Stop.
Can you feel that?
There has been a change in the world. Something new has happened.
Listen. It’s really very faint. The barest whisper on the breeze. If you concentrate, you can hear it rising and falling behind the nosy modern sounds of the city.
The honking car horns screaming I’m here, I’m here, get a move on.
The low chatter-buzz as millions of voices are carried on the backs of radio waves or dragged through wires by electric pulses.
In every house, television sets blare and in every office, printers belch out endless dry tongues of ink stained paper.
The City teams and bustles, falls over itself to keep up with the insistent beat of its own clock towers and digital watches. It sags under the weight of its own industry.
Such noise. Such a horrible, clamorous ugly din.
But there is something older than all these things. Something ancient and wise and unchanging. A note struck long and true on the cosmic chime of the universe.
Listen then, somewhere close by an angel is crying …
Barnaby the angel awoke to find himself staring at the clear, baby blue dome of the summer sky. Nothing disturbed the arc of its beauty as it swept from one side of his vision to the other.
Barnaby felt glad to be alive, insofar as any celestial entity can be said to live. Rather it might be more accurate to say he felt glad to exist and- though he needed oxygen as much as he needed food or water, which is to say, not at all- he decided to take a big lungful of air to commemorate the occasion.
Fsssh, went Barnaby as he breathed in in the warmth of the morning. He could taste the sunrise. The sweet air of a new-born day, flavoured with fading stars and retreating dreams.
Barnaby could tell it was going to be a good day.
With a contented sigh he struggled up into a sitting position, adjusted his halo which was floating at a very odd angle above his head and took a look around. His whole body had been cushioned in the fluffy white softness of a small yet perfectly formed cloud. Now the nebulous ground danced and billowed under him, constantly shifting shape in what was, Barnaby decided, a vaguely alarming manner.
One moment he sat on the back of a wild Mustang stallion, rearing proudly back on its hind legs to beat at the sun with its hooves.
The next, the angel found himself teetering on the brink of a volcano or lost in the midst of a giant plate of spaghetti bolognaise.