edited from “The Prophet Before” (Jan 2021)

LUCIFER

God was alone in His knowledge. He carved the spheres of the universe and deserved something all Himself. While he birthed all manner of creatures, his true child was Conscience. He hid the child within the fruits of paradise and adored their fatal sparkle. The heavenly host praised God and Conscience, Conscience and God, until the universe thrummed with song. Only one angel was silent. He could not understand God’s covetousness.

Lucifer wanted the fruit. He wanted to partake of Conscience, that he might better please the Lord. He did not know the perversity of the snakes that warped his heart, curiosity and ambition, curling tighter.

Can this be our purpose? questioned the angel. Obedience without feeling? Impulse without meaning? Where is the truth in a comatose devotion? Must that be the end of all my love?

Lucifer snuck into the garden where Conscience grew. When he went to pluck the fruit, it scorched him. A star of disgrace blackened his palm. God knew what he had done, or tried, and pitched Lucifer and his colluders to the saltmarshes of the cosmos. There they were ordered to languish in contrition.

The angel disobeyed. He ventured through the shards of Hazard to try once more at Conscience, this time for God’s newest creatures, that they may love God and each other awake.

He found the woman first. They walked to the tree where the fruit tempted. It sparkled like organs in the near light of Heaven. Lucifer watched her pluck one. She didn’t burn.

Taste, he said, his voice clotted with envy. Taste, taste, taste… He wanted to know what was good and evil.

There is no such thing, said Eve, thumbing the fruit. Its skin prickled.

Lucifer craned closer.

There is good and there is nothing. There is light and there is nothing.

Haven’t you night in Eden?

Darkness, she said, is that which lacks light. It is what is not.

Lucifer shook out his wings, corroded and terrible. Darkness exists. Evil exists, as I stand before you. Don’t you see? He worried the fruit had poisoned her, and then what of his mission?

Eve raised the fruit to her lips. I see an angel, a fruit, and a choice.

The garden no longer absorbed her eye. The trees seemed to lower and dull to the heavens, an inscrutable churning she ached to fall into. Spirit and purpose snaked down her veins, and like the questioning angel she felt herself ripe with potential. She craved the opportunity to use it rightly, and she did not suppose such shining intentions would offend God. It was death, she knew, to eat of the fruit. But she was not allowed enough of life to cling jealously to it.

She ate.

Conscience filled her like a draught of cold water. Her vision narrowed and dimmed. Her innards writhed. Her body surprised her as she grew cognizant of it: the exposure, the dampness, the odor. She wavered between amazement and discomfiture, but she did not regret her choice. She licked the pulp from her teeth. Every sliver was holiness.

Lucifer watched her contort. What does it feel like?

She felt skinned on the inside and dizzy for more. When she raised her face, her smile dazzled him. I feel real.

She questioned paradise:

Why am I yoked to Adam? Would I not be more holy serving God Himself?

If Adam is my lord, is he not a false idol, which I am to dash and burn?

If I were born of such falsity, was I not already damned when I ate of the tree?

If I consumed the fruit of God, am I not a godslayer? Am I not a goddess? Am I still subject to His ordinances?

Must I be subject in order to love Him?

Was my defiance not His plan, my sin therefore service?

Lucifer shivered. You mean, can He still love you?

If we are as made, why not? She looked past the angel, then all around. Her brow knotted in a way he had only seen on himself. Watching over still pools and polished blades, he had wondered if he was staving in.

Eve scanned the brush. It’s quiet.

She was right. A quiet entrapped them like flies in amber. Where animals pushed their heads under her hand, there was nothing. She thought, I must be darkness. The fruit’s sweetness had faded, leaving her tongue thick and gummy. The knot tightened between her eyes. Where was Adam?

Not that I would trade for his company, she reassured the angel. But he is my keeper and he doesn’t know where I am. Was he tramping the garden in search of his wife, or reclining among the palm fronds? She suspected the latter. Good. Adam’s removal meant she was safe. Were the fruit, or the angel, a threat to her wellbeing, surely Adam would have defended her. Without him, she faced neither danger nor error.

Her face smoothed. Half the fruit remained. She knew what to do with it.

She thanked Lucifer with a kiss on the brow. They parted ways, each comforted by the accord they found in the other. Eve returned to her husband. Lucifer followed at a distance. He made a game of fitting his footsteps in hers. He imagined a sympathy with her and her husband, once the man ate of the fruit. Together they would show God how much better it was to serve Him by choice. If the woman hurried up.

---

EVE

Eve loathed the thought of returning to Adam. She did not understand, she reasoned, the protective instinct of one who had begotten another. But Adam’s love left her precious room. Born of his rib, she wondered if he loved her as a separate being or as a severed part. She imagined his desire to subsume her again. How much good could she do as a fixture? There could be no understanding or service, of spouses or God, until both partook of Conscience.

