In a booming voice Seraphiel asked her if what she truly wanted was to be mortal. Rosia answered yes. Seraphiel explained that she would have to give up her powers and her wings in order to live like him. Rosia again said yes. Seraphield said that a gift cannot come from nothing. So he decreed that a deal be made. If either of the lovers died before their time on earth was done Rosia and her lover would become slaves to Seraphiel. Rosia still agreed.

With his mighty power Seraphiel deemed Rosia mortal and cast her back down to the earth she came from. She caught a last glimpse of her god before a blinding light surrounded her. When she was able to open her eyes again she saw Abel’s face staring at her, intently worried.

He asked where her beautiful wings had gone. Rosia sat up, immediately weak and tired but with the wave of mortal weakness came relief and happiness. On wobbly legs she announced that she would be by Abel’s side from now and for all days to come. Abel took her in his arms and twirled her in the snow.

Together the two lived off the land. Rosia had made her river perfection when she had her powers. And it was never stifling to find food, even in winter. The river was wide and deep enough that fish always dwelt underneath the ice.

But Rosia didn’t have her wings so they couldn’t return to her nest in the trees. Abel responded by building her a home out of the forest trees. They were happy together.

But it was not long before Seraphiel’s deal would come to fruition. Spring had come early one year and while Abel was out on the ice fishing, it cracked. The crack broke all the way to the shore and out of where Abel stood. Within seconds he fell into the freezing rushing water. Rosia heard his cries but the ice was cracked and Abel was quickly being carried away by the current. She cried and cried for her lover but the freezing cold brought death quicker than she, in her mortal form could act.

Rosia pleaded to the heavens. This can’t be the way they take her from him. Abel was still young, this was not supposed to happen. As if answering her prayers with a nightmare Seraphiel descended in front of Rosia.

Her god raised righteous hands and proclaimed that Abel’s soul was now his. The deal had broken when Abel fell in the river. He had been fated to live to an old age and die peacefully in her arms. But often times nature overtook fate and the world acted of its own accord. Still, Seraphiel knew the power of a deal could not be broken.

He lifted Abel’s soul, a bright red sparkling aura that radiated from under the ice almost like a fire. In the blink of an eye Seraphiel had captured Abel’s soul in the palm of his hand and he began to ascend back to his realm.

A fierce cry split the silence of the morning. Sharp and unending Rosia let her voice carry out until the very trees shook with it’s anger and the birds flew to safety. A dark fire was welling inside of her. For the first time she tasted the void of death and all its misery. Now she would make the world pay.

Her mind turned blank, her actions were no longer a part of her control. She was a marionette to the dark hole that had opened above her head. Long tendrils made of the slimiest pitch had grabbed a hold of her soul. They writhed like a snake reaching toward her from the sky, the ground and every direction she cared to look.

Without warning Rosia climbed the largest tree and ran to the edge of its longest branch. Seraphiel had made a mistake hovering low to the ice. Even a mortal with ambition of steel could catch him and this is what Rosia was. Flying through the air she caught hold of Seraphiel’s dangling arm and the soul he still wielded inside it. Her lover’s soul.

But there was something else inside his closed fist. Seraphiel had taken her powers away and he still held them. Right there, intertwining with the soul of her beloved. Her fingertips grazed the light of the souls and it turned so bright it became all she could see.

Rosia felt the rush of air before she felt the weightlessness. Time and space rushed past her as she felt a piece of her return to her body. In mortals terms it was a kind of gelatinous limb reattaching itself to her. The gelatinous limb fused and she gained wings once again. Time and space stopped rushing and she could see the crime scene in front of her.

She was falling from her gods arms. Her tawny wings unfurled, feathers expanding to catch the wind. A sharp pain went through her bones and nearly tore her renewed wings apart. In the air again she could feel her magic power once more surging through her. As a mortal she had grown used to the ever present effect of exhaustion and the overly heavy weight of her muscles. Now she felt lighter than the air and clouds. Now she felt so alive her head pounded trying to handle the overstimulation of her senses.

Seraphiel ’s voice rang out commanding her to stop. Rosia cried out once more. This time letting her lungs scream until they dried out. She gathered every last bit of her magic power and tore through the earth. Every last wrong the gods had done her filled her mind and fueled her power until it was all that she felt. Betrayal. Grief. A fire burning just beneath the surface of her skin that she could not escape from.

Rosia focused her energy on the ground below, on the river she had so carefully created. She trained her hatred on the same water that had stolen her beloved away, the same water she had once seen as the highest point of beauty that could ever be created. She turned her betrayal on the earth which had heard her pleas and still destroyed every last hope she had.

The ground under the water crumbled and the river of her tears spilled over. A crack began to spiderweb across the land. It ran under the water and down the cliff edges. A darkness opened in the earth, it spread wide and equaled in color and coldness as to what she felt inside. Pure white magic poured from every hole in the earth completely eroding the chunk of stone that Rosia carved out of the river.

The waters increased and came cascading down the exposed stone, crushing the forest below it. The beauty she created had been destroyed with the rush of a never ending waterfall. Seraphiel demanded once more that she stop.

This time, seeing the aftermath of her rage clear out an entire forest, Rosia obliged. Shaking with sparkling tears running down her cheeks she lowered herself to steady ground and kneeled before the feet of her god.

To love a mortal had not been her sin. Seraphiel could not even say that Rosia had done wrong in the eyes of the gods. But a deal had been made. And a deal had been broken.

Compensation would have to come now if Rosia was to repent. So Seraphiel, feeling the wave of the angel girl’s pain made another deal. “Give your soul to me in exchange for your lovers life and your body will be turned to stardust among the heroes of old,” he said.

The void had stopped controlling her actions but it had taken everything from her. She could sparsely do anything but nod. Seraphiel spoke his word in accordance to hers. Using the mighty power of a god, Seraphiel grabbed a hold of her soul. The soul that felt like stardust and the space beyond.

Seraphiel raised his subject up to the sky and placed her body among the stars. He stole her soul away and gave her body the perception of any mortal human. She would be able to see the land and all the world around her, but she could never leave her astro prison. Seraphiel took Rosia, in her kneeling position and turned her body into a constellation with a head turned down to the earth.

You see, what Seraphiel had told Rosia had given her hope again. Her lover’s soul had been restored and sent back to earth but that would not mean in death Rosia could never see him again. But her god had never said her lover would return to the way he was. His life would be restored anew. With no memories of his previous life. Abel would be but a babe.

Rosia was not dead nor will she ever be. But the stars would hold her captive, above the very same spot his body was taken from her. All year long she would not be moved because Rosia had been promised to see him again. She would stay where Seraphiel had put her, forever watching, always waiting for the lover who would never return.