Sisters of Water, how far shall I go?

  And where are you now?

  I saw the black angel rise in flight before me, a figure of darkness exhaled from the wounds of the earth.

  The feathery wings spread out without casting a shadow on the ground, tapering, sometimes mutating into threadlike extensions, bristling with crystals that glisten in the sun, burning with vermilion reflections. A second pair of smaller, leaf-shaped wings, rigid and transparent, vibrate so rapidly that they appear blurred in the misty air.

  The rest of the body is constantly changing. It would be easier to capture the true appearance of an image reflected on the surface of a pond in torrential rain. I cannot tell if He has a head, a face, something resembling the structure that we also liked to take when interacting with the passing creatures of this world.

  It is all just an illusion. He does not need wings to soar through the sky.

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  But He has nothing to do here. Why would He ever visit this humble ball of dust? What have we ever done to attract His attention?

  And what right has He to shine in such graceful form, to radiate such soul-burning beauty, as if He were not the herald of chaos and destruction, as if He had not come to announce the end of the world?

  And when I think that I will never catch up with Him, that I will travel in His wake until my strength fails me, there He is. He has stopped. He came down in the middle of the manicured park of a palace, a royal residence. I am still too far away to see if the place is inhabited and by whom, and how these creatures will welcome His coming.

  He does nothing by accident. I would not be surprised to discover that all this upheaval is His doing, part of a twisted as well as catastrophic design, a mad stunt to mock us, a demonstration of what He is capable of doing, and does only because He can.

  He has settled like a giant moth in the path of one of the monstrous cracks.

  What will happen? I wish I could stop, at least slow down to watch.

  But at the same time I am afraid.