Hell for Feathers

Chapter 8: If I Could Make Days Last Forever

With their narrow escape from a trio of angels set on rescuing Ashley... thus began Ashley and Skyler's extended travels through the surface. Ashley could not currently go back to 'the office,' if for no other reason that it would endanger Skyler. And Skyler had no intention of ever going back to the pit, if she could avoid it.

With Ashley by her side, that was significantly easier. No more hitchhiking, no more freight hopping, no more boxing herself up and shipping herself. (That one didn't work.) All travel was now effortless, at the mere thought of being somewhere else. So long as they didn't open a portal in view of another angel, there would be no evidence of where they were more than a few minutes later. The invisible remnants dissipated quickly, like an unimpressive aerosol air freshener. Ashley hated those things... her realm seemed to be getting incrementally hotter each passing year ever since those came out.

Then again... it wasn't really her realm anymore. Maybe she could see it again someday. Even the exiled Napoleon did eventually return to France... but Charlie Chaplin never made it back to the United States.

But she and Skyler were not really exiles in that sense. The whole world was open to them. They did what most people dreamed of doing when on vacation:

Absolutely nothing.

Ashley and Skyler made use of a twin set of beach chairs to relax in the sun. Ashley insisted that they keep on some modest sarongs to hide their more exotic elements from the unappreciative crowd. Ashley rested on her back, wings hidden, having no trouble putting her worries out of her mind. The only thing she heard over the ocean's persistent waves... was Skyler shifting on her beach chair, repeatedly changing positions.

Ashley tipped up her sun hat to look at her. "Can't get comfortable?" She asked. "I know it's not a bed, but I thought you'd be able to sleep anywhere."

"I usually sleep with my back against something solid like a cliff face or a wall." Skyler said. "That way, nobody down there can sneak up on me."

"You're perfectly safe now." Ashley assured her. "No need to keep your guard up."

"It's hard to undo years of watching my back..." Skyler shuffled some more. "This is why I'm always moving around. It's completely alien for me to relax."

"It's not exactly normal for me, either." Ashley said. "I used to worry about the work that would await me when I was done. Now... I just hope my friends are doing OK."

"Well, I'm not eager to meet any of them."

Ashley rolled her head to one side, adjusting the position of her sun hat.

"If you hear someone screaming for help... what will you do?" Skyler said.

"I'll assist any way I can without making it obvious." Ashley said. "I certainly won't just sit here and let it happen or let anyone get hurt."

"More of a working vacation, then."

"There's only so much I can do without possibly getting attention from upstairs, so I won't be taking any chances on that."

Ashley closed her eyes again, letting the beautiful sun shine on her pale yet tan-proof skin. She heard Skyler shuffle around a bit, and then heard something drag through the sand. Skyler pushed her beach chair right up against hers, turning them into a beach bed. She reached across her and put her arms around Ashley's torso. She took in a deep breath, released it... and felt the tension leave her.

"There." She said softly. "Now I can relax."

Ashley smiled. "You'll have to turn over to make sure you tan evenly."

Skyler scoffed. "Not unless it gets to 425 degrees and someone's grandmother is basting me."

Even after a few hours of the equator's strongest sunlight, neither Ashley nor Skyler's complexion changed at all. Ashley was still pale... and Skyler was still purple.

--

Ashley took them around the world for every relaxing location they could think of... where they also were unlikely to encounter an angel on the surface. Once the pair tired of searing rays of sun, they spent more times in temperate windswept meadows, tranquil cabins surrounded with snow or even a few exotic location mostly deprived of people. Neither of them had spent much time in a lighthouse, but now they could say that they had. AND they could say that they had fucked a lot in a lighthouse... if anyone asked, for whatever reason.

As the months of their exile wore on, as the summer turned to winter... they even went back to that movie theater for a change of pace. After all, that other science fiction release enjoyed an enormous swell of support that had changed the market, and a new sci-fi film had entered the holiday market. Ashley and Skyler decided to take their second date.

Neither of them had spent enough time on the surface to understand that movies started at certain times... as evenly and timely as a train station. This left them just too late to be let into this showing. They would have to wait the one hundred thirty-five minutes or so before the next one would start.

Ashley subtly whispered to Skyler, "You can't speed up time, can you?"

"No." She said. "Can you fly us at relativistic speeds?"

