Excerpt: Untitled as of yet

If he had had time to be, Angel would have been extremely, overwhelmingly fed up. If he had had room to think normal things, he would have thought *first the tiger, now this … Someone somewhere really hates me.*

He didn't. He didn't think that, simply because he didn't have time. Now that he was listening, and listening as hard as he could, Angel could hear the footsteps behind him. He had no clue how many pairs there were, but he could tell they were there. He found his pace speeding up, almost subconsciously; and he heard the footsteps behind him do the same.

Adrenaline washed through him, speeding up his heart and his breaths, making his brain churn. His already dirty t-shirt began to cling to him again as sweat stuck it to his shoulders and back. He knew this feeling. Except this time, it had time to creep up on him, sachurate his mind, take hold and begin to tighten its grip.

Angel clenched his teeth and jogged forward through the thin path, eyes fixed ahead like there might be refuge ahead. The footsteps continued on behind him, speeding up as he sped up. If it turned out that they weren’t chasing him after all, Angel would be surprised. Almost unconsciously, Angel’s pace was speeding up – from a jog to a run. The footsteps behind him sped up.

Angel’s brain, unbidden, began to churn out reasons why this person (people? He couldn’t tell) was chasing him. He didn’t like any one of them, but he couldn’t crush them down either. Maybe they had perfectly good motives. Maybe they were a rescue team or something. He tried to tell himself that, but his currently somewhat warped logic turned those suggestions away. *No,* it said sharply. *What are the odds that the person chasing you in the middle of a forest is going to be someone who’s friendly to you?*

At that point in time, the part of him warped with panic held more sway than the part of him that was trying, unsuccessfully, to calm his body down.

Angel wasn’t on the track team, but he wasn’t slow either. This was due mainly to his long legs. Gradually, his run sped up to a flat-out sprint; dismayed, he heard the footsteps speed up too. His fast pace, the sound of the footsteps behind him and the brambles that ensnared him conspired to heighten Angel's panic. At that point, trying not to be scared had fallen by the wayside. Now, with adrenaline flowing through him, breaths shallow and fast, and heart thudding, he ran on instinct. The only way to go was forward, and so forward he went, as fast as his legs could carry him.

Two things happened simultaneously then. The first was that Angel's right foot tried and failed to come off the ground; it failed because it had become intangled in a patch of some plant growing by the edge of the hastally-trampled pathway. Angel's left foot tried to continue forward, but, held back by his entrapped right foot, his body didn't. He went sprawling before he had quite realized what had hit him.

The second thing that happened in that instant was that a huge sound split the air, making Angel's ears hurt and ring. Ten times louder than in the movies, it was nevertheless recognizable enough: a gunshot. Before he could stop himself, Angel yelled, voice muffled in the ground as it was. He struggled, scratched and torn at on either side by the short weedy plants that grew there, fighting to free his caught foot.

With a violent wrench, it came free and Angel was on his feet as fast as he could move, fleeing with added panic now. Another gunshot rang out behind him. He could feel himself shaking, though he didn't really register that. All he registered was that the path continued on, and that the footsteps in the bushes were still there, keeping pace. Presumably, their owner was the person who held the gun.

*What did I tell you?* His brain asked him later – not then, because there was not much rational thought going on then. *Just what did I tell you about them?*

Another gunshot, deafeningly loud. Angel's lungs were on fire and he panted harshly, feeling a stitch developing in his side. The backpack's strap cut into his shoulder; the feathers of both wingtips were being caught on the vegetation on either side of him. The backpack slipped; he didn't stop. He only shifted his arm, letting it drop to the ground and not caring a bit as he ran.

Yet another gunshot. Angel tried to gasp, but he could barely get enough air as it was. He breathed desperately, feeling his legs straining, telling him that he couldn't run much longer, not without prior training – which he hadn't had. Sweat gathered near his hairline in a vain attempt to cool his body. The sun beat down from above, though he was slightly sheltered here. None of this registered, though – not the sweat, not the sun. Just the desperate aching of his body and lungs, the gunshots and the insistant footsteps.

And then voices ahead. Upraised voices, calling. Angel's panic heightened, spurring him to new heits of terror. Were they in front of him, too?

Angel felt like screaming. Just sprinting along and wasting what breath he had left on the desperate screams that wouldn't do a thing for him here. Another gasping half-breath –

And the scream was knocked from him before it was released, along with all the wind left in his abused frame, as he tripped and went sprawling into the open.

