Ally woke to Paradise. She sat up in bed, yawned, then stretched. “What?” Where am I? “Oh, yeah.” She shook her head awake. “I got married to an angel yesterday, and now I live in Paradise.” Was it a dream?
“Snokkkkkkkkkchoooooo.”
Alley jumped out of bed at the sound. She observed Joel sleeping in his bed. “Nope, wasn’t a dream.”
She quietly left the room. When she entered the kitchen, smells of bacon, eggs, and coffee greeted her. Her stomach grumbled from hunger.
Kaylee turned to see Ally walking in, rubbing her eyes. “Good morning.”
Alley sat at the table. “Good morning.” Ally received the cup of hot coffee from Kaylee. “Ummm, just what the doctor ordered.”
Kaylee put a plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast before Ally. After thanking Kaylee, Ally asked, “Do you eat? Or are you more like Joel, not needing food?”
Kaylee sat at the table with her own cup of coffee. “When you get a glorified body, it doesn’t require the same nutrition that your old body does. That said, most new arrivals eat from habit more than anything. Some enjoy it, so they eat without worrying about gaining weight and diseases.”
Ally swallowed a fork full of eggs. “Really?”
“Sure, but while you may now live in Paradise and have angel powers, you still have a human body. So, you still need to eat.”
“I guess I am an oddity, huh? A human with angel powers living in Paradise without dying.”
Kaylee laughed. “Yes, definitely not the normal situation. But, it is a temporary one. At some point you will die too, then you’ll live here permanently. As it is currently, you are free to go with Joel to help people in Camellia and the rest of the universe.”
“The universe?” I had never considered going to another planet. Of course, I don’t exactly decide where I go. “So, is there other life out among the stars?”
Kaylee grinned. “Of course. Some of it would be life not-as-you-know-it. But plenty of life in the universe. Maybe you’ll get to experience some of it before you die.”
Ally nodded as she sipped her coffee. She stared at the cup. “Don’t tell me Joel also grows coffee beans too. This is the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”
“Oh no. Those beans come from angel George’s place up the road.”
Ally though for a couple of seconds. “And the bacon?”
Kaylee smiled. “Nope, no pig farms and slaughter houses in Paradise. Joel brought that up specifically for you from Camellia, along with the eggs.”
Ally then asked, “Do you mind if I ask a more personal question?”
Kaylee nodded. “Sure, after all, I had my whole life ‘shouted from the rooftops’ sins and all, since I’ve arrived here. There is nothing that is personal and private in Paradise.”
“Do you live here with Joel?”
She pointed to a door on the other side of the living room. “Sure do, right over there.”
“How did you end up here with Joel?”
“You know already of my long history with Joel. He was one of the first people to meet me after I died to the former world. Upon my arrival to Paradise, he invited me to his house for ‘dinner.’ I ended up staying with the arrangement that I take care of his garden and place since he’s gone so much.” Kaylee leaned over and whispered to Ally, “Don’t tell Joel, but I agreed to it more for the tea than to help him out.”
Ally laughed with Kaylee.
“You don’t think I already knew that?” Joel had come out of the bedroom. He yawned. “You might recall that the tea was one of my major selling points.” He winked at Kaylee.
She smiled. “I did figure you knew that, yes.”
Joel yawned again. “I don’t know how you humans get so much sleep. It makes me sleepy to sleep so much.”
Ally feigned surprise. “I would have never guessed it, the way you snored so loudly.”
“Snored? Me? I seriously doubt it.” Joel held his nose in the air in mock arrogance, which caused first Ally and Kaylee to giggle, and then Joel laughed too.
“Seriously,” Ally said, “You don’t have to sleep at the same time I do.”
“I know. I’m just trying to figure out how to do ‘marriage’ with a human. This is the first, and probably only time, in angelic history that a human has had the abilities of an angel and been married to one.”
“I think we are both trying to figure this out. After all, it is also the only time in human history that a human has taken on angelic powers and been married to an angel. Right?”
Joel sat at the table and received a cup of coffee from Kaylee. “As far as I know.” He sipped some coffee. “Nice. By the way, Ally, I was up most of the time you were asleep.”
“What did you busy yourself with?”
“Making plans for our honeymoon.”
Ally smiled. “You did?” Then her smile dimmed. “You did! How exactly did you plan it out?”
“I did some research. I watched a show called the Honeymooners. It didn’t seem to help. It only demonstrated how to have fights. By apparently the ‘man’ threatening constantly to punch the woman in the ‘kisser,’ which I took to be her mouth.”
