
Jonah crossed his powerful arms and allowed his
massive pure white wings to flair slightly in annoyance
as he loomed over the two sheepish seriphim standing.
"We have rules for a reason you know."

"Yes Archangel, sorry Archangel," the grey-winged one on
the left, Maz, said, his voice full of guilt. His friend
Mizrin seemed to be so mortified to have drawn the personal
attention of an archangel, even a lesser one like Jonah,
that he had been struck completely mute.

"What is the rule about going down to the mortal realm?"
Jonah demanded.

"Ummm, no going without explicit orders from your battalion
commander," Maz said.

"And when you two went down to gallant about, did you have
such permission?"

"No, Archangel."

Jonah sighed and raised a hand to the bridge of his nose.
He wanted to unleash his aura to show the two miscreants
the full extent of his anger, but doing so would probably
kill the two lesser angels. "If it had only been that,
I wouldn't even be handling this myself, but once you were
down on earth you had to go and break another rule, didn't
you? What rule did you break,"

"Sir-" Maz started, but was immediately cut off by Jonah.
"Not you Maz, I want to hear from you Mizrin,"

Mizrin's pure white wings began shaking like leaves in the
wind and he raised his eyes to look up at the bulky Archangel
for the first time. The two seriphim were each around five
feet tall, so the nine foot archangel towered over them. On
top of that, his bulging muscles compared with their slim
frames meant he would have weighed nearly as much as the
two of them even if he were of a height with them. "W-w-
we, um, w-w-we, um, um, used, um, d-d-divine m-magic."

"Yes, yes you did, but you didn't just use divine magic,
did you Maz?" Jonah turned to the slightly more collected
seriphim.

"No, um, no archangel. We used divine magic to grant a wish
to some mortals."

Jonah nodded, "so to sum up, you went down to the mortal realm
on your own, breaking the rules. You decided to go site seeing
and interacted with mortals, breaking the rules again, which we
haven't even talked about yet. You managed to get in such a pickle
that you became indebted to a bunch of mortals, a bunch of
boyscouts no less, and you decided to clear this debt by
GRANTING THEM A DIVINE WISH!?!?!?!" Jonah was finally unable to
control himself. His aura blasted out in a terrifying flash of raw
power, slamming the two seriphim to their knees. He quickly got
his aura under control and noticed that they were gasping desperately
for breath, "sorry."

"Y-yes Arcangel," Maz gasped, "I'm sorry."

"Now tell me, did this wish at least leave your mortal benefactors
better off drawing them closer to the heavenly father, or did it
blow up horribly in their faces like some sort of djinn curse?
Will this wish you granted be spoken of as a miracle for ages to
come, or will it be used by the adversary's servants to twist more
vulnerable souls away from the path of righteousness?"

"Umm, I-I couldn't possible presume-" Maz was once more cut off.

"Guess,"

"If, um, if I had to guess, I would say, more, umm, more the second
one, Archangel."

"Well considering that their immortal souls wound up EATEN by another
mortal, I would say your little divine wish was more like a djinn curse
than a miracle, yes."

Maz blanched and Mizrin's eyes filled with tears, "d-did their souls
really get eaten?"

"Have a look for yourselves," Jonah waved his hand and an illusion
took shape in front of the two lesser angels.

===========================================================================

Maz and Mizrin struggled to untangle themselves from the netting they
were caught in. They normally wouldn't have been impeded by the non-magical
materials strung up at the edge of the field, but alcohol impeded their
divine magic and they were both drunk enough that they could barely fly,
which was what had gotten them caught up in the netting in the first place.
They weren't sure why there was a bunch of netting dangling from a cliff,
but however it had gotten there, they were trapped in it now. Mizrin's
hand was a tantalizing few inches away from one of the pouches on his
belt that contained an antidote which was meant for demon poison, but
would serve just as well to purge the alcohol and give him full access
to his magic. Alas, he couldn't reach, and was left to flop about in
the air desperately.

They were starting to despair that they would never get out when a group
of boys approached. "Guys, are those angels?" one of them asked, pointing
up. Shock spread through the group, but in short order they were working
together to free the drunken angels. Before long they had managed to
get them free. The two angels quickly took their antidotes.

The two angels quickly downed antidotes. "Thank you boys, this really
means a lot to us. Um, listen, can you keep this quiet though, we're
not really meant to be here?" Maz asked.

"But it's a miracle!" one of them exclaimed.

"yyyyeaaah, but can it be a secret miracle?" Maz asked.

"How about this, you promise to keep this quiet, and we'll grant you
a little wish." Mizrin suggested.

"Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. What do you say boys?"

The boyscouts looked at one another hesitantly for a moment before
one of them spoke up, "can you give us super powers?"

Maz tugged on his collar nervously, "nothing obvious. The point is
to keep this discrete."

"How about you make us rich? We could trip over a bag of gold or
something!" another boy exclaimed.

"Well, that would be better, but still a bit risky. Umm, how about
this? How about we let you swap places with someone else for a week?
It won't really be swapping places, more like doing a spiritual ride
along, but you'll get to see what it's like to walk a mile in their
shoes. Your bodies will stay on autopilot for the week and at the
end you'll get both sets of memories back. You'll be able to have
some fun experiences. Yeah, that should be pretty harmless. It'll
be like the most unique vacation imaginable." Maz suggested.

Archangel Jonah the playback for a moment to give Maz a withering
glare, "is vacation the only thing you think about?" The smaller
angel wilted before the archangel resumed playback.

"Well, um, yeah I guess. It's not really much of a wish if you don't
let us choose, but that does sound cool." The boys muttered their
agreement, but it was clear they were annoyed that the angel the
had just saved was basically telling them what to wish for.

"Great!" a halo glowed behind Maz's head briefly, "well, um, wish
granted and all that! We'll just be on our way now." The two took
to the skies, quickly leaving the troop of boy scouts behind.

======================================================================

Helen jogged along the trail, her braid swinging back and forth
as she moved fluidly over the roots and rocks.
