The Perseverance of Unknown Angels

They are the most powerful kinds of people of all.

There sits this classroom, outdoors in the blazing sun, where desks are laid out in a matrix. Clothed like ferals, children sit towards these desks one by one. The legs of the desks are of the strongest, shiniest iron, cast into the earth like immovable poles. The sun beats endlessly upon them all, and beyond the matrix of desks there is nothing but dirt and heat in all directions, forever.

Nonetheless they sit, awaiting something unknown. Soon a voice calls upon them all in unison, and asks, “do you wish to wear the colours? Will you? Will you?” And there is a great chatter about the suggestion. The children were not clad beyond their own human decencies. Many children wanted the colours, for they made them stand out, and provided much ado amongst each other.

As most of the children took to donning the colours, a great rumbling erupted from the earth, and a new lattice of steel arose around them at the borders of the classroom. Pikes pointed on the ends, these steel poles arose several stories high up into the bright, burning sky. This was the price they paid to don the colours.

However, not all children wanted to wear the colours. Some resisted, instead preferring their truthful nakedness, despite the scorn and pressure of the others.

Soon these massive, ugly, vicious vultures descended upon the open roof of this locked-in classroom. These were birds of predation, and they sought the children for their flesh. Most of the children who donned the colours were not taken, instead left to fend for themselves in this prison, dying in obscurity.

And while the vultures picked up some who accepted the colours as a matter of course, the most prized and sought after were the ones who resisted conformation. Their honest, vulnerable selves were all the more visible, and the vultures hungered for this, possessed by their own destructive, demonic inadequacy and damnation. And so they were chosen.

To where they were taken is a mystery. It cannot be known if they were devoured, relocated to a new kind of prison, or broke free. But this much is certain: their power is innate, and no material resource or perversion can dim it. Those of them who know this about themselves are the most angelic and powerful of us all.