Now morn her rosie steps in th’ eastern clime advancing, sow’d the earth with Orient Pearle, and Adam woke up. When I say Adam woke up, I mean both that he awoke, and when he awoke, he was up: erect, hard, chubby, pitching a tent, boneriffic, hailing a cab, sporting wood, impersonating Priapus, ready and willing, giving a standing ovation, casting Brando, sprung, phaser set to fuck, standing at attention, flying at full mast, cooking up a sunny surprise, hoisting sail, giving the tube steak salute, sixing to midnight, lifting the sheets, officiating the mermaid wedding, for he was the first and most virile of men, being both the only man and the only perfect man, and despite (or maybe because of) five or six expressions of his vital fluids into Eve’s baby cave in a given day, he always woke at dawn and ready to go.

  The only sounds were the soft breeze shuffling the leaves around, the bubbling rill that ran right beside their bower, and the sweet songs of birds that were their constant choir. Usually Eve was awake before him, leaning on an elbow and admiring his rigidness, but today he found her still sleeping. Her long hair was tangled and discomposed, and her cheek glowed red, as though from unquiet rest.

  He on his side leaning half-rais’d, like a motorcycle on a kickstand, with looks of cordial love hung over her enamour’d, and beheld beautie, which whether waking or asleep, shot forth peculiar graces. Then, with the soft baritone of a man in love, he spoke to her. “Awake my fairest, my espous’d, my latest found, Heav’ns last best gift, my ever new delight, awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring our tended plants, how blows the citron grove, what drops the myrrhe, and what the balmie reed, how nature paints her colors, how the bee sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.”

  She sat awake, startled, and looked on her love, her wide eyes trembling. She flung her arms around his neck, squeezing hard as though she were holding on for life to a buoy in a stormy sea.

  He pulled her on top of him and slid his length into her depth, which was glazeder than a donut hole, for as he was the manliest and perfectest of men, she was the perfectest and most womanly of women, and she was always ready and willing to have her keg tapped; more so this morning, when any source of comfort was welcome after a night like she had passed. Finally full and safe, she kissed him hard, pulling him closer to her, pushing her firm breasts against his muscled chest in a way that celebrated both the give and the resistance, and riding him like she had never ridden him before. It was as though her fear fed her need and her need frightened her, and the two emotions flowed into a feedback loop that couldn’t be anything but good for Adam, let me tell you what. He came quickly, after only about twenty minutes, and plentifully, and she ignored it and kept bouncing on his babymaker, which didn’t faze him at all. He lifted her up and set her down again on her back so he could push deeper and more completely into her, for such he sensed was her need, and for once, he was right. They fucked totally and completely, aggressively and uncreatively for so long it seemed like their bodies were melding into one entity of pure love and sexual compatibility, and by the time he shot off a second time, they were panting, exhausted, and covered with morning dew (as sweat wasn’t a thing yet).

  “Oh, Adam, I know envy is a sin,” began Eve, “but I sometimes envy your paroxysm, as it looks to be so pleasurable. Our joinings are quite pleasant for me as well, as I know that they are for you, but your pleasure swells and peaks into crisis, while mine is constant and more subtle.”

  “Be not jealous, my dove,” replied Adam, “for it is nothing to do with the act of love, but a simple increase in aqueous pressure as my body produces more and more of its pearl puree; as the angels have explained, if we are to be parents of generations, it must flow out of me, but it must flow out of me violently so that it can fill you completely and whitewash your insides. My paroxysms of love are the urgencies of unbearable pressure, and nothing more—any such spike in pleasure without a flowing out of man-marmelade would just seem greedy and unnecessary. Besides, it is a double-edged sword. I often look forward to the explosion and forget to stay mindful of the pleasures of the moment, while you have the enviable opportunity to enjoy every minute equally.”

  “Of course you’re right, my love. You always are!” She giggled and threw herself into his arms. And in that moment of great joy, she broke into tears of despair.

  “Eve, my love, whatever is the matter?”

  “Oh Adam, I had the most horrible dream,” she sobbed.

  “But you always dream about me, and gardening, and the children we will have…”

  “Not this night, Adam.”

  “Oh poor dear, that must have been terrifying. Now, we must rise, and go to our work.”

  “Oh, Adam! This weighs upon my soul heavier than my duties to you and God are light. Please, hear of my dream.”

  Adam sighed loudly. “Okay, okay. I’m listening.”

  “Thank you my everything! Your patience and generosity are unbounded.” She meant this without sarcasm. She hadn’t discovered sarcasm yet. “I thought I heard a voice at my ear—I thought it was you—saying, ‘Why are you sleeping, Eve? Nighttime is not a time for sleeping. Come out! It is the pleasant time, cool and fresh, where the silence is broken only by the beautiful song of the nightingale, who having worked hard all day on his song, his labor of love, rises to begin the celebration but finds himself sole waker in a slumbering world. Yet listen how he serenades his solitude, how he doesn’t wait for the rest of the world. He is a pioneer, an influencer, a trailblazer of the joys of the night—come see! Now is the pleasant time, when the moon reigns full-orb’d, and less harsh than the garish sun, spangles all she sees in ribboned shadows. Is this delightful show worthwhile if none sees it? Come out! All of Heaven’s star-eyes are awake, and they gaze down, wanting only a glimpse of you. Your beauty, Eve, is not a thing to be hid, but it must be shared with the universe so it can pattern itself after you, its mother and queen. Come out! Step out into the starlight, and let the eyes fall on your body. Open yourself to the night and learn to love its superior joys. It is the pleasant time! Come out!’ it repeated, and in my dream, I rose.

  “I stood, and looked down at the bed beside me, and you weren’t there. I knew it had been your voice that I heard, and I walked out into the night to find it. ‘Adam!’ I called, and the voice replied, ‘Come out!’. So I stepped into the moonlight. It was brighter than I imagined, and everything was suffused with a soothing, purple glow. The cool air woke my skin to the sensations around me, and I was blissfully aware of the breeze and the gentle tickle of the flowers on my feet. And the eyes! The stars, as the voice told me, had turned to eyes, and they were all on me. They took in every inch of my body, inviting me to turn and show myself from new angles—to reveal myself completely to them—to give my beauty to their gaze. And being so seen, my sex awoke, too, and I sat on the grass, feeling its caress on my bum, and I parted my legs so the sky’s watchers could see me more fully.

  “And there, on the grass, I began to spasm, Oh Adam, like you do inside of me, but without any casting forth of fluid. And it was the most incredible feeling, and I looked around for you to share my joy with you, but I couldn’t hold my concentration outside myself. I simply went within, and lived for the moment entirely for me.”

  “Eve…,” Adam interrupted, “this is most disturbing. Going out at night? Spasming like a man, and without a casting forth, and even more disturbing, without me? But Eve, I thought I was your everything!”