"I don't think so... that sounds dangerous."

"So what do we do?"

"I guess we'll just have to wait."

Skyler rolled her head back and let out the most annoyed, reluctant groan. She embodied every teenager getting forcefully dragged around the zoo by their parents when all they wanted was to stay inside.

"Stop that!" Ashley hustled them out of the lobby.

Skyler giggled.

--

Ashley and Skyler walked a few blocks to a nice hotel. This was probably the first time either of them had entered a hotel through the front door. Rather than go to the front desk and get a room to discreetly bone in, or looking for the public lavatory to less-discreetly bone in, they sat on the edge of a curved couch that sat around the edges of a huge pillared atrium, the centerpiece of the winter décor being a two-story Christmas tree.

Or what would soon look like a Christmas Tree.

Rather than being a real tree cut down and somehow brought into this atrium, possibly through the large picture window... it was a series of concentric steel rings that got larger as it approached the floor, connected to have a cone-like shape. Two staff members were attaching the fake branches and colorful lights to the rings to complete the illusion.

Ashley and Skyler sat there and watched as the tree slowly grew larger, covering more of the facade that would fool travelers for the rest of the festive month.

"It's all fake." Skyler said. "All for the sake of appearances. Entirely hollow."

"But nice to look at." Ashley said. "Cozy. Warming... though in the era of electric Christmas lights, I believe that may just be an emotional response."

"People do other things with trees. They climb them, they put birdhouses in them..."

"So maybe it's not the best foundation for that sort of thing." Ashley said. "That doesn't mean it can't be nice, that we should just not tear it down? Or replace it with a real tree that we kill?"

"I think the metaphor is getting away from us."

"Yeah..." Ashley said. "But how can you say it's fake when we ourselves are evidence of its existence?"

"Yeah, but the reality is so much worse than I imagined." Skyler said. "Perdition, but no salvation. Gehenna, no Valhalla. Sheol without Zion."

"We don't know for SURE that there isn't an afterlife. It's just not the realm where I come from. There COULD be a paradise outside this world... before, I thought working for the universal good WAS paradise... now, I have to think it's a different realm... maybe one in our future."

"Maybe in YOUR future." Skyler huffed. "Mine has already been written out for me."

"Not with me here, it's not." Ashley put her hand on hers. "As a pair, we are very hard to bring down."

"Bonnie and Clyde were hard to bring down, but it eventually happened. They eventually rolled snake eyes." Skyler spoke a little quieter, in case anyone was listening. "Is there no permanent way out of this mess? Do we just run... forever?"

Ashley pulled Skyler in a little tighter. "Forever doesn't sound so bad..."

"But they will eventually catch us, right?" She looked up. "Our luck will eventually run out. If we can't die, and we can't escape to Narnia or Oz... the only ending, eventually... is that they win."

"Maybe... we can request to live out our lives as humans?" Ashley said. "Somewhere quiet and remote, where we won't bother anyone."

"Even if they go for that, which it seems unlikely for them to give me another chance at mortal sin... and we THEN get to experience the agony of disease and entropy... what happens when we finally die?" Skyler asked. "I get sent back to the pit? Do YOU get sent to the pit? Forgiven? Do we get re-judged? They surely just drag me back to continue my eternal sentence, and they... do whatever they do to disobedient angels. A firm spanking?"

Ashley blushed a bit, holding her legs together. Skyler felt Ashley's thigh muscle tightening under her hand.

Skyler chuckled. "Just thinking about it excites you?"

"Don't. Not here." Ashley begged.

"Then wear underwear already!"

She shifted. "I found them uncomfortable BEFORE this addition. I can't even imagine being wrapped up in such bondage now."

"You're not wishing for it to be smaller, are you?"

Ashley shook her head. "No. I really can't envision myself as I was before this. If getting rid of it was the condition to go back, I couldn't do it. It's who I am now."

"Yeah, I don't know if I know how to roll it back, even if I wanted to." Skyler said. "Based on how I seem to pop back together the next morning no matter what happens to me... even if I did something VERY drastic, I think it would do no good. Maybe I was messing with something I didn't fully understand... but I like the results."

"At the end of the day... I do, too." Ashley confessed. "Without this, I would have never seen you as the wonderful sweetheart you are. It's like I've lived without one of my senses for so long, to see things so differently now."

