“You’re accepting Her light into yourself!”

I awoke the next morning lying comfortably in Victoria’s arms, that phrase echoing through my mind. I hadn’t had such a vivid dream as during the previous night, but I slept feeling comforted, shielded by Sapphira’s light, her words of faith and encouragement taking root within me. If I were to entertain the whole Great Mother premise, I’d say that she was some sort of guardian angel, in addition to her role as a “Pride seraphim”, which I was still unclear on the exact implications of.

And… arrgh, the alarm was going off! It was 7 AM, and Victoria needed to be waking up now to get off to work. I woke up alongside her each morning to make sure she would get out on time, but right now, she was just sleeping soundly, ignoring the alarm. It kept blaring from across the room, but she only moaned, staying asleep as I squirmed my way out of her arms, needing a tiny bit of personal space after a night spent together.

Her eyes were closed, and she was barely moving… I would’ve been afraid that something really awful had happened if it hadn’t been for that moan. She was definitely OK, just sleeping very deeply, more than usual.

I got myself out of bed and turned the alarm off. That thing wasn’t gonna do anything but be annoying if Victoria wouldn’t wake up to it. She was relying on me, of course, so I’d do what was necessary. I knew that getting in on time mattered to her a lot.

I returned to bed and patted my girlfriend on the shoulder, whispering at her to wake up. The process was slow, but I did start to hear her grumble and groan, and she slowly opened her eyes.

“Abby… what time is it?” she groaned.

“7:02,” I replied. She just let out an annoyed moan in response to that.

“Come on, hon, let’s get you up into the shower, alright?” I said.

“Abby… I was having such a good dream,” she said, barely moving. “Wanted to finish… maybe I can…”

“That’s not usually how these things work, hon,” I said. “And who knows how long it’ll take? You need to get up.” I wanted to be gentle but firm, making sure she’d take care of her responsibilities like she counted on me for.

“I… I guess so…” Victoria groaned, struggling to pull herself up into a sitting position.

“I just… you know about that sex thing from yesterday?” she asked. “The angel thing?”

“Yeah, I dreamed about it again last night. About her, Sapphira… watching over me, like a guardian angel. I felt so safe, sleeping with her light enveloping me.”

“Yeah, well, I had a dream about it too,” Victoria said.

Oh wow! My dream was really having an impact on my girlfriend’s sex ideas too! And this was without her even having had the same kind of hallucinatory, all-encompassing experience I had had yesterday, when I felt as though Sapphira was possessing me completely, overtaking my body as Victoria and I made love. I thought she should get to experience the same thing too. It felt wonderful.

“But a little different…” she continued. “Her name was Chamuel. She was an angel too, but not a Pride seraphim. She was a Wrath cherubim. Said her purpose was to purify my mind, rather than my body…”

“What, like a weird baby angel peeing into a fountain or shooting arrows at lovers?” I said. “I don’t really know if that makes sense, like, vibes-wise.”

“Oh, uh, not exactly,” Victoria said, laughing. “I thought the same thing when she said what she was, kinda. She said that humans’ images of angels are distorted and so forth… she looks mature. Like an adult. A full-formed angel, like you described your seraphim as being. Just, she brings purity to Mind instead of Body.”

“Right, right, OK, so it’s just like another class of these guys,” I said. “I guess that is how angels would work, with different ranks and stuff. Makes more sense than what I was thinking. Sounds like it fits in pretty well.”

“I sure hope so! It’s a fun thing you came up with, honey,” Victoria replied, caressing the side of my face. I grabbed my beloved octopus plushie, Serena, from between the bed and the wall and squeezed her tight between my tits, feeling very cozy in the moment.

“But yeah, she was supposed to make my mind more Wrathful, and she was telling me about how she was gonna do that, and a few other things too, stuff about not wearing clothes, virtues, all like we talked about yesterday, but then you woke me up, and I wasn’t really able to finish the dream properly. I felt like she was working up to something really important…”

“Well shit…” I said, almost regretting having woken Victoria up. “That sounds like such a cool dream. Did she tell you what it meant for your mind to be Wrathful? I can’t really see how that would ever be a good thing, like, conceptually?”

