It stayed with me well into the morning, getting up, the sun bright despite the low temperatures. Oh, I felt so happy I was going to make pancakes! I skipped to the kitchen and began to make them, mixing the batter from the box. Four pancakes at a time, and when the first batch was ready I chewed. No, this didn’t taste at all like the happiness I was feeling. It was too bland. We’ll just add a bit more sugar and chocolate chips. That thing that was flying, I was so sure it happened, even if it was a figment of my imagination (which it couldn’t have been) it was just so, happy. It brought me so much happiness! Did it have wings? I couldn’t recall much of it, just that it had been flying. It had to have had wings, right?
The second batch was the same, not as happy, missing something. What was it missing? I looked at it, confused, frustrated and worried as my focus turned to the bowl with the batter. I only had enough for two more batches, maybe if I just did one pancake at a time I could try to fix it and tweak it until it was happy. After thirty minutes and no more pancakes I had no promising results.
“It’s a very hard thing to re-create happiness.”
I turned to the table, someone sitting there with a plate of pancakes. He couldn’t have been much older than me, brown hair nothing but a mess of curls, a green polo shirt and eating as though he’d been sitting there the entire time. How did he get in? What? How, did he get in? What? I could only stare, ready to use my pancake pan as a weapon. “Wh-Who—”
“It isn’t really important. I love the strawberries in this one.” he said, one cheek full of strawberry pancake, “But I am here to apologize.”
“What for?” I asked cautiously, deciding maybe a knife would be better. Oh but if I had to be close enough to stab him he’d be close enough to hurt me. Didn’t want that.
“I brought you happiness. Happiness is a luxury nowadays and I can’t afford to give it to someone at random.” He said, waving his fork in the air before stabbing the last of the strawberry pancake, “Plus I have to take it back now and that’s never fun. Cherubs don’t like it when you give someone else happiness. And I haven’t seen yours, is it out?”
I was very confused. Cherubs? For a moment I thought of cherubim but that couldn’t be right. The naked baby angels on Valentine’s Day? “What?”
“I suppose we aren’t supposed to tell you, ah…” He thought, closing his mouth and giving a small hum now, green eyes looking around the kitchen as though it held the answer, “When you humans are born,”
Great, ‘you humans,’ he’s of another species.
“we have to give you a cherub, or assign one, give? Assign? Sort of a mixture of both. No not really we sort of assign you a cherub and this cherub, call it a guardian angel if you will, looks over your happiness.”
Maybe I inhaled stardust, it was a comet and I’m infected with an alien plague. That or I overdosed on pancakes. Was that possible?
“If another cherub gives you happiness it’s sort of like being given a foreign food. You can either really like it and want more or you sort of reject it and get over it. You became the former, which is all the more reason to remove it.”
He was sort of handsome for whatever he was. A cherub? That made a lot of sense then, brown curly hair, green eyes, he had a handsome face, not quite a pointed jawline but it certainly wasn’t rounded out to make him look fat. A not too narrow face, beautifully structured nose, but as a whole he looked plain, it was focusing on the details which made him handsome. How peculiar.
“Normally the person’s cherub removes the happiness so it’s strange that it hasn’t removed my happiness from you. I mean you can’t see them as you progressively get older, a fault in your species, but as children they’re normally imaginary friends and playmates and whatnot.” That green gaze soon turned to me, eyeing me up in my pajamas before looking around. “How long, exactly, has your cherub been gone? Your imaginary friend?”
“Uh, I don’t recall having many imaginary friends.” I thought a moment, “I had one that could grow and shrink as he pleases.”
“No that’s just the illusion made of a childish mind.” Now suddenly I had become very interesting, his gaze now solely on me instead of the rest of the kitchen. “No cherub. Tell me,”
Oh god he was going to turn into a therapist.
“What makes you happy? The sort of happy you felt last night. Or joy, or just excited? Maybe even giddy?”
“Um,” that was a good question despite asking it to me in my pajamas. We stared at each other, my eyes being the first to look away as I thought. Something that made me happy? “That’s… a good question.” I admitted, unable to think of anything off the top of my head, standing there awkwardly now, “I don’t really know much of what makes me happy. I’m just sort of tolerably content with life.”
“Which is wrong.” He said so suddenly and sternly I jumped, “Every single human on this planet has some sort of happiness which makes them smile. I think you steal happiness.”
“Steal happiness?” I questioned.
“Could you come here and sit like a normal person before we continue? You’ve been standing for ten minutes.”
Who was he to boss me around in my own home? Before I could even retort my legs obediently followed and I found myself sitting down at my small table across from him. I still don’t even know how he got into my house. Was he a Cherub? Was he magical? Being this close was still nerve wracking. He could have been a sociopath.
“Good girl, now, back to your happiness stealing. It’s not uncommon, trust me. There are many loop holes to giving and receiving happiness and stealing happiness is one of them. You steal happiness by sort of ‘one-uping’ another person. For example, you’re at a bookstore and someone beside you is so happy that they can afford two books they’ve really been wanting of a series. You instead buy three of that exact series and mumble to yourself but loud enough for them to hear that you can afford to buy three.” he paused, allowing this to sink into my mind before continuing “this in turn is you one-upping the other, instead of their two, you have your three which steals their happiness, not all of it but enough for them to easily shrug away the happiness.”
“You’re assuming I’m rude.” I said softly “I’m not really like that, and I think my comments.” I could only sigh at him before looking at the clock in the kitchen. “I’ve got to get ready for work, please excuse me, the door is over there.”