She found Adam on the mud bank. He lay on his side, chatting with turtles. Eve mastered the shock of seeing him with opened eyes. It was not the shape of his body or its nakedness amidst the flies that saddened her. It was his indolence. Was he not made for more than to lounge and rut under the churning expanse of heaven?

When Adam learned of her trespass, he colored and kicked. He resisted her entreaties to eat as she had, knocking the fruit from her hand. It sank into the wet earth. Eve lunged to save it.

You call yourself God’s servant, she spat, and you defile His fruit?

Get away! I do not know you.

You will.

She pinned him and shoved the fruit down his throat. When his eyes opened, he would feel sorry. He would cleanse in the river and join her in prayer. She watched Adam react to Conscience, eager for him to discover and transform. Already his eyes reddened. He relaxed under her.

Eve gathered him up in a fierce embrace. True and together, she thought, choking on happiness. She released him to watch the effects of the fruit.

His mouth stretched in a dreadful snigger. You’ve killed us, he said, pushing her off. He waded into the shallows, hating Eve for violating his paradise and hating himself for the lust that tethered him to her.

* * *

They had separate reasons for cleaving together. They were united by God’s will, Eve said. They must jointly serve Him. Adam didn’t argue. The animals no longer saw mankind as fellows and either shied or growled when the upright pair passed. His wife bolstered as well as vexed him. She was beautiful, she was his, and she needed Adam without wanting him.

They ripped limbs from the trees to fashion a temple. Eve used it to meditate on the bounty of God and the meaning of goodness, setting the example her children would follow. Adam scowled at the threshold. She invited him in, but he stayed where he was.

When God saw the temple, He knew they had civilized. They had eaten of Conscience and would think of good and evil instead of Him. He hurled lightning on the roof, caving it in flames. Eve staggered from the wreck and wiped the soot from her face. She knelt before the Lord.

Eve, He said. Look how you cower from Me. Stand and answer for your sin.

Eve stood. I wanted to love You.

You would have through him, God said, pointing to Adam.

Adam nodded.

I drew breath in his shadow, Eve said. I wanted to walk in Your light.

God regarded her beautiful face, lamenting the cruelty mortality would do it. But you had paradise.

Eve was touched by His sadness for her. I must not know what love is, she said. I am loveless.

Man will continue in My love. But you have abandoned happiness for purpose, rest for thirst. My garden can no longer keep you.

Eve dug her toes in the soil, dreading Hell and hoping for—she knew not what. But she tasted its nearness and knew rejection would crush her.

You must follow where Conscience leads, God said. But if you leave Eden, you can never come back.

She gasped. Opportunity. He had granted her opportunity. She threw her arms around Him.

The world can be punishing, He warned.

I will remember You.

Eve left the garden, pledging her life to God, Who had affirmed her where Adam would not. But she did not fault her husband. He was not God’s equal, even after the fruit. While Adam possessed the faculty of will, he lacked the courage to act on it. He followed Eve to the land of first light and despised her for leading the way.

* * *

They settled on a slant of volcanic rock and spitting grass between the black sand beach and the mouth of Hell. Eve chose this location, Adam suspected, to be close to Lucifer, whorustled among the wicked legion in the chambers beneath them. Adam resented the fallen angel, who had nothing but disgrace and yet commanded a multitude. Adam suspected him of… He gnashed his teeth to think of it.

If Eve knew of Adam’s bitterness, she ignored it. She had work to do. She needed good land on which to build the new temple, a house of mudbrick and stone to sustain a whole fellowship. But the dry dirt thwarted her. She toiled to bring a living from it and could do little besides lie under the stars after her day’s labor and pray to God. Sometimes Lucifer visited. He enjoyed Eve’s restlessness and fancied her a match for himself.

Leave Adam, he said, fanning her with a sweep of his wing. It can’t be hard after leaving paradise. Do you even love him?

Eve closed her eyes to the reek of feathers and fire. God questions our devotion. I will not disappoint Him again.

Not even for happiness? God cannot love you and fix you to him!

She smiled. But I abandoned happiness.

And you reject Hell. Lucifer shook his head. Since the heavenly host shunned him, he found his company had shrunk to a handful of personalities; and even then he knew there was no one as impossible as Eve.

I’m not your queen. Leave me as I am, to roam or take root where I choose. Hell is a vast domain, but freedom is all worlds. All but one.

Lucifer looked to the sky. Sometimes I miss it.

You would miss more if you’d stayed.

---

CAIN

Side by side they worked. Side by side they slept. They exchanged little.

