Guardian Angel
Does pacing actually help stress or Am I just so incredibly tense that I have no other hope?
Do I actually care about the girl behind the door or am I scared about what her fate means for my own?
**What happens if she doesn't make it?**
I loathe the thoughts circling about my head, only increasing the nerves racing about my body. Through every finger and toe and to the very ends of my wing tips, I feel the complete terror wash over me in flushes. The one thing that remains clear to me is that whether Hayley lives or dies is going to change everything I have worked so hard to achieve. What am I to do without her? She's been here for so long, the very reason for my existence. How can one walk away from someone like that so easily?
Hannah had fallen into step with me too long ago, pacing just as I was. Not that she could see me, completely coinsidental, but still comforting in relation to the confusion to my head. That maybe I had some sense of goodness, enough to fall into the same coping mechanisms as a mother when worried about another. Hannah's bleach blonde hair fell into her eyes and stuck together in sweaty strands. Her stilletos hung loosely from her fingers and her Sunday best had managed to fall in such a way she looked grungy and tampered with. Her makeup was leaving her face in streaks from her eyes, obviously she had cried too much for even the waterproof makeup to combat. We paced side by side, in a right ordeal.
My feet were battered and bruised, my right wing was most definitely broken. I had rips down my jeans and my arms were covered in a concoction of both Hayley's blood and my own.
Hayley, she had to live, there was no denying that she was going to walk out of that room absolutely fine without a single scratch. We'd go home and be happy and everything Would be the same.
I had been pacing for three hours at the time and before I knew it another three had passed. Hannah had fallen asleep on the plastic chairs in the waiting room after she had called Hayley's father and school and counsellor and whoever else she could. I was hanging onto hannah's cool head to calm myself down, but now I don't even have that to tether me to sanity.
This is exactly why the land above needs people like me to look after the humans down here. Because this world they have built for themselves is so gruesome and faulty that spirits need to descend to this barren land to fix them. I find myself looking at my reflection in the bathroom, if only I had one. Spirits simply live without them, though I know what I look like. I look like my person, Hayley. I don't pay enough attention in class to understand why but I believe it's just a way to tie us closer to the person we are assigned to help.
**Why was I assigned Hayley?**
She's depressed.
At the age of only fourteen young humans are already letting the reality of their crumbling world get to them. They start realising just how insignificant they are in the big scheme of things and feel hopeless and worthless and alone. They send people like me to fix that in hope that this world isn't going down completely.
I'm the laughter she omits when she watches her favourite movie. The spontaneous decision to accept an invitation to a party instead of turning it down. The falling asleep after a day where she never felt the need to frown or to contemplate such things as she had before. That was me to her. She never saw me either, no one ever can, but she can sense the happiness I bring her. I stay until she can do that for herself and I move on. Hayley is my first ever person, and I am the first in generations of my family to ever get one.
I'm not from a good spirit family. We just never seem to get things right. I'm determined to change that. Of course that means that if Hayley dies, I have disgraced my family's names and have to wait for the next generation in my family to try again. I'm not, under any circumstances, letting that happen.
My mind fills with thoughts until it overflows at times. Unfortunately, spirits also bear the fatal flaw of emotion. I deal with my feelings in my own way. Before I knew it, I was crying under the sink in a ball, ripping feather after feather from my wings and letting the blood seep onto the floor. It was non-existent to everyone else so I hadn't any fear of being discovered. Maybe I would have stopped there if that weren't the case.
**Does it hurt**? Only like it would for human to lose a limb.
I pull feather after feather out of my wings because, despite being a guardian angel, this is beyond my control and I can't fix that. Because I have control over the pain I am currently causing myself. Because I can't go back to the land above having failed everybody and sometimes tough love becomes motivation, even if it feels more like self-hatred.
It's ridiculous, really, just how much I resemble Hayley. Much like she still bears her white scars upon her skin, I bear black, sticky patches in which parts of myself
have been ripped. How I break down at the slightest obstacle like she has a tendency of doing.
