ｌｅａｒｎｉｎｇ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｈｕｍａｎ

the abilities of the angel for the story "learning to be human"

• does not have a physical form, instead jumps from vessel to vessel in order to be seen by the mundane.
  

•  upon it's abscond the angel leaves the human body, it is left in a vegetative state - brain dead.
  

• Enhanced Condition or Supernatural Condition
  
     Enhanced Durability/Invulnerability
  
     Enhanced Strength
  
     Enhanced Combat
  
     wields small golden dagger - aka "angel blade"
  
     ability to hide or conceal wings at will
  
     cosmic awareness
  
     Death Sense
  
     Decelerated Aging or Semi-Immortality
  

• Energy Manipulation
  
  
     Absorption
  
     Barriers
  
     Blasts
  
     Constructs
  

•  with prolonged use, becomes quite tiring for the angel
  
     uses up large amounts of their grace
  

• Flight
  
     Illusion Manipulation
  
     Intangibility
  
     Possession
  
     Telekinesis
  
     Teleportation
  
     Dream Manipulation
  
     Invisibility
  
     Holy Fire Manipulation
  
     Mental Manipulation
  

•  with prolonged use, becomes quite tiring for the angel
  
     uses up large amounts of their grace
  

•  Banishment
  
     Healing
  
     Purification
  
     Salvation
  
     Space-Time Manipulation
  
     Telepathy
  
     Psychic Navigation
  

• quickly becomes extremely tiring for the angel
  
     uses up extreme amounts of their grace
  

• l o n e l y angel wrote:

  
  

  

  
  It was dark - nighttime if I was placing my thoughts properly. The skies were speckled with flecks of shiny silver, though shrouded by clouds, they still shone bright. As I lowered by eyes to the ground, my body shivered and I could only attest it with a rather unpleasant feeling that had plagued me since I had awoken. The humans called this cold. I was wet and cold and my vessel would fall ill if I stayed out much longer.
  I was unsure of these mundane structures that surrounded me. I had no memory of this place. My eyes followed the cracks and fissures in this hard surface below my feet, it felt rough against my skin. I counted each break, matching my steps to it. It was the only thing I could cling to, as it was all quite overwhelming.
  
  I came to a stop, glancing above me. There was something blocking the rain and I decided that I would stay until the cloudburst took a rest. I let out a wispy breath as water droplets slithered down my cheeks. I am on earth, I reminded myself, because I knew nothing of the reason. Regardless of how hard I tried, I couldn't comprehend.  I refocused on the chill that had settled into my very bones, so foreign to me. So many things aroused my senses.. including a low rumble that spread through the horizon, followed by two glowing, golden lights. Mundane were so restless, building these strange structures. Now, moving structures. So much had changed.
  I held my discomfort with the humans close. Staring at the cloudy sky, rather than their making.
  
  
  

  strange girl:

  
  I never looked down.
  
  
  I've got plenty of room in the car and I could certainly use the company. Car. The moving structure is called a car. I made a mental note.
  I turned to walk away, even if it was pouring rain, but she latched onto my wrist. I contained by discomfort and simply froze. Mid-step, I was forcibly pulled backwards. I was unsure as to what was happening, or why this human had suddenly touched me. I stumbled clumsily to her will as I was tugged. I was deposited inside this car. I was surprised by the sudden.. warmth that spread through me. It was dry here. Had the human really helped me?
  I neatly folded my hands in my lap, staring at the feet of my vessel. What were her intentions for me?
  
  

  
  

Quote :

             My first moment in the car, I spun the knob of the heater fan full blast, hoping to warm myself - and my new companion - before we could both catch a cold. There was likely no use even trying to keep myself healthy, I was sickly as it was- a weak case of strep or flu around every turn. As if to solidify the fact, a cough strangled out of my throat. My gaze turned to the vagrant, equally as soaked as myself, expecting him to be looking right back at me. I had already formed some kind of laugh in my mouth, telling him we were both going to get sick from being out there. Except, he wasn't looking at me. His gaze had fixated through the glass of the window onto some shard of brick in the wall of the building i'd pulled in front of.where i'd pulled over. I swallowed hard, wondering if i'd made some kind of mistake inviting this man inside of my car.

