"I did. It's all really complicated and messy, but, uh, there was this angel," and here Iuliael tips his head back, looks ceilingwards with a strangely intent expression, and sings a short phrase. The words are incomprehensible, but there's somehow a suggestion of fire and vastness and the joyful anger of righteous purpose.

Even before the reverberation's died down Iuliael's looking bewildered and good-humored again. "Or the Dove of God, though that's a really, really bad translation, it never liked translations but most people can't pronounce... um, anyway. It sent a hand down here to do things while it was in Heaven, and the hand got cut off, and became me. There's lots of things I'm not good at. It's like... why would a hand need to remember things, or judge, or... do anything on its own, when the mind that commands it can just tell it what to do?" He pulls his hand across his head and down his neck, awkward. They're good metaphors as far as he's concerned, but do they make sense to people who aren't so scattered?

"So I'm not as, as good at things as other angels. They're complete, and I'm not. But I'm getting better."