  “You are, sweetums. It’s only a dream! But it gets worse. Now you must listen. After my pleasure, as I came back into myself, I saw before me the tree—that tree that we must never touch! And in the moonlight, under the stars, in the song of the nightingale, it was more beautiful than I had ever seen it. It was like it soaked up the starlight and reflected it back more potent, more diaphanous, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen, except for you and my own sweet reflection, of course. It was like the nighttime brought out all the perfection in it that was hidden from me by day. As I stared at it, I noticed standing under it one shaped and winged as our visitors from Heaven, but like the tree and the night, more beautiful than I had ever seen them before. He was staring at the tree, too, and I knew he knew the beauty I saw in it, but still I felt strange, like I shared with him a secret that we kept from God and you. I heard him whispering to the tree, but I couldn’t hear what he said, so I moved closer, and as I did and could hear his voice clearly, I recognized it as the one that called me out. I had thought it was you, but I could tell now that it was nothing like your voice—raspier, harder at the edges, sometimes more like a hiss than a whisper—though like yours I found it overwhelmingly attractive. I was drawn closer and closer until I stood directly beside him. I felt his wing wrap around me, holding me, softly at first, but then tight, holding my arms to my side so I couldn’t move them or struggle away—but I didn’t have any impulse to struggle. His voice and the beauty of the tree were holding me in place—and the things he said! ‘O lovely tree,’ he whispered, ‘so heavy with delicious fruit, nor God nor man is kind enough to relieve your happy burden. Is knowledge so despised? Are you so hated for bringing forth something so harmless, so helpful, as sight to a blind world?’

  “His eyes shone like the stars, and the same way the stars looked hungrily upon me, his eyes devoured the tree’s soft glow. ‘Forbid it who will,’ he continued, ‘none shall from me withhold long your gifts, given freely.’ Then, without pausing, he plucked a fruit and bit into it. The plentiful, sticky juices ran down his chin. I tried to turn away, to cover my eyes from the horror of his act, but his wing held me tight and I couldn’t move, and as hard as I tried, my eyes wouldn’t close. His face and body began to glow with an inner light that felt warm against my skin...and once again, he spoke: ‘Oh, glorious rapture, sweetest of fruits, but more sweet because it is forbidden,’ and at this, he began caressing my body, as you do, with his light-warmed hands, warmer in the cool night air, as though he were talking to me and not the fruit at all. ‘Oh fruit divine, fit for gods, but able to make gods of men,’ and his hands moved over my breasts, as though they were the fruit to which he spoke, and I felt the pleasure building in me again, that which I had felt in the grass, as he continued, ‘and why not? Knowledge is not a finite resource. I don’t lose knowledge when I give it away, but rather augment the good in the universe by planting it in new soils and watching as it grows.’

  “And his hand moved down my stomach and over my sex as he broke his gaze from the tree and stared into my eyes—nay, into my soul. ‘This fruit is for you, fair, angelic Eve. I will share it with you, and as happy as you are, you will be happier still,’ and his finger began to worry something between my legs—my legs which had opened for him almost of their own volition. Pure pleasure, as I have never felt before, coursed through my body, and to my shame, I thought not of you, Adam, at all, nor of him, either, but of the quickening feeling under my skin and of the fruit, which I could smell now, sweet and inviting. ‘Taste it,’ he said, and I was unsure whether we meant the fruit or the pleasure, for they seemed the same, ‘and be a Goddess, and he held the fruit to my mouth. I tried to get away, but his wing held me tight, and his hand on my sex kept me motionless, and as he rubbed me, I couldn’t resist anymore and as I opened my mouth to taste the fruit waves of ecstasy flowed through my body, and he and I flew up into the night sky, where we could see all of Eden stretched out below us, wide and various, and even beyond Eden into the wide, wonderous world of pleasures yet untasted. Suddenly, he disappeared, and I dreamt I floated back down to earth, weak and reeling from the pleasures he had brought me, and I fell into a deep slumber, there on the soft, grassy ground.

  “Oh, how happy I was to wake here beside you and find it had only been a dream!” she said, but she was somehow unsure why she had said it.

  “Sweet, perfect Eve, best image of myself and dearer half, your distress at your dream is understandable, and it distresses me, too. I fear it has an evil source, but what evil can be here in Paradise? I know there is no evil in you; you are pure, and innocent, and simple, for so you were designed and so created, to complement my free will with your own, though subject to mine. We humans rule ourselves through reason, but there are many lesser faculties that support our reason. First, and foremost is Fancy, so called because it allows us to think fancy thoughts. It takes the objects we can see, touch, and experience and puts them in intellectual contexts that allow us to tell stories about them, form understandings and opinions, and imagine how they might be used to better our lives. Like that time we put a cucumber inside you, so that your hoo hoo wasn’t lonely while my woo woo was in your mouth. Creativity is one of the greatest joys of being human.”

  Eve blushed as she grinned.

  “But when we sleep,” Adam continued, “Fancy’s cousin, Mimic Fancy, comes out and shows us weird stuff that we’ve never seen, turns shapes wild and misjoined into new and uncouth ideas. Some of the things in your dream are like things we talked about last night, and your dream seems to have mashed those together with other things to create this dastardly vision. But don’t worry, my love. Evil can come into our minds and then leave again without causing any trouble, as long as we don’t grab onto it and keep it. I know that even though you dreamed of unnatural things, like eating the forbidden fruit and coming to orgasm like a man, but without emission of seed sauce, those things that so frightened and dismayed you in your dream you will never consent to do in real life, even if there is some evil angel out there wanting to toy with your body which you are perfectly happy to give only to me.”

  “Of course, my love, but…”

  “But nothing, my sweet,” he said with a sternness she had never heard in his voice before. His face softened. “Your immortal beauty needs not be troubled with such thoughts. The morning wears on, and we must rise and go to our work among the groves, fountains, and flowers, which open their buds and breathe out their perfumes for you alone that they’ve been saving up all night.

  “Of course, my love.” She corrected herself, but silently, she let fall two teardrops and wiped them away with her hair.

  Two more that were ready to fall Adam kissed away smiling, knowing them to be sweet signs of her remorse and fear of having offended him.

  She smiled in return but she was unable to shake the feeling that something was horribly wrong in their perfect world, and that Adam’s read of the situation was dangerously simplistic. He stood and stretched, clenching his perfect butt cheeks, and while his back was turned, Eve’s hand found its way to the warmth between her legs, and she immediately found the little pleasure button that figured so prominently in her nightmare. It had just been a dream, hadn’t it? But like Courtney Cox at the end of Masters of the Universe, who believed her journey in Eternia to have been a dream until she found the snowglobe that the Sorceress gave her, the existence of that heretofore unknown snowglobe of nerves made Eve wonder if there was some truth to what the angel in her dream had said, and more importantly, if in her waking life she could feel the spasms Adam felt when he let loose his salty milkshake.