A though strikes me and I attempt to dismiss it but it clings on like an annoying fly.
Maybe I can't possibly help her because I need help myself.
Maybe I'm depressed.
I try to shrug it off because it's ridiculous and impossible. This can't happen to spirits, it's not possible. But maybe it is. Maybe the pressure I've been putting on myself has destroyed me and now I'm harming myself just as Hayley did. Maybe I'm reading in far enough.
Soon the walls of the bathroom seem to close for comfort and I leave the cubicle and make my way towards Hayley's room, desperate to know if she's okay. It's both a relief and a blow when I approach the room to find the door ajar. With a deep breath of reassurance, I slip though the crack in the doorframe.
The sight I see before me upon my entry to the room can only be described as bad. Hayley has a neck brace on, her right arm and leg have been put into casts and her foot lays slightly elevated on a sling. Her face is covered in bandages masking multiple bruises and cuts and there is still blood seeping through the bandage on her head. A drip is injected into her forearm and she wears a thin plastic tube -that I presume to assist her breathing-under her nose. The only closure I find in the room is the steady beeping of her heart monitor reminding me that, despite how awful she appears in her unconscious state, she is alive and breathing.
In this moment the storm in my head clears. Some questions are answered and I come to the conclusion that I am rather fond of Hayley. That she is no lab rat and no experiment. No pawn and no piece to play. She's a human, and she's my human and although she has never really met me, she is most definitely my friend.
Hannah is sat beside her daughter who she looks over lovingly and guiltily. I can tell just from the look and not from her thoughts that she blames herself entirely for this, for the crash. For Hayley being the one unconscious and not herself. I place my hand on her shoulder as of to comfort her, but she would only feel a slight shiver. As a suspect she shakes slightly and readjusts in her seat before putting her hand over her daughters.
I hate being so useless. If Hayley were unhappy this would be so much more easy. I could bend her thoughts to make her happy and we could all walk away fine. But this wasn't about Hayley's happiness, this was her health. I unfortunately, have no experience in bending the reality of human bodies to make them well again. And so I just sit and watch.
Hayley's eyes flutter open for a second in the early morning and she looks over at me with a dull expression. She looks at me in a way no human has ever done and I know immediately why. I have no idea how or why but she can see me. Her face has no sign of alarm or confusion. She just looks exhausted as if every breath in a chore.
**"Your wings are hurt,"** she mutters.
I nod, **"As are you"**.
Her eyes grow more intense and she looks over me more carefully, studying me. "Who are you?. A nurse dressed up to cheer up the sick kids?"
I shake my head, **"I'm not a nurse."** I ruffle my feathers a bit as to explain that they belong to me and I pray that even in this state the young girl can piece two and two together.
**"Ah, My guardian angel then?"**
I nod. That's what humans call us anyway.
**"Yeah, you can call me that".**
And just like that the young girl is asleep once more. I am unsure as to wether she will be waking up once more or if she will see me when she does. What I do know is that she's knows in her head what she saw. Will she believe what she saw or pass it off as a hallucination? Now all I can do is hope that she'll fight with the knowledge that her guardian angel is watching over you.
**Thank You for reading📝**
**CarolPretty**💌
Chasing Dragons
**Chasing dragons**- A love torn in two by drugs
I watched you chase a dragon last night, across the streets and down the alley but it caught up and it caught you. I watched you burn last night, Like a witch at the stake. All your sins. And sorrows lay before you, your very existence laid to waste, and you stood and you smiled. You had no regrets, I envy you, my love. There is much in this life that I regret.
Your friends were desire and discontent, mine was cowardice tainted complacence. Perhaps that is where it all went wrong; I was complacent, never with our love but simply with you. Should I have fought? Should I have fought harder for you, for us? I think not. You should have fought but instead, you welcomed him like an old friend, arms wide open like a child embracing its father.
