In her first life, Madrigal was always on time and had everything planned. She was permanently reliable and always available. That was, she supposed, why she had been chosen for this job in her second life as a guardian angel. At first it was exciting, darting unseen in and out of people’s lives to save them from themselves, others, and the world. It was a great amount of power she had been given, even though she was only at the most outer rings - an entry-level angel of sorts. Soon however, the monotony and thanklessness of the task began to wear her down. The work had to be done, but today as she spiraled down through the early-morning clouds there was no joy in her eyes.
The day started with a chef at a restaurant. Madrigal nearly missed this first appointment but arrived just in time. The kitchen was semi-organized chaos as usual. Hot pans of sizzling sausage and eggs covered the black stove, a faint acrid smoke filled the air, and shouting was the only means of communication. The chef was busy instructing his junior chefs in the correct way to make a soufflé, and he was not paying attention to where his knife was. The knife was incorrectly positioned above the onion, ready to chop down - an act that would have removed the tip of the chef’s finger had Madrigal not been there to move the knife blade out of the way at just the right moment. Her intervention caused the knife to come out of the chef’s hand who then cursed loudly, oblivious to the wound he had narrowly escaped. What had been a triumphant smile on Madrigal’s face vanished at his outburst, replaced by a look of defeat. She wrapped her wings around her for comfort like a tired child with a blanket. She wished she could explain to him, but this was not possible, and besides, she was needed elsewhere. Madrigal watched as the chef picked up the knife to finish chopping the onion, muttering under his breath as he did.
There was no time to wallow for Madrigal, there was always another job to do. She ran outside leaving the busy kitchen behind, and in a single running and jumping motion both unfurled her wings and leapt into the air, racing to her next appointment.
She didn’t quite know how the jobs were assigned, she just knew where to go and how fast she needed to get there, in this next case a mother driving distracted down the road. The mother was turned half way around in the driver’s seat, trying to give one of the children in the back seat a sippy cup filled with juice. The car began to veer off the road towards a ditch to the right, but Madrigal arrived in time to give the wheel a nudge to the left which straightened the car out. The sudden jolt of the car made the mother drop the cup of juice on the floor in the back seat. This in turn made the children cry and the mother became angry. Madrigal flew alongside the car for a short while, ensuring that the incident would not repeat itself. When she was satisfied that all was well, Madrigal banked away, turning towards her next appointment.
The day wore on for Madrigal. Again and again she was required to fix many mundane and trivial things. When she had extra time between appointments she would often stay and watch over the person she had just worked on, hoping that there would be some sort of recognition to the event that just transpired. Most times the best she could hope for was a softly-spoken “That was close”, or “I can’t believe I almost did that.”
Sometimes the people would turn towards her, and Madrigal was certain they were about to thank her in some way, thinking that perhaps they had noticed her through a faint real-world feeling. Maybe they felt a small puff of air from her wings, or they recognized the gentle push of her hand against theirs. But it never happened. Anyone who turned towards her did so only by accident in the act of reaching for something or talking to someone behind her. They could not see her of course, she knew this, it was part of the job of guardian angel to be unseen. But that did not make her feel any better.
It was evening now; the sun was down, her shift was over, and the nighttime guardians were flying in. Madrigal was gliding through the city on her own, taking a lazy route back to her entry point. Snow was falling, and as she passed each street lamp the glow turned each individual snowflake into a white star flying by. She was about to ascend when she noticed a young boy in a park a few streets ahead. She flew closer, circling noiselessly overhead and then spiraled down through the falling snow, landing a short distance away from the boy.
The boy was playing in the freshly-fallen snow, pretending to turn his coat and some sticks into wings and a halo. Madrigal walked over to where the boy was playing, he was running in circles using his right arm to flap the same side of his coat like a wing, and using the other arm to hold his stick halo above his head. Madrigal smiled at this attention to detail by the boy.
Madrigal approached, stepping carefully so as to not disturb the snow. As she neared the boy he pointed at her wings which were still tucked behind her. He then flapped his coat some more, asking her without speaking to play along. He could see her! “Only the pure of heart shall see God,” Madrigal thought to herself. Madrigal obliged the boy’s request and unfolded her wings for the boy to see. Her wings were large and full, each wing nearly twice as long as her body. Her trailing feathers were longer than the boy himself was tall. She curled her wings around in front of her making a sort of dome with a hole in the top over the boy. A smile leapt across the boy’s face and he danced around the shadows of her wings, leaving tiny footprints in the snow that created a rough wing-shaped outline.
Madrigal spent the next few minutes playing with the boy, sometimes jumping into the air and floating back to the ground, and sometimes bowing to him in a playful act of reverence. It didn’t matter what she did, the boy was enthralled to have her as a playmate. He would stop every few seconds to gaze at her with a serious and pondering face, only to break into laughter again and take another lap around the periphery of her shadows. It became a dance of sorts, Madrigal creating a new shape with her wings, and the boy tracing the shadow it left it in the snow.
Too soon the boy’s mother called to him from the steps of a nearby house. The boy gave Madrigal a smile and quick wave goodbye before turning and running towards the house, still holding his halo made of sticks above his head and his other arm out like a wing. Madrigal watched as he made a winding course towards his house and ran up the steps into and then around his mother’s legs. He said something to her that Madrigal could not hear and pointed back towards where Madrigal stood. The mother smiled and looked out towards the park where Madrigal was standing with her wings curled around her body. The mother could not see Madrigal of course, but she smiled back at her son, nodded and then scooted him inside. It was then that Madrigal recognized her as the mother from the car earlier in her day.
Suddenly the importance of all her work became obvious to Madrigal. A chef who cuts his finger would not be able to make food for hungry people, and a car stuck in a ditch would prevent a young boy from getting home to play in the snow. Or worse. Madrigal shuddered at this thought and a small layer of accumulated snowflakes fell from the shoulders of her wings.
Madrigal looked back at the boy’s house. The mother and son were visible now only as profiles behind the nighttime yellow illumination of a window curtain, both were sitting at a table eating dinner. Maybe some hot soup Madrigal imagined. This last thought comforted her as she unfurled her wings again, jumped into the air and began a long slow climb up through the clouds. She was looking forward to coming back down tomorrow, maybe she would have another dance.