The Room

“No, you have to fix this.”

“Why? It’s not causing any problems.”

The archangel Gabriel had recently made a contract with another of those modern-day summoners: one that uses a machine to perform the difficult work of summoning her and binding her to a contract.

Gabriel, of course, would not approve if you referred to her as a demon. From God’s perspective, after all, it was demons that resembled angels. Thus, it made sense that one would be able to hold them to a contract as you might her. Thus had Xana done.

“It most certainly is a problem for both of us,” Gabriel chided her. She absentmindedly reached for a stone tablet or a papyrus roll, then remembered that she would find neither. With a sigh, she explained. “Your contract stipulates that together we shall sterilize all filth that threatens to bring a malaise upon the human world, with the aid of the demons you have subjugated.”

“It’s not that bad,” Xana pouted. “Humans put all their trash in one place, it’s called a landfill. Why don’t you go deal with that?”

Gabriel first pursed her lips, but then at their edges they formed into a smile. “Perhaps I — we — will. After I have cleaned this place.”

Putting her arms in front of her, Xana moved out of her seat and protectively in front of her computer and its monitor. “Hey! You can’t! Newbie had to save up for months to get this for me!”

Gabriel’s glowing eyes appraised the computer and the peripheral machines attached to it. They had been kept relatively clean. Where dust had settled in the forgotten corners of the room, it did not stick to the heat-holes of the computer.

However.

Gabriel took to the wing, floating without a single beat, and moved past Xana just a hair before the latter could react. She began scooping up empty bottle after bottle into her hands and under the crooks of her arms. Without so much as a thought, she transferred them from her arms to a bundle wrapped within her wings, eventually collecting every bottle that had once laid upon the desk.

“A clean home is a fragment of a clean soul,” Gabriel told her. “How can you appreciate the finer points of this room when your sight is clouded by rags?”

“What finer points?” Xana asked. Then, lackadaisically raising a hand, she pointed at the top of the desk. “You mean my Taromon DX plushies, right?”

Gabriel considered the dolls for a moment. “Yes, they would qualify. All that does not, however, must be removed. Please leave for now, Xana.”

“What? I’m not leaving! It’s my room!”

Gabriel considered whether her contract allowed her to toss Xana out of the room on her ear, and quickly realized that it did not. “If you insist, I suppose I am in no position to press the matter further. But if you will not leave, will you please at least organize your dolls? They are somewhat unevenly spaced out.”

Xana looked up at the collection of fabric companions she had accumulated to watch over her as she gamed. “Ohh… you’re right.”

Without needing further persuasion, Xana began to move them around on the top shelf. She wondered, as she tried to get them to look right together, if this was what Seiran called “feng shui”.