like my babies were keys in a forgotten pocket. My stomach was soft, but not swollen. I was back to being a bakery, not a barrel.
My snarl echoed off the trees, and the sky darkened overhead. "Where are my children?"
"Storri?" A man's voice spoke, but I couldn't locate the person.
At that moment, I didn't care who said what from where. "What have you done with my children?" I spun, noting my sudden agility. "Give them to me!" My fingers became claws.
They weren't curled like claws. They were claws. Each thick talon poised to tear through whatever stood between me and my babies.
"They're right next to you, Storri. In your room where you gave birth to them. You're sleeping, for all intents and purposes."
I would've remembered giving birth. It had been almost midnight. I still had five minutes before they were due. Thankfully, I realized how silly that would've sounded if I'd said it out loud. Other people didn't have the luxury of timing their labors down to the exact second. I didn't see why we should be so different.
But, if my babies were alive and well outside of my body, then that meant I was in my heaven. Which meant…
"Where are you?" My fingers were fingers again. "I can't see you."
Without panic tearing away my ability to reason, I could think straighter, observe more.
I sat on a boulder at the edge of a thick dense forest. Behind me, there was a small log cabin. Through the window, I spotted a cozy room that looked suspiciously like my reading nook in the hotel. Behind the cabin in the distance stood a castle with gleaming white stones, winding baby blue turrets, and stained glass windows. "Who lives there?" I asked with awe.
"You do," the voice replied.
"Who lives in the cabin?"
"You do."
I sensed a theme.
"This is your heaven, Storri. Everything in here belongs to you."
I frowned. The old Storri would've meekly accepted that statement and waited quietly to be asked a question. Faust had helped coax the true Storri out, and while I wasn't aggressive or overbearing, I was no longer meek. "What about you? Do you belong to me too?" I snapped.
"Yes," the warm voice replied. "I am your father. You own my heart, son."
I hadn't expected that answer. "Then where are you? Why can't I see you?"
The thick trees shook as something massive moved through the forest. I searched between the branches, bending over to squint at movement slightly farther away than what was clearly visible. Branches continued to shake—without snapping, I realized absently.
The trees came alive, bending their thick trunks out of the way to create a path for a giant.
An actual giant.
I didn't understand how he'd hidden in the first place. The giant stood taller than any of the trees with a broad chest the width of at least two trunks.
When Jazz had explained his mother, Sorrows, and how she was an archangel tasked with protecting heaven, I'd pictured my own angel parent looking like an elven extra from the Lord of the Rings.
My actual archangel parent resembled Paul Bunyan more than Elrond, Lord of Rivendell. His thick brown hair looked somewhat familiar, but I'd never be able to grow a beard as full as his. He wore a red-and-white plaid shirt, dirty blue jeans, and simple brown boots—at least those looked like they'd be comfortable in Middle Earth.
"Hello, my son."
The moment he smiled, my trepidation cleared. I knew that smile. It looked back at me every time I checked my reflection in the mirror. Thick crow's feet crinkled the edges of his eyes, the kind of wrinkles that came from a life of smiling.
I peered up into his face. "What should I call you?"
His smile faltered, and I instantly wondered what I'd said wrong.
"My name is Erudite." He told me his name slowly, like he had more to say after but hadn't decided if he wanted to. "You can call me Erudite."
I gathered my lips to one side in a frown. That hadn't been what he'd wanted to say. Could archangels lie?
Too bad my habit of unknowingly voicing my thoughts had continued with me into heaven. "We can lie, but I am not. You may call me Erudite. But, if you want—if you feel like you could—I would very much like it if you called me…Dad."
He sounded so shy but hopeful. I couldn't help but want to make him happy. "All right, Dad." My stomach flipped like a gymnast. This was the conversation I'd spent much of my