When Remiel arrived at the carnival grounds, there was a great commotion. He’d flown over parked cars, long queues of people, and finally, the large wooden gates that allowed access to all the festivities. People fell back from him, shielding their eyes and stumbling away to create space for him to make landfall. With a series of wingbeats that sounded like claps of thunder, he descended until his feet touched the ground. He folded his wings and rolled his shoulders as he cranked his neck back and forth to release the tension there.
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck are you doing? Tone that shit down!” demanded a man in a black uniform that labeled him as security. He stalked towards Remi, scowling and dragging a pair of sunglasses onto his face. None of the other people that cowered away from him had thought to bring sunglasses to a nighttime carnival. Why should they? The sun was down, there hadn’t been any danger of being blinded until Remi had shown up, shining as bright as a misplaced star.
Remi’s eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open enough to emit a small, “oh,” of understanding. He called on his glamor to douse both the light and hide his wings, at the same time digging into the pocket of his suit coat to extract and unfold a small flyer. “I’m sorry. I thought I didn’t need to hide anything. That’s what was on this flyer I found,” he said, hoping the guard would understand and stop looking at him as if he wanted to rip off his arms and beat him with them.
“After you get into the park, not before,” the guard growled.
“I understand now,” Remi said ruefully and tucked the flyer away again. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to--”
“Whatever, just… don’t go lighting up the whole goddamned place anymore, okay?”
Before Remi could respond, the guard was off again, muttering under his breath about fucking angels and did he have clouds for brains or what?
Remi blinked.
Well. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets, feeling for bits of fluff and paper, and sighed. People lingered and stared at him, but their attention was drawn quickly enough to a multitude of other fantastical things. With the obvious cues glamored away, he was just a man in a nice gray suit with blue accents. He couldn’t compete.
It was better that way. He could stroll unnoticed through the crowds, observing people and watching their auras. He made a game of counting what species was attached to what aura, and had tallied far more vampires than anything else when he ended up behind an unusual group. There was a vampire with his head down, most of his attention given to the phone in his hands, a human girl with an aura that vibrated with the elation of discovery, and something… Something different. Something he’d never seen before. The third one, the man who spoke of seeing without seeing, had an aura that looked like a patchwork quilt, with colors that denoted not one species, but multiple, all overlapping and intersecting. There was his kind -- angelic kind -- but also human. He followed them, head cocked to the side, until his curiosity became too much to bear.
Remi surged past the group, then placed himself directly in their path.
“What are you?” he asked, staring intently at the pony-tailed blonde in front of him.
