Fanyasha: Why Do Angels Need People?

“Would you believe it, a room like mine,” thought Fanyasha, “with a tiny round window. A little girl like me probably lives there.”

“Only there are only two rooms in her house. That means she lives only with her mother or only with her father, or with her annoying brother. And she doesn’t have a grandmother, and no one kisses the poor baby, no one hugs her, no one praises her and no one tells her stories,” she thought with sadness, sighed deeply and slid down.

In comparison to the life of that unlucky girl, her own life didn’t seem so terrible all of a sudden. She smiled, flapped her wings and whirled in a dance around the room, jumping from the armchair to the bed, from the bed to the dresser.

“How pretty and blessed you are! How this yellow lacy dress suits you! What beautiful eyes! And eyelashes! And braids! And lips! And wings! Lovely!” Fanyasha cooed to her reflection in the mirror, trying to mimic her grandmother’s gentle voice.

From then on, when Fanyasha became sad or bored, she climbed on the windowsill, absorbedly studied the houses of other angels and imagined what their residents were doing.

“Efania, are you up?” asked father one morning, peeking into his daughter’s room.

For some time he was scanning the room wonderingly in search of Fanyasha. To his surprise, the little one was sitting on the windowsill, almost below the door.

“How much you’ve grown! You climbed so high! Aren’t you scared?”

“Not one bit!” Fanyasha replied proudly, sticking her nose up in the air and gracefully tossed her braids behind.

“Since you are so brave, it’s time to show you the house,” with these words her father flew up to his daughter and stretched out his beautiful strong arm.

It’s hard to describe the happiness and glee that filled Fanyasha. Anticipating the long awaited exit out of the room, she was ready to scream as hard as she could, squeal, laugh and cry simultaneously, but decided not to waste time on emotions, and hurriedly jumped off the windowsill and dashed for the door, leaning on her father’s arm.

“What amazing self-restraint and motivation. Bravo, my dear, you take after me,” thought the father and smiled.

“Look, Efania, over there, higher, there is mother’s room right above yours, and across is mine,” told father, and helped his daughter fly up through the wide sun-filled corridor with beautiful oval windows. The higher they rose, the harder it was to fly. Fanyasha felt how tired her wings were. The father caringly took her in his arms.

“And over there, even higher, look, is the room of grandma Nokomis,” he pointed up at the beautiful green door located above the door to mother’s room.

“And what’s over there, even higher? At the very top?” Fanyasha asked with interest when the father started descending. She peered intently up the corridor but could not make out anything except for the movements of the clouds and blurred and scattered purple light somewhere extremely high.

“It’s too early for you to know about this, Efania. Here, let’s look in here and see what your brother is doing.”

They opened the door of the room that was positioned underneath the room of the father. There were notebooks and books of all colors and sizes lying all over the place. Below, next to a large square window, Bosya was sitting at a table and was scrupulously writing something into a white notebook. In front of him lay a large book with a golden cover opened almost at the very beginning, in which magically the words drew themselves carefully and the pages turned themselves. “I wonder what this self-writing book is,” thought Fanyasha.

“Borisey, dear!” called the father, “Take a short break, we are waiting for you in the living room. Fanyasha turns six today, we’ll be congratulating her.”

“But dad, I have exams soon, I don’t have time for celebrating. If I don’t pass the first time, I will have to repeat a year in the Middle School and I really can’t wait to move on to High School,” mumbled Bosya, but did not dare contradict his father. He closed his notebook, then the book, and flew towards the door.

The life of little angels entails staying in a constant state of happiness and love, that’s why for them birthdays are not that important. As for Bosya, he didn’t understand why birthdays were needed. Instead of having fun, he preferred to lock himself in his room and flip through a book or at least to ponder something. Fanyasha, on the other hand, really loved celebrations, gifts and congratulations.

And how wonderful that it was her birthday. That is why father came in the morning and decided to show her the house. What a gift!

“What a wonderful day!” she thought, examining the photos on the walls while descending into the living room down the corridor.

Mother and grandmother were already waiting for them there. Upon seeing the birthday girl, they started clapping and talking over each other, congratulating Fanyasha and kissing her.

“My sweet girl, we have a present for you! Open it!” said the mother tenderly and brought Fanyasha a large caramel-colored box.

“Wow!” shrieked Fanyasha and started laughing when a flock of colorful butterflies flew out of the box and whirled around in circles through the living room. The wings of the butterflies gleamed in the sun and reflected sunrays, and it seemed that the whole room filled with colorful flying twinkles.

Seeing the delight on her granddaughter’s face, the grandmother folded her hands on her chest and also started to laugh. The mother hugged the father, put her head on his shoulder and they both looked at their daughter with enchantment. Even Bosya smiled and preceded to jump and catch butterflies together with his sister, but they briskly dodged their hands and were constantly landing on Bosya’s and Fanyasha’s shoulders, noses or heads, which amused the whole family even more.