Victoria yawned. “Only really vaguely. Something about… I don’t know, extreme passion? Unrestrained emotion? She emphasized that anger was only a tiny part of it… that’s just how humans view it because you know, we’re sinful, or whatever. But I asked her why she was a mind angel instead of a body angel like you got, and, shit, I think that’s exactly when you woke me up, and I didn’t really get to hear the conclusion of it.”

The body, mind, and soul are linked, I imagined Sapphira saying. To purify one aspect is to aid in the purification of the whole. I felt a warmth as I imagined those words, thinking of her wings wrapped around my body.

“Hmm…” I thought aloud, even though I felt that Sapphira had already helped me come upon the answer, rooted in Truth. “I think that there can’t just be a body and mind in this lore, you know? There’s gotta be a soul too. You and I just haven’t gotten an angel like that looking after each of us personally.”

An ophanim, Sapphira added. Woah, I hadn’t even heard that word before, unlike the other two angel classes. Was that really what it would be called? I couldn’t think of a better term.

The term appears in that heretical text you call the Bible, Sapphira said. But you are learning it only from me. Know it.

Right, right… that was pretty weird. I must’ve heard it in that Biblical literature class I had taken in high school or something.

Wait, who the hell had I just been talking to? This was all a figment of my imagination, right? Victoria’s imagination, as well?

It didn’t matter though. I felt compelled to make out with my girlfriend. Thinking could come later, if it had to come at all.

And as our lips touched, I felt that warmth once again, the feeling of Sapphira watching over me, guarding me with her light. But it wasn’t only her this time; there was another angel, too, this one shining her light upon Victoria. It was Chamuel, I realized, the Wrath cherubim, merging herself into Victoria’s form, as Sapphira merged back into mine. We were both suitable vessels in this moment, suffused with Great Mother’s light, though it was only brief. But it felt wonderful, the two of us floating, rising into the air in each other’s arms, supported by wings of pale light.

Then we began withdrawing, and the light withdrew as well. But I knew for certain this time that Victoria had seen it too, felt it too. It was undeniable.

But what the hell did that mean? My heart was beating out of my chest trying to figure it out. If this was all somehow real, there was a certain excitement to it, accompanied by a kind of existential horror. Was it really humanity’s purpose to be vessels for angels? The discarding of ambition that seemed like it would come with that was a little scary, but also comforting.

Victoria’s face, meanwhile, showed nothing but awe and reverence.

She made it to work that day, but she was 30 minutes later than she should have been. She didn’t hold it against me, though.

That night, I dreamt of Sapphira again, more clearly this time, more like the first. We were reunited in a windswept field, the seraphim shining her light down on me once more.

“You’re becoming so pure already, Abby,” she said. “It was a beautiful display between you and Victoria this morning.”

Looking down at myself, I realized that I was naked this time, and I was feeling no shame. Sapphira seemed satisfied with that. In her way, this was purity.

“When you spoke to me this morning, what was that?” I asked. “You’re a figment of my imagination, aren’t you?”

Sapphira shook her head gravely, retaining that peaceful smile that she had always had.

“I am perfectly real, Abby,” she said. “I can influence you materially through purification of your body, but I can only manifest into the material world when you are most in tune with Great Mother. Otherwise, I must communicate with you and influence you only deep within your body. First and foremost within dreams like these.

“That sounds exactly like what a figment of my imagination would say,” I said.

“Ever the skeptic, aren’t you?” she asked with a bit of condescension in her tone. “It is typical human behavior to be critical. It could even be said to be a form of Pride, though unrefined and undirected. But this lack of refinement in you is to be expected. Victoria will better guide you with her purified soul. This sort of purification is not my purpose, not exactly. You shall see in time.”

It was all pretty difficult to believe, but I supposed she hadn’t been wrong yet. I’d play Sapphira’s little game.

“She’s real, isn’t She?” Victoria moaned to me as she was waking up the next morning, almost talking in her sleep. “Great Mother, and all of her angels? I could feel them touching us with their light… knowing that I’m a vessel for Chamuel… I feel so much passion… Wrath! And even maybe a little bit of Pride.” She grabbed at me suddenly, shaking me around like a stim toy.

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” I asked, smiling at her. “Did you dream about Chamuel again last night?”

