This is a contest entry for A Word With You Press that I decided NOT to submit.  I’ve a second one that I’m currently polishing up for submission.

The contest rules are:  title has to be “The Art of [author’s choice]”.  First three words of 500 word or less piece must begin with a, r, t.  Somewhere within the story, author must use consecutive words beginning with w,r,i,t,e,r.

I bolded where I complied.

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Angel Rose Taylor is my heavenly name.  I answered to Winifred Ryan in the earthly realm, some two hundred years ago.

You may have heard the saying, “For want of a nail a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe a horse was lost then blah, blah, blah until the kingdom was lost”?  I’m the angel who finds and fixes those loose nails before the chain of destruction can play out.

What I do isn’t nearly as sexy as whispering a warning in an ear or assuming a corporeal form to carry a child from a burning building.  Those jobs fall to Mike and Gabe.  They get the recognition, the HBO mini-series, the calendars and magazine stories.

Still, a job’s a job no matter how small, and we are the masters of our destinies in terms of how quickly we move up Jacob’s ladder.

Right now I’ve got my eye on that traffic light across the way.  I’ve done my probability computations–yes, there is math–and if I adjust the cycle by five seconds for this direction, traffic will back up and choke the flow over the bridge to a slow trickle.  That bridge won’t stand for much longer  If I intervene, today won’t be the day it falls.

The only kink is that handsome devil standing over there.  “Hey, Lucien !”  His job is to pull out nails, to loosen bolts, to shoo flocks of birds into airplane paths and to distract me from what I do.

Which brings me to why I’m having this interview with you at this very moment at this very spot.  As we converse, I am hoping that Lucien will be too preoccupied trying to figure out what I’m up to, and won’t notice the gradual build up of north and south bound traffic.

Speaking of the devil.  “Hey, Lucien darlin’.”  He hates it when I call him that.

“Have you met Mr. Murdoch here?  He’s interviewing me for The National Inquirer.  I’ll send him your way next.”

Where was I?  You had asked how a divine intervener advances.  There’s no simple answer because we are constantly moving up and down.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, if you get my cloud drift.  For example, if Lucien over there were to foil my strategy, and the bridge were to collapse, I’d lose rungs.

Take breaks?  Well sure we do, as do our heat-loving nemeses, but we agree upon mutual time outs, not that I can fully trust old Lucien over there.  But you work side by side with a minion long enough and you get a feel for his style.  As a matter of fact…

“Hey Lucien!  Truce between five and six?  I have some of that baklava you love so much.  It’s sinfully delicious.”

Why am I smiling?  Because my momma always said, “Winnie, you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”