Otto’s sigh is as soft as the beating of a butterfly’s wings. “You know what we’re supposed to do here, Remedios. It was made extremely clear.” He might add “again”, but doesn’t. “We’re here to guard and guide.”

“Guard and guide…” parrots Remedios in a childish voice. “What are we? FBI agents? Boy Scouts? Cops?”

But they are, of course, none of those things.

“No, Remedios,” answers Otto in his patient, literal way, “we’re angels. We—”

“For the love of Lachish, Otto, I do know we’re angels.” She’s been one for millennia. And a very good one, too, even if she has to say so herself – which, at this point in time, she apparently does. “It was a rhetorical question.”

“I know that,” says Otto – who didn’t. “But you don’t seem to understand that guarding and guiding are what we’re meant to do. That’s our job. We have rules.”

Remedios makes a face. Ten Commandments for mankind, but a hundred rules for divine beings.

“And the primary rule,” Otto goes on, “is that we help, nurture and support. We can influence, but we’re not supposed to interfere.”

Remedios makes a so-what? face. It’s not as if they can’t interfere. They have powers a magician can only dream of – from being able to do a thing by simply thinking it to turning back floods or armies; from shifting shape to stopping time.

“But we can’t use our powers willy-nilly,” says Otto. “We can’t just alter the course of human events.”

This, of course, is a dig at Remedios. Remedios isn’t too keen on guarding and guiding. She sees herself as part of the life force, not as a celestial policeman, and is easily drawn into people’s lives and problems. No matter how complex or difficult. No matter how impossible to solve. If she were a plumber and not an angel, she would rather try to mend the hole in a dam than fix a leaking radiator.