  They stepped out of the bower into the fresh morning light. After their sex and conversation, the sun was higher than usual in the sky over the eastern landscape, and the shadows, long with morning’s novelty, began to shorten and take focus, announcing that they too must focus on their work. But before they descended into labor, Adam and Eve began their morning prayers, duly paid many times a day in true gratitude for the beauty and plenty of their life and home. Their prayers were improvised in holy rapture in various styles, sometimes said, sometimes sung, in prose or spontaneously metered rhyme. Their voices, these perfect proofs of mankind, were mellifluous and fell into perfect harmony without effort, and their song of worship shamed both the lark and the sleeping nightingale. They sang:

  “God made dirt

  Dirt don’t hurt

  It grows the trees

  Up to the sky

  God made the blossoms

  And all th’ opossoms

  And all the bees

  And you and I

  So thank you God

  We rank you God

  At number one, yeah,

  You’re the zenith

  You bade us fuck

  And wished us luck

  And it was fun,

  Hooray for penith.

  So pray’d they innocent, to thir thoughts firm peace recover’d soon and wonted calm. They went to work among the sweet dews and flowers. They pruned fruit branches that had twisted together and threatened to smother each other with their embraces. They led the vine to the elm, like matchmakers, and taught her to wind around his trunk in mutual love and support. They shoveled and tilled and did all kinds of other types of gardeningy things.

  Their hard work, and more their joy at hard work, touched the heart of their very Protestant God, and He pitied them their foreknown fate. He called Raphael—the smoothest of angels, who smoothly helped Tobias hook up with Sarah, who, though she had been married seven times, was definitely a virgin—to His side.

  “Raphael,” God began, being both conventional and efficient in His greetings, I’m sure you’ve heard about the to-do and shenanigans and goings on of Satan on Earth, how he escaped from Hell like some kind of dark Houdini, how he unacceptably disturbed the sleep of my little humans, and how he’s planning to do some other stuff, like ruining all mankind.”

  “I’ve been briefed, my Lord,” replied Raphael, a bit offhandedly.

  “I need you to go to Eden, and meet up with Adam when he and Eve take their lunch break. Be friendly with him, Raphael, and chat with him for the rest of the day, friendly-like. Pull the stick out of your ass, have a beer, and relax a bit.

  “I’m cool, Daddy-o” said the complete absence of a stick in Raphael’s ass.

  God continued, “Try to make it seem natural—you know, like you’re trying to make conversation, not like you were sent to warn him. Work the conversation toward how nice Eden is, and how that happiness is conditional on them following instructions like good boys and girls, and how it can be ripped out from under them at a moment’s notice if they decide to do something dumb. Then maybe you can talk about how Satan, who was recently kicked out of Heaven for doing something stupid—maybe you can figure out how to make that some kind of an analogy—is loose in the universe and has been targeting my creations in other Earthly Paradises. Tell them he’s not violent, because he knows I’d put that down, but that he uses deceit and lies. You know, so they should be on watch. Do a good job, and when Adam willfully transgresses, I’ll let you tell him ‘I told you so’.

  “Yes sir, I’d like that,” Raphael responded. “But, sir?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Just to be clear, you’re asking me to lie to them?” Raphael asked.

  “Why yes, I guess so.” God chuckled a little.

  Then Raphael, pleased with himself, chuckled too.

  “We’ll beat the Devil at his own game!” God said.

  Raphael had gotten the bug, and now his chuckle had turned into a guffaw. “We’ll kick his butt! Then he’ll see that Adam and Eve are unimpeachable.”

  God’s laugh died down. “No,” He said, gravely, “Adam and Eve will be quite totally impeached—imappled, rather. Satan will accomplish his plan and be punished accordingly. When I said we’d beat the Devil, I more meant he’d get exactly what he wanted and then be horribly punished for it, and then we’d be locked in a slow war of attrition with his minions for the next several thousand years.”

  “Oh.” Raphael replied. For the first time in a while, he felt foolish. His ass felt empty, and he wished he had a stick to lodge up there.

  “Now get out of here.”

  Raphael gave a quick, embarrassed aye-aye and hit the road. He edged his way past the other angels, all of whom were smiling goofily at his little mistake, then he remembered he could fly and shot awkwardly up into the air. The angelic quires parted, sniggering to let him through. As he approached the gate, he fumbled in his pocket for the remote, dropped it, immediately snagged it, and clicked the auto-open button just in time to not smack right into the pearly goldenness at top speed.

  Once outside the gate in the empty vacuum of space, he could breathe again, and his flight became a centering meditation, which all angels learn when they are young because of the inevitability that they will embarrass themselves in front of the Creator of the Universe. And though Raphael looked like a bit of an ass to the other angels, to the rest of the universe, he looked like a fucking superhero of speed and awesomeness, and he knew it. He streaked through the ethereal sky, with no clouds or stars to impede his course, and when he had blasted through the center of the sun, he came out the other side flaming like the Phoenix, sexiest of birds.

  Even the towering eagles in the skies over Paradise were like “Holy fuck, that guy’s a badass!” and one of them tried it himself, but didn’t even get, like, a quarter of the way to the sun before he was like, “Whoa, that’s far,” and it’s probably for the best.

  Just a few short hours after leaving Heaven, because he’s that fast, he landed on the eastern cliff of Paradise, and the flames immediately extinguished themselves as though he were too cool to be so darn hot, but you know, I take back that subjunctive ‘were’ because he was too cool. Yea verily, far too cool. Without the flames, his true shape could be seen, and then the eagles were really impressed. He was a winged Seraph, but not just any seraph. He had six wings, and he used them to cast a shadow over his beauty, so your eyes wouldn’t burst out of the sheer glory of his gloriousness if you happened to look directly at him. But it still wasn’t recommended, let me tell you what.

  In case you’re having trouble picturing a six-winged angel, I’ll help you out a bit. He had two wings on his shoulders which wrapped around his chest like the breastplate of a suit of armor, and which should be an easy metaphor to picture because under them, he wore the breastplate of a suit of armor, embossed in the shape of wings, which you can compare directly, especially if you happened to be there, which you weren’t. His middle wings, which grew out of his lower back, wrapped around his waist like a starry belt, so from a distance he looked kind of like Orion, but instead of three stars, he had a fuckton of them. The third pair of wings grew out of his heels, and were stiff and powerful, like little foot-dicks, but more wing-like. He stood silent and proud, with arms and wings akimbo, and as he shook his plumes, angel smell filled the air—and there ain’t no smell like angel smell.

