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waited patiently, something animals weren’t know for.
     
    There was an air of expectation as she approached, and a sense of longing and adoration. Despite the shocks of the morning he found he could understand their reactions, much as he might not want to.
     
    The instant she reached the garden it was as though a switch had finally been flicked on. As one they mobbed her, all wanting to be close, and Sherial welcomed them to her with a smile that outshone the sun. He gathered it wasn’t a completely unexpected event for her.
     
    But at least while they were with her they’d stopped eating his gardens. His mind in chaos he fled the scene, needing to find some peace.
     
    Entering the gym he discovered he was right about the birds. More right than he could have guessed. They’d left their calling cards over every single piece of equipment he owned, giving it an aroma far less pleasant than the sandalwood he normally favoured. But at least he found, after carefully checking the indoor pool, they’d made it no further. Swimming in bird droppings would have been simply too much.
     
    He busied himself with a mop, thanking every god known to man for the fact that the floor and equipment was all easily cleaned, and in half an hour had the place looking like new. Nailing up a board over the broken window hopefully ensured it would stay that way if his guests remained. He could have left it till Tuesday when Mrs. Pool visited but thought it wouldn’t really have been fair. Besides what would he have done until then?
     
    All the while as he worked, he kept an eye out for Sherial, determined to know and understand everything she did and was. Yet while it was relatively easy to see everything she did through the French doors, to see everything she was, it was close to impossible for him to accept it.
     
    For the most part she sat on one of the small garden seats he’d laid several years ago, surrounded by her adoring audience, and accepted their love. And while that was all she did and he saw absolutely everything, it explained nothing about what was really happening. For animals don’t generally just start loving people, nor do they live in peace with one another. Yet these did, and he could even see it in their eyes. As perhaps had he looked in a mirror he would have seen in his own eyes. It was a depressing thought for a man of secrets and self-confessed paranoia like himself.
     
    Stranger still, he could also watch her aura glowing around her, a visible corona of golden light that extended around her like firelight to encompass her entire audience. It had been with her ever since he had first seen her, but only now did it finally occur to him to wonder about it. People don’t usually bathe in golden light.
     
    Then there were her wings, huge and glorious wonders which were far too big for her when she sat and trailed along the grass behind her. She extended them high above her head each time another adoring animal jumped to her lap for a blessing, an automatic reflex he guessed. She had easily a twenty foot span, and considering her light weight Mikel was almost willing to accept that they’d support her in flight, or at least gliding. But the previous evening he’d had a distinct recollection of seeing her hovering, with the wings only moving gently in the still night air, barely creating a breeze. That too was surely impossible according to all the laws of physics.
     
    Of course, he finally had to admit, perhaps the laws of the world simply don’t apply to angels. He wondered what if any laws did.
     
    Mikel followed his labours with a light workout which was all that his muscles could take after the previous day’s hammering. An hour at the weights, another in the dojo and a quick three miles in the pool. In the next few days if he was able to continue with his schedule, he’d return to full training, five or six hours a day of intensive, gruelling weights, aerobics and combat, coupled with swimming and