A hysterical sob rang out across the dining room, followed by hastened footsteps and rough banging of the front door.

"She's the fifth woman this week you send away crying. I really don't understand you," Anne Collymore, an elegant and soft-spoken woman in her fifties, said to her son.

"No, it's you I don't understand, mom," said Logan without looking up as he sliced through his hanger steak. "Why are you so persistent in setting me up with one woman after another?"

A harsh clanging of cutleries made Logan slightly jump in his seat and look up at Mrs. Collymore's fuming face. He faced her with the infamous nonchalant expression of his but deep inside, he was shaking. 

"You know what baffles me to no end, you insolent child?" Anne wadded up a bunch of tissues in her right fist. "It's when I ask you to meet someone, and you'll just answer, 'Yes, mom,' with all smiles and no arguments," she said in barely a whisper, gritting her teeth.

"It is for me to make my point, and everyone should know by now that I'm heartless and I'm not going to be serious." Logan continued eating but he could feel the growing tension rise in his body. He just wished that his mother would drop the subject. The last thing he wanted was to argue with her.

"You could have just said so, Logan. My son, there's no need for you to be heartless. Do you seriously want to live in that kind of reputation?"

The steak was already halfway to his mouth when something inside him snapped. Logan looked at his mother and Anne gasped at the trace of indifference swimming in her son's deep black eyes.

"Oh, mom," he said finally after moments of suffocating silence, his frosty voice covering the walls of the entire room. "At least not the kind of reputation my father holds." Logan let out a mirthless laugh as he dabbed a table napkin into the corners of his mouth before standing up. "I have a board meeting to attend. Thanks for the lunch."

"Time will come, son. Cupid will get you."

"Cupid? I don't believe such crap."

Not a minute had passed and Logan was out of the house and Anne Collymore was left alone to wallow in self-pity.

"No," she said aloud, refusing to allow herself to step closer to that swamp of regrets. She'd start thinking about everything she'd lost, and before she knew it, she'd collapse emotionally, drowning in pain.

Once again she stopped herself, not wanting to indulge those bitter memories and regrets. She'd done plenty of that in the beginning when she first learned her husband found someone else and wanted out of their thirty-year marriage. Any day she hoped Ernest would come to his senses and see what he was doing to her and to Logan, their son; only he hadn't. 

Logan was the light of her life, her ray of sunshine through the years. She spent so much time with her son, raising him with limitless love and motherly devotion. If there was any bitterness in her soul about the way Ernest treated her, it was for what he'd done to Logan. Unfortunately, Logan was the one who introduced Ernest to Maddie. He never forgave himself for that, despite Anne's reassurance. 

To complicate the situation more, her son refused to forgive his father, not only for betraying his mother but for stealing Maddie, the woman he himself loved and planned to marry. Logan's anger was constantly with him. The anger had become part of him, tainting his life, as though he wore smudged, dark glasses that revealed a bleak, drab world. All he cared about now was his business, his drive for more and more, and while he'd achieved greater success than most men twice his age, he wasn't happy. 

Logan was thirty-three, and in Anne's view, he should get married. However, her son resolutely refused to discuss it. His attitude toward love and commitment had been completely warped. He no longer dated, no longer sought out relationships.

Anne bowed her head and prayed. Sometimes it was difficult to find the words to express what was in her heart, but not today. The prayer flew from her lips.

"Dear Lord, send my son a woman to love. One who'll help him heal, who'll teach him about forgiveness. A woman who'll open his heart and wake him up to the kind of man he's becoming."

Slowly, as if weighed down by her doubts, Anne's prayer circled the room. Gradually, it ascended, rising with the steam from the nearby teapot, spiraling upward out of the simple cottage and toward the leaden sky. It rose higher and higher until it reached the clouds and then sped toward the heavens. There, it landed in a bed inside the lotus flower in the form of a wispy sheet and followed the queue of other lotuses which carried the wishes and prayers of love. 

Merry the Head Cupid, however, was supposed to watch the prayers come from the Pool of Requests. But only the three, silly cupid angels were present and they watched as the lotus, bearing Anne's prayer, came out of the cave's mouth and drifted over the water towards them.

"Don't read it," Gracious cried when Hope, unable to resist, bent to pick up the wispy sheet inside the lotus.

"Why not?" Hope had always had more curiosity than was good for her. 

"Hope," Gracious warned again, but her pleas only fell on deaf ears.

"Well?" Charm finally asked, who was doing her best not to reveal her own interest a second before. "What did it say?"

Hope's eyes swept from left to right, with each second that passed, her eyes growing larger and larger. 

"Oh, no!" she cried, looking alarmed.

"What?"

"What is it?" Gracious and Charm asked in unison as the two of them fought to have a better view of the prayer request. 

The two of them shared the same sense of urgency as Hope by the time they finished reading it. Only Gracious was a little bit red in the cheeks out of furiousness and Charm's nose was stuffy as tears pooled around her eyes.

"Poor, poor Anne," Charm said, then sniffed.

