Heyyy!

So I know this is the end, but I don't want it to be. I want people to keep reading my blog and giving me feedback. Soon, as in hopefully in a few weeks, I'd like to start the second draft and I really would love feedback about what to change and what to keep the same. I also don't like the ending as it is now, so I'd really appreciate some feedback in that area especially. You don't need to be a writer yourself or anything in order to give me feedback, honestly! The average person's opinion is the best, since they are the audience. 
So please please please read away! You have no idea how much I would appreciate it!
Thanks so much,
Anja

THE END! (Chapter Four)

Pre-read note: So, I finished my novel. I thought I'd be more thrilled than I am, but I am not amazed with the ending. I think it ends too suddenly, with just to much stuff being randomly explained... but at least it wraps things up and explains things... I think.  

Yeah, basically I need a lot of feedback on this section.

BUT I'M DONE! And that's what's important! Now I can just go back and figure out all the parts that don't make sense and rewrite most, if not all of it. 

Chapter four, part two:

I came to this world much like Annika did – I woke up one day in a hospital room with a pair of white wings on my back. I didn’t remember things the way she did, though. To remember things in this world is typically a gift or privilege, and something that occurs very gradually.

My guider had been an elderly woman. She had shown me around the city, signed me up for the best school, essentially become a grandparent figure.

Then one day she turned around and told me that it was my turn, told me that all along my point in this world was to become a Guider myself. So I began my training, and they began to let me have my memories back. At first it’s a real shock: you go from thinking that the life you’ve been living is your only life to learning you had a whole different one in a different world. They go gentle on you, though, letting you remember only the happy things first. They deny you a lot, really, until you’re deemed “strong” enough to handle more details. Sometime between your third and fourth New Wings, and you think you finally have everything understood, then you start to remember the times your parents fought and the people you lost and the things that you did that you wish that you didn’t.

It was also the time I started to stop remembering. I gave up on my past, as all I seemed to remember was getting worse and worse. I gave up remembering my family, I gave up remembering Sofie, I gave up remembering myself. I told myself that this life was a chance to start over, a chance to forget the things I regretted in the life I had before. That’s why I lied to Annika – I figured I needed another story to replace the truth, so I wouldn’t have to remember, so I wouldn’t have trouble forgetting.

Annika, or rather, Sofie – the girl who broke my heart again and again. Sitting on the floor of the library, probably the same place where she’d been only the night before, I wiped a stray tear from my face.

I had failed again.

That’s what kept running through my head again and again.

I had gotten a second chance with the girl I loved, but instead of protecting her from this world, I’d asked her to become part of it. I’d watch her become someone I didn’t know, someone I never had known. Then, when she learned of what I did, she had run. Looking at the black and white photo in my hand, I couldn’t help wondering what she’d run from – me? Or this world? Both?

I tried to think of what I’d tell her if I had the chance to explain. Could I tell her why I’d turned to the other side all those years ago? Could I tell her why I hadn’t been there for her when she needed me now?

Why did I?

I felt the realization like a physical weight that pulled my whole body down – I had no reason. Sure, I’d been following orders. Sure, I’d been scared. Sure, I didn’t have much other choice each time. But, each time, I couldn’t help think that those were nothing but excuses and no real reason.

The tears felt warm against my cheeks. I’d forgotten what they felt like, not having cried since that night when I’d watched Sofie disappear into her house from the storm. The photo weighed my hand down and I struggled to lift it to see her face again. Salt water hit the delicate page. Oh, Sofie.

It didn’t take me long to get up off the floor, shaking the dead weight of pain off as much as I could. I left the rest of the folder on the ground, leaving the door to the library wide open as I started towards the third floor, where I’d left the meeting. By the time I’d stood in the elevator for much too long and found my way down the hall to the monotone voiced man’s office, the weight was gone and I had an urgency to my step. I didn’t knock, instead opening the door and sticking my head into the dark space.

“Sir?” I called, but no response. The room was lit by a single lamp on the desk, competing against dark mahogany walls and thick burgundy curtains, and losing badly. No one was around, the heavy, imposing furniture all sat empty. I glanced behind me into the empty hallways before ducking into the room and closing the door behind me. There was a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, but when I tried to open it I found it locked. However, on the desk under the lamp, there was a small stack of black folders and I saw the name “Annika McCalden” sitting on top.