               "Kind of cold out tonight, huh?" Again, I looked over, wondering if - this time - there had been any reaction, and once again I was disappointed to find whatever he was looking at was still far more interesting than I was. Perhaps he'd freed himself from an institution, and I would need to take him back?

                More gently, I tried. "Do I need to drive you somewhere?" 

               And then, my phone buzzed in the cup holder for the near fifth time since i'd hung up on Alexander, sending abandoned gum wrappers and little pieces of little scampering away. I picked it up, weighing it in my hand as I stared. For a moment, all I could do was wonder about him. He was odd. And then, I answered the phone, and pulled out of the lot probably a little bit faster than I should of. A short conversation, and ten miles down the road, Alexander was convinced that I had let an axe murderer into the car and I was going to die. But he was so quiet, sitting so straight, hands folded across his lap like he'd just come out of a gentleman's meeting. I couldn't help but think he wasn't any kind of trouble, and I was confident enough in my assumption to drive right toward my house. Once I was there, I would check the news station and see if any silver alert had popped up- and then, I would go from there. 

               "If you need to call someone, you are more than welcome to use my phone." I told him slowly, wiggling the phone in my right hand, as I kept the car on the road with my right.

              It was only about a five minute ride from the building I had found him at, to the small house I sometimes shared with a roommate. It just so happened, that this had been one of my off months, and I would be alone. Because of this, when we finally pulled up, the house was so completely dark and eerie, it might have seemed abandoned to the untrained eye. I prepared myself to turn off the car, not wanting to give up the comforting woosh of heat that had always stolen the chill away faithfully. As I did, I noticed how frightfully still he'd become, and a knot formed in my throat- what if he was dead? I bent toward him, honestly curious if was or was not alive. I jumped as his gaze split to me with utter surprise, like he himself was surprised that i'd been alive and come so close- but it'd hardly looked like he was breathing, how had he recognized i'd leaned a fraction of an inch closer to him?
                 "It'll take me just a second to open the door, and I don't have my umbrella anymore thanks to an unfortunate encounter with a wind gust." At that point, I left him, not really caring if he was going to follow me or remain sitting like i'd stuck some sort of hobo mannequin in my car as an ornament. 

               Part of me expected him to stay there, but another part of me was relieved when he slid through the door at the last moment before it slammed shut. A nervous grin spread wide across my face.
               "I might have some old clothes that can fit you, if you want them?" The sound of water droplets dripping onto cold tile was louder than I had ever imagined. Maybe he was deaf, or mute? I told myself as I tried to soothe the increasing worry boiling in the pit of my gut.

• l o n e l y angel wrote:

  
  

  

  
  
  The moment that she began to speak to me as if I were mundane, like her, I was perplexed. A weak cough escaped her lips, then she spoke of the weather. I kept my eyes down, simply listening. I was slow to understand, but I gathered most.  Do I need to drive you somewhere? Drive? To propel or carry along by force in a specified direction. To drive in a car. I was learning, from this human. I suppose it wouldn't harm me to stay with her long enough to gather myself.
  
  My eyes flicked upward an inch, curious of this faint sound. She picked up this strange.. shiny rectangle.  She spoke into it. For a moment I thought of many mental disorders that she could possess, that would possibly explain why she was speaking to herself. I glanced back down, listening to this half-conversation. Abruptly, it ended and she wagged the shiny rectangle in front of me. Call? Phone? I saved the terms to my own little record, for later. I was unsure yet as to what this thing was, but I was closer now.
  
