Mini NoNoWriMo -- 538 words

The first time Nancy McGill sees an angel, she's nine years old, and Nona is pruning her rose trellis and singing softly nearby. The melody is familiar to the girl, and she hums along softly, because it sounds so much nicer when Nona sings it.

It's early on a Saturday morning---she slipped out of the house before her brother and sister got up for their habitual squabbling over who gets to pick the cartoons and who's having which cereal---and now she's here in her favorite place in the whole world with her favorite person in the whole world, and it's going to be a pretty day. The sunlight is as soft as a kiss, and she isn't too cold or too warm, and Nancy wishes she could stay in this moment forever, because it's just so perfect.

You can, something tells her. It isn't the inner voice she's always heard, but it isn't someone talking to her, either. It's music, a song, but it wasn't Nona singing it. She looks around, and just behind her right shoulder is a brightness. The only thing Nancy can think of to liken it to is when Glinda floats away like a soap bubble after she talks to Dorothy in Oz, but this isn't round, or a bubble, it's just...bright. Not hurt-your-eyes like a flashbulb bright; more like cut-glass making a rainbow when the light hits it just so. It's white, but it's colorful white, and for a moment, she just gazes at it, enraptured.

You can always call on this memory if you need it, the voice tells her calmly, or on me. The beautiful sound meets the shining light, and it pulses, fanning her with a motionless wind and a sense of joy so fierce that tears twinkle down her cheeks.

That was an angel, Nancy thinks with wonderment. An angel just came and talked to me.

She can't quite fathom why such a magnificent being would single her out---it isn't like she's anybody special. She fights with her family all the time, especially Walter, and she and Karen Bailey copy each other's homework a couple times a week, and Sunday school makes her itch.

"You had a visitor," Nona says quietly as she's standing there, looking at the morning dew still on the leaves and noticing how the sunlight creates tiny prisms and infinitessimal rainbows.

"It was an angel," she whispers. Maybe it isn't good manners to talk about them when they aren't there.

"How lovely for you," Nona says, sounding pleased, but not as if it's anything out of the ordinary. "There, that's better. Let's take all this loose stuff to the compost heap. Mind the thorns."

Nancy sees her angel several more times before Nona's death, then it becomes something else that's locked away in her heart through many long, dark years before she dares to call on it again. She's well past forty when she sees her first demon, but unlike her first angel contact, she goes looking for the demon.

Mini NoNoWriMo -- 538 words

The first time Nancy McGill sees an angel, she's nine years old, and Nona is pruning her rose trellis and singing softly nearby. The melody is familiar to the girl, and she hums along softly, because it sounds so much nicer when Nona sings it.

It's early on a Saturday morning---she slipped out of the house before her brother and sister got up for their habitual squabbling over who gets to pick the cartoons and who's having which cereal---and now she's here in her favorite place in the whole world with her favorite person in the whole world, and it's going to be a pretty day. The sunlight is as soft as a kiss, and she isn't too cold or too warm, and Nancy wishes she could stay in this moment forever, because it's just so perfect.

You can, something tells her. It isn't the inner voice she's always heard, but it isn't someone talking to her, either. It's music, a song, but it wasn't Nona singing it. She looks around, and just behind her right shoulder is a brightness. The only thing Nancy can think of to liken it to is when Glinda floats away like a soap bubble after she talks to Dorothy in Oz, but this isn't round, or a bubble, it's just...bright. Not hurt-your-eyes like a flashbulb bright; more like cut-glass making a rainbow when the light hits it just so. It's white, but it's colorful white, and for a moment, she just gazes at it, enraptured.

You can always call on this memory if you need it, the voice tells her calmly, or on me. The beautiful sound meets the shining light, and it pulses, fanning her with a motionless wind and a sense of joy so fierce that tears twinkle down her cheeks.

That was an angel, Nancy thinks with wonderment. An angel just came and talked to me.

She can't quite fathom why such a magnificent being would single her out---it isn't like she's anybody special. She fights with her family all the time, especially Walter, and she and Karen Bailey copy each other's homework a couple times a week, and Sunday school makes her itch.

"You had a visitor," Nona says quietly as she's standing there, looking at the morning dew still on the leaves and noticing how the sunlight creates tiny prisms and infinitessimal rainbows.

"It was an angel," she whispers. Maybe it isn't good manners to talk about them when they aren't there.

"How lovely for you," Nona says, sounding pleased, but not as if it's anything out of the ordinary. "There, that's better. Let's take all this loose stuff to the compost heap. Mind the thorns."

Nancy sees her angel several more times before Nona's death, then it becomes something else that's locked away in her heart through many long, dark years before she dares to call on it again. She's well past forty when she sees her first demon, but unlike her first angel contact, she goes looking for the demon.