“This is bad. What happened to you? Don’t tell me those idiots fired you for writing that book?”
He nodded sadly. What other reason could there have been?
Other than the part about carrying on a secret love affair with someone from the wrong side of the tracks for over two decades, of course.
“Wait. Can’t you talk to me?”
He shook his head.
She frowned. “What do we do now?”
He shrugged. It felt odd with his collapsible mouse shoulders, but then again, he couldn’t shrug at all when he was in his preferred form, so he had little experience for comparison.
Wendy sighed. “I hate to say it, but I think it’s time to go to my supervisor.”
George shook his head frantically. He didn’t want her to risk her job anymore than she already had, and what would an angelic supervisor think about her bringing an imp to this neighborhood?
“I can’t let you stay this way forever. Michael! Got a problem here!”
George cringed. Michael the archangel was her supervisor? He was dead meat. A dead tiny piece of meat, hardly enough for a mouthful.
Oh, how far he’d fallen.
Risen?
“What?” a crabby voice answered.
George turned slowly on Wendy’s hand to face the deep, masculine voice.
He blinked.
Blinked again.
He was a cherub.
“Is that an imp?” the cherub asked, his frown distinctly out of place on his chubby baby face.
“Yes, this is George. They fired him.”
“Hmph. If I had any sense, I’d fire you, too.”
George blinked.
Blinked again.
Michael the archangel, leader of all heaven’s armies, Lucifer’s equal… was a cherub?
The winged baby clad in a loincloth flew toward George. He flitted above and around him, studying him from all angles, and George watched the angel’s baby blues with disbelief. Michael looked so cute, so innocent. Not at all how George thought heaven’s greatest warrior should look.
“Wow. He must have really offended somebody. They stripped his immortality and everything. Right.” Michael interlaced his fat fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Set him down, and I’ll do what I can.”
“Which is?” Wendy asked, squatting to set George on the cloud beneath their feet.
“Restore his immortality. I can’t give him all the abilities he used to have, but others have managed just fine after similar setbacks.”
“‘Others’?”
Michael flew down to George. He touched a chubby finger to the tip of George’s nose.
“Bibbidi bobbidi boo.”
“Seriously?” George could almost hear Wendy rolling her eyes. “That’s the phrase you choose to use now?”
“Hey, it’s more fun to say something than to just wave your hand and make it happen! Stand back.”
George felt funny. The granola bar working its way through his digestive system wasn’t happy. Neither was his digestive system. His stomach churned and gurgled, and his whiskers itched. He twitched them, then swiped at them with a paw. No effect. He sat up on his haunches, using both paws to clean his whiskers as he’d done after eating, and he flicked his tail, and then he realized he didn’t have a tail anymore. Or whiskers. And there was significantly more distance between him and the cloud than there had been before.
He looked down at his feet. Feet, not paws, clothed in red shoes, the toes of which curled up and back with a golden bell dangling from each tip. Horizontal stripes of red and white circled up his legs and under red shorts that ended just above the knee. A black leather belt decorated with golden bells was snug about his waist, and red triangles of fabric fell over the belt at regular intervals, hanging from his red short-sleeved shirt. Red and white stripes circled down his arms with his long-sleeved undershirt, and at the ends of those stripes were hands.
Small hands. Hands like Emma’s.
He didn’t need a mirror to know about the hat. Bright red, curled at the top like the toes of his shoes, with a single golden bell that jingled when he moved his head.
Wendy was covering her mouth again, shoulders shaking.
George felt his face warm to a shade slightly less vibrant than his clothing.
“You’re an elf?”
“You didn’t know that?” Michael asked her. “I thought you’d been together for a couple of decades.”
She shook her head. “No, he never told me. This… this is an imp’s true form?”
George cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes. He shifted his weight to his left foot and nudged a bell with his right foot.
“Yes,” he mumbled.
“So, that means Santa Claus and all his elves…”
“Santa Claus and his wife are imps who decided to leave the profession and set up shop on the mortal plane,” Michael explained. “Santa’s elves are all descended from him, but they are mortal. None of them know Santa and Molly are imps.”
“But they still have magic,” George said, looking up at the cherub. “Does that mean—”
Michael shrugged. It was quite odd to see an infant shrug.
“Maybe. I don’t know. They didn’t get fired; they quit.”
“You’re… an elf,” Wendy repeated, giggling.
“Hey! It isn’t that funny!”
George tried to glare at her, but he had to look up to do so, and she was now much, much taller than him. He was taller than Emma’s three-foot stature, but he knew he topped the charts somewhere around four feet in this form—just like Santa Claus—and she was about the height of a mature willow tree.
He felt the tips of his ears. Round, just like Santa Claus.
At least he didn’t have a beard.
“I’m sorry.” She shrunk herself to his level. “At least I can do this, right?”