  The car came to a slow stop and my eyes were trained on my filth coated feet. I felt her eyes on me, burning into my very being. I felt as though I should be more unnerved, but I was not. I slowed my vessel's heart, soothing myself with the low thrum in my head. I felt the air disturb as she drew just close enough to force my eyes up. No closer, I thought to myself. As if I had burned her, she retracted back with wide eyes and a pulse that rivaled a hummingbirds wing speed.
  As she left the car, I turned to do the same, but the mechanisms on the door confused me. I scanned over it for a moment, then pulled a small handle and it released. I followed her with my eyes trailing over the structure. This was a human residence? I watched her enter through a doorway, and I cautiously traversed the threshold. I had not expected the warm temperatures and waterproof walls.
  I felt mildly overwhelmed as I scanned the room, not recognizing anything as familiar to me. I stood ramrod straight in the middle of the room, facing her with my eyes trained on hers. She offered me attire. Was mine not suitable for the situation? Was I overdressed? I glanced down, confused. I tugged at my coverings with curiosity.
  "What are you called?"
  
  
  

  
  

Quote :

As I spoke, his brow curled up into this over exaggerated arch, making it obvious he was questioning my motives. He seemed honestly confused that I might ask him if he wanted to change out of the dripping garb. But was he not cold? I could see his hand shaking visibly even as he was pulling on his clothes and looking for something wrong with his clothing that might have prompted my suggestion. As he inspected himself, I looked at him closely, only know beginning to notice how the droplets of water falling from his hair were cutting streaks in the grime seemingly ingrained into his skin, and a smell reminiscent of rotting corpses that was beginning to permeate the air.
When he seemed to be done with the brunt of his investigation, he glanced at me, and said, What are you called? My head tilted, and I watched him even closer than I had been before. I had never met someone who spoke in such a way, as if he'd stepped out of Romeo and Juliette. The publisher inside of me chided him silently, What is your name, not what are you called. 

"My name is Alice, who are you?" 

I curled my arms around my chest, shivering, but I wanted to know who he was. This strange man i'd found on a college campus, where i'd never seen anyone else but another college enrollee - let alone a homeless man, who spoke like he stepped out of the 1600's. 

• l o n e l y angel wrote:

  
  

  

  
  
  I could smell her discomfort, anxiety. Human's feared what they did not know and right now, she was in the dark as to my identity. I wondered if the feeling would only grow if she truly did know me.
  She analyzed everything about me as though I was transparent as a sheet of glass, and I was terribly amused by it. What did she think that she saw? With such a limited mind, I couldn't fathom.
  Alice, Alice the mundane. "Irrelevant." I responded slowly, she didn't need to know me.
  Why was I here, anyway? What did she have to gain by bringing me into her residence? Even by human standards, I was unknown to her. Regardless, she had given me some information, I would oblige her with whatever strange urge that she had to take me in. "My body is hypothermic." I said flatly, I was inconvenienced by this and would need a new vessel soon.
  I decided that I would not be here much longer, merely until the rainstorm stopped.
  
  
  

  
  

Quote :

"Hello, Irrelevant," My own brow bounced now, confused by the strange development. What was so precious about his name that he couldn't offer me his name- I had offered him my house, and clothes. Perhaps, Alexander had been right. This was a strange man, in a place he shouldn't have been - he was dangerous. Still, I wanted to help, even if he wouldn't offer me a single simple word.
My body is hypothermic. "You're cold." I corrected softly. "I'm cold, too." Goose bumps prickled along my skin just thinking about the chill tingling up my spine. As if to emphasize the point, I sneezed. I turned, intending to change myself even if he wasn't planning on accepting my offer of new attire. "If you would change to something new, you'd be warmer."

The way he was behaving was only emphasizing my thought that perhaps he was an escaped asylum patient that was ten thousand degrees of crazy - and I invited him in. "I have some - if you'd like them." Once again, I was only half sure that he would follow me through that little house into the back room. But, I had a little inkling that he would. He was too simple not to trail behind, out of simple curiosity of where I was going and what I was doing, that had to pertain to him.  