He gasped for air that wouldn't come as his body still tried to recover from the winding. He lay there, waiting for whoever had it in for him to shoot one more time, at close range this time, and not miss. For whatever reason (maybe someone had finally decided that nobody should be walking around on Earth looking like some fairy-tale angel), he was done for.

But the shot never came. Angel's breath returned, slowly, and he sucked in air to make up for that which had been denied to him since he'd started to run. His lungs were still on fire. But he could breathe again, thank god.

Leaves of small near-the-ground-growing plants and pine needles had stuck to his sweat-soaked brow, and there was plant matter covering (and sometimes intruding into) his eyes from the two falls he had taken. Angel reached up a violently shaking hand and wiped at them, removing them from his face and eyes and allowing himself truly clear vision.

He was lying on his back now, wings outspread as they had been when he had tumbled; he, instinctively, had spread them as he began to fall. *Like I could start flying,* he thought a little bitterly.

Clustered around Angel, some looking concerned for him and some for themselves, were a large group of people. Most of them were adults, though he spotted a few young children and a couple of teens lurking about. Surely these people weren't out to kill him; he'd never seen them in his life. There was not a single familiar face among the crowd gathered about him now.

The gunshots were gone, though. Maybe whoever had been shooting at him had given up. He couldn't relax, though; adrenaline still raced through his fast-pumping blood, energizing him, putting him on edge.

So much was he still frightened that, when one of the adults spoke, he started and began to raise a hand to protect his face. The voice was loud and clear, aiming both to soothe and reassure. "Are you alright?"

Angel thought he was going to die of fear and shock right there on the ground at the feet of the large crowd. His lungs still ached ferociously. He doubted he had even run a mile, but the strain it had put on his body was taking its toll. *If someone would deign to let me join the track team, or a sport, or anything, I wouldn't be in this trouble,* he thought despondently.

He took another breath to reply; the cold mountain air burned in his lungs, and he began to cough instead. The short coughing fit didn't last long, and the man talking to him was patient. When he had caught his breath again, Angel tried to reply firmly. It didn't work quite as he had planned. "Y … Yeah, I think so."

*Don't talk to strangers,* he couldn't help laughing to himself, injecting the old phrase with as much internal sarcasm as he could muster. It was definitely too late for that now. If they wanted to murder him like the strangers he had heard about as a kid, then he wasn't going to be able to stop them, winded and bruised and still shaking as he was. A sitting duck.

Or maybe not a *duck,* as such …

There was a silence as the crowd around him stared at each other. Finally, the young man that had spoken to him first came forward. "We don't generally have teenagers falling out of the forest at random," he said. "I'll get you some water. Are you thirsty?" He asked the question like he was just remembering it – like the act of getting water was thought of before he actually wondered if Angel was thirsty. Bruised and battered and still scared enough for two people, all Angel could do was nod mutely.

He sat up slowly and heard one of the littler kids say immediately, "Look, Mama, wings!" At this, Angel tried to fold them in tighter to his back; his left wing shot pain through him as a reminder. He flinched and let it out again to fold itself lightly against his back.

He tried to stand fully, feeling suddenly self-conscious and uncertain; his trembling legs would barely support his weight. He wavered on his feet, feeling slightly lightheaded; he figured he had stood up too fast for his own good. He reached automatically out to grasp something for support and found a warm shoulder.

Immediately he retracted his hand and almost dropped back to the ground. A hand steadied him under the elbow. "I don't bite," said a rough, amused female voice. "Not usually. Not in public." She gave him a grin. Her accent was hard to place, though it sounded like she had once lived somewhere in Canada or thereabouts. If Angel had been better with accents, he'd have known this for sure. As it was, he just knew it was an accent and didn't bother to place it. He, with his brain still trying to catch up to his body, gave her a faint, halfhearted smile in return. He tried to pull away, feeling slightly steadier on his feet, but she wouldn't let him go. "No you don't, idiot," she snapped. "If I let you go, you'd just fall over. Come on, Dad's getting you water, I'll sit you down somewhere. Damn, have you been living in the forest the past week? You're filthy."

She, in a whirlwind of meaningless chatter, led him over to a bench sitting just outside a tiny house that looked more like a single apartment than anything else. He sank onto it, folding his hands together as their trembling eased a little. His brain was just about to the part of his life where he had fallen out of the forest and into the midst of these people. He was happy to sit there and calm down and wait for it to catch up.