Ally’s eyes stared at Joel. “Wow! Just wow! What world was that from?”
“Earth.”
“Figures.”
Joel gulped down some more coffee. “It appears, at least on Earth, that a favorite place to go for a honeymoon is a place called Niagara Falls. Not sure why, though. The only thing there is a river that careens downward for a very brief period.”
Ally shook her head. “After what you told me what they believe goes on in a honeymoon, I’d question anything from that world.”
Joel nodded. “The important thing, I believe, is what do you think it contains, and what would suffice for you?”
“Hum.” Ally tapped her right index finger against her lower lip. ‘’Not like I’ve ever been married before to know, but it generally seems to be normal to go somewhere special and spend time together.”
“Hum, strange. It’s not like we spend an inordinate amount of time apart as it is. Like I said last night, and if it is important to you, then it is important to me, but what’s the point of a honeymoon?”
Kaylee cleared her throat. “You are forgetting, my newlyweds, that you do have somebody here who has been married before?”
Joel huffed. “Okay, married-to-Cole-in-an-unusual-fashion-woman, what do you have to offer?”
“Why did it not work out with your previous wife?”
“I, uh . . .” Joel jaw set. “What does that have to do with our honeymoon?”
Kaylee smirked. “Humor me. You see how it fits in.” Joel hesitated. “Come on, Joel. Shout it from the rooftops! Confession is good for the soul, even an angelic one.”
“Well, okay.” Joel gulped. “Best I can figure, we simply went our separate ways to the extent that we no longer acted married. I was out doing my angelic missions per the instructions of the Big Boss, and she had different task she was assigned to a position at headquarters.”
Kaylee smiled. “Just as I suspected, you failed to spend enough time together due to your work schedules.”
Ally jumped up from her chair and paced as she thought and spoke. “Of course. The idea being that you start off your marriage totally focused on only each other, so you go somewhere special that the demands of your job won’t distract you.”
Kaylee grinned. “Exactly, and they have an annual anniversary to keep reminding each other of that need. At the heart of any good marriage is the spending of time with each other, human or angelic.”
“Or,” Ally grinned widely as she could. “Or, if, like us, you’re job is like an continuous honeymoon, you just keep doing your job.”
Joel nodded. “I think the two of you may be onto something there about honeymoons. So, where do you want to go? I just checked with the Boss Man, and he says it is a go.”
Ally jumped up and down. “Hey, do either of you two have a good planet we could go to?”
Kaylee grinned while Joel’s eyes grew wide. Joel said, “You want to go to a planet?”
Ally nodded with a big smile. “Can you think of anywhere in Camellia or one of its alternate worlds that we could go to get away from our work?”
“I see your point.” Joel opened his arms. “Of course we could go to an alternate world on another planet, I think the one on, what is called on Earth, Neptune, would be a good one. I know of a nice cafe and touristy spot there.”
Ally jumped into Joel’s arms and they hugged for a moment.
Once they released, Ally said, “I wonder something, though. Why do you refer to a name by what Earth calls it?”
“What do you call it, then?”
Ally shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think we have a . . . wait a minute. I see where your going with that.”
“Exactly. One of the advantages of Earth is that they name practically everything. Not merely people and cities, but even stuff like their machines that transport them around, to every star in the sky that they can see. Even a person has a first name and a last name at least. Many have more names attached to those. And as if that were not enough, they often give each other nicknames as well.””
Ally wondered aloud, “What’s a nickname?”
“A nickname is usually a term of endearment—though it can be negative—given to someone, or a shortened form of their name. For instance, you nickname could be Al. But not likely since that is primarily a man’s name, though there are exceptions to that practice, and some girls end up with boy nicknames, even some—“
Kaylee jumped in. “Hum, I wonder why they do that?”
“I think it is because they have a hard time dealing with ambiguities, and names tend to identify and classify things.”
Ally wrinkled her nose. “You mean they even name groups of things?”
Joel nodded. “Sure do. You do as well. Maybe not to the same scale as they do. But you tend to identify yourself by the town you are from. Your town is a group.”
Ally nodded. “I see what you mean, though we don’t name a town to identify a group of people, but to identify the town itself. But we do use it to refer to the group we are from.”
Joel lifted a finger into the air. “But, even the act of naming a town is naming a group. Why else would you give a place a name other than the fact people live there? You don’t have a name for every mile of road in Camellia.”
Ally’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean they do?”
“Pretty much.” Joel drained the remainder of his coffee from the cup. “Anyway, I’ll go and set up our honeymoon, Honey.”
Kaylee and Ally giggled as Joel disappeared.