"I'm guessing you wear a medium," I spoke aloud, sitting down in front of the crooked open door of the close. I pulled the old ratty boxes out of the dark space and began rifling through them. When I found something that might work, I would throw it behind myself, until a small pile of clothes for both he and I had formed.  He was there when I turned around, as I had suspected, standing a few feet away from my own person, with that odd look on his face, head tilted like a curious puppy. That look he gave wasn't blank necessarily, but I couldn't decipher if what I was seeing was ephemeral, or not all there. "Here, change into this-and this." I told him, tossing both a shirt and loose pants to him individually.

l o n e l y angel wrote:

A gentle cock of my head, a curious stare. I did not understand her.
"My internal body temperature is 94.0 F, I am hypothermic." I pressured more firmly, why had she dismissed me so quickly? Were all mundane so sure of themselves? Such little, frail creatures, yet they thought themselves to be the crown of the food chain. I wasn't sure what that meant to me, but these feelings from my vessel made me understand how hard it was for them to see otherwise.
I turned, on her heels as she crossed the residence. She had offered me new attire and though I was skeptical, she had begun to dig for it. In my time here, the mundane were not so quickly to be giving. Had generosity been something ingrained in this new world? I side stepped as she tossed piles of fabric towards my feet. I bent slowly, gathering it into my hands. This attire was very different from what I remembered, but it would have to do for now.
I weakly reached behind myself, grasping onto the torn fabric at my back and slowly pulling it over my head. My lower coverings followed after, and I replaced them with the new, dry attire. Though my locks still dripped with rain water, I stood still, awaiting word from my mundane host.

Quote :

I did not dare look back at the man, I heard clothes dropping. He was changing. In front of me. I should have suspected such a development, but for some reason it had shocked me. It seemed that any rational human being would have asked where the bathroom was. When he seemed to go silent, I turned and looked up at him. "Are you hungry, I have something in the kitchen you can have." I asked him quietly, staring at him again. He looked much better now, but there was still something about him that wasn't quite so normal. My brows pinched slightly, and then released them once more. He seemed so unfazed by the fact he'd swapped clothes right in front of me, like it was just something any normal person would do.
"It's just off of the doorway where we came through, i'm going to change, and i'll meet you there, ok?" I had gathered my own pile and started toward the bathroom, just down the hall from where we had stood just then. "If you see something you want to eat, in the kitchen, you can have it." I shut myself in the bathroom before there could b any protest from him, even tough he'd followed after me like some kind of lost puppy. When I was safely behind my door, I relaxed and looked at myself. Mascara streaked down my face from the rain, and my hair was beginning to frizz and poof in random patches. Oh well. I sighed slightly, rubbing under my eyes with the butt of my fist, before changing and heading out to the kitchen to see if the old man had actually wandered there.  

l o n e l y angel wrote:

Had I made some kind of mistake? There was an odd look on her face and I wasn't sure why. It was brief, she had already moved onto the next topic and I watched her closely. This human fascinated me, ever so unaware that she was harboring something so unimaginable to her in her residence. She offered me a meal like any kind mundane would and I cocked my head slightly. It had been so long since I'd been in a vessel, I'd forgotten how tedious that these frail bodies were. I wouldn't be lingering in my meat suit much longer, so why would I need to bother with nourishment? Contemplating, I followed her. Moments later, she cut me off with a large wooden barricade and instructed me to go somewhere that I didn't recognize.
Everything here was so foreign to me, and I decided to wait for her to return.

Alone, I wandered the hallway, staring at these foreign things around me. I couldn't explain any of it, the colored walls, these strange.. frozen mirrors on the wall. Who were the people trapped behind the glass? I stared at it, touched the cold surface. How? These mysteries of the humans were eluding me so.
My hand fell as she stepped out and I met her eyes curiosity brewing in my mind, I waited a moment, realizing that she was leaving me here, so yet again I was on the chase, trailing behind her to the next room within her home. I decided then that I would accept whatever my vessel needed, if she so chose to keep me here.

Quote :

 Ąʟɪᴄᴇ.

  

     ➳ The lace lined leggings were considerably warmer than one might of first thought, paired with the twice oversized sweat shirt, I was becoming almost too warm. But, there was no time to change my mind about my evenings attire, there was a strange man in my house, and for all I knew he was rifling through my things picking out the very best of my chap jewelry to keep for himself. I panicked at the thought, tying my still damp locks up into a bun before I turned and opened the door.
     My head down, I ran right into a blockade. For a moment, I thought maybe something ditzy had rolled around in my head and i'd forgotten to open the door, the object was so steady and hard. But when I looked up, I was surprised to find the man standing there. He was waiting for me, presumably. Maybe he couldn't find the kitchen. Maybe he was a pervert.

