***
Chapter 1
Ophelia knew she wasn't an ordinary child. She certainly looked ordinary enough, with her round, fat wrists and long, curly black hair. But she didn't feel ordinary. Her mother said it was because her daddy was a unicorn, which Ophelia knew was nonsense because all of the unicorns had died out thousands of years ago, also because horse penises tended to be far too large for human women.
She did have a silver birth mark right in the center of her forehead though, and she loved oatmeal more than anything. They lived in an ordinary, boring townhouse in New York City, and she attended a droll, boring school. But she knew that her teachers were full of crap, and her classmates, for the most part were sheep. Not literal sheep, but sheep in the Machiavellian sense.
Except for Gregory. He was a skinny, shy boy with buck teeth and too many freckles for his own good. But he could see through the fog of misconception in their ordinary, boring, droll lives, and the truth terrified him. Also, Ophelia sometimes terrified him because of her assertiveness and the fact that she read far too many books for a person her age.
despite their gnostic outlook on life, and their disproportionately large brains both Ophelia and Gregory were struggling to make it through their classes, mostly because their answers were to creative, or insufficiently vague.
Also, Ophelia tended to be condescending to the teachers and because no one believed children, her teachers would mark her tests and papers down out of spite.
It didn’t really matter to them, though, because neither Greg nor Ophelia believed that primary school grades were a very accurate measure of someone intelligence. Obviously. Additionally, they hated the classrooms with their bright, terrible art and posters of people with milk mustaches looking down at them, smiling, and advertising their consumerist agenda.
What the children loved was their local library. After school, they would walk a mile and a half down the road to the giant, concrete and glass obelisk and walk in through the sliding doors. Ophelia would haul massive, cross-referenced tomes through the stacks and down the stairs to the hidden garden at the center of the building. There, Gregory would be waiting with a stack of comic books and together, with the massive grey wall towering above them, Ophelia and Greg could read unmolested for hours, inhaling the freshly produced oxygen put out by the flowers and trees.
Almost nobody would join them, for most people hate the outdoors because the light hurts their eyes and because they might get dirty.
Ophelia and Greg would sit in the garden until dusk, then return the books to their shelves and walk back to their respective apartments, hardly exchanging anything other than, "goodbye Ophelia, I'll see you in the morning." and "goodbye Greg, tell your mother hello for me" they rarely talked at length because they both knew a simple truth. The best friends can sit and share each other’s company in perfect harmony, without entertainment or manufactured conversation and simply enjoy their time spent together.
***
Chapter 2
"You pretentious little as swipe." growled mister Blaggerson, putting Ophelia’s latest test on her desk. At the top, in red ink, it bore a deep red C. "If I've told you once, I’ve told you 600 times, I'm not interested in your pet theories. You will answer your tests with the material I have presented in class, or you will fail. I am not interested in the opinion of an 8-year-old." he moved to the next desk, smiling again, "very good Lashaqua, B plus plus. Very good Ryan, a 92 today." and so on.
Gregory buried his face in his scrawny hands. Another 45. This time, he had been marked down 15% simply for pointing out several grammatical errors on the test sheet. Teachers hated that.
During lunch, Gregory would eat three hot dogs with lots of ketchup, and Ophelia would eat fries, as the lunch lady eyed her suspiciously. They never served oatmeal for lunch.
"Mother says hello" offered Greg, between sips of apple juice. "She’s making no-bake cookies tonight, and I know those are your favorite. She said I could bring some in a zip-lock baggy for our reading time tomorrow."
"Oh, that sounds lovely, Greg." Ophelia replied, smiling "your mother is such a dear. How is her new job going?"
Greg wiped his mouth with a napkin, and then returned it to his lap. Proper manners, he believed, were the only thing holding our society together. "Well, she's about to close a deal on her first apartment, and the commission will be something like 60 thousand dollars. She’s very excited." a flash of distress crossed his face.
Ophelia turned. Headed their way across the lunch room, were three particularly thick-headed and mustachioed fifth graders. In unison, Ophelia and Greg rose from their chairs, calmly bringing their trays to the wash bin. Being largely nonviolent, neither of them wanted anything to do with a lunchroom conflict. It seemed, however, that they didn’t have much choice.
A sweaty fist smashed into Greg’s face, sending his already duck taped glasses to the floor. "Morning twerps" belched the bigger boy "gay any good faggots lately?" he snorted
Greg reached for his glasses, his nose dripping blood and already swollen
Ophelia stood up for him "don't you Neanderthals have anything better to do? Like learning to read or something?"
The boy turned on her, spitting on her chuck Taylors. "We know how to read" he said, and the other two boys nodded and sneered "plus, you're a fat fatty" and he turned back to Greg.
"I'm not sure how my physical stature or Greg’s sexuality factor into this conflict, unless you're simply projecting your own insecurities about your reproductive ignorance and surplus of testosterone on us in a vain attempt to mask your own self-loathing and lack of accomplishments"
The fifth grader punched Greg again. "I know a lot about sex," he retorted "I watch porn on the internet in the computer lab every day"
Ophelia could tell this was going nowhere. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills, totaling almost $15. "Okay," she said "there's a hundred bucks in it for you proletarians if you will just leave us alone." she waved the money in front of them. She knew they couldn't tell how much it was. The bigger boy snatched at it.
Ophelia tossed the cash in the air and grabbed Greg’s wrist all in one motion, "come on!" she said, and together they ran out of the lunch room while their tormentors crawled around on the floor picking up the dollar bills.
They hid in a stall in the girls bathroom until their next period started, then walked briskly to their classes hoping that the eighth graders were still trying to figure out where the other $85 had gone.
***
Meanwhile:
Avery Redgrove was not a man to be trifled with.
Firstly there was his intimidating appearance. He was in his late fifties, with fearsome grey eyes which glint in the darkness like a hungry predator. He has a small black goatee, and receding dark brown hair with streaks of silver which he keeps pulled back into a tight pony tail. His teeth are perfectly white and exceedingly sharp.
Secondly, he was a wizard.
Wizard Redgrove sat in his study; a tall room filled with old books from floor to ceiling. There are two leather high-back chairs, and a fire is crackling hotly in the hearth. Everything is still. Slowly, Redgrove turned the pages of an ancient book, carefully scanning each page with his reflective eyes.
The fire in the hearth stirred, and there was a sound like a loud clap. He turned toward the sound, but saw nothing.
The angel was very tall, almost ten feet. Very humanoid in form, yet anything put human. Far from the Aryan stereotype so often associated with angelic beings. If anything, this angel looked Arabic, with dark skin and brown eyes. He had wings like a golden eagle, brown and gold feathers gleaming in the firelight. He stood near the window, observing everything Redgrove did with watchful eyes.
The angel knew that Ophelia and Gregory were a threat, and he needed them dead. According to his sources, Redgrove was the perfect tool for the job.
***
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