o v e r t u r e

It was a day much like many other east African Sundays, sunny, appropriately enough, and warm, calm and dry, a glorious day by almost any standard. This congenial meteorological economy prevailed throughout the course of its slow circadian migration under the hydrogen incandescence for which it was named, whose radiance, at once harsh and gentle, falls alike upon just and unjust.

As the morning sun filtered through the treetops, the sound of birds gave way to shouts, and gunfire, and screams. Men, as often they do, seeking violence against the innocent for crimes of their own invention, killed again, but only those helpless to resist.

In this manner the local social dynamic, which opened with a certain organic resonance to an atmospheric benediction, found itself subject to the focused intent to chaos of the only Earthly creature with the capacity to shed its own soul.

On our particular Sunday, the exercise of this longstanding human tradition evoked for the first time an entirely unprecedented and utterly unintended consequence.

An entity not of this world.

An emissary with a mission.

An angel of death.