My girlfriend nodded. “She told me about how I need to act as a guide for you, even though I’m only being purified after you. I’m supposed to be a spiritual leader, apparently. She said that’s my true purpose… I’ll be the first in the world to have a truly purified mind, an example of Wrath for the whole world to see.”

I felt a thought cross my mind, something Prideful, a piece of Sapphira’s wisdom, I imagined.

“Pride begets Lust, doesn’t it?” I asked.

My girlfriend sat up, looking at me with a big smile.

“And a purified mind begets a purified body,” Victoria confirmed, and I felt that I could almost hear the voice of an angel speaking through her.

We kissed passionately, and then she went off to work. The two of us said nothing of Great Mother for the rest of the day, but she seemed to be present all the same, in my tits and beyond.

The next night was a quiet one, with no direct input from Sapphira, but I realized I needed to sleep on my back in order to avoid brushing my tits on the sheets below me. It seemed like they were becoming more sensitive each day after the last.

I didn't wake up until 7:30 the next morning, sleeping in after the alarm until Victoria was already awake. She was sitting with her hands pressed together, whispering a prayer. She wasn’t religious as far as I had ever known, and I’d never seen her doing anything like this before.

“Victoria… honey?” I said, carefully placing a hand on her arm. Whatever this was was clearly really important to her, so I didn’t want to go and interrupt it outright, even if it was kind of strange.

“Oh, good morning, Abby,” she said, in a voice so serene that I could’ve almost confused her for Sapphira. My love really had the voice of an angel. She had moved her hands apart, and was looking at me with a little smile on her face, barely tired at all compared to her usual demeanor in the morning.

“What were you doing just now?” I asked, a bit apprehensively.

“Praying to our Great Mother!” she said without hesitating. “I want to be in communion with Her.”

Whoa. That was a lot more than I expected to see, honestly. Was she really that into this? But like I had told Sapphira, I’d play her little game. I didn’t want to discount this outright, it was just strange to see Victoria buying into this even more than I was, even though it was my silly dream that had started this whole thing in the first place.

“Like, really?” I asked. “This isn’t a bit?” It wasn’t the kind of joke that my girlfriend would usually make, but it wasn’t out of the question either, I guessed.

“It’s not a bit, Abby,” Victoria said, uncharacteristically peeved. “I’m thanking Her for the gifts She’s given us. Wrath, Pride, Lust, purity, it feels like it all comes more and more naturally with every passing day.”

“You sound kind of like how Sapphira sounds in my dreams,” I said. “How can you be accepting this so easily? It’s kind of unnerving.”

“Really, honey, I sound more like Chamuel, I think,” she said, planting a kiss on my lips with an assured confidence I rarely saw in her outside of sex. “She told me that Great Mother saw potential for Wrathfulness in my soul, just like She saw potential for great Pride in your body.”

As she said that, she grabbed at my tits, a soft smile on her face as I completely lost my shit, my tits just as sensitive as they had been yesterday if not more. It was so ridiculous and strange to imagine that Great Mother could be real, but in this moment, it sounded like such a positive thing.

“My… my Pride! You mean…” I felt as though Sapphira began to provide me with the words I was looking for. “My breasts! Of course! A sex positive goddess like Great Mother would probably assign virtues to body parts. Like a vagina or girlcock would have to be Lust, obviously… and the thighs could be Sloth, maybe, because they’re used to sit down…”

“The head is the center of Envy,” Victoria said, kissing me on the lips, “the stomach is the center of Gluttony,” she said, grabbing my tummy, “the arms and legs are the center of Wrath,” she said, squeezing my right hand in her left, “and all the little details are the center of Greed,” she said, poking a small mole I had on my left tit.

“Oh wow, you’re understanding this all so quickly,” I said.

“Chamuel is dictating to me,” Victoria said with a warm smile upon her face.

“That’s so cool,” I said. “Can she tell me more about what Wrath means to her? Uh, and to Great Mother?”

She opened her eyes wide, and I could’ve sworn that they were glowing just like Sapphira’s as she spoke: “Unrestrained passion. Emotion, flowing outward, with no filter. It’s much more than anger. That’s just a small part of it. And when the world is purified of sin, there will be nothing to be angry over. Everyone will live together in perfect harmony.”

