She was known as the most gentle Guardian. It makes what happened next even worse.
Luminara stared at the tiny town below her, not believing her eyes. Maybe the Tsars have made a mistake. Overlooked this simple, common slip. She shouldn’t be here. But who was she to judge the Tsars’ Assignment? After all, Guardian Angels and Devotees were only meant to be pawns in the grand scheme of things.

Before the telephone wires dotted this tiny town, or the shining houses bright with fluorescent light, I had been here… lived here… Before I had become a Devotee.

I remember the first blooms of spring, the first singular snow flake that had landed on my younger self’s tongue. But that was almost a century ago.

It feels so… artificial. Like an offering of fake flowers; they don’t wilt or die, just stay the same. Forever. It feels like home, yet it has changed so much it's almost unrecognizable.

My luminescent hair falls off my shoulders as I shake my head. I shouldn’t concern myself with these emotions. A Devotee shouldn’t concern themselves with such base sentiments. That is only reserved for humans and the most imbecilic of guardians who let feelings get in the way of divine duty.

I slowly grounded myself just behind an apple tree, the tips of my radiant wings dragging on the lush grass spades.

“Ma! Ma! Noah’s stolen my doll again!” A little girl’s voice echoes.

My skin glows. Yukses, my Assigned Soul’s voice.

I rush to the voice, everywhere a blur. I stop when time slows and I’m in a narrow corridor with light yellow painted walls. I find a girl barely above 7 years old. My eyes dart to her shoulder then her hair then her feet. A thousand possibilities cross my mind: how her hair might get in front of her view or how her feet might trip on a certain lifted floorboard that she’s moving to right now, or how she might get tugged behind by the fabric of the cape she’s wearing, or—

I move without thinking, adjusting the tip of her cape, ever so slightly. My hands raises—seemingly on its own—a subtle aura-filled wind shoots from my palm and connects with her forehead, sending a wave of serenity into her brain and embedding itself into her psyche

She stops slowly in her tracks. Her dark auburn hair drifts off her shoulders as she cranes her neck, checking her surroundings.

“Ma?” She yells again.

I huff and nudge at the doll— whom her brother had stolen— on the floor, knowing she cannot see me. What good would it be if Humans could see Guardian Angels? Devotees, at that?

Her eyes light up with that ever familiar glow that warms my heart. She tips over to grab it, and I watch her hug the blond doll with a smile that could solve all problems from one’s heart.