sexless, it now has beautiful angel white hair and dark blue eyes of unusual depth. You may have noticed that the Herald has been scratching and touching its back for a while, and now it's finally explained. The herald's wings have started to grow in.
How do you deal with the child's discomfort? Do you have any remedies to ease it? How does he/she react? How do the wings reflect the item given?
It had been a while since the angel-like child had made her way into his life, but to be honest, the teenager still wasn’t used to it. Would he ever be used to it? Heck, one day he was a perfectly normal kid walking back from school, and the next he had an angel girl sitting on his bed. If someone would have told him his life would have turned out like this, then he would have laughed at them. Heralds – ha! He always thought angels were just things his family told him in stories. Just another part of their tradition. Well, Hez was wrong, because apparently they were real. Eliana wouldn’t have been sitting in his room if they weren’t.
While his Herald had taken her usual spot on his bed, the boy sat in the swivel chair at his desk. Slightly annoyed by her words, he simply leaned back in it to ponder her words. So what if her back hurt? What did he care? There wasn’t much that he could do about it, and even if he could, who said that he wanted to? Yet, still…a twinge of guilt gnawed at his stomach. He couldn’t just ignore the girl. She wasn’t some homework assignment or chore that he could avoid just like he did normally; she was a living thing – an angel. He would have to help her somehow, even if he couldn’t do much. It was the least he could do.
”What do you want me to do,” he asked, getting up from his chair in order to walk over to the bed. Eliana didn’t look that well. Her face was paler than usual, a pale, milky white color. There was no color to her cheeks, and even her crystal blue eyes seemed a bit dull. Then there was the fact that she was curled up on the bed in as small of a ball as she could get. Usually, she’d sprawl out on as much of his bed as she could, but not today. Today was different. Instinctively, the thirteen-year-old reached out to lay a hand gingerly on his Herald’s back. This got a reaction from the girl, but not a good one; she winced and retracted back in discomfort.
”I don’t know,” she admitted, and at the moment, it was true. She didn’t know what he could do.
”There’s not much I can do…” the boy whispered back meekly. ”If I try to get a first aid kit or something, my parents might worry, and then they might come up here. They could see you.” That thought worried Hez to no end. Hashem only knew how his parents would react to the angel girl. After all this time, he still hadn’t told them, or any of his family members. Not his parents, not his grandparents; no one. He couldn’t bring himself to share his secret. Not yet. For all he knew, if they found out, they could kick Eli out of the house, and then what would he do? She would be homeless and out on the street with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. That was the last thing he wanted for her.
It was then that an idea came to the Herald girl. Pushing herself up with her arms, Eliana sat up and looked over at Hezekiah with a gentle expression. ”You can pray for me. That will help.” She nodded her head with a definite expression. Now, all of a sudden, she seemed so sure of herself. ”I know it will.”
He wanted to say flat out no right there. The teenager wanted to refuse and just forget completely about having asked her for help. Prayer? Uggh; that was the worst thing she could have asked for! He was always hesitant when it came to praying, not to mention anxious. There were so many to remember, some of which they only did for holidays, and others just for little things. The subject always annoyed him. His grandfather told him there were prayers for everything. That was the last thing he wanted to do, but…as much as he didn’t want to do it, what else could he do? Nothing else came to mind, and so Hezekiah relented. One minute he was sitting next to his Herald, and the next he was putting on his prayer shawl and yarmulke. If Eliana wanted prayer, then prayer was what she was going to get.
A simple painkiller might have done the trick. A heating pad could have helped, too, perhaps, or some ice to soothe the aching, yet the angel wanted none of that. As Hezekiah went through the Birkhat Ha-Gomel, a prayer said for surviving illness, childbirth, or danger, the Herald’s pained expression seemed to disappear. It faded rather quickly once he began, only to be replaced with a soothed and content look. Not only was it clear that she was feeling a lot better, but Eliana’s wings finally broke through her skin.
That was a whole different experience than Hez had expected. He thought it would have been painful. Eliana would have screamed, he thought, cried out in pain from the sensation of it all. There was none of that. No tears, no screams, and best of all, there was no blood. All there was from the whole ordeal was two sets of wings on Eli’s back: the upper pair was a rich golden color. Along the edge of them was a stitching design of what appeared to be red string. Just below those wings was a smaller set of deep red ones. These were stitched with gold, and a yellow star charm dangled from them. How peculiar, the young boy thought, yet also very fitting. They seemed to reflect the red string bracelet the boy had offered up upon meeting the Herald to a T.
Needless to say, the boy was awestruck by his Herald’s new wings.
”Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
”What? Getting your wings,” he asked.
”No, silly! The prayer.”
Hezekiah blinked at this, only to rub his head sheepishly. He should have known that was what she’d say. ”Oh…” he murmured, giving her a shake of her head. ”No, it wasn’t.”
”You should do it more often, Hezekiah.”
Whether or not he would end up praying more was still up for debate. There was one thing that the boy learned from all this, however. He was able to help out his Herald once again, but not only that: he also grew closer to her in the process. Prayer was the thing that put Eliana at ease and made her feel good, so he was glad he was able to make her feel better.
And who knew? Perhaps he would start praying more from now on.
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