Back in the past, in the long and far ago, the angel was still furious.

"Oh for the love of all that is holy, why'd this have to happen again? Am I really that scary? It's just some limbs arranged differently from human beings. No wonder that Lovecraft chap told me he'd had such an easy time of it: if this is what happens when they see a man, three birds, and a lion intermixed, I can only imagine what a squid-man hybrid would do. But what am I to do now?" He ended his diatribe with a wail.

Hmm, yes, this is quite the conundrum we find ourselves in, agreed the ghost of the boy, looking down at his rapidly cooling corpse as he hovered beside the angel.

"You're telling me. Last time was my final warning: this time, I'll be lucky if I'm only demoted. The more likely outcome is that I'll be fired - literally."

He sighed glumly. "At least I can take solace in knowing that you'll be happy in heaven."

Ah, so I made it there, did I?

The angel drew a scroll out of a floating pocket and unfurled it. "At least according to this record, you did. To Be Admitted Into Heaven Following Purgatorial Cleansing For… wooh boy, you can do that with three tongues?"

The magician said nothing.

"I’ll be honest, I never even imagined it was possible - never you mind desirable - to lick pineapple pizza, chocolate ice cream, and ketchup potato chips simultaneously. In a way it’s vaguely impressive, but also a horrific crime against Transcendental Gastronomy. So, I'll be fired, and you'll be… firing it up in Heaven, I guess. Presumably with food that actually tastes good."

What is Heaven like? The magician asked, resigned to his tragic fate of going to Paradise forever and ever.

"The beer's nice."

Can you still learn there?

"Learn? Pfffft, no - when you have a question, the correct response just pops into your head."

The ghost froze. But what about the process of discovery? What about the joy of working, slowly, to uncover the truth - to ‘seek it with thimbles, seek it with care,’ drawing it forth from its nooks and crannies with promise of ‘smiles and soap’?

“All very nice, but purely incidental in the higher spheres, where the dross of phenomena fade away and all that remains are the Pure Intelligibles. In the numinous dark of the Ogdoad, who needs to hunt blindly, or cast nets like a fisherman?”

The ghost sank down to its knees, hands over its head, rocking back and forth. The angel put one of his three hundred hands on his shoulders. “There there, it’ll be alright.”

No… no learning? No thrill of realisation, no steady thrum of pleasure as you flip through pages until late in the night, or see something new while out on a walk?

“You’ll adjust in time. Trust me, knowing everything you want to as soon as you want to, has its perks.”

Is there no way to avoid going to Heaven? What about Hell, can I learn there?

“In Hell you can only learn using Slickipedia articles.”

Noooooo.

The two sat there in silence for a moment, thinking. The dead body spasmed once.

“There is another option,” the angel finally admitted, nervously, “one that saves you from having to go to Paradise, and can prevent me from being fired.”

Ohhh? Said the magician, immediately enthused.

“We can always sneak into the Heavenly Body Repository, and steal you a new body.”

Wouldn’t that mean another person wouldn’t get a body? The magician asked, but the angel’s wings flexed as it waved the concerns away.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Nah. We keep spares for… uh… Reasons.”

***

“Hey, hey, hand me that spare arm. I want to see if I can implant it into her back.”

“Alright, alright, but don’t forget to move the eyes just slightly off kilter. Oh, and you have the spare knee joint installed, right?”

“Of course I do. Added it when I removed the tongue.”

And then the light clicked on. The Angel of the Guf looked at the two angels on the floor, and the collection of random limbs and organs they were currently playing with, his disdain writ clear on his features. “Don’t tell me - you’ve been designing wilfully terrible bodies, again.”

He looked down at the Human Body Order Form that they were supposed to be filling out, then at the nearly finished human they had on a tray.

“And precisely how is this the body of a future all-star track and field runner and motivational speaker?”

The angels laughed nervously. “Hey, relax, we were just messing around. We’ll make the correct body now.”

One of the angels pushed a button hovering ethereally in midair. The body vanished, and the angel froze.

The Angel of the Guf’s eyes narrowed. “That was the Reset button, right? You didn’t accidentally hit the Send button directly underneath it, right?”

“Uhhhhhhhh…”

“Oh for the love of spaghetti.” The Angel of the Guf facepalmed all four of its heads simultaneously. “You know you’re going to have to make it up to the soul later.”

***

“Anyhoo, there’s a bunch of excess parts lying around,” Urtico said hurriedly. “So don’t worry about it.”

Well, if you say so, then that would be optimal. How do we get in, though? I imagine you can’t simply waltz through the door with the soul of the recently deceased.

The angel’s two rows of eyes winked.

***

This is a terrible idea.

“Shush. Purses don’t speak.” Urtico muttered under his breath, as he tiptoed his way down the Halls of Heaven towards the Heavenly Body Repository, purse floating obtrusively under a row of flaming eyes.

They can speak volumes silently, through their mere presence. Nobody will be fooled by this.

“Trust me. I got this.” And the angel would have said more, except at that exact moment she stepped into the hall. Urtico froze.

Huh? What is it? The magician whispered, for there was only a thin slit in the purse by which he could see the door to the Heavenly Body Repository, and a stylish wing blocking their path.

The angel started to reply, then stopped. It was her. Missy - the angel he’d been pining for, unnoticed (or so he thought) for millennia. There she stood, as beautiful as the day when first he’d seen her, fluttering her three thousand eyelashes and rubbing her eight hands nervously.

He realised he was staring (a fact made all the more obvious when you had four heads and an additional two rows of eyeballs) and abruptly started coughing to distract attention from his actions.

“How- how are you?”

“I’m g-good,” she returned. Strangely, she seemed as nervous as he. Awkward silence reigned in the hallway after this pronouncement. At last she took a deep breath. “I- I have a confession to make. Urtico, I’ve always-”

Then she noted the purse shifting, as the ghost of the magician uncomfortably adjusted himself inside it. “Wait, hold on just a moment, is that needlessly conspicuous purse moving?”

Urtico’s eyes flickered back and forth shiftily. “Maybe.”

The magician stayed deathly quiet, even though every bone in his noncorporeal body was screaming at him to start asking questions. Nonetheless, the eyes of the female angel narrowed.

“I’m all but certain I saw that purse moving. And why do you have a purse, anyways?”

Urtico deflated. He couldn’t lie to his lady love. Truth be told he couldn’t lie to anyone, but especially not to her. As the ghost sat squished in the purse awkwardly the angel told her the whole story. When he was done, she wiped several tears from her numerous eyes.

“Ohhh, that’s so sad. Poor dearies. You must have had such a hard time of things,” she observed, gazing sympathetically at the angel and his ghost, before continuing. “But there’s a better answer than body robbery.”

“There is?”

There is?

“Of course. The answer is- well, I can’t say it just yet.” And the female angel took a deep, juddering breath. Her eyes burned with determination as she steeled herself, prepared to achieve the purpose of her initial interruption. “To tell you the truth, Urtico, I have a confession to make. I’ve- I’ve always been attracted to you. W- will you go to dinner with me?”

She looked down, four faces burning. “At my place. I can give you the better answer there.”

Urtico’s heart leapt. His answer was to say - no, to cry, to scream with joy - “Yes, yes, yes.” But then he recalled his duty. He went to shake his heads, as he had no time for dinner (even with the love of his life), when he felt a ghostly hand tugging on his feathers.

Say yes, bro. Opportunities like this don’t come along every day, if at all.

Missy blushed harder, a blush that was joined by the angel Urtico. He looked at her, then brought his body down in a formal bow.

“It would be my honour, mademoiselle, to accept your offer.”