Argh, Chris! How can you leave us here? Up until now, I've been more than happy just immersing myself in your story as a magically crafted and wondrous place. I have let my mind drift to all the fantastic cultural references here, the stuff that invites you to contemplate Life, God, the Universe and Everything and the miracle of Lois and Clark.
But now there is an irresistible sense of urgency. The beautifully solemn cliffhanger ending - don't ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you, Lois, not because you are dead but because now you are
not - makes me extremely impatient to read the final part of this. The incredible odds against succeeding as a Guardian Angel is painfully obvious in Lois's words to Clark:
"We'll have a chance to meet. We might even fall in love. But I can only come back if nobody knows who -- what -- I've been. And that includes you. And me. Only by forgetting the past do we stand a chance of having a future."
How heartbreaking is this? How totally frightening? Imagine jumping in without having even the slightest chance of checking the water level first, without even knowing if you can swim or not. Imagine getting back to the Earth knowing that you were murdered there and you've been dead for five years. You will wake up having no money, no job and no home, and you will suffer from the whopper kind of amnesia that will seriously hamper your ability to function in that world at all. You were sent there to do a job that your angel colleagues did their very damndest to remove the very last shred of your recollection of.
But this is the human condition. We all rush headlong and blindly into the future, knowing nothing whatsoever about what it will bring. What it will throw in our faces.
All we have is our faith. Our trust. Our trust in ourselves, and, I guess, our trust in love. I'm a space buff, you know, and I like to contemplate this image of our lovely little blue planet rushing headlong into the blackness of space, doing about 942,000 kilometers an hour in its orbit around the Sun. And being full of itty bitty feisty little human beings optimistically going about their daily lives and dreaming beautiful dreams about tomorrow.
And as long as we are alive, things could be so, so much worse!
And Lois is alive now. Amnesiac, homeless, unemployed, destitute, yes, but alive. And even though she will never know it, and whether or not it will ever do her any good, she
is an angel. A Guardian angel. Clark's Guardian angel. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chris, for making me see that she is! And not only here, but in all other Lois and Clark stories as well, even though she will never know it.
And she is his soulmate, too. Of course she will find him. Against impossible, impossible odds.
And talking about angels, and seeing that it's Christmas... Well, Lois isn't the only person who is an angel and doesn't know it. And not being a religious person, I don't mean that in a religious sense at all - though nothing prevents a religious person from being that sort of angel, of course! You know what I mean. And if you just give the matter a few moments' thought, I'm sure you can easily come up with the names of a few angels you know yourself! It's not a bad idea to tell these angels now and again that you see the things they do for others. And now is as good a time as any other to tell them!
I so want to read the last part of your wonderful story now, Chris, but at the same time, I don't want it to end at all!
Ann
Susan