“Well, I like that emotional expression is encouraged…” I said. “So it makes sense that you’re having your mind Wrathified or whatever, given how… unrestrained you can be. How emotionally expressive, when you’re in the right mood. I’ve always admired it about you.

“Pride, I guess I understand as a virtue more easily. Self-confidence and so forth. But I don’t really understand what that has to do with me. I barely feel like I can handle myself in public at all.”

“I think it’s probably because you have such good tits, honey!” my girlfriend said, reaching for them. They were more sensitive than ever before, and I felt like I could stay there for hours letting her feel me up if nothing stopped me.

So Slothful! I heard Sapphira exclaim, encouraging me. Even if all this Great Mother stuff were to turn out to be the sort of collective delusion that it obviously was, it felt so nice to give in to the feelings I was having right now, and imagine that it was all real. Honestly, I wanted it to be real at that moment more than anything else.

I couldn’t help but cry out loud, “Thank you, Sapphira! I want to be Slothful and Prideful and Lustful! And even Wrathful! I want to be pure!” And as I said that, I felt as though Sapphira’s light was warmer in my heart and soul than it had been at any point before.

Victoria was still grabbing at my tits, and she'd been reaching down to suck on my right one, but she reared back her head in response to my words.

“You’re becoming closer to your guardian angel! I’m so glad for you, darling!” she said. “I don’t think we have a need to deny this to ourselves. It’s OK to give in to pleasure and relax. That’s the essence of Slothfulness.”

“If Sloth is such a virtue, then why are you… why are youuuuu…” I arched my back, totally overwhelmed by Victoria’s tongue as she went down on my nipple. “Why are you bothering to go to work?”

Victoria opened her eyes for a moment, looking up at the ceiling, probably communing with her own guardian angel. Then she looked back down at me with a warm smile on her face.

“Well, Chamuel is not an expert on Sloth first and foremost, but she argues that it would be Wrathful of me to do something impulsive like calling in sick just to be with you, my darling. So I think I’ll do it on that basis.”

Victoria indeed called in sick that day, something I’d never seen her do before when she wasn’t actually sick. Even though she had always been a font of passion and emotional expression, my girlfriend was usually really responsible when it came to work stuff. Seeing her do this made it feel like something really had changed.

While Victoria got herself ready in the bathroom for a relatively lazy—Slothful—day, I checked in with my other partner Eleanor as I made sure to every day. I had been keeping zer up to date with all of this angel stuff that had been happening, my dreams and so forth, just like Victoria. Ze hadn’t had an angel dream zerself, so I didn’t think ze really understood the gravity of this whole thing. To Victoria and I, it was seeming more real with every passing minute, even if it was ultimately basically just a silly sex fantasy that the two of us had gotten worked up about together.

When Victoria returned to the bedroom she had a devilish smile on her face — though, given the circumstances, it was probably actually an angelic one.

“Chamuel says I should show you just how Wrathful I can get,” she said, throwing herself on top of me. “Heh… sorry, that sounds a little intimidating, maybe. I just want to show you how much passion I can have.” I felt a little relieved as Victoria clarified herself, and began playing with my extremely sensitive tits, sending me moaning uncontrollably again.

“How’s Eleanor doing?” she asked, pinching both of my nipples at once and driving me crazy. “Has ze had an angel dream yet?”

“Noooot yet!” I exclaimed, holding onto Victoria for dear life as I squirmed, unable and unwilling to hold myself back at all. I needed to show my girlfriend passion now, to be Proud of my tits and unafraid to put Wrath on display either. Sapphira was here for my Pride, but one day, maybe I could embody all seven virtues.

“Between us, we have a cherubim and a seraphim purifying us… I wonder if ze would get a ophanim?” she wondered aloud.

Ophanim? Did she just… oh god… oh, Great Mother, how could she have known to say that…?

“An o-ophanim?” I said, my voice trembling for more than one reason. “What… whaaaat’s that?” It wasn’t an honest thing to say, but I needed to know what Victoria was thinking, just to make sure that I was still dealing with reality here. It was starting to seem not so likely. I could barely think about anything with my tits being grabbed anyway… maybe this whole angel thing really was some kind of waking dream.

“Oh, an ophanim is an angel that purifies the soul,” Victoria said, letting up on my nipples a little bit. “Seraphim are angels of the body, cherubim are angels of the mind, and ophanim are angels of the soul.”

