flashfic

The Workshop

She is not an angel, but angels visit her workshop.  Some are crowned in light from the universe’s first exhalation.  Others come with swords forged from final kisses, and still others bring wine pressed from ripe stars.  (Angels have indifferent palates, but she is kind enough not to tell them so.)

Angels visit her when their wings want mending.  She has tools fine and terrible: needles hammered from indiscreet mirrors and nails that bite like first love abandoned, bandages woven from the susurration of seafoam and bonesaws that recite anatomical treatises in the language of entropy.  No one questions her skill with these things.

But it is not her skill the angels think of when they come to her.  Rather, it is that old story of an angel who unwinged herself that her comrades might fly again.  When they mention it to her, however, she only laughs and says she could build herself wings any time she liked; it is their company she wants.

for YKL