Her beauty was perfect, carried as much in body as by her smile, unmarred by the blood. Maybe it was because it was hard to imagine her any other way; like Athena with her armor, she must have been born covered in a network of scars and a crazed grin missing half her teeth, nails filthy and fingers twisted and badly mended due to overuse, one leg missing and bleeding a solid red stream and an arm hanging by thorn muscle and flesh.
The angel stared back. It had no mouth to smile with, or ability to express, and so far in its existence it had never needed such a thing. But experience was experience, and the angel stared her back expecting her to fall because that was the way of things; it struck, and they fell.
"Go on." Said the woman between gritted teeth, impatiently, as if she was about to break out into laugher and wanted to get it out before that made her unable to speak.
There was nothing in the angel's design that enabled or encouraged emotion, only very basic foundations that in flesh and blood migh