  The angels on watch knew him immediately, and all stepped out of their tents and saluted him as he walked by, for they all respected them, even if some of them thought six wings was a little extravagant. He walked through fields of myrrh, cassia, nard, and balm, all the sweet-smelling plants of the world, for in the fields of Eden, nature did what she want, and everyone was cool with that, for she was in her new-created prime, and she was a little drunk. An artist or an engineer sent to design these fields might have done it differently, but she was enchanted with the spirit of freedom and play, and she was putting flowers on top of flowers, and pomegranates on cornstalks, and really, that’s about how crazy and awesome and blissful it was. Raphael laughed to himself in that Errol Flynn way that nobody saw as really very authentic but that everyone knew meant a jovial defiance of every limit, which put him and Nature in at least superficially the same boat. Raphael was a standup guy like that. He liked to help people and spirits feel good about their choices.

  Across the field he saw Adam, sitting in the door of his shady bower, because it was hot outside, as this was the time for the sun to warm the bowels of the earth, so it got actually pretty intense. But you know, it’s lunchtime, and if it didn’t get a little too warm, Adam would never take a break. What a guy! Eve was in the kitchen, preparing lunch of savory fruits that spurred on the already active appetite and encouraged the thirst to slake itself on grape soda, which Eve made by hand from fresh grapes and water from a naturally bubbly spring. Nor Fanta nor Sunkist, nor Crush, nor Shasta could compete with the refreshing fruits of nature, nor were they trying, so I guess that’s a little unfair. Really, the point is that Eve’s grape soda was really tasty, and being paired with the fruits they had for lunch made it seem even better.

  Adam called out to her: “Eve! Come check this out! Out in the distance, a glorious shape comes this way moving, another morning risen at noon. Maybe he brings fancy messages from Heaven and he’ll be our guest today. We’re going to need more grape soda! Go down to the cellar and bring up our best food and drink to prepare for our guest!” He would have done it himself, but he was really enjoying his lunchtime break, and the shade felt so nice on his warm skin.

  “Sweet Adam,” she called back, not even annoyed, “We don’t have a cellar. Everything grows year round and there’s not really any reason to store things. I will be happy to go out in the hot noontime sun that chases us to our bower in order to pull fruit off the bough, though, and make ready for our guest who apparently didn’t feel the need to let us know he was coming when we were picking fruit for lunch.”

  Adam grinned. She was so thoughtful. “Okay, honey! However you do it is fine! But don’t skimp, our guest is from Heaven, and we don’t want them to think we’re trashy.”

  Eve knew all this already, but she appreciated Adam reminding her. She turned and hasted out into the sun, and rather than let Adam’s demands bring her down, she took them as a challenge, and turned on her chef’s brain. She chose carefully, fruit by fruit what was most ripe and succulent, which flavors paired most perfectly together, and how to build the courses up from delicacy to delicacy into a crescendo of flavor and good taste. She took into account nutrition and color, texture and sweetness, as everything was to be perfect for her guest. Though she didn’t have manna and ambrosia, she had the one thing sweeter, variety, that could win over the palate even of angels. She heaped her bounty on the table, squeezed grapes and berries for soda, pressed the savory creams from nuts and kernels, and spread out rose petals and fragrant herbs on the ground beneath the table.

  Meanwhile Adam, our primitive grandfather, combed his hair sweetly and walked out to greet their Godly guest. Years from now, princes would put on pomp and rich clothes and gay codpieces, surround themselves with retinue of noble bearing and banners and trumpets and flugelhorns to march out and meet their neighbors, but Adam, brimming with the nobility of nature, with his perfect posture and firm jaw, his confident gaze and perfectly chiseled abs, walked out to meet his guest, naked and alone. When he drew near, Adam, not nervous like a trekkie meeting Wil Wheaton, but coolly deferent to the angel’s advanced rank, bowed low.

  “Honored guest, fancy angel,” Adam began, “who if I were into dudes I would be all up on, but being not am not, though respectful of your rank and beauty. You have chosen to leave your own Heavenly Paradise to visit our Earthly one, and as it is the hottest part of the day, and your buddy Uriel shines his warming planet mercilessly at our little garden, please step inside our cool, shady love nest. Taste of our fruit, share our repast, and maybe when the sun has calmed down a bit, we’ll play some pickleball.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The Holy Virtue responded: “Adam! My friend!” He hugged him, having taken the high order to take the stick out of his ass quite seriously. “I see you’re a little bonery all of a sudden.”

  “Sorry,” Adam replied. “You just smell really good.”

  “No worries,” said the angel, “I’m flattered!” And he was. “Thank you for inviting me into your bower to share your repast. I have the afternoon off, and I thought I’d see if you wanted to hang for a bit and chew the Paradisical fat. Lead on! It’s hot as heck out here, and it’s easy to get a little overheated with all these wings.” Upon saying which, he stretched all of them to their full length to capture the majesty of the sun shining through them.

  Adam led Raphael to their shady bower, which like Pomona’s arbor o’erflowed with fruits and vegetables of all shapes and sizes. The floor’s subtle perfumes were no match for Raphael’s awesome angel smell, but they occasionally wafted through and joined the bouquet. Eve was there, and nakedly adorned the room with her naked beauty, which was naked, dressed only in her lovely nakedness, like a naked wood nymph or those naked goddesses who naked strove in Mount Ida to determine which was the fairest, and who though naked, were not as lovely in their nakedness as was Eve, who, by the way, was naked. Raphael greeted her with the profuse and holy greeting reserved for womenfolk, and which he would eventually use with Mary at the annunciation: “Oh, hi there.”

  “Hi!” she replied, giggling.

  “Nice tits,” said the angel. “To nurse the next generation of man-children and girls,” he clarified.

  She smiled broadly. She did have nice tits, and she enjoyed it when people noticed.

  The table was raised of grassy turf, like a small, rectangular butte in their little hut, with moss-softened rocks placed around it for seats. There were only the two of them, and though they rarely had guests, they had seating for eight, just in case. On the table were artfully piled all of autumn’s fleshy harvest, summer’s sweet-juiced vine fruits, and for decoration, the flowers of spring, all of which grew all the time in Eden. They sat and talked for a while, sipping grape soda and admiring the meal to come. They were in no hurry, as it wasn’t like it would get cold or anything. It was pretty much just a pile of fruit, most of which hadn’t even been peeled or cut. Eve thought of herself as a brilliant culinary artist, because Adam was ebullient with his praise, but to be fair, pretty much anyone could pick fruit and stack it on the table like she so carefully did.

  Our many-times-great grandfather began. “Heavenly stranger, please, taste the rainbow of bounties that God the Nourisher sends unmeasured to us in perfect good. It might not be what you’re used to, but our humble palates enjoy it, and it is what we have to share.”

  “And so I shall,” the angel replied, “for angels have to eat, too, you know, and what God in His bounty has given to you, I will eat bounteously in reply. Your palate and mine have the same faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, and taste, and just like you, what we taste is digested in our stomachs, assimilated into our vital juices, and goes to our hips, hence my big angel booty.” He stood and shook it.

