For millenniums to come, Adam the Guardian would bemoan the fact that he’d not discarded his vulnerable, human form prior to facing the Angelic Council.
Archangel Michaela’s knuckle-dragging goons had spirited him away from his mortal charge without warning, suggesting the High Council was far from pleased with his actions. But why, he wondered, as her muscle-bound wannabe’s dragged him into the Judgment Chamber, shoving him hard towards the crystalline floor.
Adam came to a knee-skidding halt to sit beneath the looming Judgment Bench. Still, he could not think of one single transgression that would invite the scrutiny of the Council—at least not during this millennium.
Michaela, the High Judge, sat center seat at the bench, with her sable brows drawn into a singular slash of ire. "The choice is yours, supplicant," she spat. "Will you choose to confess the truth and accept penance now? Or must we shame your confession from you yet again?"
Adam’s cheeks ran red, and he hung his head as any contrite angel is bound by protocol to do. Yes, it was true. He was no stranger to Judgment. The last time he’d fallen under suspicion, he’d neglected to place a veil of forgetting on a stable wench he’d had a fling with. The next day, the poor girl ran around town shouting to any poor soul who'd listen that she’d been touched by an angel. The townsfolk had suspected the girl bewitched. Mindful of the implications of damning a saint, they placed the girl under the guard of nuns in lieu of having her burned at the stake.
During the discovery of that sordid brouhaha, the esteemed Michaela at least attempted to mask her displeasure until the condemning testimony could be read.
That the High Angel did not offer preamble to these new charges did not bode well for the Guardian. Adam knelt before the statuesque angel and bowed his head in a perfect pose of abject humility. "It would prove futile, indeed, to disgrace your just reprieve with a lie," Adam said. "Experience has taught me to grace the bench with none but the honorable truth."
The archangel snorted. Then she extended her wings to full span and soared down from the high bench to land towering over Adam. "Forget the flattery, Guardian". With a haughty toss of her cascading, alabaster mane, Michaela extended her sword tip so that it touched the tender skin beneath Adam’s cleft chin.
The position of her blade point left Adam no choice but to look up, up, up into Michaela’s bottomless blue gaze. It took every ounce of Adam’s will power not to cringe before the imposing angel.
"Did you have recent knowledge of a mortal, Adam?" As Michaela hissed the word knowledge, she slowly wound the long, cool fingers of her left hand through Adam’s chestnut curls and then jerked his head backwards. Her awe inspiring blade tightened against his throat, its glittering edge poised to slice.
"What mortal and when," Adam asked. He winced at the pitiful sound of his own whimpering voice as his larynx recoiled against the sword’s gradually increasing pressure.
"That’s a good guardian," she said, lips twisting to a brittle smile. "Then you admit it?"
"Admit what?" Adam asked, feeling more than a little impatient with these baseless charges. "Milady, I’ve known many mortals", he rasped. It wasn’t like the occasional dalliance with a mortal was rare among those sworn to Guard. What few carnal pleasures he’d partaken of seemed small compensation for the ethereal joys made impossible by his Earth bound duties.
Keeping the mortal souls from the Evil One’s reach had become a dull exercise in redundancy, what with all the newfangled thou shalt’s and thou shalt nots being bandied about.
Michaela’s blade edge pressed into his skin. "Finish your testimony."
"What more would you have me say, milady? Is it any secret that for all human kind’s faults and foibles, a Guardian must fall in love with them to achieve his mission? Do you want really want to hear that in a fit of loneliness, a drunken milkmaid found herself…in the arms of an angel? "
Michaela’s wrist flinched, causing her sword to pierce his flesh. "Is that your confession, Guardian?"
Stinging rivulets of sweat ran into the open wound Michaela’s well-honed blade had opened on Adam’s neck. Still, he refused to cry out. "Are you serious milady?"
Adam’s plea came answered by a warm gush of blood as it seeped from the smarting gash. It crept like a scarlet banner of shame down the front of his neck. At least it’s seeping and not spurting, Adam thought. She did not mean to kill, only to intimidate. "Do you want the blow by blow details, Madam?" he offered, unable to hide the twitch of one, deep dimple as it threatened toward a smile.
As if in affirmation, a cataclysmic smack resounded throughout the cavernous Judgment Chamber.
Emboldened by his undeserved pain, Adam raised his head higher and rose to his knees. Never did his glacial stare release Michaela’s. "What guardian has not partaken of mortal delights during their time on Earth?"
Surprise registered in Michaela’s fierce visage, and she stepped backwards.
Fully aware of the brashness of his gesture, Adam stood erect and addressed the High One, eye to eye. "Certainly, the intimacies I may or may not have shared with a mortal do not warrant this voyeuristic inquisition…milady. "
Michaela opened her mouth wide and let forth a scream of angelic rage. She spread the great expanse of her ivory wings wide and soared high into the center of the dimly illuminated celestial dome . "Did you not swear to confess the whole truth, you presumptuous waste of Ethereum?"
Crackling blue orbs blazed forth from the Archangel’s cerulean glare. Four in number, they zoomed skyward and then bounced off each other, finally retreating into the far edges of the chamber. There they marked time, as if to intimidate the accused until the final penance determination came delivered.
Adam refused to succumb to such pyrotechnic dramatics. Certainly, his intimacies with the drunken mortal wench did not represent the first dalliance of its kind. He’d been quite careful to hide the memory of their shared pleasures beneath a veil of forgetting. I never make the same mistake twice, Adam thought.
Michaela’s psychic probe penetrated the bony cage of Adam’s mind. As she plundered about, searching for evidence, she assailed Adam with questions. Do you take me for an insipid idiot? Will you stand here and deny that when you assumed the form of a mortal, you defiled the cherub, Serafina?"
