Demon

Natalie’s

The child’s development is fascinating to behold. Even without his Guardian, Jonathan begins to resume his life. Thankfully, the characteristic that had previously been so defining for him, his desire to inflict suffering on others, shows no signs of returning. But his thoughts are clearer. His activity level increases.

And even he has a rudimentary awareness of the reason for his improvement. He senses that it is Natalie. It was only after the first few days had passed, when she first saw him again, and touched him, that his soul started its path towards recovery. Until that time, it was almost as though he was in a trance, barely awake, scarcely participating in the activities of daily life. But each time that Natalie has been with him, and especially when she touches him, he experiences an almost imperceptible improvement. The cumulative effect of the last weeks has been significant.

It is as though the power of his soul, which had truly been a wondrous sight to behold before that catastrophic day on the playground, cannot be suppressed. Even the injury caused by the sundering of his Guardian from his soul has not been sufficient to entirely quench his light.

He has begun to correlate the Seer’s touch with a feeling of increased well-being. Each time she makes contact with him, and his soul glows anew, he feels more clarity and energy than he experiences when they are apart. He eagerly accepts each little pat from Natalie, grasps her hand whenever she offers it, and begins to actively wish for these incidents to occur. He instinctively gravitates towards the healing light of the Seer.

Natalie wishes to introduce the topic very gently. She shares her brother’s concern that Jonathan’s mental state is still fragile, and that difficult information might cause his healing to regress. She thinks for a moment, and decides where to begin.

“Right before you fell, I had told you something that I tried to tell you before, a few months ago.”

“Oh? What?” He reaches out with the hand that is not held within Natalie’s, and strokes the dark brown fur of his pet, who is lying quietly nearby, regarding the Seer.

“It was about guardian angels. Do you remember?”

“Um, maybe? I’m not sure. I’m having a hard time remembering everything.”

She nods sympathetically. “I know you are. I’ll help you. Before you fell, I was telling you that guardian angels are real. They are here to help us. We all have one.”

His reaction, so different from the violent spasm caused when Demon tried to prevent her from sharing this knowledge last time, is barely visible. “Oh. Okay.”

“Unlike when you told your brother, Jonathan does not perceive this as a game you are trying to play. He accepts what you tell him, but does not understand what you mean, or grasp that this information is significant. It might be that new knowledge is going to be difficult to absorb in his current condition.”

Jonathan waits passively in the silence while Natalie listens to my description of his mental state.

Natalie peers closely at his face, concerned that her message is not being received. She decides to simply continue the narration, while he appears to be willing to listen to whatever she has to say.

“I know about guardians,” she tells him, deciding to simply be completely frank in the hopes that this increases his chance of understanding, “because I can talk to mine. I’ve always been able to see my guardian angel, and he talks to me all the time.”

She regards him, waiting for any reaction. He simply nods, and continues petting his dog. Natalie looks at Gabe, who has been on alert, fearing that Jonathan’s reaction would be nearly as intense as it had been last time. Clearly it is not. Jonathan is barely registering the importance of what Natalie has told him.

Gabe adds, “It’s true, Jonathan, she’s right about guardian angels. We all have one.”

Jonathan nods again. “Okay.” He pets the dog some more, as the words of the Seer slowly penetrate his mind. He has heard of guardian angels before, and has a preconceived notion of their purpose. He has a belated thought relating to what Natalie has said. “I guess ours didn’t do a very good job, then, did they? If they let us both fall off the jungle gym.”

Natalie squeezes his hand encouragingly, glad that he is at least engaging with the topic, and seems to be understanding what she has said. She goes on. “They can’t do anything to protect us physically, so we can still get hurt even though they are always with us. What they are here to protect is our souls. They try to help us live our lives, and grow our souls.”

“He understands what you have said, but thinks there is hardly any point to an angel that can only protect the soul. The soul is not something, ironically, that Jonathan feels is important, despite how crucial it has been to him.”

“Protecting the soul is way more important than protecting the body,” she tries to clarify to him. “The soul is the part that will last forever. When we’re done with it, it goes back and stays with our guardian angel forever.”

“He understands as well as he is going to, my dear. He has heard what you said. Again, though, he does not understand the significance of this topic.”

“So, remember I said that I could tell you what happened when you fell off the jungle gym?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“You probably don’t remember, but you had started feeling really mad when I tried to tell you about guardian angels before.”

“No, I don’t think I remember. Why would I be mad?”

“Because your guardian angel was making you be mad. He didn’t want you to find out about him.”

“Why?”