  Adam had not noticed before, but he certainly did now. Raphael was bedonkadonkalicious.

  “Whatever was created needs to be sustained and fed,” the angel continued. “Unrefined things feed refined things: The earth feeds the sea, the earth and sea feed the air, the air feeds the heavenly fires.

  “What about the moon?” Adam asked.

  “The what? Oh, the moon.” Raphael was a little caught off guard by this. He was mostly talking out of his ass anyway, which, now unburdened with stick had quite a lot to say. Now he had to figure out how the moon fit into his diatribe. “Well...um...the moon, being pretty unrefined, has trouble finding stuff to eat sometimes. That’s why it has holes in it. It couldn’t find enough food, so it didn’t have any extra substance to fill them with.”

  “But doesn’t the sun nourish it with its warmth?” Eve asked precociously as she dusted the pictures.

  “Um...sure...that sounds...how did you know that?” Raphael asked, realizing she was right.

  “It’s just a little observation,” said Eve, not sure herself how she had known. “But doesn’t that disrupt your system? I mean, surely the sun is more refined than the moon, but yet the moon, as you have admitted, feeds on the sun.”

  Raphael tried to respond, but he couldn’t figure out how to bring it back around.

  “Eve, darlingest darling,” Adam added, “you’re embarrassing our guest! We’re discussing the laws of physics and the composition of angel digestive systems. Surely, that bores you.

  Eve hadn’t been bored at all, but she realized she had overstepped.

  “Oh, of course you’re right, Adam, and Raphael, your system cannot be flawed, for you are an angel, and you have the wisdom of the universe at your fingertips. I am merely a human, and a woman at that; forgive me.”

  Adam smiled broadly, proud of her perfect tact, and Raphael felt a little more at ease. Eve continued sweeping the dirt from the dirt floor.

  “As I was saying,” Raphael said, “I’ll eat happily of your food, and I savor the opportunity to taste things we have not in heaven.”

  Adam was pleased, and he and the angel dug the fuck in. They ate hungrily and totally, like fat kids at a pie eating contest, while Eve, ever the perfect naked hostess, kept the grape soda flowing, removed empty rinds, and brought more fruit when it ran low. Long after Adam felt full to bursting Raphael kept going, and like a child whose parents, for religious or quasi-scientific reasons, don’t allow him to have an XBox, when he goes to another kid’s house for a sleepover, doesn’t want to do anything but play XBox all the time, so the angel seemed like he could shovel in the people food forever, without a break.

  Eventually, the bower had been emptied of food and drink, and all the nearby trees that Eve could run to and return from in a reasonable time were divested of fruit. Eve was winded from her attention to the angel’s copious needs, and Adam, frankly, was bored. Out of food, but bleary eyed and drunk with the sensual pleasure of eating, Raphael noticed Eve’s lovely body with a feeling approaching lust, though as you know, angels can’t experience anything so earthly in its baseness. His tiny angel dick (for it’s little-known but true that angels are hung like infants) stood up a bit, but Raphael eventually recovered from his stupor and it relaxed.

  “Thank you, Adam, for the plentiful repast. It gave me great pleasure,” said the polite angel.

  Adam smiled. “Oh it was nothing. Please come back any time.”

  Eve glared at both of them.

  Adam couldn’t help but admire the angel, who nonetheless seemed only to want to look at Eve, and as he was eyeing the fine materials and gems of Raphael’s robe, his well turned calves, and the delicate way his hair lay on his cheek, Adam realized he had a great opportunity to pick this empyreal minister’s brain.

  “Inhabitant with God,” he began, “you have done us great honor to eat of our fruits and to enter under our lowly roof. It wasn’t food fit for angels, but you accepted it so very, very willingly. What are angel feasts like?

  “Kind host,” the angel replied, “there’s only one God, and from God all things flow, so all things are as one, though they seem quite different to you. Take men and women, for example. Despite some very pleasant differences in shape,” and with this he eyefucked Eve a little, who though she didn’t seem to notice might have stuck her ass out a little farther than necessary while wiping off the table, “ you are largely the same. Your bodily functions and operations, the shape and locations of your joints, the texture of your skin, and innumerable other things about you are the same. As many qualities do you share with the monkey, the mango, and even the potato, though some are obviously of inferior refinement.”

  “Though surely you are not saying that Eve, who was made for my amusement and service, and the potato, which was made to feed my body, are my equals?”

  “Of course not, silly boy, yet still you are made of the same substance. Is a fallen stick the equal of a tree? Or a stone the equal of a statue carved from stone? Yet each is made from the same substance as the other. It’s simply a matter of refinement. Matter is simply the solid and liquid waste of heaven, at different levels of purification. Dust, sand, sulphur, tar are as heavenly as fruit and pure water, but without refinement. All the world is angel poop, and some of that angel poop, through refinement, has been made quite lovely. Your incredulity is understandable, but look at it this way, does not the root, when placed in the soil, create the stalk, which is much finer than either? Does not the stalk put forth the aery leaf? Does not the leaf herald the beautiful flower, and does not the flower make way for the fruit? Surely all are the same substance, but is not the fruit much more colorful, pleasant, and succulent than the root?”

  “I begin to understand,” said Adam, but there was a subtext that was lost on him.

  “The soul wishes to be vital, and by the combination of the soul and body, the animal is made human, and given access to reason, of which there are two types: rational and intuitive. Rational, or discursive reason is apportioned to humans through observation, thought, and discourse, while angels have intuitive reason. The strength of human reason is that it can grow and improve, while the strength of angelic reason is that it is complete and needs not change. All things are the same and become what they need to be. Baby batter, when you add eggs, becomes a baby, by simple refinement and admixture, and that baby, as it adds nourishment and experience, grows to be a capable, rational person.”

  “I forget where we started,” admitted Adam

  “Ah yes,” said the angel, “I had eaten hungrily of your fruit and you wanted to know why I enjoyed it, when I was used to heaven food. My body processes it the same way, as though it were manna or ambrosia, but my tongue enjoys it as something new, different, and exciting.” There was a subtext in his phrasing that, for once, wasn’t lost on Eve.

  “Cool!” Adam exclaimed. “Can I try some manna? If what you’re saying is true, it should work the other way, too, right?”

  “Try some manna?” said the angel, indignant. “Of course not! You would never be satisfied with regular food again, and we couldn’t have that.”

  “Oh. I’m pretty full anyway.”

  “Over time, though, as you spend generations in perfect immortal happiness in Eden, you will learn the skill to develop into creatures more like us, who can transform physical nourishment into spiritual, and you’ll be able to travel as you like between Heavenly and Earthly paradises. That is, if you are found obedient and you remain unalterably firm in God’s pronouncements.”

  “But God’s pronouncements are easy and natural,” objected Adam, “why would we ever challenge them or disobey?”

  Eve turned away to dab at a dirty spot on the dirt wall.

