Coincidences

The shrill sound of an alarm clock startled Jasmine awake. Slapping at the clock to shut the alarm off, she groaned as she looked at the time. Apparently, it had been going off for the last three minutes, so she had to get up, grab some clothes and get into the shower. Reluctantly leaving the comforts of her bed, she started getting ready for school and went downstairs for breakfast before heading out the door.

Thinking of her dad's comment last night, she rushed over to the bus stop to catch the bus and thought about her dreams from the night before.

'This time, I dreamt of angels instead of dragons...,' she thought. 'I kind of wish it was dragons again, so then I might recall more details for my art project. But one cannot control what they dream about. Though, I recall a little bit of information about angels, my imagination seems to be quite something else. Maybe I should write a book? My dreams seem to be fantastic material for a fiction story.'

As the bus pulled up to school, Jasmine got off and headed inside. Her morning classes droned on and before long, the lunchtime bell sounded. She went to the cafeteria and got a bite to eat before heading to the school library for the rest of her lunch period.

Curiosity and the thought of writing a story about angels based on her dreams had led her there. She searched about and found some books that were vaguely related to angels, such as Dante's Inferno. Skimming through the work, she found mention of the hierarchy of angels and the layers of heaven.

Not being religious herself, she had never really looked into things like angels and demons, so she was surprised when she found some terms she recalled from her dream, such as the Dominions, Powers and Principalities. Even more surprising was that she never recalled having read anything like Dante's Divine Comedy, which was broken up into the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise.

Moving to a computer, she decided to search up more information in hopes to find something like a Cliff Notes version of Dante's Divine Comedy. Afterall, the book was pretty long and she wasn't so much interested in the story as she was about the hierarchy of the angels that was described in it.

Her online searches were partially fruitful in that she found that the angels could be broken down into nine ranks. From the top, or closest to God, there was the Seraphim. They were described as six-winged angels that had the Voice of God, Metatron, as their leader. Then came the Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, and Principalities. Under these divisions, there were archangels and the rest of the angels of heaven. Yet, what drew her attention even more was the mention of the non-canonical Book of Enoch, which went on to name some of the archangels, such as the Archangel Gabriel that had descended to announce the birth of Jesus Christ. In addition to Gabriel, it mentioned Michael, Raphael, Uriel and Sariel, but it also gave an account of a war of heaven and the fall of angels, such as Lucifer, as well as the origins of demons.

Thinking of her dream, she felt like it as almost comical. 'Am I a prophet or something? To have such a weird dream and for so many points of it to match some scrolls that were recovered from the Dead Sea that I have never heard of before? Either way, my time is about up.'

Noting the clock, she printed off a summary she found online and logged off. Glancing at the book, Dante's Divine Comedy, she decided to put it back and left the library right as the warning bell for her afternoon classes sounded.

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The rest of the school day passed without incident and other than the usual math homework assignment, Jasmine had little else to distract her from working on her rough sketch. She even went ahead and completed her homework assignment beforehand so that her sister, Krystal, had nothing to complain about.

As she was drawing, she remembered how in her dreams, the angel had dark-colored wings, a lot like the dark-feathered wings of the dragon she was drawing for the art contest from her previous dream. This made her remember about her web search results about the Book of Enoch and how the devil had been described by Christianity to be a dragon.

'Huh... Lucifer was thought to be the Morning Star and a Seraphim before his fall. Maybe I should read a bit more about that later,' she thought. Before she knew it, she was searching up information about Seraphim on her computer and came across competing ideas on the origin of the word Seraphim. It even mentioned online how it came from the same origin as serpents and that Seraphim were actually dragons. 'Well that is interesting, but I'm pretty sure that no Christian wants to hear that their angels are dragons,' she laughed silently to herself and turned back to her artwork to be interrupted by the call to dinner.

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Dinner that night had the addition of an unexpected guest, her brother, Ethaniel. Since it was the weekend, he had decided to make the trip home for weekend from college. Seeing that all too familiar head of dirty-blonde hair sitting at the table, Jasmine excitedly rushed to her spot at the table to greet him.

"Brother!"

"Hey there, lil' sis," he smiled and reached over to affectionately pat his youngest sister on the head. "What have you been up to? Doing alright in school?"

Jasmine beamed at him and replied, "Mmm, yeah. There is going to be an art contest in another two weeks and I'm going to be submitting a piece."

"Ahh? Is that so," he paused and a glimmer passed in his pale blue eyes before he continued, "Well, I'm sure you will do fine in the contest with how energetic you are, but don't you think it's a waste? I mean, if you applied even half of that energy to your classes..."

Jasmine quickly cut him off before he could continue and exclaimed, "Don't start that, Ethan! I already hear enough of that kind of crap from Krystal, but even you!"

"Hey now!" Krystal rebuked furiously.

"Urgh," biting her tongue to keep from lashing out, Jasmine lowered her head unwillingly and muttered towards Ethaniel, "...see, it's bad enough I hear it from her, but 'Et tu, Brute?'" **

[[** "Et tu, Brute?" - Famous quote from William Shakespear's Julius Ceasar that roughly translates into "You too, Brutus?" which are the famous final words of Ceasar when he finds himself being back-stabbed by his comrade, Brutus. ]]

Ethaniel just laughed and reached over to help himself to a portion of the food on the table. However, he noticed both Krystal's indigent expression and Jasmine's sullen look and figured he should probably say something to help smooth over the situation.

"Well, it is fine that you want to compete in the art contest, but there is a reason why they call starving artist exactly that, starving artist. It doesn't exactly put food on the table."

At this point, Jakob intervened to add, "Your brother is right. Plus, it is both your mother and I's wish that you will go to college and make something of yourselves. You wouldn't let us down, would you?"

Krystal looked smug with herself with this while Ethaniel grew quiet and pensive. While Jasmine just sighed and answered, "No dad."

She tried her best to dismiss her sister's self-satisfied smiles and didn't enter the rest of the sparse conversation at the dinner table. Most of it was just her father asking her brother about the happenings at college and Krystal vying for attention. Keeping quiet, she was the first to finish her meal and excused herself from the table to return to her room.