Ivory Guard Read Free

they had to give it up.
    Her mother shrugged, looking at her through the glittering veil of tears. “Eighteen years. It seemed so far away. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Time flies, that much I know now.” She took Lillian’s hand across the table, squeezing it. “But we don’t regret a single moment. Because we had those moments. We had you in our lives. Our decisions might seem selfish to you now…” her voice trailed of and her eyes seemed to plead with Lillian, as if searching for absolution.
    Lillian’s mind and heart were racing. Had her parents done anything wrong? Her heart said, ‘No’. Had they been selfish? No…well. Maybe, she admitted, acknowledging for the first time that small flame of anger licking inside of her ever since the angels had dropped the truth on her. Her parents had gotten the child they always wanted, and she? No one had asked her how she would feel about having to give up the life she had always known for something so unbelievable as fighting demons or something. Why give her the delusion of choosing a nice college and classes, of preparing a future they had known she wouldn’t be able to live anyway? God, everything inside of her felt as if being ripped apart.
    Without saying a word and too confused to offer what her mother needed she stood and moved to look out the window. Not seeing anything.
    H er father came home then and after one look at them he knew. He said nothing, just took Lillian into his arms and locked them tight around her as if she might vanish at any moment.
    At that instance, as her nose filled with his familiar scent of soap and that one cigarette he allowed himself thinking nobody noticed, Lillian came to realize one thing. It didn’t matter who fathered her. She only had one father and that was the modest man standing in front of her. The man who was so calm in the middle of the storm that had blown into their lives. Her Dad was the one she would always remember, who had kissed her bruised knees when she’d been a child, who shared her love for words, who listened to her joys and doubts, who was there . He was her father, and not some winged stranger.
     
    At night Lillian lay in her bed, exhausted from the day’s revelations and emotions but not able to sleep, and sighed. Besides the shock something else mattered and needed to be dealt with - the feeling of betrayal inside of her. She felt betrayed and robbed of the future they had let her believe in.
    Lillian rolled onto her side and looked out her window. Under the cover of darkness lay a garden sweetened by summer and she could see softly flickering light coming from the neighbor’s house as they watched TV.
    She had planned to go to college , had loved talking and dreaming about all the possibilities like the rest of her friends. Even though she had no clear idea of what to study exactly, she had wanted to learn, to try psychology or even archeology or even journalism. Everything and anything. Get a job, maybe a house and family one day. The usual.
    But now, it all meant nothing.
    Now she had not much of an idea how her life would look like. Training, fighting they had said. But what did it mean? Guarding holes to hell, she suddenly remembered Amber saying. Was that true, or just some kind of saying among angels?
    There she was, the daughter of an angel, about to be trained as an Ivory guard or some such, and Lillian didn’t even know whether she believed in God. It almost made her laugh. Or cry. She wasn’t really sure which would burst out first.
    In the blink of an eye her world had changed from one where she knew most of the answers into one full of questions. A situation she really wasn’t comfortable with and needed to get control of.
    Starting now.
    Sitting up in her bed she whispered, so as not to alert her parents, “Amber?”
    For a heartbeat she didn’t know what she would do if the angel didn’t turn up. What she would think. She couldn’t even say whether she wished for it or