He snickers. His face immediately turns stony again after, tense, but he snickers.

"Oh, we don't need to get married, darling." She snuggles up close to it, ignoring the warning imagery of moths flitting around a lamp in her head.

The angel looks quizzically at her, before swooping her up into its arms, one wrapped around her knees and the other cradling her back.

It's warm. Not like the heat, cumulative, but an adjacent sensation overlaying temperature. An angel's presence.

28:3 "Of course, my ward. And we shouldn't dally."

...It is genuinely unclear which sense of the word that's meant in. Possibly both. The angel flaps its wings, at once moving several feet into the air, spreading a light wind, disproportionately far-reaching and soft at the same time, glancing towards the Scholar, who nods.

They soar inexplicably into the air. Faster and faster, the air starting to shimmer around them; the wind picks up until it's painful, until, suddenly, it's replaced by a slight breeze, absorbed into the shimmer. It's hard to make anything out, but it seems like they've just passed the clouds. The angel's posture changes, and it seems like they're now moving horizontally. 

She's never flown like this before. The angel's flight makes no physical sense, impossibly deft and making fine adjustments and maneuvering that seem a lot more closely tied to it's intent than actual aerodynamics. She draws in a breath. She feels filled with a childlike wonder, with no fear at all of falling. It's the best thing that's ever happened to her.

The angel is content to stay quiet for a while, focusing on the flight, expression tranquil.

Leave the neophyte to be merry, at least for the twilight of her pagan life. Before the works begin.

30:3 "I never was given your name, my ward. Do you intend to adopt a new one after conversion?"

"I've always liked the name Nova - wait, conversion?"

The angel gently furrows its brow at the lady in its arms, before smiling pleasantly and nodding.

Of course they left informing the pagan to me. It's only fair.

32:3 "My ward, unless I'm gravely mistaken, you have not yet been inducted into the Holy Church of Operations. I am glad to bestow upon you the good word if you have any questions; suffice it to say that your induction and spiritual renewal awaits once you complete the initial stage of your Orientation, that you may fight for the Light of God. It is not as straightforward as the baptism, but you have nothing to fear."

"I thought this was for the United States Military, not some kind of rebirth into spiritual enlightenment!"

The angel simply smiles.

I suppose evangelism is my calling.

34:3 "It is both, my ward. The Church works under the guiding hand of the Lord's Department of Defense, the Light's instrument in quelling the darkness. You will be agent and acolyte, hand and heart of the operational unit of the true vine, under the direction of our superior officers."

"And so that it may be on the earth as in heaven, you shall follow hierarchical precedence as you follow my laws. And you shall follow your superior officer as you follow me, and the Ruler in the North of America as you shall follow he who sent me..." (Operations 1:3-4)

She squints. "What's with the numbers? I've never heard of 'Operations' in scripture."

The angel nods sagely.

Pagan.

36:3 "A new piece of revealed scripture has come to our knowledge, my ward; one that must be kept with the utmost secrecy until such a time as the darkness has been repelled. The great scholars of the Department of Defense have found it."

She's dumbfounded. "And you believe them why? Don't you have your own connection to God to check?"

The angel quirks an eyebrow at that, as a mother amused by a child might, understanding.

It's nothing it hasn't seen before, but it never ceases to boggle the mind how mortals seem inclined to opine on matters of angelology. 

38:3 "The mouth of Metatron has been closed for untold centuries, my ward. What I hold that is of the Lord's is an aspect of the Light, that I may channel His form always and forever. His absolute knowledge belongs only to Him, and His voice, should He wish to use it, is invested in the mediator. The divine plan, the path of the Light, has been determined, and is now ours to travel. The Scripture holds the emanation of the Light, and so it is the Scripture. Forever and always, the lens of the Lord..."

The angel goes on like that for a minute or two, flowing smoothly into orthodox jargon. Faint runes glow on its throat and revealed wrist, a deep red. Its expression wavers, and its tone declines from the motherly into the rote, the hollow. It closes its eyes, and slowly, the runes fade. It smiles again, slowly.

