It wasn't everyday a hole ripped itself through the fabric of heaven, and it wasn't everyday someone fell through it. 

 

Ochsa managed to achieve both in the span of one day. 

 

Unfortunately, she was too busy screaming to appreciate the rarity of her current predicament. The wind rushed past her, terrifying and exhilarating, drowned out by her own screech. Abruptly, she jerked to a stop, feeling no pain except in her throat. 

 

As she shook her head, dazed, a startled voice reached her ringing ears. 

 

"Oh my! Are you alright?" 

 

Ochsa glanced up. She had landed on some kind of green carpet – did the mortals call it grass? – and found herself staring into a pair of concerned eyes, brown and drab.

 

Ochsa stood and squinted upward, brows furrowed. Eternal damnation, the hole had closed. Not that she could have sprouted her wings and flown up there anyway, she thought forlornly. Once out of the celestial realm, her powers were locked. 

 

"Do you want to get a check-up? You seem fine, but there could be internal injuries." The woman spoke to her again, a girl clinging to her leg with curiosity in her shadowed eyes. 

 

Ochsa tilted her head. "Check-up?" 

 

The woman smiled kindly. "Yes. Oh, perhaps you did not realize? We're at Barchen Hospital now." 

 

Hospital. Ochsa knew that word from her Mortal Studies class. It was the place where humans, frail and fragile, went when they were unwell. 

 

"Are you sick?" Ochsa asked. "Is that why you're here?" 

 

The woman's smile faltered. It was the young girl who answered on her behalf. 

 

"No, Mom's fine. She's here because of me." 

 

"So you're sick?" 

 

The girl shrugged. She had stopped clutching her mother's leg. "Yeah." 

 

"Elle! Don't say things like that. You'll get better." Her mother's tone was fierce, almost admonishing.

 

"But it's true that I'm sick now." Her logic seemed to render her mother speechless. "Anyway, Mom, I'm tired. I want to go back." 

 

"Alright, then let's –" 

 

"I want her to come with us." Elle pointed at Ochsa. "She's fun to talk to." 

 

Her mother hesitated. "I'm sure she must be busy." 

 

Elle turned to Ochsa. "Are you busy?" 

 

Ochsa thought it over. She needed to find a way back to the celestial realm before she permanently lost her divinity, but she had until the next full moon to do so. What was one or two days of self-indulgence?

 

"No," she said at last. 

 

That was how she ended up in Elle's ward, alone with the girl while Esther – her mother – went to buy coffee. Ochsa found herself feeling mildly offended at the parting doubtful look the woman sent her, an unfamiliar sensation that was as fascinating as it was annoying. 

 

She was still mulling over that prickly feeling when Elle broke the silence. 

 

"Why were you falling from the sky?" 

 

"I dropped into a hole," Ochsa said honestly. 

 

Elle snorted. "A hole in what? The clouds?" 

 

Ochsa didn't reply. It didn't matter if Elle believed her or not. The faith of humans was a burden her kind refused to seek. The last time they were worshiped by them, entire wars were waged over the debate of their existence. Her people didn't saddle themselves with guilt, but it came nonetheless as most unwelcome things do. 

 

"This is boring," Elle complained. "Ask me some questions."

 

One popped into Ochsa's mind immediately. "How ill are you?" 

 

Elle's face turned sour. "According to Mom I'm fit as a fiddle, but she cries every night when she thinks I'm asleep." At Ochsa's blank look, she sighed and said, "You're really dense. I'm dying, okay?" 

 

It didn't sound ‘okay' at all to Ochsa because Elle said it with both her voice and eyes trembling, but she nodded. 

 

"Okay." 

 

Elle fidgeted. "Ask me another question." 

 

"Is dying scary?" 

 

Elle blinked. "You're not supposed to ask me that. At least, no one ever did." 

 

"Oh." 

 

"But I wish they would. It's silly, you know, as if pretending I'm fine would magically make me better?" 

 

Ochsa did not know, but she nodded again anyway. 

 

Elle wriggled her fingers, taking her time to answer. When she did her tone was contemplative, a wisdom far beyond her years creeping into those muted eyes. Ochsa wondered if the prospect of death hastened her mental maturity. 

 

"I'm afraid, but fear won't keep me alive. We all die one day. It makes me more sad than scared that my end will come sooner than others, but..." Elle peered up from her fingers into Ochsa's gaze. "I'm still glad to be alive. For now, I guess." 

 

"Oh," Ochsa repeated, if only to fill the silence. 

 

Elle frowned at her. "You're not very sympathetic." 

 

Ochsa racked her brain. She had practiced dozens of human dialogues at the academy. What would be an appropriate response? 

 

"I'm sorry?" It came out like a question. 

 

Elle just clicked her tongue. 

 

Clacking footsteps approached from the outside. Esther must be returning. 

 

"Will you come visit me again?" Elle asked, a note of uncertainty in her voice. 

 

One heartbeat passed.

 

"Yes." 

 

Ochsa visited Elle everyday. 

 

She probably should have spent that time looking for a way to return to the celestial realm, but procrastination had always been her strongest forte. She dropped by the hospital so often that even Esther began to thaw toward her, revealing the warmth that had first greeted Ochsa when she fell onto Earth. 

 

When Ochsa wasn't in the hospital being lectured by Elle, she would wander the streets, observing the mundane trivialities of everyday life, from buskers singing their hearts out to the homeless who lay sprawled across the ground. It was the latter she studied the most – how strange it was to see those bleak eyes briefly brightened as a passer-by tossed a few bills at them. 

 

Humans were infinitely fickle, lacking the unchanging nature of her kind. 

 

On the day of the full moon, Ochsa walked into the ward in time to see Elle throwing up blood. The nurses and Esther were there while she hovered in the doorway awkwardly. Their expressions were dark enough to make her whole body go cold, a lump forming in her throat. 

 

Without knowing why, she wanted to leave, but Elle looked up and smiled at her, crimson lining her teeth, and the urge to flee left. 

 

Later, Elle asked, almost like an afterthought, "How old are you?" 

 

Ochsa paused in the middle of recounting her latest observations. Her kind did not age, so they did not die.

 

"Older than you," she settled. 

 

"Obviously." Then in a quiet tone, she said, "I've never had an older sister before."

 

Ochsa was inclined to echo the same, but somehow she thought that wouldn't be the response Elle was waiting for, so she remained silent. 

 

"Will you stay until the end?" 

 

And as Elle asked that question Ochsa already knew her answer. It was one that she had subconsciously realized from the moment she had chosen to step into the hole that would take her away from her unchanging world into the unknown that haunted her all her life. 

 

She would lose the glorious immortality that defined her kind, she would age and she would die – but she would also live. 

 

Dying did not terrify her more than living excited her. She saw it reflected in Elle's eyes, so endlessly full of hope and joy. 

 

"I will stay even after the end." 

That night, the moon rose as it always did, round and bright, looking so much like the hole Ochsa had thrown herself down. The world had not changed. 

But she had.