The entire sky had broken open, and into earths atmosphere had poured the thousand colors, and more, of sun’s set.
I sat on the beach, watching.
 Downwind, Shai was celebrating. Friends and passersby populated the slanted shore, kicking sand into each others eyes and beers. A quitarist had appeared, annoying all but the most drunk with his explosions of impromptu folk magic. Shai drifted. Greeting the dozen attendees in robotic cycles:
 “Hello Asha.” Oni. Marx. Sam. Rebeccah. Natty.
 “Hey! Wow, Shai, its been…”
 “I know right? How have you been?”
 “Oh, I dunno, sortof just hanging around.” Laugh”
 “You still at the quarry?”
 “Yeah, I’ve mostly been trying save up for next term you know?”
 Pause.
 Shai looked around, eyes absent and seeking above the gauze covering her nose.  She shifted hips, her undrunk beer tilting dangerously.
 “So,” her friend would start, “I’m glad you, you know, are doing better, um. How are you you know?”
 “Sonia!” *Emma. Becky. Phillips. Freeman. Shai would hail, nodding and smiling herself away from whoever she’d been talking to.
 “Sonia, hey!” Jess. Fariss. Oni. Marx. Sam.
 “Shai!”
 Rinse. Repeat.
 I played with the wet sand soaking my ass. Picking up clods and pouring it in front of my eyes. A grainy filter through which to see the burning clash in the heavens. Seraphim swept upward on their great feathered wings, only to be speared by molten tridents held by bat-winged cherubs with horns and toothy glee.
 The grey sea water swallowed the crisped wings of the fallen. Absorbing their bodies into its depths, perhaps as food for its inhabitants or to abduct and add to their number.
 It wasn’t a war. Just children playing, or insects being licked up by something as plain as hunger. Protein. Nutrients on wings.
 Shai had moved out when I told her.
 You. Fuck. Was all she’d said before I had to go to work, then come home to an empty house. Her things gone and the door open.
 Cancer you could get behind and offer your voice of protest. Link arms and fight the militial wall of tear gas and crowd-pellets. Cancer wasn’t anyone’s fault. Cancer turned you into a martyr for sympathy and support. You could exit the world with happy tears, surrounded by loved ones and a ceremonial farewell. Even AIDs would’ve been better. The validation of the rainbow clan could have sustained us. Kept us together.  We would’ve bonded even, become closer in the fight.
 But what kind of sympathy could you get for an off-brand STD that no one could pronounce?
 From Shai, none.
 Instead of closing off entirely, she had sent an incessant flow of messages.
 Asshole. I’m getting a rash. Going in to get tested. Thanks asshole.
 The white cloaks said it was “benign”. More shitty tests. Fuck you.
 My face is rotting off. [picture] You ruined my nose.
 She messaged every angry thought, every accusation she could think of, lashing and ugly, sometimes fifty times a day.
 Then her messages stopped. And for a while, nothing. She was silent for months. No midnight texts saying You awake asshole? I can’t fucking sleep with my skin crawling with your shitty poison inside me. Good night asshole. No serial sobbing voicemails. No tortured frequency, nothing.
 The invite to Shai’s ”Fuck off Grande Verole!” Recovery Beach Party had come tacked to the front door. Sores had rotted her nose off, shallowed her flesh and given her a permanent limp. But she had beat it. She was going to live.

The Celestials continued their skirmish, choral battle chants meeting impish cackles. The Angels fought the Cherubim with swords and light, brought down like a flock of geese by giggling child-demons. Porcelain flesh torn open by heart-headed arrows shot from baby fingers.
 How much sympathy was there for someone who had almost killed their friend?