Episode 2

We grew fond of each other soon after that encounter.
Personally, I think she came closer to me because I seemed
to see beyond her beauty(which I literally did) and I came
closer to her because, well, because she was beautiful. And
intriguing, but mostly beautiful. She was of average height,
just a head below me, slim figured with nice curves and a
bossom that could only be described as ambitious. And
those her wings were glorious. They fanned out ever so
often, usually when she was in a happy mood. The chains
didnt seem to disturb them so much. And even the glowing
of the gold itself added to her beauty. Of course only i could
see and appreciate them. Due to her physique she received
a lot of stares from the male folk at first until they got used
to her. She was quite friendly and approachable too. She
had a way of caring for those less oppurtuned than her and
was usually seen helping others at their desk. Some
misconstrued this as pock-nosing at first but they caved in
when they saw her lovely smile and genuineness. Ok, you
get it, I guess I was a bit….infatuated with her. Don’t ask me
why I am using past tense. You’ll find out soon enough.
Sometimes when I was watching her, I would see the
manifestation of her wings and the gold chain would clink
and jingle. This usually happened when she was in deep
thought and at that time she would look sad, forlorn. I tried
to look harder, to see more, to know what it was that was
bothering her so much but I never saw beyond the gold
chains. I previously mentioned Pachios. You remember. My
guardian Angel. He usually kept out of sight and only
appeared when he needed to alert me of something or if it
seemed I was unduly worried. He sat beside me now at my
desk as I was watching her gold chains glimmer yet again.
“Leave her be.” He said. “If it was meant for you to help her
you would have seen more by now.”
I sighed. “But, pachios, come, haven’t you seen anything like
gold chains before? I’m interested, what do they mean?”
Pachios kept silent. By now I had learnt that when he was
this way it was either he didn’t want to get involved or he
genuinely didn’t know himself. I sighed again. The gold
chains didn’t seem threatening, only maybe set off a kind of
sad aura. Maybe she had commited a very grevious sin….or
maybe her destiny had been tied by some evil relative….my
mind went from one possibility to the other. I had tried
asking her if there was a problem on various occasions but
had come up with nothing.
Suddenly she looked straight at me. She paused for a
moment from what she was doing and smiled. I smiled back.
She rounded up whatever she had been doing and crossed
the office to my side.
“Hey weirdo.” She grinned.
“How are you doing breastina.” I answered good naturedly.
She laughed and punched me on the shoulder. It hurt a bit.
“Have I ever told you how strong you are?” I asked, rubbing
my shoulder.
“Nah. I know you just say that to make fun of me”, she
replied. From the corner of my eyes I saw her chains glow
briefly. Guilt? Did they glow when she felt guilty? I chased
away the thought.
“Come to fellowship with me today.” She said.
I groaned. For a few weeks now she had been insisting that I
follow her to a new fellowship that had opened close to the
office. She said the pastor there was preaching ‘fire’ and was
really sound.I grunted, unconvinced. Don’t get me wrong. Its
not that I don’t go to church. I am as christian as you’ll get
and a little bit more too for obvious reasons. But then there
was my Sight. Most times when I was invited to a prayer
house or meeting or fellowship there was the tendency for
me to cause a scene. I tried not to but in the end I usually
ended up being the one to cast out the demons or loose
those that were chained. Pretty exhaustive work which was
made occasionally more exhausting if the person I was
casting out the demon from turned out to be the pastor
himself. I ended up worshipping in one of the orthodox
churches. They had a tendency to be more peaceful.
Today Nina was being extra persuasive, giving me a sad,
puppy dog kind of look that would break anyone’s heart. I
felt myself giving in but held on to my decision bravely.
“Why not? What’s your reason this time?” She asked.
“Well, l have that report to submit tomorrow and it kind of
looks like its going to rain.”
“I’ll help you with the report. I just finished the one oga gave
me and its not like I’m doing anything else this evening. Plus
it will give me an opportunity to know your place. Well?
What do you think?”
She wanted to know my place?
I gave in.
The venue for the fellowship was a three room apartment
that had apparently undergone some structural changes.
The door had been widened and the walls freshly painted.
Rows upon rows of wooden benches lined the hall and
brand new speakers decorated an immaculately white alter.
The flowers used for decoration were huge. Apart from the
ceiling fans, tornado standing fans had been installed at
intervals along the aisle. Huge multicoloured banners
decorated the side walls. At the head of the alter a large
banner declared in gold letters “BOUNCING IN FAVOUR
CHURCH INTERNATIONAL”. The place was getting filled up
pretty fast when we arrived. Nina led me down to the middle
aisle and sat next to me. The choir was belting out a popular
rendition and I was already getting a bit nervous. Nina
looked at me and frowned.
“What is it?” She asked.
“Er, nothing…nothing.” I smiled gamely, trying to ignore the
vulture sitting on top of the choir mistress’ head. Most of the
other choristers were alright though for some strange
reason I kept on seeing them singing with their eyes closed,
like they were actually sleeping. I faced the alter and joined
in the singing. Nina sang along and suddenly everything
seemed so peaceful. Her voice was an amazing soprano.
Every note that came out of her mouth was silver lined, like
she belonged in the choir more than anyone else. I sighed to
myself. What a woman. Surely this was love? I mean, logic
told me that if everyone was hearing her the way I was,
she’d be a music star by now. So either other people weren’t
hearing her the way I was, or I found her so attractive that
anything she did amazed me.
We sang for a while more then the pastor came onto the
alter. There was wild applause which he received humbly
then he motioned for us to sit and began his service.