I've taste dragon fire my love and I will live on. You lived the dragon chaser's life and now are love is gone. It's dead. But the fact is that death is inescapable;the indeniable truth of life is simply death. Life, like love, is a cruel lie but death and disappointment are just harsh realities. Simple, cold, unavoidable truths. The dead don't live to tell the tale, so why must I tell yours?
It didn't hurt. Not at all. It just shredded my heart and shattered it into a million shards but it didn't hurt-I'm strong. Stronger now thanks to you. Stronger yet, yet so broken. Just like the glass, Illuminated by the blue lights, lying flush to cobbles and all the while the screeching sirens reverberate off of its rugged, coarse edges. The glass in my feet like the knife to my heart. But it didn't hurt.
Oh how critical the world, how you, made me. Me, one made of proud, strong yet so naive, so fragile glass smashed by the unrelenting and wild whims of the world. Am I to be like the glass at my feet-lying here on the cold stone, broken beyond repair-lost in the chaos of it all? It's not unlike our love, is it? Both ruined by you, just like the dragon ruined us.
You, my love, were my hairline crack. you were such an elegant flaw. Glass must be so fragile to be floored by hair's width of impurity. You ripped me open and left me so. Vulnerable. Exposed. Your tongue a serpent, weaving its wicked malice through my world. I was none the wiser. You said you love me. Oh, how you bested me but at the end who has won? You may gloat while you rest and wither away but I live on and I will outlive you. This I know. This I promise.
You, you broke your promise, you lied. You said forever but forever is a ludicrous fantasy for dreamers and pretenders. That was you, my love that was us. You left me here in this mess, your mess not mine. I wanted simple love but instead, you left, leaving nothing but let-downs and liabilities. You were a liability just simply lie. You held jurisdiction over my body, over my mind. I was yours but just as you retained me in your clutches, the dragon fire had a hold on you. You had no chance, my love I promised you, not even you could outrun the dragon and despite all your best efforts, like the rest of us, will fall.
Still, what is the greatest lie of all? Your love? Perhaps merely your whimsical promises of life and a love for the ages. My romance was not so simple; it was love, not lust. Do you understand? You craved the adventure, the euphoria, the thrill and my caution amounted to nothing in the eyes of a....a debauchee- that's all you ever were. You had an insatiable desire for more, a lack of contentment that could not be kerbed, not by anything nor anyone. Not by me. That hurt, it hurt that, I wasn't enough, that love -our love -wasn't enough.
Enough. I've had enough and I had enough too before but, but lies they bridge the fear. Your lies polluted even the very depths of my universe. Unfathomable depths, ones not even I knew existed. Not till. You poisoned them with your lies. They seeped in, exploiting me in a most wicked yet addictive way. I craved you my love but by playing with fire-the burning passion of our love -I was burned but you, you were decimated by hellfire, the breath of dragons, the reapers elixir. I will live on, I will endure. Endure the pain, the loss.
I lost everything to dragon fire. I lost you, my love, and with you went my heart -both lost to the raging flame and fire. We burned bright, but we burned quickly. Quickly into the night, we hid and I dearly hoped that there was more to life than this but somewhere between the town square and the cobbled streets I lost you and with you I lost my heart.
Yet above all my sorrow and pain what hurt the most was losing love, our love. But why, why didn't the confusion go with you, the long nights and blinding lights? Weren't the bars, and the burdens, the heartache, and the anguish, weren't they all meant to go, you were meant to take them away, far, far away. They should have all burned that night, up, up in flames. But still, they roam my mind leaving but a cloudy grey abyss that dominates me. I now see that I was
empty with your love but yet you empty me still. Drain me. Why? Why must you plague me? Your torment me. You, my love, are my Gordian Knot, my all-consuming enigma, why impossible predicament.
Did it hurt my love; was it painful when you looked it in the eye? When the dragon's talon locked into you. When it gained control over you, over everything. It hurt me. I felt pain. I felt excruciating, agonisingly crippling pain as I watched on helplessly as the little that remained of our love was drained from your eyes, foggy orbs all that lingered. They weren't your eyes.
