the Last Time God Spoke, pt. 2

In so much as the Voice of God could be said to whine, Gabriel did so audibly as he stretched his wings wide, searching the expanse of feathers for more detritus.

“No one else up here smells like anything at all.” Ropes of muscle, naturally grey and currently silvered in the diffuse heavenly light, coruscated across his ribcage and abdomen as he jerked and twisted in a spastic circle, inspecting every bit of himself, muttering all the while.

A choir of waif-like angels he hadn’t noticed sulking nearby eyed him suspiciously. He stared at them from beneath one huge outstretched wing, and then straightened to his full (rather imposing) height. They burst into giggles and fluttered breezily past him.

“That’s just great,” he yelled after them, catching their scent. Gabriel realized that the angels, like everyone in heaven, smelled vaguely of dust. Dust, and something sweet. “Marshmallows,” he grumbled. His stomach turned.

Shuffling his wings back in order, he stomped off to his living quarters. Well. Technically, no one was “living” up here, and no one had any property to themselves. Still, the place where Gabriel spends most of his time in heaven might as well be called his, as no one save a stray newcomer ever passes through it.  And they never stay long.

People used to approach him all the time, ages ago. Bring him gifts and things. Mostly clouds shaped like earth-things, poems or bits of stars. Junk, really, but still, they were offerings. The newly dead (and for a brief period before the whole earth debacle all of the cherubim in the spheres) thought that he could curry favour with God Himself.

They didn’t understand, of course, that God had stopped listening to Gabriel shortly after some of the other angels, erm, left. Also, none of them really seemed to get that the Lord didn’t favour anything, or any one. Never had. Ever. He loves e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

Gabriel did his best to never spend more than a few moments in His presence. He found it depressing.