The Winged Heart

[Mar Black's POV]

"Let's go home, Sunshine," my wife, Aurora, says as she leans against the doorframe of my lab and gives me one of her warm smiles.

Yes, she calls me Sunshine, as a reference to the song "You are my sunshine" by Johnny Cash. Personally, I never liked the song. It makes me feel bitter. But Aurora? She loves it! It would be stuck in her head for days and she'd sing it clear and lovingly every time she catches me staring at her. She loves the way the nickname contrasts with me, my serious and broody personality, and my name "Mar Black", which couldn't be darker if I tried.

She used to say: "It's like a wish. I wish for you to lighten up. Catch a bit of my brightness!"

A stupid joke, because she could, quite literally, light up the sky. And no, not because of her bright personality. She is an Archaggelos. A type of humanoid alien with wings.

I hadn't know that she was an alien at first, because Aurora has always looked and felt like a normal human.

She popped into my life one day and we've been inseparable ever since. Apparently, the Archaggelos can see the red string of destiny, and she had followed it to me.

"Come on, Sunshine!" Aurora complained loudly, successfully pulling me from my thoughts. "Do we really have to do this now? I told you; I have a surprise for you! I want to go home and show you already."

"Calm down, Aurora," I mumble in my usual, calm manner of speaking. "You know that we have to do this every day for the measurements to make sense, right? I wonder if your energy levels will have risen again."

She giggles. "No, they will be lower today."

"Why? What happened? Are you sick?"

She giggles again. "No, I'm not sick. But -like I told you already- it's a surprise! Let's go home."

"You know it will only take a minute," I say with a soft smile as I pat the stool on wheels next to mine by the computer.

"Ok, ok," she says as she sits down next to me and I hold the sensor of the digital multimeter against her upper arm.

"It just has to say BEEP right?" she imitates the sound that the device makes when it finishes its reading. Which usually only takes a few seconds, but for some reason, takes a lot longer today.

I am just about to check what is wrong with the device, when a violent shiver runs through Aurora and a surprised "Oh!" escapes her lips, before she vanished into thin air. The meter -and the computer that the meter was hooked up to- explode, taking the main fuse of the lab with it, causing a blackout.

"Aurora?" I call out into the darkness, still trying to push my rising panic down. "Aurora?! Sweetheart, if this is a joke it really isn't funny. … AURORA?! …. Shit!"

That's when my nerves catch on fire. I jump up, as if hit by lightning and start searching in the dark. Only when I hit my knee on a cupboard, my adrenaline flooded brain manages to register that that is an absolutely useless action because it is far too dark to draw a decent conclusion, so I navigate my way through the dark towards the cupboard where I know the spare fuses lay. As by a miracle, I blindly find a new fuse and start making my way towards the fuse box to replace it. But once the lights jump back on again, she still is nowhere to be found.

"Aurora!!" I call again, praying that she would hear me, but I still couldn't see her anywhere.

"Shit!!" I curse again. My mind is going a million miles an hour, all thoughts too fast to grasp. I take a shuddering breath and try to sort out the most important one; what had happened?

I stare at the computer from which a thin trail of smoke is rising and quickly unplug it before it catches on fire and blows the fuse a second time.

It seems safe to assume that the measuring device and the computer had caused the problem. But what had happened? And how would I fix it?

All traces of hope quickly evaporate as I look at the state both devices are in. They are completely fried, some of the hard plastic has even melted. I stare at the devices for a moment and sigh. I am grasping at straws, but my only hope lies in getting both the devices fixed. And that would take a while, assuming that all the parts that need to be replaced are available at the lab.

Well, there's no time like the present. So I roll up my sleeves and pick up a screwdriver.

When I wake up, feeling thoroughly groggy, I notice that I have fallen asleep behind my desk, with my cheek on the keyboard of the destroyed computer.

"What time is it?" I wonder and look at my wristwatch, just to find that the date on the dial has shifted twice. This used to be a bad habit of mine; working for days on end without eating, drinking or sleeping. It had been a while, because Aurora used to temper this habit. A lump in my throat chokes me up as the realisation hits me that she really is gone.

It had become clear really quickly that there was no fixing either the measuring equipment or the computer, but I'd tried none the less. I had known that I had been grasping at straws, hoping to find a trace of my wife, but there hadn't been any.

I thought about continuing my search, but then remembered that it hadn't been the first time that I had passed out, and I am feeling thoroughly nauseous now. So that must mean that it is time to go home, eat something, sleep a little and perhaps have a shower. Aurora would kill me all over again if I managed to kill myself, before she manages to return.

So home I went.

At home, I grabbed a few pieces of fruit from the counter and drank a few glasses of water. I'd somehow hoped that having some food in me would help me feel less nauseous, but my failure still weighs too heavily on me.

I sigh and decide that I don't have the energy to shower.

I am about ready to drop myself onto the bed, only kicking off my shoes, not bothering to undress any further, when I noticed a football sized lump underneath the covers.

I stare at the lump stupidly for a long moment, but then pull the covers from it. When a light blue egg appears, I stare stupidly at it for a moment longer.

I reach out a finger and poke it, curious to see what will happen. A sense of relief washes over me as I realise that the little object isn't likely to jump up and attack me. But then I notice that it feels warm to the touch.

I lay my hand on it and feel a soft glowing warmth pulse inside it. Like a heartbeat.

And suddenly, I realise what it is! This is the surprise Aurora had been talking about! This is why she'd joked before the measurement that her energy levels would be lower than usual. She'd lain an egg!

My vision goes blurry and I realise a thick stream of tears is running down my cheeks.

"We're going to have a kid together," I choke out as I slowly crawl towards the egg on the bed and hug it closely to my chest. Big ugly sobs start rising from my chest, so badly that I can feel my whole upper body quake with them. I let myself cry.

I must have cried myself to sleep at some point.

I wake up to the gross feeling of my wet, tear stained, sleeve.

At least my head feels clear now.

Opening my eyes, the first thing I see is the egg that I am still holding firmly, in a warm embrace, clutched to my chest.

My kid!

I need to think about this for a moment.

Every cell in my body is screaming at me to keep on searching for Aurora, but I have no clue of what has happened to her, and I might not even be able to do anything even if I did have a clue.

My logical mind steers me towards the little one in my arms. I did have a clue as to what needed to be done with the egg. I would need to hatch it. I wasn't sure what kind of a parent I would be without my precious partner in crime, but I'd have to try my best to raise this little one right. Not in the oppressive manner my own father had raised me.

"Don't worry little one. I've got you," I mumble quietly to the egg, meaning every word of it.

It took me two years, many hours of body heat and an incubator which used shitloads of electricity to hatch the little one from the egg.