They should not have been there…

‘It’s not your fault.’

The voice froze her. Her eyes fastened on the dead refugees. She heard the thump of her heart. Then she laughed, the sound echoing and then collapsing into tears. It was her voice, of course it was. Hers. The words had come from her thoughts into her mouth without her realising.

‘It’s not your fault, Zadia Koln.’ She heard herself speak, and felt the words puff into the air, cold and glittering with frost.

‘It’s not your fault…’

She heard the footsteps then, slow and deliberate, walking towards her across the deck.

She tried to look up.

She could not look up.

She could not move.

The beat of her heart had stopped. The frost of her breath hung in the air, glittering dust hanging before her eyes.

‘You had no choice then, and you have none now…’

There was a shape at the edge of her sight, a shape like the shadow of something that walked like a man. She wanted to close her eyes, she wanted to look away. Her eyes stayed open as the figure stopped just next to her.

‘But you did have one choice…’

She could smell burnt meat, and something that brought to mind the incense they had burned in the temple on Miranda. A temple… a temple that was just a room with some candles, and marks scratched on the floor, and bowls set under a flow of water from a broken pipe.

‘You all have a choice of which angels to listen to…’

Frost was creeping over her limbs and up her neck.

‘You can listen to those voices that you know are true, and which will keep you safe, even if it means that you must be just a small flame, rather than the light of eternity…’

Blood… She could smell blood, and… and water…

‘Or you can listen to all the hate, and rage, and resentment that you carry like a parent does a child…’

The thing shifted, and she could see it now.

‘And all of you humans always make the same choice…’

Something sharp hooked under her chin and pulled it up. Two yellow eyes looked down at her.

‘You always choose to listen to the bitter angels of your hearts…’

She could not draw breath to scream.

‘And we listen.’

‘You are from Terra?’ asked the boy.