Chapter 1: Luke 2:10

It was raining in New York when something smashed through the sky.

What this meant is that when ten thousand out-thrown droplets of boiling universe debris met ten million falling freezing droplets of winter Manhattan rain they swam the way down, and landed as hard little beads and pearls and Prince-Rupert-drops that clattered or smashed or burst on pavements, some still burning orange hot, others cooled enough and buffeted enough to be caught in a gloved hand and ferried away as souvenirs.

The something came down faster than the shower of debris meeting shower of rain all around it, shocking away a near vacuum of material around its comet fall that arced down across the skyline and curled up like a rollercoaster just above the grass of Central Park, wings flurrying with a metallic sound in the rain as metal boots clashed, met concrete and lawn, obliterated it, dug tracks, brought it to a stop.

Metal gloved hands were held open, catching the rain, and then closed in tight fists. 

Above, in the sky, as the last pieces of burning shrapnel hit forearms or apartment windows or car roofs, there was a punched-through ragged hole, just a little under the sun,  that showed view of psychadelic burning space behind, nebula clouds fire-red and sunset purple and sprayed across with new strange stars. The rain fell across it, dislodging a few more pieces from the edges, agitating the spacetime platelets in their attempts to knit. The effect, as the syrupy, molten glass-like substance poured down in a long vertical river into the Hudson and formed a solidifying new island of glossy amber on its surface, was that the horizon was bleeding clear, purple-tongued, coppery blood. The hole throbbed, opened and closed wider or narrower with a rhythm that breathed like a living thing. The sky was wounded. 

Exactly as the raindrops and   had bshardseen thrown away from the lightning-down arc of the angel that was now carefully making its way across the park, most people nearby flurried away from it, terrified. But, less predictably bound than raindrops, a few New Yorkers and tourists stopped and stared, or even drew closer.

It was fifteen feet tall, proportioned like a human doubled. It was wearing – no, seen now clearly through the haze of rain it was – a gigantic suit of intricately carved metal armour, embossed in some places, cut low in others to form symbolic patterns seen blurred through water-refracted light. Its head was a haze of yellow firelight swimming through the rain, and its gauntleted hands swung military march as it moved. Its silvery wings, every feather a razor blade, moved in and out like breathing bellows as it walked forwards.

Without breaking its stride, it raised one hand – its right.

The rain stopped.

The raindrops didn't fade out slowly, in a normal way. Instead, every little cold piece of water tumbling through the island's sky simply stopped dead in mid-air, and hung there. They glistened for a second like marbles, seen more finely and brightly than ever otherwise possible by startled eyes, and then accelerated upwards. They fell in reverse motion, dragging across at the hole and sending some glassy blood hurtling up into the sky before, too heavy, it fell back down and splashed into the river. The clouds overhead grew briefly darker and fatter, then broke apart into shards and dissipated like steam.

Shafts of sunlight stabbed down over, and the angel stood fully illuminated, visible to all those present to bear witness.

The angel by now had moved near to the fountain bearing a rough approximation of its likeness. Tumbling planet eyes falling in closed orbits on perfect rings around a common centre of gravity lit all on fire looked with something postured in its back like amusement at the winged woman in the centre.

The angel stood there, calmly looking at the statue for around 27 minutes. In that time, the NYPD arrived, and created a cordon around it. Park officials began to pick up the pieces of where it had landed, and argue with NYPD over whether it should be collected for evidence.

Pressing tight against the police boundaries were already the pilgrims.

There were within 10 minutes at least a thousand people in seeing distance of it and within another 10 approaching quintuple that. People praying, holding up phones or cameras, trembling in dread, calling out to it futilely, or simply staring. There were attempts to force past the police to touch it; they failed.

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Journalists were starting to arrive too; TV cameras being set up, and some that had simply rushed from their apartments and jostled their way to the front phone in hand. For a few minutes, all their cameras captured was it stood, hunched, wings opening and closing, great gauntleted fists shut tight. All over the Manhattan sky were voices; praying, screaming, sobbing, swearing, interrogating.

It remained unmoved until 27 minutes when suddenly, it turned to face the crowd, and raised its hand. There was a startled scream; some people drew back, but others surged forwards with grins on their faces. The police stumbled; one lost his own nerve and fell to his knees to scream out desperate prayers, face covered with clawed knuckles.

A few Bible-book savvy observers already knew what it was going to say before it even began, found themselves mouthing out the words with it that hummed bass-deeply up from the ancestral nub of the spine, rumbling in every language known to man and a few not yet, echoing back and forth inside the walls of every single listener's head:

Μὴ. ΦΟΒΕῖΣΘΕ·

...

不 要 懼 怕

...

   لا تخافوا

...

NOLITE. TIMERE.

...

BE.

NOT.

AFRAID. 

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