  “I’m happy to hear that you feel that way,” the angel said.

  “Kind benefactor,” Adam said, “you have taught me of the ordering of nature and the differences between angels and men, and you have shown me how the study of nature and pondering its truths can make men more like angels and teach us the path to Heaven. But I ask you again, why did you add on the qualifier, ‘if you are found obedient’? Could a God doubt those who He made from dust? Could any His love desert who placed them in Paradise, met their needs, and gave them honest work?”

  Eve laughed nervously, “Of course not! That would be like me disobeying Adam!”

  The angel sensed something was wrong. This time, he looked into her eyes and not at her plentiful bosom. She immediately looked away.

  “Life is easy for humans,” Raphael continued. “You have minimal power and minimal responsibility, but you must fully understand the responsibility you have if you’re to be truly successful. Thank God for your happiness, for it flows from Him.

  However, for your continued happiness, thank yourself. God gave you everything you need to live a happy and fulfilling life, but He also gave you free will, so that you might choose to be an asshole.

  “God made you perfect, but perfection is not immutability. You have to maintain that perfection. You want to keep having rippling abs? You have to eat reasonable portions and work purposefully.

  “Overall, God just wants to know that you chose to serve Him. Could He make you do the right thing? Of course, but then it’s not meaningful anymore. You are predisposed to good, but that doesn’t make you incapable of evil, should you find reasons compelling enough to do evil.

  “The angels in Heaven have the same requirements. We have a good life, but if we decide not to be obedient to God’s easy commandments, we stand to lose some privileges. We serve Him freely because we love Him completely, but there have been some that did not, and they were kicked out on their angel tuckuses.”

  “That’s great news!” Eve replied, startling both the men, who didn’t know she was listening. “I didn’t realize we had free will, and could make our own choices. I assumed that since I had always listened to what Adam said, I was just kind of made that way—that when he asked something of me, it would just kind of automatically happen, as I had never thought to challenge it.”

  Adam and Raphael’s bodies tensed. Their eyes moved from side to side, avoiding making eye contact with Eve, who was freaking them out.

  “Of course,” she continued (with a gleam in her eye than neither of them saw), “I will never forget to love Adam and to obey his commands, which are always so just and reasonable. And we will both remember always to love and obey God, who has only given us two commandments, and so much good else.”

  The menfolk visibly relaxed. Eve wiggled her naked hips a little more than she needed to as she walked away, and the menfolk stiffened again, though they remained relaxed.

  Adam spoke again, but this time in a self-conscious whisper, looking up at Eve after every couple of words, as though he was unsure whether she could hear him. “You were saying something about angels that disobeyed. That’s a little hard for me to believe! They’re angels! They’re the good guys! And they disobeyed God, Who had to kick them out? I gotta know. The full story.” By now he had forgotten to whisper and was speaking excitedly, in a big boy voice. “There’s a lot of day ahead of us, and there’s no fruit left to pick anyway. I love a good story!” Adam’s face twisted in thought for a second. He had never actually heard a good story. I guess what he meant was that he anticipated loving a good story were he ever to hear one.

  And he was about to hear a story like none other.

  Raphael thought for a moment, mostly about how lucky it was that Adam was making it easy for him to do God’s will and bring these things up subtly.

  He spoke: “This is a heavy story you ask me to share, O first of men, and I find myself overtaken by emotions that I hadn’t felt before or after the tragedy occurred. How shall I relate to human sense the invisible exploits of warring spirits? How shall I tell without breaking into tears of remorse of the ruin of so many who were so glorious and perfect? How shall I reveal to you the secrets of another world, whose revelation may be unlawful though within the scope of God’s commands?”

  ***

  Light: And he went on like that for another hour-and-a-half.

  Me: This is going to be exciting, though! Skip to the good stuff.

  Light: Well, it was exciting. I was there. But, if you noticed, Raphael isn’t exactly a captivating storyteller. I’m going to tell you the story my way, and not just repeat to you what that jerk said. It might be a little more colorful. I hope you don’t mind.

  Me: That sounds great!

  ***

  The Earth hadn’t been invented yet, and all this stuff that you people are standing on was those days the dominion of Chaos, and more like a room temperature soup than a planet, when one day (and I use that term pretty loosely, because we’re talking celestial days here, which aren’t even really very conceivable by humans, but you kind of get the idea), God called all the angels together before His throne.

  There were a lot of angels, like a lot a lot. They came from all the ends of Heaven and lined up nicely in hierarchical order, because if angels are good at anything it’s organization and following orders. Each different rank of each company had its own standard, and front to back, there were probably ten thousand different standards, all with holy ensigns depicting acts of love, charity, and worship. The ranks were arranged in concentric circles around a raised dais on which sat the Throne of God, Father and Daughter, side by side. I don’t think the Daughter was in her feminine phase yet at that point—She was always bouncing back and forth between cods and plackets, you realize, until She did the famous thing—dying for mankind, I mean—and kind of got locked in—cocked in, I should say—to maleness. Oh, no, actually, that was the first time the She showed up—I was thinking about a different day. So yeah, definitely no juicy titties yet, being, and having, just a wee One.

  Anyway, those particular facets of God were glowing all bright in the center, and soldier-angels were all lined up around Them, and then He (the Father) spoke:

  “Okay, listen up, Angels. Hear me, because I’m only going to say this once, and it’s a little confusing: This is my Son. I just made Him, like a few minutes ago. And, well, I anointed Him, placed Him on this throne at my right hand, and I just wanted you guys to know about it, since He will be, along with me, your boss and ruler for all eternity, and it seemed like an important thing for you to be aware of. I promised Him everyone in Heaven would bend their knee to Him, and, well, it’s His birthday, and you don’t want to make Me look like an asshole, do you? It’s a pretty simple command. I order you to be happy about this and obedient to my Kid in all things, and if you can’t handle that and you disobey Me, I’ll remove you from my blessed vision and cast you into utter darkness without redemption for all eternity.”

  Everyone seemed pretty okay with this. They nodded their heads and nodded their approval, and all that. Many of them shouted “Happy birthday!” to the Kid. As I say, everyone seemed okay, but all were not.

  The angels spent the day in song and dance about the sacred hill, which wasn’t in itself special, because they did that pretty much every day. Their dance, which they performed without leaving their complicated configuration, but in turning the circles of angels between each other at different speeds and in different directions, and precisely thereby recreating the motions of the stars, planets, and heavenly bodies, because you can pull off some pretty sick choreography when you have eternity to work with.

  Just as the heavenly spheres make beautiful music as they turn in their grooves, so the sounds of shields and armor brushing up against one another and the harmonies of angel voices supporting their chiming delighted the ear of the Father and his newborn adult Son, who cooed in a way that’s cute when babies do it and really, really creepy when grownups do. I guess since He was both, it was okay.