     "I'm sorry." My head pounded, making me wonder how such an ancient being could be so strong. "I didn't mean to run into you - aren't you hungry?" I ducked around his body carefully, feeling cornered in the door of the small bathroom. I continued down the hall, hungry myself. 

l o n e l y angel wrote:

I'm sorry, My head cocked, following her with inquisitive eyes. She had run into me, but it certainly was because I was affecting her. I had not yet figured out why, but her internal body temperature was raised and her awareness of her surroundings was decreased. Odd, but I would readdress it later on.
As she came around me, I was on her heels. "Should I be?" I sensed something strange about the way she felt towards my presence, was she.. afraid? Maybe my vessel was undesirable.
I glanced at my hands, as they'd caught my eyes. Littered with liver spots and wrinkles and I realized that my body was less than in it's prime.
This wasn't going to work out.
Not only would this weak body not be capable of containing by being much longer, but it would be more maintenance. The only thing keeping me here was.. this mundane. She taught me things, important things. But this vessel was clearly unappealing to her, I gathered from her reaction.

Quote :

 Ąʟɪᴄᴇ.

    

     ➳ "Why shouldn't you be?" My responses had become uninvolved. Stranger seemed better to understand when I spoke as if he was illiterate, it made things more painless for the both of us. 

Shuffle, stomp, shuffle, stomp. I didn't notice how heavy his footsteps were until he stepped foot onto the tile of the kitchen. Shuffle, stomp, stomp,- and then silence.

My eyes turned back, the sounds of his heavily trailing boot steps having stopped. I had expected another dull-witted question to come out of his mouth, perhaps this time it would be how I kept the flowers on the counter alive. Except, that wasn't what I found at all. Instead, there was this look of nothingness on his face and his hand was held fervently over his heart, unspoken words still hanging onto the top of his tongue. It was as if his soul suddenly decided to flee, leaving his body devoid of but a little sprite of life.
I tried to step in the way of his fall, but didn't make it.

The next hours were hazy of red, white, blue and a ride in a sterile white box. This irrelevant man had endured a heart attack, and now he was dead.

Had I done something wrong by offering him soup? The attendent nurse assured me not. Rather likely an already clogged artery that had collapsed even more because of the stress the rain that was still at hurricane force outside the hallway window had put on his body. His death was inevitable, unimportant. Likely no one would miss him. It was simply rotten luck that I had taken him in when I did, and had I not, it was likely he'd have been devoured by the local pack of feral dogs before anyone would have even spotted the body.

But, I cared about this irrelevant man, even if no one else cared to. He had been my own responsibility and now he'd expired on my own watch. 
 
There was passive sympathy from one of the nurses as she found myself curled into ball across from a now empty hospital room. She was slightly overweight, with a pale complexion, and hair similar to my own. Adelaide, her name tag said, brought me a massive woolen blanket that was a dull hospital blue, and wrapped it around my shoulders as I spoke to Alexander on the phone. She stayed for a moment, stroking my shoulder as if she was my mother, the decrepit sense of loss trickling across my features must have been a familiar scene to her. Adelaide soon, too, had to leave me to attend to other affairs. Leaving me feeling tiny, pressed against the hallway wall, crying over a man i'd met only half an hour before.

l o n e l y angel wrote:

Three times, she corrected my grammar; I almost felt self conscious.
My eyes ever so slightly raised from the 'American Heritage Dictionary', "Heterousian, A Christian holding that the substance and nature of the God the Father and God the Son are different; an Arian." I recited softly from the book. "How fascinating." My higher tone of voice rung oddly in my ears. I had yet to acquire a female vessel, so this was new to me. I crossed my legs slowly, perching the dictionary on my knee. Share more of your knowledge with me. Stop crying over the mundane. I willed silently. Show me your interest, fascinating human.