"And for that, he shall forever be loveless. Serves him right for not believing in the cupids. For not having faith in us," Gracious said furiously, crumpling the wispy sheet in her clenched hands.

Charm gasped, horror-stricken at Gracious' words. "But doesn't that defy our purpose?" 

"Anne wants to believe," Hope explained to Gracious gently. "But she's worried about her son and has given up hope that anyone can reach him. We can't let her lose faith. Maybe there's something we can do!"

Hope quickly scooped the request out of Gracious' tight grip, then almost dropped it when a voice spoke behind them.

"Do for whom?" it asked.

Merry. The Head Cupid, Merry.

Charm spun around and backed away, making her trip at the hem of her white dress, crushing her wings in the process. Oh, this wasn't good. Merry was their friend, but she wouldn't tolerate their snooping around the Pool of Requests. Cupid angels were only supposed to take orders from their Head and not mess around with the prayers.

"Nothing." Hope moved closer to Gracious until they stood shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing.

Merry's brow furrowed with concern. "I had only gone for a moment and you three are suddenly up to something. Can you give me that, Hope?"

"Give you what?"

"That thing you are holding?" Merry said testily, squinting her eyes. "And, oh Charm, hold yourself together, please."

Charm pulled herself up from the cloud soil and Hope handed Merry the prayer. The three of them huddled close to each other, dreading their punishment.  

"Hmm," Merry hummed thoughtfully after reading the prayer's content. She folded it in half and blew it until the wispy sheet turned into a fluffy bunch of feathers, the wind carrying it across Heaven. "What happened to Logan Collymore's parents is already beyond our control. It is such fun to steer humans toward one another. Creating romance is what we do but that's where our job ends. Whatever happens after that, whatever becomes of their love, is up to them. It's up to them to take care of that love."

There was a moment of silence. The only sound that could be heard was the soft gurgling of the water from the pool. Merry took her time thinking while the three cupid angels waited, holding their breath in anticipation.

"I'm going down to Earth," Merry said a moment later. "I'll do this task myself while you three—" she pointed a finger at them, her eyes sharp and threatening "—shall behave yourselves while I'm gone. No more snooping around the prayer requests."

Hope, Gracious, and Charm nodded noiselessly and Merry hummed in approval.

Her wings unfurled, lifting her off the ground. Her rose-colored fluffy wings beat with sudden intuition. The wind hummed against the fibers of her wings, carrying her in the clear blue sky. She slid over low tiers of clouds, causing the slightest disruption, like a breeze passing through a chime. 

And there below, she spotted Logan in his car, driving towards work. She flew just feet above his car, unsighted. She fixed her arrow's aim. But before she could release it, Merry noticed that something was amiss. The tail of the arrow was puffing pink glittery smoke that smelled strongly of lavender. And since she didn't think that anything could go wrong and it was just some minor issue, Merry fired it. And instead of flying straight to her target, it wheezed in the air like a deflated balloon and ended up with a thunk at the nearby street sign.

Her mouth gaped open. She was left dumbfounded that she lost sight of Logan, who was turning left toward the busy road. But Merry was willing to risk more arrows for her plan to happen. 

It was easy to find where Logan's car went. The challenging part was to right her aim at him. She leveled the two arrows' heads where his heart was, aligning it to the bow's grip handle to hold it steady.

"Okay. I got it," Merry said then she released the string. The arrows, both emitting clouds of pink dust at their trail, zipped towards Logan. It was close, so close before the arrows swerved in the wrong direction that Merry had closed her eyes in frustration.

Then there was a scream, a solid thump, and a frightened and shaky voice. Merry opened her eyes to watch.

"Are you alright?"

A pale, shaken Logan stood above an equally shaken girl, who was sitting on the ground inches away from his car. Her bike was lying nearby with a flat front tire with two pink arrows sticking to it. 

"I should be dead," the girl whispered, looking up at Logan and blinking several times. She thrust out her hand, assuming he'd help her up. "Are you an angel?"

"You should be arrested for pulling a stunt like that," he said angrily, ignoring her hand. 

He wanted her arrested? Of all the nerves! "Listen here!" she cried, still in a sitting position. "You were the one who ran into me."

"You're insane!" He was shouting now. 

"Hmm, this is not what I had in mind. I literally threw a woman in his path," Merry said to herself as the pair continued to argue on whose fault the accident was. "Oh, Logan, she almost fell for you. But this can be a start... don't you think, Fate?"

An angel named Fate emerged from her hiding spot behind the tree. "True. And I guess I'll take over here. Good work, Merry."

But Merry could only sigh as she stared at Heaven, thinking about how twisted and cunning the world was to humans. 

"It'll be a long way for them."

-ˋˏ ༻✿༺ ˎˊ-

🏅Winner – Reclaim Your Myths

PROMPT FROM WattpadFairytales

The Broken Cupid — You work with angels, and you happen to be the main cupid. Head of all Cupids. When you finally spot someone that doesn't seem to believe in fairytales or even YOU; Cupid exists, you accidentally shoot the wrong arrow at that particular person who doesn't even seem to believe you exist. How are you going to fix this mess? Or are you going to do something else for a change?