She was smiling. The sight made his heart do funny things, only slightly less discomforting than whatever his stomach had been doing before.
He reached a tentative hand toward hers.
She took it.
They interlaced their fingers, and he felt a smile stretch across his face.
“Okay, I’m leaving before you two get mushy,” Michael grumped. “Wendy, do not think this means you’re out of the woods. You’re still on suspended duty.”
“What does that mean?” George asked her.
She shrugged. The silky, misty dress draping her slender figure rippled like waves in still water. “It means I’m not allowed to go to work until he tells me otherwise. Unless the situation is dire, of course.”
“So…” George took a step closer to her. He brushed her slate-gray hair behind her ear, light as fog. “You have plenty of time to show me around the place?”
“Among other things.”
He swallowed. Was it just seeing her up close like this that made his heart bang around in his ribcage like Animal from the Muppets banging his drums? Or was it because he had a heart in this form, a real, literal heart, and the emotions he’d known in his mind and felt before, in a way, now hit differently?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him, her voice softening.
“I, uh… I thought you’d laugh at me. And you did.”
“I laughed because it surprised me, and because you’re adorable. What’s wrong with that?”
He frowned. “I don’t want you to see me as adorable. I want you to see me as cool, as someone who is equal to you.”
She sighed. A morning breeze drifted across his face.
“Cool, adorable—the point is that I love you, and it really doesn’t matter how you look. You are equal to me, even if I’m technically looking down at you.”
“No fair.”
“What?”
He felt the corners of his lips twitch. “You said it first.”
“Oh.” Her gray eyes slid away from him. Dusk darkened her pale cheeks. “Well, it’s true. I love you.”
He caught her chin and coaxed her to look at him again, like coaxing a cloud to slide past the moon. “I love you, too, Wendy.”
And then he kissed her.
He kissed her.
Soft, silky, misty, dewy—her lips were everything he’d imagined and more. Even better than his kissing her was that she kissed him back. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then he closed his eyes and tried a new angle, and although he couldn’t see it, she closed her eyes, too. He ran his fingers through the fog of her hair and cradled the back of her head in his hand, and she put her arms around his neck, wrapping him in a cool, refreshing mist. He slid his other hand around her waist, slender and ephemeral, and he tried a new angle. And another. He tasted her upper lip, and her bottom lip, and just when he thought he couldn’t stand any more happiness, she parted her lips and invited him deeper.
This was bliss.
Twenty-two years of longing, waiting, dreaming, hoping.
He didn’t know if he was crying, or if dew was collecting on his skin.
They didn’t have to worry about silly things like breathing, but their lips parted as one, so in sync with each other that they simply knew when it was time to end the kisses and stare into each other’s eyes.
Slate gray and slate gray.
She reached out with a slender finger and touched his hair. “Gray. Like mine.”
He nodded. “You make it look much better, though.”
She was so cute when she was blushing. Storm clouds darkened the fog, and she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. He so rarely saw her this way.
“You know, being adorable isn’t such a bad thing,” she said, peeking at him through misty lashes. “It’s only a word to describe my attraction to you, and it isn’t even the best word.”
“What is the best word, then?”
“I… don’t really know. Do you know the best word to describe… me?”
He nodded. “I do.”
She laughed. “Remember that phrase. We may need it soon if this keeps up.”
“I hope so. Because you’re the most beautiful, gorgeous, elegant, confident, perfect—”
“Stop!” She covered his mouth with her hand. Her cheeks were almost black from her deep flush. “I get it!”
He kissed her palm.
She jerked her hand back. “You really are an imp in this form.”
His lips curved into a mischievous smirk. “I try.”
“So… should I show you around?”
“Not yet.”
She bit her lip, like a heavy fog bending a thin blade of grass beneath drops of its dew. “Are we going to worry about Lily’s predicament?”
“Maybe later.”
“She is my fairy goddaughter, you know.”
“I know. And she’s in safe hands with Emma around. There’s something very peculiar about that elf.”
“I think she's closer to a true imp than most of the other elves,” Wendy agreed.
George nodded. “But enough about her. I’d rather talk about you.”
“You already know all about me.”
“Okay, then… I’d rather kiss you.”
Wendy’s eyes widened. “A-again?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Is that a problem?”
“N-no, I just…” She cleared her throat and looked away. “I don’t really… know if my heart can handle too much of that.”
He caught her chin and turned her face toward him. “We’re immortal.”
He kissed her again, and wow, was it worth it. It had all been worth it.
Date of creation: 07/20/2025
Word count: 7,995 (maximum 8,000)
Prompt: Write about a character who has always had the ability to change how they looked, and so they hid their true appearance behind attractive facades. They have achieved every success they ever wanted to including their significant other. Now, their abilities aren’t working, exposing what they truly look like.
Genre(s): Drama, Fantasy, and Romance29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡusP4f7cY7N