Your eyes are an ocean, vast and clear. Your eyes are the morning dew on the overgrown grass. Your eyes entrance me and they entrap my very soul. They were not your eyes, they were nothing but a cruel reminder of what used to be.
They were pools of deepest darkest turmoil, a gateway to agony, pure anguish. They were a wicked embodiment of malice and misery. They were oblivion- the darkest abyss. Oh, what has become of you, my sweet dragon chaser;your eyes are not yours.
I envy you though; yes I do, for even if but a moment, my love, you lived, I just didn't die, at least I survived. I survived you. Just barely enough. Yet you haunt me still, when will you stop my love? When will you live, when will you finally be content? When I join you in oblivion? Is that what it takes? Is the dragon calling me as it called you? Is it because I watched; is it because of what I saw?
Because I watched you chase a dragon last night
Across the streets and down the alley but it caught up
I watched it catch you
I watched as you burned last night
Like a witch at the stake
All of your sins, all of your sorrows lay before you
And you stood
And you smiled
You had no regrets
None
I envy you, my love
There is much in this life that I regret
But I promise I will never regret you
Ever.
Thank you for reading my article.
-CarolPretty❤️
Colors of the wind
**'The wizard of Oz'** starts out in black and white and then transitions to color. This sudden introduction of color has many implications, but all of those who debate the shift view color as important. Magazines feature the glossy picture of celebrities and advertisements-- all in color.
In art, color is arguably one of the most important features of a piece of artwork. An artists' choice of color can change everything about a piece, including mood and emphasis. Color is one of the most significant features in a piece of artwork for me. As an artist, I spend a lot of time planning a composition. I consider subject of the piece, the angle of viewing the subject, and the meaning I want to create with the piece. I look at how color creates meaning in my piece. I look at how color creates in my piece. One specific color placement can change everything.
I first got into art during middle school. I took an art class because I didn't want to take music, and it stuck with me. The great thing about art is there are no rules to it. You can paint violently, splashing globs of oil paint onto the canvas or smearing pastels all over the page. You can draw neatly with graphite to create a pristine picture. You can choose any of a variety of colors. All your emotions can be poured out into a piece. I find art to be almost therapeutic:you can throw your whole soul into your painting and it will reflect everything going on in your mind.
As an artist, color reflects what I'm feeling when I paint the piece. For example, while going through a recent breakup, I started an oil painting with violent reds and brilliant blues. The colors clash. There are great dabs of oil on the painting. The vivacity of the colors creates a hectic piece. The contrasting colors reflect my own internal debates and conflicting feelings of anger, confusion, sadness and guilt.
Colors are significant in artwork to reflect things that aren't really there. In '**Pocahontas**', one song describes painting the colors of the wind. If I tried to create warm, light breeze, I would sketch light reds and oranges across a piece. The lines would be faint and blended together into light blurs of breeze. Alternatively, '**frozen**' featured a town with cold, harsh winter winds across it. In the movie, the town is depicted with blues and purples, creating the colder feel. The lines of the wind are more defined, making it seem sharper like the harsh winds, which were present.
Color is just one way of how we express our emotions. Stop someone on the street who is feeling down and ask them how they feel? They might respond "**blue**", signifying sad. They might feel the "**blackness**" of hopelessness or desperation. People in a fight might say that they "**saw red**". Red is anger and passion.
Magazines use color to create moods. Bright colors create positive feelings towards the products on the pages. A restaurant advertisement might use red to induce appetite. similarly, a photographer must carefully consider placement of color in their pictures. While at my uncle's wedding, my family and I took pictures, and I organized it so we were standing on a red bridge with green teas all around. The red showed the love felt at the occasion. The green of the trees were blurred, creating a neutral background for the splendidly colorful filipino outfits my family wore. It was a light green, contributing to an overall tone of lightness and happiness.
