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Nyra hates that girl Celeste. Oh, how she loathes every word that left her spineless mouth and the eons of rigidity she forced herself to endure in the name of a god who hardly remembered her existence. How when she opened the door to where that absent god resided, she was less upset that He was dead, and more distraught that she was wrong. That her judgement was incorrect, and that the second archangel was, once again, smarter and stronger and braver than she ever was.
Nyra remembers every emotion Celeste felt in those last moments with second archangel Bernadette, in the same order she felt them. First was shock— my god is dead and I’ve been following the will of a corpse for centuries; then discontent— I’ve been following the will of a corpse for centuries and Bernadette was right all along; then anger— Bernadette was right all along, and she just solidified God’s death into history forever just by bearing witness to the scene— whether that anger was directed at herself or misplaced toward Bernadette is where Nyra’s memory is a little unclear.
The last thing Nyra can recall from that moment, the most vivid memory of all, is the look in Bernadette’s eyes before she turned away from Celeste and left heaven forever.
She was so tired.
Bernadette looked exhausted in that final moment. Her eyes were dull and glassy, pity etched across her sclera, and her pretty face was stained with malcontent. She held the weight of the world in that face.
Nyra wishes Celeste had told Bernadette sooner how much she mattered. Maybe if she knew, she would have been able to change the situation before it was too late.
But Celeste would never tell her. Celeste would die with her mouth sewn shut, because if she told Bernadette the truth— that she was so much more than just a trick of the light reflecting off the shards of a broken mirror, that objectively she was the most important thing in the universe and subjectively she was the only thing that mattered now, in Celeste’s broken mind— then Bernadette would have been able to change the situation before it was too late.
And Nyra hates Celeste simply because she loathed change with the enmity of a filthy sinner.