I picked the folder up to find it much, much lighter than any other I’d seen. Opening it, there was only one white page. Across the top it had her name, then “missing.” Underneath listed places she’d been spotted. There were quite a few, and it spanned years. Today, in only a few hours, she’d been to her past, her present, and her past life in the 1940s. She’d last been seen in 1966, in the U.S., only a few hours ago.

I put the page down gently, tucking it where I’d found it, as I processed this...

I was out the door to the elevator in seconds. No one was in the hall and the doors opened for me in moments. I pushed the button for the highest floor, twenty-three, and the doors “bing”-ed close behind me. I had never actually been to the twenty-third floor, but I knew that the building was set up so that the people with the most power had larger offices on the higher floors, with the person in charge of the whole city occupying the whole twenty-third floor. I had never heard their name before, and I didn’t even know if it was a man or woman, but I knew that I needed to talk to someone at the very top. The people here knew where Annika was, but they were doing nothing, and had declared her as “missing,” although obviously they were tracking her. I needed to know what I was going on, I needed to be on the twenty-third floor.

“Ding.”

The doors opened and I stepped out into a bright light.

As I the elevator doors shut behind me, I realized I had to be in the wrong place. Instead of walking into a receptionist area or some hallways, I’d walked out into the middle of a construction site. There were no completed walls in on the whole floor, and instead the whole space was supported by large beams. Absolutely everything was a neon white, from the floor to the ceiling. Bright lights ran the entire length of the floor and were turned on, despite the fact there wasn’t a person in sight. Floor to ceiling windows displayed the clouding-over sky of Soleres along the three outer walls I could see. Between me and the sky was a good fifty feet of space, occupied only by the large beams and the occasional bucket and broom by a few dusty, unfinished tiles.

I went to turn around to hit the button to go back downstairs when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.

“Hello?” I called, frozen. “Is anyone there?”

There was no response, but a white wing flickered behind one of the large posts.

“Hello?” I said again as I slowly started towards the beam, “Is someone there?”

Silence hung in the air, but two white wings immerged from behind the beam, one on either side, low to the ground, as though the person behind them was sitting.

As I started towards the beam, the wings started to shiver, then disappeared.

“Hello?” I said again, but all I could hear in response was the crackling of a broken tile beneath my feet.

I approached the beam slowly, repeating my hello again and again, until I came around in front of it, and there she was. She looked up at me and smiled like it was any other day and we were meeting for lunch or coffee. Her blonde hair was loose around her shoulders and her bangs fell into the corner of her blue eyes. She sat with her knees up and her back against the beam, her wings tucked behind her, looking out the window at the gray sky. Moving to the side, she seemed to make space for me beside her, and I slowly sat down. Her arm felt warm and alive beside mine, but I watched her still feeling like at any moment she would disappear, only a mirage of my imagination.

Her eyes scanned the horizon as she said, “Fancy meeting you here.”

I tried to find my voice to respond but it had left long ago.

“It’s ok,” she said, turning to me and smiling again. “It’s me, Annika, or Sofie, whichever you prefer.”

“How do you...?” I couldn’t finish my thought but she jumped in anyways, saying, “I found out when I read those files. Once I saw her picture, I felt like I was looking into a mirror. At first I thought I was your sister in my past life, then I read the story about you and her. Then I started to remember being her... It was an odd feeling. In a lot of ways, it still feels like a story to me, just a story that I know really well.”

I finally worded some of the questions running through my mind: “How come you’re here? How did you get here?”

“I’m still not sure. After I jumped from this building, I found myself flying through a different era. I went back to the 40s and watched some of Sofie’s life as a ghost. I learned my wings were more than decorative and soon discovered I could think about where I wanted to go and ... I don’t know, just end up there. So of course I went back to my home town, where I’d grown up as Annika, to the place I still consider home. I saw my sisters and my mom, watched them for awhile. Time doesn’t seem to stay linear when I’m crossing between worlds the way it does when I stay in one. I don’t know how long I stayed there, watching and thinking. I realized a lot, realized things I’d done right and the things I’d done wrong, then learned to forgive myself.”