On one of my recent pieces of artwork, I blended colors together to create an image of a sunset through a bridge. The dark blues, purples, and blacks in the water created to a calmer feeling while the darker purples and reds created a loving feel to the piece. I wanted viewers to feel nostalgic amd remember the romantic memories of their past. Another piece I did was of a tree on a bright autumn day. The bright red and orange leaves left an upbeat tone. The light colors made the piece feel free, as if the viewer was standing under the tree with their toes in the grass, feeling the warmth of the sunlight and wind in their hair.
As shown with the '**The wizard of oz**', perhaps equally as important as color is the lack of color. This can be done when an artist uses grayscale instead of the color wheel to complete their piece. In photography, low light can make a piece darker and seem moody. One of my photography friends, when creating a piece that dwells on memories of childhood, took a picture of a bench and darkened the piece when developing the film. This created a more distant, fuzzy image to reflect his current state of remembering the significance of the bench in his childhood, even though no one was sitting at the bench or playing around it at the time the photograph was taken.
The lack of color can make the eye focus more; instead of being attacked by vivid colors, the viewer can look deeper into the piece and see more details. Black and white can be more subtle and somber because it doesn't have quite as much energy as a color piece. However, using grayscale in a piece can still assault one's eyes with the juxtaposition of dark black and light gray or white. I created a piece describing an oil spill in 2010. In the piece, I used dark black contrasting with the white background of the page to create the numbers 2010. Above the numbers, a circle had very little contrast in colors, reflecting the murkiness of the water caused by the oil. The turtles, birds, and fish trapped in the layering of shading reflected the capturing of them in the oil spill. The darkness of the overall piece sil reflected my negative feelings on the subject: I'm very into environmental friendliness; oil spills aren't exactly kind to nature. Instead of ranting and raving about the injustices of big oil companies, I created a piece that could act as a political statement against the companies. It was a healthy way to vent my disgust on the spills, through it may not have created any sort of action towards making the problem better.
Absence of color can also be used to create contrast between color and grayscale, making certain objects stand out. One classmate painted a woman on a boat with her back to the viewer. He used grayscale for everything except for red for the jacket and body of the woman. This highlighted the turmoil in his mind: at the time he created the piece, he and his girlfriend were on rocky terms. In the past, I have used black and white to blur motion at a traffic light. I used a collage of white tissue paper overlaid on a black background to create distinct shapes which confuse the viewer and create the effect of fog. My goal was to draw attention to the bright colors and create a blurred, abstract piece to reflect the confusion of the scene. The only colors are the lights: car headlights, street lights and traffic lights. This makes the rest of the picture, the cars and buildings, fade into the background and creates a layering of colors. It simulated driving at night, where the bright lights are easy to see and the streets and buildings fade into the background. However, there was also a more subconscious feel to my piece. I conceived my piece after a fight with a friend. My mind was muddled and confused: much like the abstract nature of the piece. Creating an insane piece reflected the insanity in my mind.
The strongest of emotions make for great pieces of artwork. I created a tree out of greens and yellows. I dabbed the piece with color using palette paint. Everything was light and bright. When I was painting, I was outside, enjoying fresh air and nature. The piece reflects the pure joy of the outdoors. Once, I was feeling lonely, so I used chalk pastel to draw a frog in the moonlight. My choice of a dark green paper, dark colors, sole light source in the painting (**the moon**), and murky water reflected the loneliness. The lack of anything in the piece save a sole frog on a dark lily pad created a depressing image. However, after I created the piece and blurred the colors into a muddled state, I felt like there was a weight off my chest. Some people find that writing helps sort through their emotions. Others like to talk to their friends. For me, I privately toil over a piece of artwork, pouring my heart into it until everything becomes clear to me.
It isn't often that we paint the colors of the wind, but color is fundamental to create emotions and abstract qualities that we can't capture with a realistic depiction of the world. Sometimes words are simply not enough. Through color, artists sift through emotions and tell their stories.
Thank you for reading my Article.
-CarolPretty❤️
@CarolPretty
