Angel

Sometimes it takes a strict regiment of meditation, banishing, induced trance, combined use of sigils, the alphabet of desire, divination, and astral travel to find what you are looking for.

Automatic drawing. White robes, indigo robes, blue and gold robes. A crystal ball. Two rings. A magical dagger. An energy-storage entity.

A battery of tests, many candidates who would seem to be the one, but aren't. Dissolving in the light of the sacred letter, fragmenting like so many astral bubbles. Rising upward, like a balloon, hitting the ceiling, memories, dreams of the future. Sinking, down in an elevator with a glass door, down spiral staircases, into the place of a hundred caskets, where a hundred duelists find their final resting place.

But sometimes, it only takes one glance. When your eyes finally meet. Hesitating. Afraid to speak out, afraid it's not really her. Call the sacred letter over and over again, but she isn't driven away. It's on her back. It's a wing. It's a print on her apron. Speaking her true name, even though you already know the name she's always been known by.

One glance. When you realize you've never looked each other in the eye before, not really, not until now, not until you've finally fulfilled your promise to find her, across the stars, across the planes themselves. When you look into her eyes and your heart skips a beat, when she looks up at you and smiles...

One glance.

My angel.