France, c. 1150 A.D.

[hear_the_voices]

Anna is watching the activity below her on Earth.

It's what she does, these days. Watches.

All she has done for more than a thousand years. Watch. Unable to interact, or to go home.

At present, her attention is mostly (though not entirely, never entirely) focused on the watching the construction of yet another soaring church built to celebrate the fact that the world had not ended when the first millenium did. She finds this outburst of church-building fascinating; by now there are none alive who could have worried that the world would end in Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 1000, and yet the building continues.

Comments

[hear_the_voices]

"That stone is going to fall," she says, of the church they are watching.

It's going to crush that mason, too.

And there's nothing she or Castiel can do, but pray for his immortal soul.

(Castiel is right to worry. Anna is discontented.)

[thursdays_angel]

"Yes," he replies neutrally.

It will likely halt construction for a time.

"He seems to have a good deal of love for his work. There are worse ways for mortal life to end."

[hear_the_voices]

And better ones.

Anna still, after all this time, occasionally misses being able to close her eyes, and just shut it all out for a moment.

But as she can't, all she can do is watch it fall.

[thursdays_angel]

Shouts and cries rise from the work-site as men run to the scene of the accident.

Castiel remains respectfully silent until they begin to die down. Even though none would hear him if he were not.

"They'll say that he gave his life in the service of God," he predicts.

[hear_the_voices]

"No doubt," she says.

What else can they say? He died needlessly because a rope was not secure?

Both are true, in their own ways.

[thursdays_angel]

"He will be looked after."

Castiel isn't sure if he's saying it for her benefit, or for the benefit of the people clustered around the mason.

It's a moot point, either way.

She already knows.

And they cannot hear.

[hear_the_voices]

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.

"We should see to other things," she says.

[thursdays_angel]

"Yes. There is nothing we can do here."

The resident reaper will tend to his soul on its journey. They will not be needed to provide escort.

[hear_the_voices]

"No, there's not."

That will not change with a new location, but at least the details of the things they cannot do will be different.