“He was different from other guardian angels. He used to like it when …” She hesitates, not wanting to remind Jonathan of his earlier pastime of cruelty, for fear that in his current state it would cause regrets. She revises what she had been planning to say. “He had found a way to make you do mean things, because he liked how much your soul would grow when that happened. He wanted to be able to keep controlling you.”

“That was clever, my darling, to assign responsibility for Jonathan’s past cruelty to his Guardian rather than to himself. He is considering what you said, and remembering times in the past when he committed such acts. Although, he remembers very little of the more recent times when Demon was causing him to do so.”

“Huh. I guess I remember doing things sometimes. You are saying that my guardian angel was making me do it?”

She nods, mutely, not wishing to actually utter a falsehood. She knows, of course, that Demon only started controlling Jonathan’s actions in the past few months. The prior years were Jonathan’s responsibility. Again, though, she does not wish any sense of guilt to interfere with Jonathan’s growth.

“So,” Natalie continues the tale, “your guardian angel didn’t want you to find out about him. He liked controlling you, and he was afraid if you knew about him you wouldn’t let him make you do things. So he made you mad when I told you, then you tried to make me stop talking.”

Jonathan shakes his head, sensing a slight glimmer of a memory of that incident on top of the jungle gym, but it slips away again more quickly than a dream. “I guess I don’t remember.”

Gabe adds, “That’s what happened. I tried to make sure that Natalie was okay, since it looked like you were going to push her off the jungle gym. So I grabbed your arm and…” Gabe also hesitates, taking the cue from Natalie to avoid assigning blame to Jonathan. “And that’s when we both fell and got hurt.”

“Oh,” Jonathan says, believing this tale but feeling detached from it, as though it happened to somebody else. Which, in a way, it did. This Jonathan is a very different creature from the Jonathan on top of the jungle gym that day.

“The reason I’m telling you all this, Jonathan, is because there is something else that I think you should know. That explains why you’ve been feeling so strange ever since that day.”

This does interest him. He has been perplexed by his own lethargy, knowing it to be different, but not understanding why he feels this way now. “I am feeling strange. You can tell me why?” He looks at her, with an eager, open, accepting expression on his face, so unlike the old Jonathan that it is nearly heartbreaking. His eyes are filled with a hope, that she can help him. She is flooded with even more compassion for his plight.

“Your guardian angel left after that happened. He hasn’t been with you since then. And your soul got weaker because he isn’t here. Without him, your soul is smaller than it should be. And that’s why you’ve been feeling so tired and different.”

His brow wrinkles with concern. “My soul is… like … broken?” Emotion washes over him, both a fear of the unknown, and a conflicting sense of relief that there is an explanation for his mystifying condition.

“But I’m helping you, Jonathan,” she says fervently, bringing her other hand to join the first in grasping Jonathan’s. With her added touch and increased urgency, his soul responds by flaring brighter. “That’s why I keep coming over here. My guardian angel says that when I’m with you, and if I touch you, your soul gets a little better. I think you will keep getting better.”

He is moved, finally realizing the import of what she has been telling him. “He begins to understand, my dear, that everything you are saying is true, and that thanks to your efforts he is beginning to recover.”

She is intensely focused on helping him not only to understand, but to prepare. “I will keep helping you, and your soul will keep getting better. But I think that once it is well enough, your guardian angel will come back. You have to be ready if that happens. If he comes back, and tries to control you, you should not let him. You don’t have to do what he says. If you don’t want to do mean stuff, just don’t do it, no matter how he makes you feel.”

Jonathan’s emotions overflow. This is too much for him to absorb. “What?” he cries. “I don’t know what you mean. Like, I have to fight my guardian angel for control over my own self?”

Natalie is dismayed that she has brought distress to him. “I don’t know, Jonathan, we don’t understand exactly what has happened, or what will happen next. But I’ll stay with you, and help you, and Gabe will too. Even Timothy will. You’ll be okay. We’ll make sure you’re okay. You just have to try hard to only do the things you want for yourself.”

He is not weeping, but he is filled with anxiety over this unexpected warning. He pictures a terrifying dark angel come to seize control. “What will happen? How will I even know when he’s back?”

“I’ll tell you, as soon as my guardian angel knows that it is happening. But it isn’t yet. I don’t think it will happen very soon. Just keep getting better. Just pay attention to how you are feeling, and make sure that they are your own feelings. Not something that feels like it came from somewhere else.”

She is worried that she has not explained this clearly enough.

Jonathan says, anxiously “You’ll stay with me? It feels better when you stay with me.” He looks down at their joined hands.

“I will, as much as I can. We will help you get through whatever happens.”