“How I wish for her to be a child for a little longer,” said the mother softly. “Childhood is so amazing. Maybe we let her out of the room too early. She is only six. We wanted to wait until she starts school and shield her against the world. There is so much around us that could interfere with her carefree happiness.”

“Not too early at all,” muttered the father. “You should have seen where I found her today! On the windowsill! Yes, imagine that.”

The mother raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“So that means that in the near future she could fly out of the room herself,” said the father very seriously. “Efania is curious and willful; we cannot keep her locked up anymore. It’s time for her to learn more about this world. And by the way, we should remove our photos with the people from the corridor. They hang pretty high, of course, but it’s better to be on the safe side.”

“How fast she is growing,” sighed the mother. “Dear, let’s not let her out till she starts school. I don’t want her to find out about people for as long as possible. Let her live for herself a little bit more.”

Towards the evening, the butterflies calmed down and sat all over the furniture and walls, turning the living into a beautiful colorful garden.

The father, mother, grandmother, Bosya and Fanyasha settled into the large puffy couch and played the cloud game, guessing the color and size of the next cloud that passed by the window. To everyone’s surprise, grandmother was leading by a large margin, as if she herself sent the clouds of the right color and shape.

Later, the whole family discussed how they should make a new couch and how to better enlarge the living room: to widen it on the side of the front door, or by enlarging the windows across the room. That‘s how it was usually done when a child grew up in an angel family – luckily, houses made out of clouds could easily be enlarged and remodeled in any way you please.

“And now it’s time to thank our beautiful butterflies, say good-bye to them, and let them go,” said the grandmother all of a sudden, and started flying towards the window. “We will open the windows and ask the wind to take care of them.”

“But… why? Why do we need to say good-bye? What happened?” Fanyasha was about to burst into tears. “I thought they would sleep, and tomorrow they would fly again, and we’ll play together again. Why? Why do we need to let them go?”

“Efania, dear, please understand, these butterflies won’t fly anymore. The lived a wonderful day and their time has come,” the father explained in a calm voice. “Everything in this world has its time, everything eventually ends, and we need to accept this with gratitude.”

Fanyasha pressed against her mother, trying to hold back tears but they streamed down her cheeks nonetheless.

This was the first time in her life she found out that everything ends, that we need to be able to bid farewell and let go. It was unbearably painful and sad, but at the same time she felt a quiet joy that she was maturing, and that she was finally trusted with secrets of this extraordinary, mysterious world of adults.

Grandmother flung the windows open, whispered something under her nose, stretched her right hand forward, spread her long fingers and traced three circles in the air. At that time, the room filled with a strong cold wind. The curtains flew up and twisted; the wind lifted and whirled thousands of small colorful butterflies, and then led them outside one after another.

Chapter 5:

A Person will be Born Specially for You

From the moment Fanyasha saw the house, she became more joyful and free in her movements. Now she did not need to spend all of her time in her room, she could easily go out into the corridor and then slide down into the living room.

The world became wider for her and gleamed with new colors. How much she enjoyed helping her mother decorate the renovated living room with new lace curtains and colorful throw pillows. How fun it was to watch Bosya and her father puffing and groaning while widening the corridor, which they did by putting their feet against each other and pushing the walls apart with their bodies. Sometimes her parents were delayed at work, and Fanyasha would fall asleep in her father’s large armchair listening to the magical tales of her grandmother.

Fanyasha also loved to stop half way down to the living room and look at the family photos on the walls, while holding onto the bookshelves.

There was her grandmother in her youth with long loose curly hair and a charming smile holding Fanyasha’s mother in her arms. And there was a photo of her father, taken in flight, against the background of their house, looking so slender, handsome and, as always, serious. On one picture, Fanyasha saw little Bosya on the lap of a tall silver haired man in a blue coat with big brown eyes. So this is what grandfather looked like. She wondered when he was going to return. Fanyasha really wanted him to finally see his good and talented granddaughter grow up. Next to that was an incredibly beautiful shot – the scarlet red sky during sunset, with her mother and father sitting on a cloud hugging each other and looking into the distance.

And here was Fanyasha, so small, wrapped in a golden cloth in the arms of her mother, her father next to her, and Bosya peeking behind his father’s back. And next was the picture of happy grandmother in a wide green dress, holding her hands up and catching a laughing Fanyasha. And next to that she was constructing a new pillow out of clouds in her room.

“Wow!” whispered Fanyasha with a glad smile. “I even have my own baby pictures!”

It was funny that Fanyasha decided to consider herself an adult after her sixth birthday, and the experience with the butterflies.

“I wonder who took all those pictures.” She tried to remember if she saw anybody at the time the photographs were taken, but could not.