I contributed to the delinquency of a small bird!
Title: Death's Other Kingdom (7/?)
Characters: Gabriel, OC
Rating: PG
Gabriel opens his eyes and is more than a little confused to find himself in Heaven.
It doesn't look quite how he remembers it, but, he supposes, that's only to be expected. He hasn't seen Heaven in aeons, and he's never seen it through the eyes of the dead. They've rearranged, and the angle is all wrong from where he's sprawled.
Weirdly, this bit of it, his bit, presumably, looks alarmingly like a college campus. In fact, a specific college campus in Springfield, Ohio.
Probably something to be read into that, but Gabe decides to ignore it.
More interesting in an immediate sense is the young angel peering down at him with freakishly enormous eyes. Ze's a tiny thing, practically a baby, with only one small set of wings, gossamer and iridescent blue. He doesn't recognize hir, which means ze must be one of the post-War kids, from after his time.
"Uh, hi," he says, cleverly.
"Hello Gabriel, ” ze says, blinking as rapidly as ze speaks, “I am Tubiel. I wish to welcome you into Heaven once again and after so long."
Gabriel levers himself upright and sets out for a stroll.
"Alright, kid, to what do I owe the pleasure, Tubiel?" He asks, looking a bit askance at the little angel.
Ze hops up from where ze has perched hirself on the steps of Crawford Hall and flits after him. "I heard it said that you had emerged from Purgatory and been returned to Heaven and I felt compelled to preside over your homecoming. You must be returned to Earth, Gabriel."
Gabriel stops in his circumambulation of the university and peers back at hir incredulously.
“Wait, what? Walk me through that one more time.”
Ze cocks hir head at such an extreme angle Gabe has to resist the urge to tilt his whole body along with hir to compensate.
“I apologize but I am unsure what you mean. Walking is a human behavior, correct?” Ze blinks. “Walking is what you have been doing to move yourself around this Heaven, is it not? Why?”
“Oh, boy,” Gabe sighs, “You are going to be difficult, aren’t you?”
After a lengthy and mind-numbingly pedantic explanation of human colloquiallisms, he finally brings Tubiel back around to the subject of what in Heaven, literally, ze was talking about in the first place.
It turns out that by “preside over your homecoming”, ze meant “get your ass back down to Earth” and not “get you situated in Heaven”, which doesn’t actually clear a lot up.
“Ooookay, but why do you wanna get me back on the ground? Not that I object to the idea, mind you, but that’s not the usual line I get from you Host folks.”
Tubiel gives him this look like he is being deliberately slow and ze cannot fathom why. “Because it falls under the dominion of my sacred duty imparted unto me by our Father.”
“Right. Which is what, exactly?”
“I preside over small birds.” Ze intones seriously.
At that, Gabe’s not really sure whether he should get indignant or cackle like a loon.
“Small birds,” he settles for.
“Yes. I am made to guard the travels of small birds and to ensure the safety of their return home. Gabriel,” ze implores, “You are become as a small bird who has lost his way.”
“But I’m not a bird at all!” He pauses. “And I’m not small, I’m an archangel!”
The little thing giggles at him, a sound like tiny bells and birdsong. Ze actually giggles at him.