You know that, silly! Sapphira said. It is a term from your human Bible, as we discussed.

“I know that!” I said to both of them, feeling as though I was speaking on both the physical and spiritual planes. “But how can you know that, Victoria? I just heard it from Sapphira a couple of days ago ago. And she’s just a figment of my imagination. How can you know? Fuck, I feel like I’m having a dissociative break here…”

“I learned it from Chamuel, darling… there’s no dissociative break to be had. We’re getting our information from the same source…” Victoria said with a worried expression.

Had she really become convinced this was real? Or was I just hallucinating that too or something? Was I still dreaming? Had I been dreaming ever since the first time I talked to Sapphira? Or since the night after? It felt like it was all I could grasp on to without admitting that it was real, that I was going to be purified, that my girlfriend and I were going to be some kind of cult leaders in the long run, probably…

Leaders of the one true religion of our Great Mother, Sapphira said. As befitting of the first pure humans since time immemorial.

Yes, that sounded like a cult! The only difference is that, ostensibly, this would be real, only that’s what any cult member would probably say.

It is Truth, Sapphira said, and I groaned out loud.

“What’s wrong?” Victoria said.

“If we both heard about ophanim…” I hesitated. “Then it makes this seem real. And Sapphira’s telling me we’re gonna have to be cult leaders or something…”

“Oh, you mean how we’re going to guide humanity toward Great Mother’s light?” my girlfriend replied with a smile. “It’ll take time for angels to reach the others, but our community will be the first purified one… the first of many, as Her light spreads across the globe. It’s so exciting!” Victoria’s passion, her Wrath, was palpable as she hugged me tight, pulling the window shade aside a little bit to look at the sunny skies outside our apartment.

“I guess it w-will, if this is real,” I said. “It’s just a little scary.”

“That’s silly, sweetie!” Victoria said. “You don’t need to be scared! You’re only feeling that way because your mind hasn’t been made pure yet. But a purified body begets a purified mind, Abby. I think… well, I think maybe you should ask Sapphira about what that would mean exactly.”

Stress was welling up in my body then, not even in an uncomfortable way. I felt myself suffused with Great Mother’s light for a moment, as though She Herself was touching me with Her divine hand. And much as I had before, I felt myself merging with Sapphira, wings spreading out behind me, a glowing halo above my head. We may not have been as in sync as we had been while Victoria and I were being especially intimate with each other, but with Great Mother’s divine intervention, it wouldn’t necessarily be needed.

“In time, your Pride will bear such a degree of sensitivity that even a light breeze would send you into a fit of touching yourself, Abby,” Sapphira spoke through me. “Therefore, when I am done, your body will already be attuned toward instinctive Pride. To touch your Pride, enjoy it for its sensitivity, to devote yourself to hedonism. Your mind and soul will have already begun to follow by then… and your other body parts as well. Other angels will proceed from me to ensure the utmost purity in your body, mind, and soul as needed. And it will be much the same for Victoria, and for all other humans to follow. It will be a gradual process, but one guaranteed to succeed by Great Mother’s divine will.”

My Pride… my breasts. I had always wanted them to be more sensitive, but this sounded a little silly. They already felt almost unmanageably sensitive, to the point that putting on a top was becoming increasingly difficult. But that’s just what Sapphira was saying, wasn’t it? The changes to my body were already affecting my decision-making in small, subtle ways, and if my tits got more sensitive, then that would only increase. There wasn’t exactly a lot of point in trying to fight this. My tits weren’t getting less sensitive any time soon, and I wouldn’t want that anyway.

As Sapphira’s light began to fade from my form, remaining with me spiritually if not visibly, I had a small smile on my face. If this was what was meant to happen to me, then I wouldn’t fight it. Sapphira was only filled with goodwill, and she was an agent of a benevolent goddess. Victoria wasn’t scared, after all, and she had been face to face with the purification of her own mind. That sounded kind of sinister, but it had only led to good things thus far. My body was being made perfect, pure. There was a lot to concern myself with, but I could only hope to control so much. As I pulled Victoria down toward one of my tits and pressed Serena the octopus plushie against the other, I thought mainly of how physically wonderful it would all feel.