‘Wings and Things’

"Your father," Estrella said to Sun, as she tucked him into bed, and flicked a hand at the glow-balls, to set them moving in slow intricate patterns above the young child's bed. “Has gone away for a while.”

She looked different, Sun thought. Her eyes were stained red on the white bits, and there were dark marks beneath them against her creamy skin, making them look as if they were set deep in her face, and her face looked strange too, as though it had become all sharp angles. Sun didn't like to see her that way, but he didn't point it out, didn't say so. He watched the glow-balls as they changed colours and he tried to blame it on them, on the strange and beautiful light they cast, but somewhere inside he knew he was fooling himself, and that there was something upsetting his mother a very lot, and that his dad had disappeared.

“Will we see him again soon?” He asked her.  

"I don't know, darling," Estrella answered, "maybe, but maybe not." She always told Sun the truth, even back then she'd always been honest with him, and not just because she was Fae and she couldn't lie. Fae might not be able to speak outright untruth, but that didn't mean they couldn't imply, deceive, mislead, confuse, and generally twist words until you were telling them the black sky was white, and the blue sky red, because they had made you believe it so, and never a false word spoken.

"I will try to get word to him," she told him, "but beyond that I cannot say." That was enough for Sun. If his mother couldn't do it, it couldn't be done. "So?" She asked, calling his attention back to her earlier words, to before he'd interrupted. "Where was I?"

"You were talking about Daddy." Sun told her, pleased because he knew the answer was correct. “And saying that he had gone away.”  

"That's right." Estrella answered, forcing a smile for him. "Your father, Rain, was one of the Host of Heaven, the beings that are also called Angels. Angels have many different purposes; like fighters, and healers, and there are lots of others, but Daddy was a messenger, taking the word of Heaven to the world of Man, and occasionally to other worlds, on other planes, in other realms."

"Like here?" Sun asked, snuggling deeper beneath the covers, and half closing his eyes as she stroked his hair.

"Yes darling." His mother told him. "Not often, but sometimes Heaven has reason to talk to those in Faerie. And this time, it was Daddy who brought the message, and that was how it all started."

"That's how all the trouble started?" Sun asked, because he'd heard the phrase, and he felt kind of grown up using it.

But Estrella laughed, and it was a musical sound, like the chiming of bells, gentle and flowing as though it was carried to him on running water, like the little stream that went past their house. It went over the mossy rocks that were slippery to touch and impossible to walk on, and were the most beautiful shades of green and blue and purple, and it formed lots of bubbling, fast flowing waterfalls.

That laugh made Sun remember a day a few months previous when the three of them, she and Dad and Sun, had made paper boats and she had shown him how to sail the delicate little craft down the stream and over the falls, using magic to steer them into the current and stop them running aground in the little shallow pools at either side of the fast flowing water, or in the reeds that rippled like long green fingers, and snagged the tiny boats if they went off course and got caught and tangled in the long tendrils.

Dad's boats had been the most beautiful; intricate and lovely, layer after layer of paper sails that looked like dragons when the tiny breeze lifted them, their decks festooned with banners and flags that swirled around them as they sailed, but his magic didn't work here, Mum had explained afterwards when his boats had got caught time and again and in the end he had got up and walked away, standing alone and staring out into the valley the stream flowed down the centre of.

Mum had packed the boats away and she and Sun had gone indoors but Dad had stayed out there and it was much, much later when she'd gone out to him and they had spoken for a long time, voices too quiet for Sun to make out the words, but when they came in he had looked a lot like Mum did now, Sun thought, and he had been quiet and distant for days after.

"Well," Estrella said, her laughter dying away, "you could say that, though whether or not you'd call it 'trouble', depends upon your point of view, really. It was how Daddy and I met, and we ended up with you, so it definitely wasn't all trouble, because you are the best gift that Heaven has ever given anyone, or at least, I believe you are." She leaned down and kissed his forehead and when she straightened back up she was smiling again, less forced this time, and her golden eyes caught the light of the glow-balls and gleamed colour after colour with them, and for a little while Sun watched, entranced, while he listened to her tell the story.

"But you are right in some ways, darling. Daddy did get into trouble," she said, and her voice changed a little, became sad, and soft, and as far away as Dad's eyes had been that day, and even though she was right there Sun wanted to wrap his arms around her and pull her back to him, in case she too disappeared as Dad had done. "Heaven doesn't like its angels to fall in love," she said, and her golden eyes glittered colour, and it was not until he was older and had looked back upon this moment that he realised she'd been crying silently, her tears catching the colours of the glow-balls even more brightly than her eyes had done. "And they punished him, and they took his wings away, and they threw him out of Heaven and took away his magic, and he was no longer Rain, but Rain Fallen."

"Oh." Sun said quietly. "Why that name?" He had always liked his dad's name a lot, just as he had always liked the falling rain, and the feel of it on his skin, the sound of it as it hit his window, and the way it dripped from the trees long after it had stopped falling from the sky.

"Because when angels are thrown out of Heaven it is called a Fall." Estrella explained. He hadn't had to take the 'Fallen' bit as name, but he had chosen to, finding some small solace in the irony, but she did not tell Sun that just then, did not wish to give him too much information to process in one go.

Sun hadn't known that before, about the name, or about the wings. He hadn't thought that his dad had once had wings, and that was why he did, too. It made sense to him now, the way it made sense that he had often felt his dad's eyes on him and when he turned Rain had been staring at his wings, his expression unreadable.

"Could he share my wings with me?" Sun asked, and Estrella put her hand to her mouth, and made a strange choked sound. "No darling." She said, her voice a whisper, "wings don't work that way, I'm afraid, but it is sweet of you to want that." Her hand faltered for a moment, and her fingers caught in his pale hair instead of running smoothly through it, but a moment later they were moving again as gentle as she always was. "I knew that he had Fallen, but I did not know where to look for him." She said, "and it was years before he found me again."

She did not say that after years and years of searching she had found him, in the mortal realm, barefoot, lost and broken, nor that he had tried again and again to end his own life, that his arms and his body were still scarred from his attempts, nor did she say that it was only after years more of living with her that he had become anything like sane again, because Sun was too young to understand. Those things Sun found out later, much later, from her and from others, when he was old enough that they made sense to him. But on that night he knew none of that.

"Oh," Sun had said again. Estrella had gone quiet, her hand steady as her fingers carded through his pale hair. "Has Daddy gone to find his wings, then?" He asked her.

"Not exactly." She told him. "He's gone to find how to live without them."

"And his magic?"

"Yes, darling, and his magic." She said more, but Sun was falling asleep and if he heard it, he didn't remember when he woke again the next day. He supposed that his dad never had found the things that he was looking for, because he never did come home again, and on the day that Estrella married Tamarin, Sun realised that he never would.

Sometimes Sun thought he felt his dad's eyes on him, or on his wings, but when he turned to look there was never anybody there and he thought he must have imagined it, but on those days he felt strangely comforted, as though even though Rain wasn't there with them, he was close by, and he would come if Sun ever really needed him.