“Do you – Can you,” I stumbled, then managed to whisper the end, “forgive me?”

“Truthfully, I spent a lot of time thinking about you,” she answered, looking at the clouds. “There was this whole you that I’d just learned about and I was just starting to remember, the you that was in love with Sofie. I don’t understand all of it still, but I think I’m starting to understand why you did the things you did, and I don’t think the question is or ever was if I forgive you, Jake.”

She placed her hand on my knee, pausing to look me in the eye, before saying, “The question is: do you forgive yourself?”

As soon as she said it, I knew it was true. I had never been really looking for anyone’s approval but my own. The problem was that I still didn’t have an answer for myself.

Annika watched me, waiting for the answer, and when I didn’t give her one, she moved her hand from my knee to my hand. I looked down at our fingers intertwined and when I looked back up, she searched my eyes for my yes or no. Silence hung heavy, in this sticky way that made it hard to breath, and she slipped her head onto my shoulder.

Slowly I whispered, “Yeah... I think I do.”

“Go on,” she said, her hair still cascading down the left side of my chest, and I looked for the words to tell her that that was why. It wasn’t because of something I’d done better, it wasn’t because I’d completely changed, it was because I’d come to realize what I’d done and so had she, and if she could still love me, then the least I could do would be to forgive myself.

“I think...” The words came slowly, “I think I can forgive myself because I know that if I had another chance, at any of it, I know what I would want to do differently. And even though it still feels like I lost my second chance as soon as you left this world, I am still here, fighting for you. I came up to this floor looking to get information and then to find you. I knew that I couldn’t let you get away from me anymore. But, instead, here you are.”

I felt her nod her head, then she whispered, “Here I am.”

I let my head rest on top of hers and watched the sun struggling to shine through the gray.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“Heaven,” she answered.

“Isn’t this...?” I asked, slowly, but I couldn’t let myself call this place Heaven.

“No, it’s just another in-between world. They found me, you know, not too long ago. There were a couple of men with white wings and black suits that showed up when I was wandering through my past life as Annika. They explained quite a bit, about how there’s many in-between worlds, and you’re sent to one to try and teach you a lesson, to come to terms with yourself. Once you do that, you’re free. You can go where you want. There is more than one version of Heaven, and this isn’t one of them.”

“So, we’re free?”

“As soon as you said you forgave yourself, you lifted your own chains.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care, as long as I am with you.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

And with that, we sat on the twenty-third floor of the building that I’d worked in for years, but this time there was a lightness in me and an ache in my wings. The weight that I’d carried with me for so long was lifted and I knew that, wherever I ended up, I would be happy, because not only had I found myself, I’d found the girl I loved.

The end.

Update

This is a random update to say: HOLY CRAP I'M ALMOST DONE WRITING A WHOLE NOVEL and HOLY CRAP WHY HAVEN'T I FINISHED IT ALREADY?! 

I have only half a section more to write, if I don't put an epilogue in or if I use the epilogue I wrote for it last year. We'll see. But seriously, I am so close! I promise the ending will come soon! 

Thanks to everyone who's even just read a chapter or two! It means the world to me!

Anja <3

Chapter Three (post two)

Pre-read note: This is literally just written (which is why it's being posted at 2am) so please forgive any non-flowing parts or any spelling errors or typos. Thank you. 

Chapter three, section two, part two: 

That wasn’t the last time I saw her. It would be the second last time, but I would count it as the last time, since the very last time was not something I would want to remember. The very last time was something that I’d bury deep in my mind and hope to forget, but we all know you never actually forget what you want to forget.

It was during the freezing winter of 1945, when I was dressed in warm German wool while I watched the people I used to know slowly starve. Used to know – that’s how I always thought of them as soon as I wore the swastika on my arm, that’s what happens when you turn to the other side – the people you would have died for become the people you used to know. They literally, slowly yet surely, became people I used to know as the Germans starved the Netherlands. The elderly and the young slowly were the first to be killed off in, I would learn later, surprising numbers. The numbers grew as the winter went on – but as a soldier, you’re not told the numbers, you’re never told the numbers.

