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My footsteps echoed once I entered the room, surprising me. The silence was even worse. There was no one in here like there should have been. I was coming in for a class. "You made it."
I would have jumped, I should have jumped, but I couldn't.
My eyes rested on someone at the front of the room, leaning casually against the front desk. It was a man. Though "man" seemed too…simple a term. His clothes flowed over his figure like they were made for him. There was something other worldly about his face with glowing sea-green eyes and slightly wavy blonde hair that fell around his face like it was painted.
It was clear that he wasn't the professor, he was much too young. I should have been terrified, I knew that, but I wasn't. His smile was so genuine as he appraised me, but it wasn't in a scrutinizing way. He appeared excited. What was worse was that he didn't have a (shadow).
He turned around suddenly, rearranging things on the desk, and then I saw them. The white wings on his back fluttered slightly a few feathers falling to the floor.
He strode up towards me, it was so graceful he could have been gliding for all I knew.
"I'm the professor's TA." He said.
I knew I was staring, but I couldn't do anything else. He grinned knowingly and held a book out to me.
"Give this a read. I think you'll find what you're looking for." He said softly. I trusted his statement and took the book from him.
He turned back around and walked down the stairs. Another feather fell in his wake and I just kept looking at it. I wanted to touch it, to take it and study it, feeling its softness. I wanted to know that it was real.
"Oh, Anna!"
My head shot up. He'd said my name like he knew me.
"I'm Gabriel." And then he walked out the back door.
When I looked back down at the stairs, the feather was gone.
I walked home in a daze, leaving my things by the door. The book felt heavy in my hands, but it wasn't very large. It was old and clearly hadn't been opened in a long time.
The Creed. That's what was scrawled across the cover. The phrase just kept repeating over and over again. I couldn't figure out why it was haunting me.
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