Every now and then, Cherie’s square piece of plastic would make this weird trill like a rainfrog someone had squeezed. Whenever it did, she picked it up and stroked it or talked to it, and it calmed down.

“Do you have to feed it, too?” I asked her.

She thought that was hilarious, even though I really wanted to know.

“You don’t have ]][[]][ on the Range, then?” she asked, meaning the square of plastic.

“I’ve seen them in god drops.”

“Maybe the gods put them there so you would take one. They give all of us {squares of plastic}.”

I couldn’t imagine carrying around a piece of plastic I had to take care of. It was enough work just keeping myself and the girls alive.

“What would I want one for? I get sick and tired of talking to just Thrasher and the others, I don’t need a piece of plastic I’d have to talk to on top of them.”

“But if you had a {square of plastic}, you could talk to other Angels even when they were far away.”

“If I’m far away, it’s because I don’t want to talk to them.”

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Cherie set her piece of plastic down and climbed back into the nest with me. “I like how strange you are.” She licked my bottom lip. “How you don’t think you need anything you don’t already have.”

“If I needed something I don’t have, I would’ve died without it a long time ago.” Maybe she needed her piece of plastic, though. Maybe that was another reason the gods had to take care of the Angels here.

She trailed her hair across my face as a joke, and I twisted my fingers in its silky white strands and tugged her down for a kiss.

Later on when her {square of plastic} started yelling again, she told me, “There’s a [][][]]]][[]]][ nearby tomorrow, and I was chosen for it.” She held it up and pointed to it. “A [][][]]]][[]]][ is like our version of a god drop, except the gods stay there to hand things out to the Angels they’ve chosen. Do you want to come with me or stay here?”

Before I could answer, she rolled her eyes. “It’s going to take hours. I wouldn’t go, except I’ve been dying for the new {square of plastic}. Every time I walk past somebody, it seems as if they already have one.” Something about the way she said it made me feel bad for her, like nobody wanted her to have the one thing she wanted, like the gods and everybody else were against her. “This is the first time I’ve ever been one of the chosen.”

I would’ve rather stayed there in her cave, just us, but I did want to see what their god drops were like here. Anyway, if Cherie was going somewhere, I wanted to go with her. Maybe it really was safe in the stone forest and nothing could get her, but I wasn’t going to take any chances and leave her alone with nobody to protect her.

“All right,” I said. Then, to make her laugh and forget about the pain of never being chosen before, I tried to repeat the words she’d said. “Let’s go to your {god drop} and get you your new {square of plastic}.”