38:4 "There's so much waiting for you, my ward. A greater calling than almost any other."

She barely hears its words, focusing instead on where the runes lay shiny against its skin. She reaches out towards them, as if in a trance.

They're hot, in an additional sensory modality to an angel's warmth. Red-hot, but not painful. The air around them smells faintly of ash.

The angel just smiles down at its ward, uncomprehending but patient. 

"What are they?"

A tilt of the head.

The runes disappear into the angel's bronze skin, and the warmth dissipates.

42:3 "What do you mean, my ward? Ah, do you see my marks? They are what binds me to this realm and to the Church, that I may carry on my duty without losing my presence to the heavens. I may well benefit from requesting maintenance from a scholar, if they seem to be revealing themselves..."

She frowns. "I thought that you said your duty was to the heavens?"

It nods.

The runes flare slightly. Their heat feels opposite to the angel's light, wrapping around in a strange, tense sensory knot. The angel's arms tighten.

4̴4̷:̶4̴ "The Son of Man shall reach for the heavens and wrest the light down unto the earth. You will understand soon."

She shudders a bit, despite herself. She's not sure she wants to understand.

The angel is quiet. The runes lightly hiss and fade, until there's no noise but the gentle wind. 

What little blurry scenery can be seen through the cloud cover the angel seems to stick to suggests they're moving very, very fast; interstate, for sure, in the hour or two the trip takes. They start to slow down, and, strangely, the wind picks up a bit, held back just enough not to hurt the eyes. The angel hugs the clouds closer, and reaches for the radio on its chest, taking a curved path.

46:3 "Charlie Three, Alpha Mobility requests entry into restricted airspace. Transport code Sierra Uniform November, standing by for arrival team."

The response only takes a few seconds; there's no confirmation or reading back, permission is simply granted and the controller on the other end says something hard to make out about the arrival team. The angel smiles.

46:5 "Now, my ward, you will be received by a gathering of monks and their warriors. This is a place of many rules and their strictest enforcement, but no harm can befall you, should you simply follow the directions of your handler. It may be a strange place, but you must take it in stride. Am I understood?"

She straightens up. This she can do. "Yes ... Sir?" She ends hesitantly. Do angels even have gender?

Whether they do or don't, the angel doesn't see the honorific fit to comment on, smiling pleasantly back at its charge and nodding in acknowledgement.

The angel spreads its wings as wide as they go, and they descend unto the earth, breaking cloud cover, and with it whatever the barrier that stood between them and the atmosphere. Even this controlled descent is a bit eye-watering, but it's not hard to make out that they're going down to some kind of facility flanked by hills, bathed in floodlights. Blocky concrete buildings painted in white, vertical architecture extending up the sides of the hills, landing pads held up by metal supports. At the center of it all, within a slight depression at the center of the facility, an old stone church, surrounded by glowing forms. ...And they're coming down fairly quickly onto one of those pads...

48:3 "Welcome. And I apologize."

The angel gently tosses Electra into the air just before they meet the ground, slowing her down, and slams down into the steel. It catches her with raised arms, and, within a fraction of a second, lowers her down into the ground. A group of soldiers in black fatigues immediately grab her arms and hold her up, firm. One of them holds a clipboard, a few feet away, and another beside him a bag full of ziploc bags.

"Search and seize," one of them yells. It's hard to focus.

She struggles against his grip. "You don't need to do that, I'm willing to cooperate!" She slips out of the bulky coat anyways, ducking and trying to quickstep back out of reach. It's hard to take evasive maneuvers when she's still shaken from their landing.

Electra might see the angel floating away, smiling sadly, job done. More likely she mostly notices the two soldiers who grab at her legs and hold her up.

"Standard procedure. Don't move," says the man with the clipboard. "If we can't get this done quickly we'll have to make time by making a change of clothes."