Beneath the mud, its features haven't settled yet, still locked in the perfect, sexless symmetry of angels. But these things are always quick; the eyes it blinks open are wide, and unfocused, and a vivid, inhuman yellow.

Raguel's presence doesn't seem to have registered.

There are so many drops.

It tries to lift itself again, bowed and shaking under the rain.

It isn't silent, either; quietly, ever so, it's making the sound you make from deep in your belly when you don't even have the air to scream.

(There are so many drops. There are so many hundreds of thousands of tiny pinprick drops of water, falling down, there  are  so  many )