With a cosmic force and a shower of sparks, the angel hit the earth’s surface. She flickered for a moment in the aftershock, wavering like a plucked string, and then, all at once, crashed into the ground. The broken remnants of her wings fritzed and twitched against the grass. Above her, the growing dawn streaked across her vision. She swallowed, coughed and pulled in a shuddering breath of air.
Her lungs burned. Her bones felt shattered. She was cold and damp, still ringing with the shock of landing, and the ground below her sent daggers of pain shooting through her raw shoulders and into her chest. Slowly, she lifted her head and cast her blurring eyes toward the world around her.
She knew where she was instantly. Millennia had passed since she had last felt the atmosphere of Earth on her skin, but she still recognized it; cool, crisp and shimmering. So different from the place she had left.
Her eyes gradually cleared, and a high steeple framed by leafy green trees swam into focus. She had landed at a church. Her lungs still ached, her mouth was raw and metallic, but she managed to chuckle weakly at the irony of that.
The angel’s gaze followed the slope of the steeple upward, above the tops of the trees. A tinge of orange light spread out from the horizon. Her mind was reeling, but she dimly realized that she wouldn’t be alone for long, that humans would start to emerge as the sun came up. But pain and bewilderment pinned her to the ground. The last several days, like most, were a blur, and her thoughts whirled in search of what could have brought her back to this place.
She stared up into the heavens. The stars twinkled out one by one, giving way to the daybreak. Soon only one shone like a flame above the distant skyline.
The morning star.
She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled. She was still dizzy from the whiplash of hurtling upward, and the noxious, draining heat radiating from the church in front of her threw her off balance. But faint noises of traffic drifted through the trees, which now glowed in the light of her namesake star. If a human found her here she didn’t think they’d be much of a threat, but she wouldn’t risk it, not with her newfound freedom on the line.
Lucifer turned away from the church and ran off into the city streets.