[Writing Prompt] A guardian angel is found out.
Guardian Angel
Anduriel had a problem.
Discretion was the name of the game in his field of work. The guardian angel business was not about being flashy or striving for recognition – it was about those subtle moments – those moments when things suddenly went just so.
Anduriel was good at his job, which was lucky for his assignment, because Kaley was incredibly accident prone. She was 24 now, and Anduriel had known her, and guarded her, from the moment of her birth.
As Kaley’s guardian, Anduriel was able to influence the world around her in minute, but often critical, ways. For instance, once Katey was walking distractedly across the street and nearly stepped in front of a yellow taxi. The tires passed within an inch of her big toe. Had either she or the taxi been going only a little faster or slower she would have been terrible hurt.
It was Anduriel who changed their speeds them both down, Kaley on the stairs of the subway station, where a strong downdraft of wind impeded her movement, and the Taxi half a block away, three blocks away, where suddenly he had every green light.
This was how Anduriel worked his magic – how guardian angels everywhere did their work – influencing the elements of nature, the infrastructures of the human world and the behavior of other human beings to imperceptibly shift circumstances in Kaley’s favor.
Of course, this process was supposed to be secret. Sure, some people believed in Guardian Angels, or prayed to their Guardian Angels, or sent a silent thank you when a disaster was avoided. But no one was able to touch their angel, or see them or hear them. Fundamentally, a Guardian Angel was invisible by design, unknowable by edict of God Itself.
Which brings us to Anduriel’s problem. Recently, Anduriel went a step too far in order to protect Kaley. She was alone in her kitchen preparing dinner, cutting an onion while watching a TV show on an Ipad.
Anduriel was always on edge when Kaley used sharp objects – her track record was not great. As he watched her cut this onion with, at best, half attention, Anduriel felt certain something was about to go down.
One of the powers endowed to Guardian Angels was limited prognostication. Generally this manifested as a non-specific sense of concern, and only became concrete a few seconds before a dangerous event was about to occur. It was a fickle power, and not at all reliable.
As Anduriel watched Kaley cutting the onion, suddenly the power kicked in, and Anduriel saw that in a moment, in under a single millisecond, Katey was about to effectively chop off the top inch of her left pointer finger. This was not much warning at all, far less than Anduriel would usually receive, but these things did happen from time to time.
Anduriel sped into action and, in his eagerness to protect Kaley, fed by a certain adrenal instinct, he way over did it, slapping at the knife with his hand. From Kaley’s perspective, the kitchen knife she was holding went flying into the air, apropos of nothing, and fell to the floor.
Kaley was startled at first, and backed away from the cutting board. Then she looked down and saw that she had the slightest line of blood, just a shallow cut, right below the first knuckle of left pointer finger. Kaley looked back up, down at the knife, and then to her right and left, eventually settling her gaze, to Anduriel’s astonishment, on the very spot where he stood.
There was an akward moment during which, ridiculously, Anduriel did not move a muscle, as though he were not completely invisible. Eventually, Katey picked up the knife and finished making her dinner, but she wore a quizzical look for the rest of the evening and ate very slowly, and in relative quiet, shutting off her electronics.
Over the next few days things seemed to return to normal, and, Anduriel hoped, the moment had been forgotten. But every now and again, Kaley would stop what she was doing and look around, as if searching for something, or someone, and Anduriel would hold his breath and wait for the moment to pass.
After a couple of weeks, Anduriel thought the risk of exposure had passed and had stopped worrying about it. One morning, before leaving for work, Kaley tore a page out of a notebook, took a pen and scribbled something on it that Anduriel could not make out as Kaley was holding it very close to her chest. Then she placed the note face down on the kitchen table and sped out the front door to work.
Normally, Anduriel would follow her out, but this morning he stayed behind and just stared at the note. Kaley lived alone, so who, Anduriel wondered, could the note possibly be for?
Hesitantly, Anduriel breached the physical plane once again and flipped the note over, reading it three times before flipping it back over and sitting on the couch, unsure what to do next.
The note read:
I know you’re there. I know you’re watching. Who are you?
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