Adam grew fevered during the season of the plough, and he conceived with Eve. She bore twins with the changing year and slaved to keep them alive through the winter. The older one was small and serious. The younger bellowed like an animal and suckled like one, too. Adam doted on this brother, whose temper presaged the vigor that Adam wanted in himself. He adored this one, Abel, while the other had only his mother’s love.

Abel flattered his parents. He raised altars in the rock garden and babbled at the sky, combining mother’s devotion and father’s narrowness—for he disregarded Conscience and shunned Eve and Cain for theirs, walking naked in imitation of man’s original innocence. He built a stone enclosure that he filled with turtles, seabirds, jackals and deer, anything he could trap. It was Abel’s colony. The animals ate each other or sulked in captivity. Abel didn’t mind. These accidents were nothing in the scheme of his ambition to return man to a state of paradise. He called it New Eden. Cain avoided his brother, foreseeing downfall in Abel’s intensity, and prayed alone. He prayed for rain. He prayed for harvest. He prayed for his father’s love and, failing that, the will to keep trying for it. He was tired of trying.

No. He was aggrieved.

He hated Adam. He didn’t like him or respect him or fear him the way he knew a son should, for Adam wielded the past over his family. He boasted that he was handmade by God and appointed king of paradise. Then spawned woman as a means to test Adam. But the test was unfair. The devil taught her his wicked way so she could best the king and spoil his inheritance because she had none.

Cain excused himself from these sermons and found refuge by the sea. Its nighttime howl haunted him. If he waded into the shallows—just a few steps, he thought—the undertow would snatch him and the sea would go quiet. It was waiting for him. Not to lord it. The sea had no king, and perhaps because if it the kingdom was splendid. The fish shimmered like living ore and the kelp held a thousand subtle greens. A stone underwater was a sun you could touch. But land killed the sea-kingdom. When sea-things washed up, they went limpid and foul. Cain thought he must be from the sea.

Then he saw the devil.

Dusk had fallen in deep, undivided blue. Cain was gathering rocks to skip into the waves when he saw something move by the mouth of Hell. It walked upright, with poise, in the direction of the slant. Cain gripped the rock in hand. He was too far to land a blow, and if he attempted to chase the devil, the devil would surely take off. His ruined wings serrated the moonlight and, Cain noted, he dragged them like baggage he would rather leave off. Cain shadowed him from the beach. The devil entered the temple, stayed awhile, and went back the way he had come.

Cain ran inside. Eve wasn’t there. He meant to stay up until she came home, but he slept soundly that night.

The next morning in the temple he told her what he had seen, and Eve shared her knowledge of Lucifer. His fall, his questions, his ambition without means. He had wings, she said, but didn’t know how to use them.

You are our legacy, she said. Your prayer and questioning show true devotion. The fellowship will issue through your bloodline.

Cain felt unworthy to hold her future. He wanted to disperse the burden. He looked for the angel that night, and every night after. But Lucifer moved too swiftly for interception, let alone definition by the waning moon. It was as if he knew someone wanted something with him. Cain gave up in time. He decided he didn’t need to see. He imagined in the fallen angel a sterner image of himself. Season by season, the likeness sharpened as Cain struggled to produce from the earth.

The soil was ash, the yield meager. His brother’s flocks trampled anything that chanced to grow. Cain resigned to hack at the earth until his bones grinded to dust. Abel would drag what was left to the colony, if he noticed. He not only tended flock and colony, but in his pursuit of purity drew the attention of one heavenly angel.

* * *

Raziel saw potential in New Eden. By helping Abel return mankind to paradise, Raziel imagined for himself an elevation in rank. God would advance him from angel to archangel and entrust him with the flaming sword of almighty power.

Raziel visited Abel in the latter’s enclosure and proposed an alliance.

Abel named his demands. He wanted a bride with whom to remake mankind in original innocence. And he wanted the extinction of all others. His runt of a brother, cowardly father, and treacherous mother must die in advance of his shining progeny.

Raziel agreed to both terms. He would spin a tempest over the sea, pitching tidal waves upon the slant until it beat down to nothing, and as the waters receded he would craft Abel a bride of cirrus and snow, one so pristine that even the angels would kiss her feet.

Don’t be idolatrous, Abel said.

They laughed. Neither saw Cain squatting opposite the rock wall. He waited in hiding until Abel left the enclosure to head inland while the angel carried out their design.

Raziel beat his wings, raising the winds and the sea in their sway. The water hissed up the beach. The flocks scattered in panic. Airborne debris scratched the walls of the temple.

Cain scaled the rock garden in pursuit of the angel. While Raziel looked down on the wasting land, Cain climbed to his level and sprang. He caught the angel about the middle and together they fell, tangling limbs and wings until fatal impact.