  Evening approached. Heaven has evenings and mornings, too. Not out of any necessity, but just so it feels different sometimes. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the celestial day, they just dim the lights sometimes so the angels feel better about getting smashed. They had been dancing for quite some time, and everyone was starting to get hungry, so someone shouted, “Hey, let’s throw an evening!” and they all went in to dinner.

  The tables were magically and immediately covered with angel food, and nectar was literally flowing out of the gemstone looking fruits that grew on the vines of Heaven, so you just had to stick your cup underneath and you were good to go. They all sat on big, cushiony flowers that grew like chairs around the table, and everyone “took communion,” which in Heaven just meant getting shitfaced and eating until you couldn’t move.

  God turned down the dimmer a bit and everything shifted to twilight, and all the angels paired off and dispersed back to their own mansions for their own private celebrations. Everyone slept well that night, fanned with cool winds, except a few who stayed back to keep the hymns going around the throne of God—God doesn’t sleep, and you know how He loves His hymns.

  There was one other who didn’t get much sleep that night. Satan, still Lucifer in those days, was one of the first archangels—some would put him right at the top of the pile. He was powerful, and God loved him and favored him. Nonetheless, he was fraught with envy against the Son of God, and seeing God anoint Him and proclaim Him King was more than he could handle. Suddenly, it seemed to him, he had been knocked down a rank in order to make room for one more between him and the throne. God is immortal, so there wasn’t really any chance He would move out of the way so Lucifer could take over, but that wasn’t the point. He always had a really numerical way of looking at things, and he always saw himself as God’s number two. And tonight, in a much less satisfying way, he really felt like God’s number two.

  So now he was pissed off, and full of malice and disdain, and when midnight (or the heavenly equivalent, as it’s all a bit arbitrary there) struck, he decided he was going to get his subordinates together, as he was an important general in Heaven, and convince them not to worship this new holy Upstart.

  He woke up his first lieutenant—I don’t remember what his name was back then, but now they call him Beelzebub—and whispered in his ear, “How can you sleep at a time like this?”

  “What, what do you mean?” said a very drowsy Beelzebub.

  “Don’t you remember the decree of the Almighty? We talked, remember! You and I! You said you felt the same way about it, but I couldn’t sleep because of how I felt about it, and you were sleeping, which means we obviously didn’t feel the same way about it!”

  “Let me sleep, Morning Star, and we can feel the same way about it in the morning.”

  “Wake up!” Lucifer whisper-shouted, slapping Beelzebub about the chest and shoulders.

  “Argh!” Beelzebub replied. “I’m up! I’m up.” And he was, and it was good. He sat up in bed and rubbed the sleepy boogers out of his eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We can’t talk here. Assemble the troops. Tell them that I’ve been commanded to hurry, and to take everyone who follows my banner to the Quarters of the North with flying march. Tell them we must arrive before daylight and prepare the place, because the great Messiah, our new Sovereign, is on His way to deliver a speech about a bunch of new laws.”

  “New laws?”

  “New laws.”

  “Why would we need new laws?”

  “Sic semper tyrannis,” whisper-shouted the evil one, and he ran off, jumping nonsensically from the balcony and leaving Beelzebub, with bad influence pounding in his chest, to follow his odd command.

  Beelzebub ran through the camp (which was really much more like a large, gated subdivision than a camp because it being heaven, they were all in mansions), waking up the aides-de-camp, who woke up the lieutenants, who woke up their men, who were incredibly well disciplined and didn’t curse at anyone until all Lucifer’s regents stood just out of earshot of their assembled troops. Lucifer told them what he had told Beelzebub, that they were to march north to receive the Messiah, but he scattered his orders with ambiguous phrases and subtle jealousies, so those who caught on to his true meaning could make themselves known, and the rest might begin to hold the ideas that Lucifer intended to nurture in them. The ruse worked on some, but all followed the strong, leaderly voice of their great leader. All knew him as a capable and trustworthy general, and his beautiful face, like the morning star that leads out his starry retinue, made them want to trust him even if they were wary enough to sense something was wrong. And so, he flew north, drawing after him a third of Heaven’s army.

  Meanwhile, God, who is cool as shit, sat on His platform of godliness, surrounded by golden lamps that were just for show because the didn’t need them to see, saw in His eternal eye what was going on, how many great multitudes, and who would turn against Him, and how and when the rebellion would rise.

  He smiled a Godly smile and spoke thus to the Child: “I know you were born yesterday, very literally, so what I’m going to say might be a little overwhelming. First of all, I just want you to know, you’re a good-looking kid. Not just a little, but like, you’re going to find throughout your place in eternity that people are going to want to follow you. I mean, some people are going to be threatened by your extreme good-lookingness and want to nail you to things—figuratively, I mean,” the Father snickered to Himself a little, “but your good looks aren’t going to help us now.”

  The Son just stared up at him.

  “It’s time,” he continued, “to shine up the old omnipotence, open the armories, choose up weapons, and mark the boundaries of our realm, which is all of creation. A new foe is rising, and one of considerable strength. He intends to set himself up King in the North, forever dividing the Seven Kingdoms in loyalty, and eventually, he will try to take the Iron Throne for himself. He already has the Night Watch, and the Karstarks and Tully’s have bent the knee. He will lead them against us, and all the houses of the North, to try the extent of our power, and we must gather all the strength we have in the Red Keep to prepare for a siege, lest we are caught off guard.”

  “But Father,” said the Son, clear-eyed and already having binged most of the shows on HBO, “that’s just a bunch of random stuff from Game of Thrones.”

  “I know,” said the Father, “I’m just trying to make this interesting. Lucifer really did set up base in the north, though.”

  The Son laughed. “You are right to make fun of your enemies. Lucifer seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what omnipotence means. He is mostly just angry that You created Me and that You share all of Your power with Me, You know.”

  “I know. That’s why I want You to be the One to put him down.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. I got you a new chariot and everything.”

  And with that, a cloud spun around revealing a brand new war-chariot, painted with flames and thunderbolts, with spiky wheels to use to fuck up the wheels of His enemies.”

  “Radical!” shouted Messiah, who could really only express the depth of his joy in ‘80s TV slang. “They’re gonna have a cow!”

  Meanwhile, Lucifer skirted the globe of Heaven, infinite in truth, but finite in action, like Zeno’s tennis-court (or maybe its inverse?) but a substantially bigger infinity, followed by his host, innumerable as the stars of night, or the dew drops, stars of morning, impearled by the sun on every leaf and flower.

