I liked that you tackled the problem of prejudice causing a lonely and unsatisfactory life in heaven. That someone would choose a human life over heaven is interesting. You made heaven as an extension of human flaws extending into their ideals, which was an excellent concept to come up with.

The threat of having the angels constantly erase her memories showed how erasing the past cannot serve to make someone happy. I would have liked to have seen what Safira's take on this would have been if she had some unpleasant memories from her past. Would she have changed her ideas on the memory wiping or not? Originally when you said God had her memories wiped I assumed it was because she had painful memories. By delving into this more deeply you could show that whatever her past life had been it was not worth forgetting, in part because the love she had experienced in life was something she did not want to give up.

It seems that Safira had a nice life as a human where she was loved and wanted to continue that. That love was so important to Safira to want to continue her human life really stands out. Which made it a nice read to escape from everyday troubles and to read about heaven and then to think maybe life on earth isn't so bad (especially if heaven is catered to the ideals and likings of others and has the same prejudice we experience as humans). That the love we experience is what is important, well done.

Wow..that was awsome!

Essentially a naturalistic depiction of the afterlife; lots more time but no externally-provided ultimate answer. The story’s “real world” seems to be a fishbowl with the angels outside. Is heaven another fishbowl?

Angels as agents with disposable memories. The whole concept of the guardians losing it; ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ Neat.

“This place can either be your Heaven or your Hell, depending on how you play this.” _

The true love between fundamentally likeable, unfortunate people is good as always.

There’s relatively minimal character development and not much background on their relationship (then again, neither is necessarily so important in a short one-shot)

Maybe the psychological impact would be greater if there were a more immediate and/or more specific threat. Though maybe not everyone wants that.

Technical stuff that I noticed:

With respect to “So it is the weakness of Man after all” - I don’t think Gabriel was ever human. Sorry to be anal. Unless he *is* supposed to be originally human in the story.

“she recalled the car speeding down the road, it hitting her”. The “it hitting her” sounds awkward to me given that ‘it’ is used in the same sentence as the antecedent. I’d change this, probably to ‘the car speeding down the road, hitting her’ or ‘speeding down the road and hitting her’. Or ‘..., the impact’ etc.

“a kitchen on the right, dirty and cluttered with dishes in the sink, and a bedroom on the right” - a kitchen/bedroom on the *left*? Or is everything really on the right?