Underhill saw Sorrowmouth stooped in the doorway with his…

““Underhill saw Sorrowmouth stooped in the doorway with his bowl and thorn, mottled skin burnished gold in the lamp glow, beady eyes beseeching him. Underhill nodded and he dipped his head under the doorframe and into the room, towering over both Underhill and Mary. Mary continued, her words beginning to slur. “I think, no, I know that if I didn’t have my beliefs, you know my absolute belief in, well, in angels, guardian angels, all around us, around me, I wouldn’t have gotten through these last few weeks.” She glanced up, beyond where Sorrowmouth’s face hung like a stiff mask in the cloud of cigarette smoke, and saw something else entirely. She closed her eyes and smiled an entirely benign smile at the very notion of her personal angels. There were some crude and disappointingly prosaic paintings on the wall around the fire of them floating in the air, their wings outstretched, lit up with a golden glow that Underhill remembered like the tattered fragments of an ancient dream. Angels looking over babies in cradles. Angels hovering above the Earth, showering it with their benevolent light. Sorrowmouth finally pricked at the woman’s grief with his thorn until it seemed to bleed furious moonlight. Chaotic swirls of black and silver and red convulsing in the air around them. He gathered it all into his upturned bowl and began to sup at it like an eager dog.””

— Simon Avery