(Continued at the point of Unjwyll’s interpretation of the star’s intentions. Refer to Part 1)
Now, it would be an understatement to say Unjwyll got it wrong, and one might even be tempted to conclude that he was either extremely incompetent at interpretations, or else he had developed a special antagonism toward the star, perhaps toward stars in general, and naturally wanted to frame her for pre-meditating one of the two crimes listed previously. Both assumptions would be incorrect. In reality he had simply done what was taught him as a youngster. The course, ITAD 101 (Interpreting and Translating Astral Designs of Destruction 101) spelled out certain assignment requirements, which the cherubs mostly dreaded and despised and therefore quite inadequately fulfilled; except for Unjwyll, who thrived in doing them and far exceeded the rest of the class. The requirements were as follows:
“Angels, being higher and nobler than all other created entities of the universe, must excel, too, in the art of articulation. Translations must therefore not only convey the thought of the star itself, which is the easy part, but also must appear in the presentational form of poetry, the best of which contains an abundance of alliteration, rhyme, hyperbole, emotion, and occasional King James English.”
Now, if one thing is true of angels, it’s the fact of their dutifulness. Duty, not art, not poetry, and not exaggeration, characterizes a very large percentage of any given host of angelic beings; although an exception might be made in reference to their singing, of which their manner is known to be quite … decorative. Otherwise, the motto repeated among most angels (and seen on countless posters in their hallways and conference rooms) is concise: “Receive the message, give the message, and return for further instruction;” making the ITAD 101 class requirements the most atypical and secretly the most shunned of all courses, even among the arch-headmasters (or angels in positions of authority). But tradition has a way of preserving even the most counter-intuitive practices, and the class has remained mandatory, despite the most vehement protests to eliminate it from the schedules.
If the decision to retain the course was a bad one, today’s event represented a good case-and-point supporting such an argument. Even so, notwithstanding the fact that Unjwyll’s reasons may have been falsely premised, his response certainly saved an entire planet from decimation.
Having thus read the poetic interpretation of the star’s thoughts aloud, the look on the angelic fellow’s face quickly escalated seven degrees upward from anger: Now it was a look of fury, and accompanying it were these words, which he spoke into something akin to a loudspeaker - a device which some of have called a trumpet—and which angels always wear on their person … just in case,
“Art thou fallen from these heavens, O star, to the earth and banished from this thy stellar habitation, to that of the dust, for a period of time until these, thy erring thoughts, have become demonstratively exorcised!”
It was a most profound utterance; and it was so for two primary reasons: First of all, no such condemnation had ever been thus pronounced against a star (not a literal star anyway) and secondly, no one could’ve possibly understood a word of it; not because it was spoken with hints of King James English; rather because the trumpet/loudspeaker, while greatly amplifying the declaration, muffled the words indistinguishably. We only know what was uttered because Unjwyll had written it all out before the sound-off, and he had very good handwriting.
Despite the confusion that filled many other stars, a few other zooming angels, as well as a certain arch-headmaster (who was listening and watching the whole thing from the Space Surveillance Video Control Room, or SSVCR) the angel’s words resounded with the purest clarity in the only place that really mattered, The Celestripolia (pronounced Sellis-trip-poll-e-uh,
