Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.
With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion--like the phantom pain of an amputee.
I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-" "What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously. "This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years-" "The same bird every thousand years?" Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said. "Bloody ancient bird, then." "Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-" "-limps-" "-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-" "Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of-" The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy." "But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered. "How?" "It doesn't matter!" "It could use a space ship," said the angel. Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah," he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird-" "Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about," said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to-" He hesitated. "What have they got to do?" "Sharpen its beak on the mountain," said Crowley. "And then it flies back-" "-in the space ship-" "And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again," said Crowley quickly. There was a moment of drunken silence. "Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak," mused Aziraphale. "Listen," said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-" Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly. "-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music." Aziraphale froze. "And you'll enjoy it," Crowley said relentlessly. "You really will." "My dear boy-" "You won't have a choice." "Listen-" "Heaven has no taste." "Now-" "And not one single sushi restaurant." A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.