"I don't see this ending well at all. Maybe the Buddhists are right. Life is a cycle of suffering that you must attempt to escape to reach peaceful oblivion."

"I don't want to face oblivion just yet." Ashley said. "It has just started getting good."

"So... what do we do?"

"We spend our remaining time here wisely." Ashley said. "And that means... until the forces of omnipotence themselves tear us apart, I shall never leave your side."

--

Once again, Ashley insisted on paying rather than using her powers to sneak in like unsupervised teenagers. Furthermore, she wanted to save her powers for when she needed them. Not having gone back to 'the office' for so long, she didn't know if she's eventually run out of 'power' or have her capacity reduced. Better to only use it when they were traveling long distances to lose the heat. The money was of comparatively little value.

The theater was more crowded than last time. Late on a Monday night still felt like a slow time for a movie theater... maybe some of them were just happy to get out of the cold. Skyler and Ashley took the evidently unpopular seats in the far back. Nobody came to this nerdy movie to make out; none of them had girlfriends.

Skyler and Ashley linked hands as the house lights went down. What a shame for them, they both thought.

After twenty or so minutes, they began gently whispering to each other, too soft to be heard by any surface ears.

"This movie isn't as exciting as the last one we saw."

"It sure isn't."

"That bald chick is hot."

"Yeah..."

"How come they don't have robots in this future? We were supposed to get robots eventually, aren't we?"

"I don't know..."

"Are we all going to dress in gray in the future?"

"I hope not. It's so drab."

"But white's impossible to keep clean."

"I've never had any trouble."

"Of course not. And you don't even need the Sunshine Rinso."

"I don't know what that is."

"Oh, I have so much to show you."

The movie continued on, floating slowly with the ponderous lack of urgency of a dirigible. Skyler sighed. This was the world that man dreamed rested beyond the Firmament? That their exploration had rendered everything in the universe known, and thus dull? At least that other movie had giant dog-men and laser guns. And robots! That galaxy had so many robots, they started to deliberately build some of them to be homosexuals!

For a while, Ashley earnestly tried to pay attention to the movie... but this one was really quite dull. Skyler had stopped trying to smother her yawns in her fist. It was dark and warm.... She somehow peeled herself off Ashley's shoulder. Skyler reached between her legs and freed her cock from within her undies, tugging it out towards the unoccupied row before her.

Ashley nearly jumped out of her seat. "Stop!" She hissed as quietly as she could.

"Hey, you got to do it last time."

And that was how easy it was for Skyler to talk Ashley into her second felony. A victimless crime... so long as nobody saw them. Mutual masturbation turned into mutual handjobs with sloppy tongue kisses. Nobody in the audience ever caught on, even if that show would have been so much better. They didn't even leave a mess, tossing the used bucket directly in the trash like last time.

--

Out of earshot of the rest of the crowd, Skyler discreetly spoke to Ashley, "Well, that movie sucked."

"Not so loud."

"What? They didn't make the movie." Skyler shrugged.

"Remember when we were in the hotel a few hours ago and I said we should spend our time wisely?" Ashley said.

"YOU said that." Skyler said. "I want to spend our time as frivolously and meaninglessly as possible. I want to learn no lessons and get more ignorant and smaller and less worldly every day. They say ignorance is bliss, after all."

"My point was... I don't think we needed to see that movie."

"Yeah, the best part was jacking you off in the back when nobody was looking..."

Ashley gingerly pushed Skyler out towards the exit before anyone started listening to them.

What had been a nice evening when they had entered the theater... was now very late. It was probably below freezing. She discretely bent over with her back towards a wall to pull up her socks until they came up over her knee. She also tightened her skirt a bit so it wouldn't blow up in the winds. She could feel the icy air tickle between her legs, especially a damp spot on her tip from Skyler's little movie theater magic.

Skyler waved her arm over her head, urging Ashley to run across the street and follow her to the nearby park opposite the movie theater. Ashley followed, looking both ways before catching up with her.

"What are we doing?"

Skyler found an empty patch of grass covered entirely with fresh snow, clear and clean as a canvas. Ashley knew what she was going to say. Make some yellow snow... how would she even do that? She loved showing it off so much... it was like so many deadly sins wrapped in one act. Would her debauchery ever find its ceiling?

