Title: Tongues of Men and Angels
Rating: TA for implied?romance.
Summary: Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.
Disclaimer: *obligatory insert*

Chapter XVII: By Wind, By Water
Bitterly she weeps at night; tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her.
Lamentations 1:2

"What are your wounds?" he asked once more, after they finally left the house. It had been their longest stop so far—they had lasted there over a week—but they hadn't spoken again of such deep or painful things since the last time he'd asked her, and so his voice splintered through the silence.

She blinked up at him, owl-eyed. "What?"

"The wounds you carry with you," he asked. "What are they, Bethany?" His voice was inexorable, and austere, but somehow gentle in spite of all that. She pulled her gaze away and looked out over the purple rooftops, smoky in the predawn light. Her scar was healing cleanly now, but it would always be there: a stark reminder of something she could not share with him.

"They're—" she said, and paused, and weighed her words in her open palms on her knees. "Small," she finished at last, and the corners of her lips were tight but her mouth—oh, her mouth was a wealth of vulnerability and pain. "Compared to some peoples', I mean. Compared to Joy's."

He swallowed the questions in his mouth and tilted his head instead, watching her, gauging her like an enemy. Which she wasn't. Which she could not be—never again.

Not after this.

"Nothing small could do this to you," he said after a moment, and he felt very certain, watching the way her mouth trembled. She was—strong, as a mountain in the face of a storm. He would not have credited it before, but it was the truth.

And she smiled. Of course she did. "Everything small did this," she contradicted. Her eyelids fluttered, and closed. They were as soft and frail as a butterfly's wings. "It's like…erosion," she said, and chuckled softly. "The breaking down of a human being."

He thought he could reach out and take hold of her pain, let it run through his fingers like sand and grit. He would love to see her washed clean of it, bathed in the glory of God. He imagined the light would shoot out of the ends of her hair.

But as he watched, her copper-eyes grew bright, and wet. Her lashes suddenly grew slick and starlike, clustered together by the dampness of her barely-restrained sorrow. She fell utterly, terribly, uncharacteristically silent: her ruined mouth shivering, the muscle in her throat straining.

He went very still, just watching her, suddenly very aware of his own breath. If he moved too much, he thought her tears might spill over, and he wasn't sure what that would mean—only that it would be something awful.

Word Count: 435
Completed: May 3, 2011
This drabble is only partially true. Obviously, with a huge scar running down her face and her little sister occasionally disappearing into a near-catatonic state, something huge did happen. But while I hope I have shown Bethany as a unique and complicated individual, she's also playing as a representative of humanity as a whole—and I do believe that it's this that hurts us most. Not the big things, but the daily grind.

This chapter is dedicated to every person who left a review or private message telling me that this story affected them, that it left them with a sense of peace or hope. I wanted to write a fiction about brokenness and about being made whole, and so there is tragedy here: in the past (behind the story) and in the future (ahead in the story), but it will always be followed by something tender and kind. I was hoping that my readers would "get" it, but I never imagined that they would feel it. So for all of you—particularly those in need of a little light in the darkness—

This is for you.

****By Wind, By Water is a twofold title, though it does not stem from any particular bible passage. Wind and water are, of course, two of the most well-known forces of erosion. They are also two of the most well-known symbols of the Holy Spirit.