Dear Diary,

Date: January 24th, 2023

"How are you today, Richard?"

"Eh, I'm thinking..."

"About what?"

The truth was that I never wanted to tell her what I was thinking about. The truth was that I wanted to keep it to myself. However, the words slipped from my mouth before I stopped myself. "Estral."

I remember seeing a small spark in her eye when I said that. Her lips have curved upward, but just a bit. She wrote something in her notebook and started chuckling quietly. I remember going to ask her what was so funny, but she held up a finger, which stopped me before I could even start.

She smiled at me and said, "I apologize for that. What were you thinking of Estral?" Whitney smiled at me.

I chose to ignore her smile and take a deep breath. "I'm thinking about if...he's here. You know?" She nodded her head, showing that she understood. "Like, I feel like he's here, scolding my every move." I smiled at the thought of him. Whitney nodded her head.

She wrote in her notebook again.

That's when I realized something.

"When did you get a notebook?"

She stopped writing and looked at me. She looked at the back of her notebook and I finally got a good look at it. It was a sparkly white notebook with a white cloud over it and in cursive letters, inside the cloud, it said 'Don't be afraid of who you truly are.'

"I bought it at the store yesterday. Isn't it cute?" She asked me. She showed the front to me and giggled. "I thought it would work well with our talks and it does. It has small sections inside of it that helps me organize what we're talking about."

I was still confused, but it made sense I guess. I continued to talk about what I was thinking about. "I've been thinking about what would've happened if he were still here. Would I still be in therapy? Would I be somewhere different in life?" I paused and looked at Whitney. She wasn't writing down anymore and she was looking at me with her full attention. Then, I thought of something. "Whitney, what about your angel?"

Now, the look on her face made me regret my question. She looked as if she got caught in a lie. "Um, my angel's name is Hayle. She doesn't come to work with me." She answered.

I nodded my head, showing that I cared. And how I respected her choices. I leaned forward. "Can you tell me about your angel?"

She chuckled nervously. "This time is for you. Not for me."

I raised an eyebrow. "But I can ask you questions that will help me." She stayed quiet. I smiled. "Can you please tell me about your angel? About Hayle?"

She smiled and nodded her head. "When I was 18, I got an angel. Let me tell you, she definitely looked the part. She had light brown hair and dark green eyes. She didn't look like everyone's typical angel, but she was gorgeous."

I smiled, but mainly to myself. "Can you tell me a memory you two had?"

She hesitated, but nodded her head. "There was this one time, around 10 years ago, when I first met her," She smiled, most likely recalling the memory. "We were running in my backyard, my older sister and her angel, Janiah, watched from the porch. I tripped and scrapped my knee pretty badly."

I frowned, but she continued to talk. "Hayle ran to my side, closed her eyes, said some words, and when I looked at my leg..." She chuckled. "The scrape was gone."

My eyes widened. "An angel-"

"Healed me. Did you not know that angels could heal?"

I thought about it for a second. I wondered what else Estral didn't tell me about.