  That metaphor isn’t very hardcore—we’re talking about angel revolutionaries here, and I compared them to philosophical mathematics and dew drops. It was a risky move, but I stand by it. It really does capture how many of them there are, and we can handle the badassedness of them separately, maybe just by creating a hierarchy: At the bottom, dew drops, then stars, then mutinous angels at the top. They are more hardcore than stars, significantly more hardcore than dew drops, and there are the same amount of all three of them, approximately. But if we pull it apart a little further, check this out. I called the dewdrops “stars of morning” in order to show the difference in badassery between day and night, which sets me up for yet a further comparison: If the stars of day are that much less badass than the stars of night, and then, our evil band of angels is even more badass than that, then they must be nightlier, too—their souls darker than night. Yeah, bitches. That’s how it’s done.

  Anyway, we have a shit ton of angels coursing through the night sky over huge regions of Heaven that are as much bigger than Eden as Lucifer’s dick is than a regular angel dick, and as we’ve established that regular angel dicks are tiny, it’s important to say that Lucifer’s dick was huge; like really, really big, and not just for an angel, like big for a porn star. In fact, on average, the revolting angels had significantly bigger dicks than the angels who stayed faithful to God. Now, I’m not saying that means anything, it’s just a weird fact I thought you’d want to know. You never know who’ll get one.

  Anyway, after a thousand digressions, Lucifer passed into the limits of North Heaven, which, being the ghetto of Heaven, was still pretty nice. And there he took his throne.

  When you have that many angels, they can build a palace pretty quickly, as we saw in Book One, and here, Lucifer’s palace was high on a hill and visible from a really impressive distance, like a mountain set up on a mountain. It had domes and pyramids and flying buttresses and shit, all carved out of gold and diamonds. Lucifer called his palace the Other Mountain of the Congregation, because he wanted all his shit to be kind of like the shit God has, and God called His shit the Mountain of the Congregation, so Lucifer wanted one. Also, he was calling all his peeps together and it was on a mountain, so it’s not like it was an imprecise name or anything.

  He called everyone together, still keeping up the ruse that they were preparing for the Messiah, so that those who weren’t really on his side yet would listen to him and get switched over, such was the power of his rhetoric.

  “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vertues, Powers,” he began, as these were some of the different angel ranks below his, “if those powers are still accurate under the Messianic restructuring, since, you know, we’ve kind of been handed over to this New Kid, who is suddenly our all-powerful dictator, erm..I mean, anointed King. We have rushed here in the middle of the night to discuss how best to receive our new ruler when He comes to receive our knee-tribute, our kneeling fealty, that His Father and ours has demanded we give Him. Are we ready to prostrate ourselves before a second God? It seemed like a lot of work to sing the praises of one God, but two is going to be twice as much of our day. It’s a big ask, but They’re big Gods, so we’ll just make the adjustment, right? Unless…” and at this point, Lucifer paused for an uncomfortably long time while the audience sat dumbfounded, waiting, as Lucifer had hoped they would, to hear the alternative. “Unless we stand up instead of bowing. We erect our minds and bodies to the task…” and his choice not to make the dick joke trebled the respect of his audience, “...of self-rule. What if we cast off this yoke and do the right thing, not because we’re told to, like children, but out of our own common integrity? Will you submit your necks to a new tyrant? Will you dirty your shiny angel knees for some upstart? I know you better than that. I trust your abilities to know the truth of the situation. You are natural born sons and daughters of Heaven, and as such, though unequal, you are free. These ranks, these armies, these commands rank our importance, our power, our responsibility, but they do not categorize our liberty, which is the same for one and all. Who can call Himself king over free peoples? Who can establish monarchy over his equals in freedom? Who can step forward and impose new, harsh laws over those who, without law, always do right? We are ordained to govern, not to serve. And this new Upstart isn’t going to tell us how to live our lives!”

  Apparently Lucifer hit a nerve somewhere, because his troops broke into a fury of shouting and applause. He reveled in it, letting the joy of knowing his bet had paid off wash over him and fill him with even more hubris. He was about to speak more blasphemies, when Abdiel stood up, flaming with zeal, from among the seraphim.

  “False, proud, blasphemous fool!” Abdiel shouted, “ungrateful for all God has given you! Will you stand up and recommend we all resist the unimpeachable word of God? Is it wrong that the rule of a Sovereign pass to His only Child? Is it wrong to bend your knee to your rightful ruler? You say you are free, and that it’s unjust to bind you with laws that limit that freedom, but are you going to dispute justice with God Himself, That which created you from nothing and gave you the freedom you profess?

  “Has God ever held you back? Knocked you down? Challenged your autonomy? No, He used His entire power to lift you up, to maximize your good, to bring you dignity, to unify one with another in all things.

  “You say that it’s unjust for equals to rule equals. Whom are you saying equals the Messiah? He is the true Word of God, and as such, He too is responsible for your creation. Are you His equal? Am I? Is all angelic power, united, equal to the Word of God?

  “Stop your impious whining, and do not tempt the Word of God, but apologize, plead, be you the first to kneel that you may be forgiven for your ultimate transgression while pardon may still be found.”

  Abdiel finished speaking, and looking around him found none to support his wise words.

  Lucifer was relieved, but it didn’t show on his face. He betrayed only complete confidence. “You say this upstart is the Word of God? That God created us? What is your proof? Do you remember your creation? Were you there, while you were being made? Did the Maker make us? I don’t remember. Do you, Abdiel? And since I wasn’t there, since I don’t have any evidence to the contrary, I can just as easily assume we were self-made, that we and God sprang up simultaneously, as an inevitability of the beginning of the universe. Why should we follow God? Our strength is ours, not His. He will not teach us our highest deeds, but we shall learn them from our own right hands. We will see which of us is stronger: One God or a million angels. We will gather round the throne of God and decide whether to pray or prey. Beseech or besiege. Go. Tell your God that we are coming for Him, ready or not, and fly fast, for we will be right behind you.” He finished, and the crowd of assembled angels broke into laughter, throwing clouds and stardust at Abdiel, the faithful.

  Abdiel stood proud, his shoulders back, his back straight, his head held high. He who came for a meeting of friends was suddenly surrounded by enemies, but he spoke, fearing no evil, addressing his words not only to Lucifer, but to his former compatriots on all sides. “O spirits accurst, forsak’n of all good, I see your future when I look at you. I see your fall from Grace, your punishment, your pusillanimous repentance much too late. I see you turning on each other and throwing your comrades under the bus of inevitability. You will not have to meet and discuss how to get out from under the golden scepter of the Messiah, you will be ejected from its sphere, and given instead the iron rod of judgment, to bruise and break your disobedient backs. You tell me to fly from here, and I do so, not because you advised it, but because it is the best of all advice and advice I encourage you all to follow. Soon enough, you will feel God’s thunder on your heads, and the devouring fire of evil and earned shame. You will weep when you learn anew who created you, and you will beg Him not to uncreate you.”

  And Abdiel, the only faithful among the faithless, unmoved, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, passed forth from among them like the purest fart betwixt the butt cheeks of sin. And flapping his angel wings, he floated into the sky and left them, guilty, to their doom.