Skyler grinned her bright white teeth like a tiger. "I want to build a snowman!"

Ashley chuckled. She was definitely spending too much time with the demon. It was rubbing off on her... or maybe it was the other way around.

They walked into the snowy patch of grass. "Have you ever made a snowman before?" Skyler asked.

"No..." Ashley said. "Just snow angels."

"How do you start one?"

"I think you just make a snowball, roll it around in the snow and keep making it bigger and bigger."

They both went to it, reaching into the damp snow and packing it together. Neither of them had gloves, but that wouldn't stop either of them. Ashley fashioned herself a fine smooth, dense snowball, as perfectly round as a marble. She showed it off to Skyler... who was having more trouble. She scooped up more snow... but it melted against her hot hands, the steam noticeable in the darkness.

Skyler looked to her hands with deep dismay. "You know..." She shook her head. "I had almost forgotten."

Ashley dropped her ball into the snow, maybe the first snowball ever crafted that wasn't thrown at someone. She took Skyler's hands in hers. "I have an idea."

They took a walk around the city, finding a nearby craft festival lit mostly with strings of colorful lights. There were many handmade wares, some silly, some festive... some quite practical. Ashley met a woman approaching middle age with a fleet of handmade mittens and other crocheted items. She paid with the last remaining money she had on her person, no longer feeling confident enough to access the tithe without someone noticing.

Before they left the area, Skyler saw Ashley eyeing a gentleman taking down his little booth of wares, where he was selling a lot of macrame textiles. He tried to pull some off his wall, but when it came free, it shook the back of his booth, which sent the snow held on the tarp above his head down his back. The man shivered and brushed the snow off his hair... and turned towards that shop with those nice crocheted hats he had been looking at this whole time.

Ashley quickly brought Skyler away as the man crossed the narrow path to the woman at the table of crocheted products, leaving them to their introductions.

Skyler smirked. "You little cupid." She poked her in the side. "You did that on purpose."

"Maybe it won't work out, but... he needed a hat, and she needed to sell some of those hats." Ashley said. "Making everything work in perfect harmony, even if I made a little mess to make it all happen."

They returned to the park, some new snowfall beginning to fall and hide the gray slabs of half-frozen slush by the roadsides, dusting the nearby evergreen trees decorated with white specks.

The snowman they made was less than three feet tall. It was only two segments, one large snow ball with one half its size sitting atop it. It was lacking the traditional features of button eyes or even a carrot nose. There wasn't a farmer's market open this late in the year to get an appropriate carrot. The only feature it had were two uneven sticks for arms. With no face, they couldn't tell which way he was facing, which way he was going.

Still, Ashley and Skyler were proud of their creation, standing right beside each other with big smiles, Ashley's arm over Skyler's shoulder.

"Does he have a name?" Skyler asked,

"Do they name snowmen on the surface?"

"I don't know. I've never seen one with a name tag."

"There's always Frosty..."

"No, then when he gets to first grade, the teacher will say 'Frosty' and ten sticks will go in the air." Skyler shook her head. "What was the name of the iceman in The Iceman Cometh?"

"I don't think that was a literal man made of ice."

"Ah, that's boring."

They looked at their creation again.

Skyler held Ashley's hands. "I... loved creating that with you. I..." Her voice shook. "I would love to do it again. I know you're not eager to have any more demonic stuff inside you, but... having a pure little angel in me sounds... really beautiful."

Ashley pulled her close and held her tightly, her breath ragged. "I love you."

Skyler clutched her back, as if she'd fly away. With Ashley's arms around her, she felt like a hot rivet. "I love you, too."

They kissed. Ashley looked at their feet. "You melted all the snow around you."

"Oh no, is Jimmy OK?"

"Jimmy?"

"Is that a good name for a snowboy?"

"I don't know." Ashley rolled back a bit. "Wait... snowBOY?"

"Jimmy is young. He'll grow." Skyler tented her fingers nervously. "So long as we get more snow. What's the weather going to be like tomorrow, sky girl?"

Ashley looked into the sky, facing west. "I think it'll be warmer tomorrow. Rain."

"Noooo.... Jimmy!"

"Don't worry..." Ashley said, with that almost superhero reminiscent determination unique to angels. "I won't let anything hurt Jimmy."