Michael speaks to Theophile
Theo watched Todd and Zophiel spar from his perch on a large boulder at the edge of the mountain clearing. Yet again, she seemed to have a connection with someone else that he just didn't understand, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that. He frowned as the thoughts turned themselves over and over in his head, coming to no useful conclusion.
A sigh sounded by his shoulder. “You just don't get it, do you?”
He turned to see Michael settling himself on the rock, arching his wings to keep feathers out of the way.
“Get what?” Theo asked.
The angel sighed, a wry grin twisting his lips. “Just how very important you are to her.”
Theo glanced at the two sparring in the field, then looked back at the angel. “She has such deep connections with so many people. Like, with Todd, they can talk 'shinobi' for hours, or she and Maggie can literally read each others' minds. But when we try to talk, it's . . . awkward. Forced. I don't know what to say to her. I'm not a shinobi, or a woman . . . once, we had things in common, but now. . . It's like she's almost someone I know, but not quite.”
Michael was silent a moment. “You think she's changed?”
“Yes,” Theo replied. “I used to know her, used to understand her. We used to be able to talk for hours about the scrolls and old books we studied. Not anymore. Now--” he looked again at the field, where Zophiel seemed to be teaching Todd how to repel airborn attacks as she repeatedly swooped down at him from above. “Now she has wings, and her name is different, and she's a wasteling, and she says the oddest things that make so sense. . .”
Michael's grin returned. “How do you know she wasn't always like this, and has only recently allowed you to see her true self?”
Theo had no answer for that. But that didn't mean he was finished. “But how can I relate to her anyway? She's . . . she's two thirds immortal, only one third human. What can I possibly be to her?”
Michael chuckled. “If there is one thing always true with you humans, it is that you either massively over estimate your own importance, or you go to the other extreme, and completely underestimate yourselves.” He looked at Theo, amused at the other's stubbornness.
“Listen to me,” the angel said. “You have more power over her than any other living person right now. It's a bit of a scandal back at the Centre, in fact. There is nearly nothing that you could ask of her that she wouldn't do. If you told her it would make you happy if she went off the mountain and slaughtered an entire village, she'd do it in a heartbeat. If you idly wondered what the terminal velocity of an incarnated grigorim was, she'd find out. If you told her there was nothing that you wanted more than for her to fall on her sword, she'd be dead before you finished speaking.”
Theo looked skeptical, but Michael continued. “And if you told her to abandon me and our other Beloved. . . well, she'd give it serious thought.”
Theo shook his head. “I can't be that important.” He insisted. “She's. . . well, she's Zophiel . . . and I'm. . .I”m just me. Just Theo, the lost student. I'm not good with a sword, or diplomacy, or magic. I'm nothing special.” He concluded miserably.
“Has it never occurred to you that you are that important to her because you are simply yourself?” The angel looked incredulous. “That your being an ordinary human was exactly why you assumed such importance to her?” Michael frowned, and then tried a different tack. “Alright, student, what do angels do?”
Theo was taken aback by the seeming change of subject, but recovered quickly. “They. . . they love.” he answered.
“Exactly,” Michael nodded. “And they love by. . .”
Theo nibbled his bottom lip. “by. . . serving?”
The angel nodded. “Very good. And whom do they serve, and how?”
Theo smiled. “They serve God, any way he desires.”
“Which is usually what way?”
Theo thought a moment before answering. “Which is usually by helping mortals, for that is why they were created in the first place.”
“Good!” Michael exclaimed. “So, our angel Zophiel. She loves and serves by. . . “
Theo nodded. “By serving you and your, er, other.”
“and?”
“And?” Theo didn't think there was an and.
“And how else?
Theo shook his head. “I don't know that there would be any other way.”
Michael frowned again. “By serving a mortal. Namely, you.”
Theo shook his head in denial. “She's not my servant!”
“Of course she isn't. But if certain precautions had not been taken, she might have had potential as a wife. Why do you think we made sure you wouldn't be, er, the marrying kind?”
“You're kidding,” Theo said dubiously.
“Nope,” Michael was blithe. “Her or Maggie or any of the other countless females you so effortlessly charmed. But we simply couldn't allow you to marry either Maggie or our dear Zophiel, so here you are admiring Todd instead. And that's why she spends so much time doing her patron-of-spies-espionage-and-shinobi-thing with Todd, because he may well end up having a place in your heart she can never have, and she knows it, so she's making sure that he's worthy of the place.”
Theo thought about that for several minutes. “I still don't understand her,” he said.
“Of course you don't,” the angel agreed. “How can you understand her when you haven't even begun to understand yourself?”
Theo started to protest, but Michael gently cuffed him with a wing. “Listen up. You won't understand her, or Maggie, until you start being honest with yourself. You have no idea who you are, or what you believe, and you'll need that to do what you'll need to do. People have been rather gentle about it until now, but you're running out of time.” The angel's eyes shifted west, toward the duchy of Westron. “The time for leisure and learning is coming to an end. You will have to face yourself before the this all ends, and right now, you are not able to do this.
“If you wish to understand those around you, you need to start by having at least a basic understanding of yourself. Consider this your quest, for now.”
Theo turned back to the clearing, where Zophiel now seemed to be sharing with Todd the finer points of giving an angel a massage between their wings. After several minutes, another question occurred to him.
“But Michael, what--?” but the angel was gone.
“Dammit,” he muttered. “Guess that's all the free help I get today.”