[FFML] [ORIG] Angel Dawn, Chapter Two

[Henry Cobb]

[ORIG] Angel Dawn, Chapter Two
By Henry J. Cobb, all rights reserved.

Archive at http://www.io.com/~hcobb/anime/fanfic/angel_dawn.html

I think that the characters and situations presented here are original, but
I owe a heavy debt to my influences.

Chapter two: "Dawn of the Dream"

It was night.  I was sitting in the back seat of a different car than I had
rode in the previous day.  Mr. Himoto was driving and a woman was sitting
next to him.  The three of us rode in silence.

I was griped by a strange overwhelming emotion.  I found I couldn't look at
the two and so turned to the window to stare out in the night.  We passed a
light and I could see my face in the window's reflection.  It wasn't my
face.  It was another girl's.

The entire situation felt odd and uneven.  I must be visiting a human's
dream.  I tried to pull my soul away from hers, but I felt bound and
trapped by the strange emotion.  I focused my strength and leapt to my own
identity.

I felt my body in motion and it did feel like my new body.  I was moving to
music, it was a performance, some sort of dance.  I looked around and saw
that boy I had learned Japanese from.  I looked down at myself and saw that
I was dressed in extremely thin fabric that hardly covered anything.  It
just wasn't practical to stay warm in such an outfit.  I exerted my will
over the dream and changed my coverings to my school outfit.

The boy, who had been leaning forwards, fell back onto his bed and the
music stopped.

This must be his dream.  "Excuse me, but I must have offended you
yesterday."

"What?" He sat up.

"I touched you without introducing myself first.  My name is Dawn."

"Ichiru, er I mean I'm Ichiru Sakurayama."

"Excuse me again Ichiru, but there are things I must attend to.  You are
not injured?"

"No, no, I'm fine.  You can come by anytime."

"In that case let me leave you this token,"  I closed my eyes and thought
for a moment, then handed him a red candle, "Light this when you want me to
visit your dreams again.  Goodbye for now,"  I summoned my wings of fire
and flew up, through the ceiling of his imagined room and out of his dream.

I stood on his dream, in the field of dreams.  There was a minor
insect-form demon nearby but I looked at it sternly and it scuttled off.
Why was it so near the dream of a human?  I looked up and saw the Tower of
Darkness nearby and the Tower of Light in the far distance.  Not a good
place for an angel to be.

I focused my will and changed my perspective until Ichiru's dream could fit
in the palm of my hand.  I picked it up.  It was quite heavy, but my will
was sufficient.  I don't think I had moved a human's dream before.  Was that
even allowed?  Well too late now.  I flew up then turned towards the Tower of
Light.

As I flew I could see some angels and demons tending to human dreams and
others heading out to deal with the distant other things.  I landed well
short of the Tower of Light and put Ichiru's dream gently down on the
surface, where it could bathe in the light.  One thing I was sure of was
that dragging a human's soul into Heaven would have drastic effects of some
sort.

I stepped up to the gate.  It was closed.  I pressed my hand against it and
it did not budge.  I banged my fist against the gate but there was no
answer.  How could it be left unattended like this?

I remembered that there was an observation platform at the top of the tower
so I flew up towards it.

There was a flash of lightning and my connection to the world of dreams was
painfully severed.

"Ow!"  I woke with the beating of new heart in my new head.  My thoughts
were all scrambled and my brain felt like it was engulfed in fog.

As I sat up I noticed a pressure in my abdomen, but somehow I knew what to
do about it.  I found myself walking out of my room and then to another
small room where I used the facilities.  As I washed my hands and face
afterwards I found my thoughts clearing.  I wondered how I had known this
bathroom was there or how to use it.  I suppose I must have read it off
some object I had held.

I returned to my room.  It was all in darkness, except for a faint glimmer
from the window and the door I had left open.  I held the curtain to the
side and looked out onto the street.  The only lights were mounted on poles
that were placed every so often down the sides of the street.  I glanced
up, but could not see the stars against the glare.  Humans had done this.
They had setup this artificial barrier of fake lights to hide Father's
work.  No wonder they had gone so astray.

I turned back to the room and turned on the ceiling light with the switch
embedded in the wall.  I looked over the room.  Most of the things I had
explored the previous morning, but there was a shelf with thin boxes.  Most
of these had labels and one of the labels included the word Brazil.  I
pulled it from the shelf and it fell open.  There were pages with pictures
and writing inside.  I read through one page and the writing continued to
the next page.  It was sequential.

Best to start at the beginning then.  I pushed all the pages to the side
and reached the very first page in the book.  While most of the writing in
the book was extremely regular in size and alignment, there was a very
short bit of writing on the first page that was at an angle and unevenly
spaced, "For Haku-chan."  I ran my finger over it, but all I could tell was
that some writing tool held in somebody's hand had left it there.

I flipped the page and started to read.  It was a book about the country of
Brazil, the people, the places, the animals and plants.  There was a
comfortable feeling as I read it.  Somebody else had held this book and
turned these pages and it had given her relief of some sort.  I basked in
her feelings.

I was a dozen pages into it before I considered that this book might be
very useful to my mission.  If somebody asked me to tell them something
about the place where I was supposed to have lived, then I could simply
quote something from this book and if they hadn't read this one book they
would accept my answer.

I put the book down.  The comfortable feeling was gone.  That would be
deception.  How could I lie?

I remembered the first time I had considered a situation other than total
honesty.

"Yes Dawn?"  Father had read my concern on my face.  Well I didn't have a
face back then so he had actually read it on my aura.

"Why don't you tell them?  These humans.  Why don't you tell them
everything about you?"

"There already is a place where everybody knows everything about Us."

"Where?"

"Right here.  And the result is both Heaven and Hell.  Either one accepts
all that We say without question or one defines themselves in their defiance
of Our word.  It's quite limiting really.  That is why We started over
again with Earth.  Any answer We give to the humans directly is unearned,
but by struggling to understand Our will they lay the foundations of their
own understanding.  So say We gave onto you something, what would you do
with it Dawn?"

"I would treasure it always."

"And that is the difference between how angels and humans act."