Two Angels

The two Angels stood across from each other, over an oak table, each one, a fluttery mess of soft, gently swooning curls of hair and downy tufts of feathers.

They were angry, and storms seemed to flash around their eyes.

The one on the left, with wings of sapphire, was smaller, darker, and more treacherous looking. There were sullen little fangs jutting from the deep red breadth of her lips. She was more Devil than Angel, but she looked eerily serene nonetheless. Her face was gentle and unassuming, but her deep black eyes, abyss-soaked and drunk on some sort of imagined cruelty, gave her away.

The one on the right, with wings of ivory, seemed so much sweeter. She was all pale cotton candy and purring harp plucked notes. Her face was the pristine white of flawless snow, and her eyes were practically electric with brilliant blue shimmer. She was peerless in her beauty, but cancerous and sick beneath it. And she appeared so much kinder, so much more steeped in goodness than the sapphire winged Angel she stared down. But her facade was so deceptive as to almost be criminal. She hid what she was better than the little Devil across the table.

Their discord was ludicrously outsized... their mutual anger and dislike breaking the sky in two and filling the gap with crashes of thunder that were unearthly in their gargantuan cacophony. They were full of barely contained rage, shuddering under the voluminous and whispering folds of their gowns. Each was demanding a fall of the other. Each was demanding that the other was an impostor, a pale copy of the original, a lesser, weakened version of a primal force.

The sapphire winged Angel displayed her history on the table. She was Nature incarnate, lusty and loud and heavy handed in her dealings. She had been there since the first breath, watching as creation tore itself asunder in fumbling attempts at winning her over. She smiled a befanged smile, cold in its mirthless glee, and ran her long nails across time, shearing one lover from another, splitting life from the living, ripping hearts apart throughout the span of existence. She did this on a whim, as a show of who she was and how little the petty concerns of those beneath her meant. She folded up her history, like an antique roadmap and then set it ablaze without anything further to prove.

Her ivory winged challenger did the same, opening her life up like a yellow spined book from an otherworldly library. She had been there, too, in early waking moments of honey-tongued lies and eyes blaring out secrets from behind shuttered mouths. Her ambition was hidden and maybe worse, different to be sure, and larger in its potential for heartache. She didn't hold back a glossy lipped smile split with gleaming teeth as perfect as any other bit of her face. She was certain that she was the force, the thing sputtering in hearts and masquerading as love. She winked across time, luring weak hearts from their homes like a siren calling out to befuddled sailors. She snuck her shellacked nails into their eyes and harvested them, collected them and stole them from the faces they had so typically been beholden to. She licked her lips and blew a lilac kiss across the pages of her life, crumbling it to glitter and sparkle before dissipating in a swarm of rung silver bells.

And there was no clear victor. Their hatred didn't skip a beat. And the staring just continued.