 My family was well-off. My father had worked for the government, before he’d been part of the German resistance movement which led him to his death. I assumed, as I lived in my military barrack-style accommodations, that they would be ok. They’d have enough to get by. I tried not to think of Sofie, though, with her three younger brothers, a father off at war and a working mother trying to put food on the kitchen table.

Then, one day, I ran into her. She was bundled in wool stockings and coat, with her hair all pinned back instead of its usual loose waves, and wore a tight lipped smile that I knew wasn’t genuine. Lugging what seemed to be basket filled with some sort of purchases, she was trekking through the heavy snow fall through the downtown area. It was growing dark and, since the city was starving and freezing, no one was out. No one, that is, but us in green wool, and Sofie.

I don’t know what she was doing out. I don’t know why her mother didn’t send one of her brothers with her, at least. I don’t know why the soldiers thought they had the right to cause trouble, but they did. Three of them started walking behind her, whistling and joking loudly. They weren’t guys I knew, although they would probably have been staying in the same barracks as me. Their noises got louder and more cocky as we approached from the other side of the street. The visibility was poor, so at first I didn’t realize it was her. I didn’t agree with what they were doing in the first place, and I could tell the other two soldiers I was with didn’t either. The one on my right was watching the group with a sort of death glare that I only wished would work. I don’t remember his name, but he’d been another street kid that they’d picked up and put the badge on. We started walking towards them, crossing the street, and at first I followed the other two, but then I noticed that oval face and those blue eyes, and I stopped dead.

Luckily the two guys I was with didn’t notice, and just kept walking. I saw Sofie look up at the two buff soldiers coming towards her, cornering her, and I saw her eyes grow huge and her breath suck in. The three soldiers behind her were laughing and calling still, gaining on her heels, and I saw her looking for a way out, a way to escape, but there was a brick wall to her right and the other two soldiers approaching her from the left. She was trapped.

I wanted to call out to her. Once she knew it was me, trailing behind but there, I knew she would have felt better. Even if she’d thought we would have to take on five full grown men, it’s always better to have a friend. But, as she looked around with big blue eyes, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t come to her rescue, I didn’t even say a word. I watched as she finally stopped dead her tracks, clutching the basket to her side. I watched as she looked between the loud, laughing group behind her and the two quiet soldiers marching towards her from the left. I saw her almost cry out at them, but she seemed lost for words. Then one of the soldiers I’d been with, the one who’d also been a run-away, called out not to her, but to the guys behind her. For a second she was caught in the middle, with the three soldiers growing defensive and my guys not giving in, but quickly the three who’d been harassing Sofie realized there was no point in arguing, that they weren’t going to get to this girl. They threw some more insults into the cold winter air but then turned around, and walked away.

I stood, stupidly, in the middle of the street as all this happened. I watched the three soldiers trek down the road as the other two, my two, asked Sofie if she was ok. She stumbled over her words as she responded yes. I stayed far enough away so she wouldn’t be able to see my face. She thanked the soldiers and glanced at me, the chicken, before continuing her trek through the snow.

I regretted it instantly. I felt the guilt rise from my stomach through my spine, into my head. I knew I’d done the wrong thing. Even if I was dressed in the enemy’s costume, I loved her, and I’d neglected her. I’d abandoned her when as soon as things had gotten rough for me, and then I hadn’t even come through when she’d needed me for something as small as standing up for her. And for what? Because I was ashamed of who I’d become, because I was ashamed that I was on the wrong side. But, standing there, watching her start down the street, I know that I wasn’t ashamed in that moment to be wearing a green wool coat with a red symbol on the arm – I was ashamed of the very person I was, the kind of person who abandons the ones they love the most.

I followed her home. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s true. The other run-away and the other soldier continued down the street, but I told them I’d meet up with them later, then I followed Sofie as she walked. I kept a good distance between us, and the heavy snow helped keep me out of sight, and although I knew I was doing nothing really, I needed to know that she got home safe. I needed to know that I wasn’t completely useless. I needed to know that she was still alive, breathing, ok.

I watched her open the door to her cottage-style home and be engulfed into the light and the warmth. I imagined her brothers raiding the basket she carried and her mother asking her how the walk was, and Sofie complaining only of the cold. I watched as the girl I loved stepped into her house, taking the last piece of my heart with her.