Elegant Angels

Ron Koppelberger

Elegant Angels

In Breaths of red wilderness unflawed the beauty of planet 205.9 was unequaled by anything he had ever seen. The flowers in the dense underbrush were a bright orange and the leaves on the trees were red, there were patches of green here and there. The lush jungle tangle was fascinating but he was entirely distracted by the presence of the angels, the elegant angels.
They were white with tufted feathers and tall nearly eight feet from the bottoms of their pearly feet to the tops of their feathered heads. They were magnificent and deadly. Their teeth were fanged instruments of death at nearly two feet in length, he thought of Saber Toothed Tigers when he saw them. And their eyes were large bulbous balloons with gold irises in the center. They were truly elegant angels and death to those who bothered them. He remembered hearing about the first explorers who had encountered them. They had been drained of all their blood and placed in giant cocoons, as a spider might do or a caterpillar. The thought gave him chills and he tried to imagine something else.
Elegant Angels indeed, deadly and elegant.