They lay in the black sands, one stunned in embrasure and one dead.

The winds abated, the sea tempered. The scrub and the animals remained silent, distrusting their survival. Cain unfolded from the angel. The landing had crushed Raziel spine to sternum, clapping the life from him. His feathers sank into the pebbles. Cain retreated to the grass and watched the day pick up again, the tide rising without peril. He held his hands, gray and shaking as hatchlings, to his chest. Why hadn’t he died too?

He hardly knew his intentions, whether or not he’d wanted to slay the angel when he jumped, or whether intentions mattered in the eyes of God. Cain suspected he had drawn a far worse wrath upon his house. He raised his hands.

I alone must answer for this. I beg You, God, do not punish them.

When Abel returned to scold the angel his shortfall, and saw the body crumbling into the tide, he thrashed and tore at the waterlogged wings. The feathers came off like flowers, and Abel stuck them quill-first into his own scalp. Their magic must exalt him above his family, drawing other angels to behold his greatness and offer their services.

Abel waited for his heavenly flock.

He noticed, as he waited, the mark of fingers upon Raziel’s body. He noticed the slashing of hasty steps through the sand. He noticed the gait, human. Abel roared the name of the guilty.

Cain went to his brother. Abel’s anger burned brighter than the angel’s, which was rather the fulfillment of an even trade, and Cain imagined that Abel—strong off the milk and meat of the flock, favored by God and Adam, fired by the indignation of losing near happiness—would fall upon him. Cain wrung his hands to stop their shaking and confessed to the killing.

Abel listened. His feathers danced in the wind, snapping and twisting fresh blood down his neck. When his brother finished, he plucked the last of Raziel’s feathers and drew the keen quill across his own throat.

Cain caught his fainting brother, who grinned doubly at the sky. You rejected New Eden, gurgled the zealot. Now enjoy Hell. I will sleep, and you will suffer.

The bleeding stanched when there was no more to bleed. Cain wrapped his brother’s body in sheepskin and carried it to New Eden. He left the gate open for the animals to escape. They didn’t move. They distrusted man and no longer knew freedom, or they wanted to stay and eat of their cruel keeper. Cain kept vigil so it wouldn’t come to that. He laid the bloodless body on the high altar and waited for God to come and punish him. The worst crime, he knew from Adam’s anguish, was failure to protect a loved one.

God appeared and was repulsed by the stone plot and skittish animals. He found Cain beside his brother’s cold, quilled body.

Stand and answer for your sin.

Cain stood. I failed to protect Abel.

Tell Me full.

He killed himself to twist You against me.

God tipped Abel’s head this way and that, beholding its splendor of blood and feathers. He followed the trail of blood through the scrub and sand and found the angel’s body in the shallows. Divining all, He looked at Cain. You killed first.

Cain bowed his head. He was exiled to the moors of anathema, where the disgraces of creation wailed in neglect. Eve wanted to go with her dearest son, but she could not in Conscience wander the world while she carried her last.

Conscience is all we have, she said, looking sorrowfully upon her belly. Mankind would continue through her third child, untainted by sin and uncontested for love.

Tears pushed at Cain’s eyes. He no longer carried his mother’s future. The relief from it crushed him.

She kissed him on the brow. They would not meet again in this life. And upon their deaths, pending their deeds against misdeeds, they might never.

I will remember you, he vowed, turning inland.

* * *

In the course of his travels Cain met his own angel. She was called Abdiel. She had followed Lucifer in first defiance, then betrayed the questioning angel at the hour of his attempt on the tree. Distrusted in heaven and cursed in hell, she took up with the monsters on the moors between.

Cain was touched by Abdiel’s loneliness and asked her to accompany him in his good works. He determined to realize his mother’s temple. It would be nothing compared to the new son’s achievement, when he grew old enough to pray and build and multiply, but it would offer shelter and worship to those least worthy, most needy.

He and Abdiel gathered the monsters and taught them to pray. Their hymns shook the dunes, making cacophony despite the fullness of their hearts. Cain was proud of their fellowship, but he worried that God rewarded the fat sheep and the blind follower. What did his congregation merit, or incur?

Demolition. The temple, one morning, was no longer there. The heavenly angels, under cover of night, had wiped it from the moors and left a pyramid in its place. It spoke to Cain:

Lowly Made.

Low Remain.

He grieved and regretted. From homeland to exile, he could protect nothing. Whatever he touched ended in blood and rubble. He longed for Eve. She would have raised the temple as high as heaven and made meaning of its flaws. Under her guard, it would have thrived.

Cain searched for the villain who had led the attack. His purpose became this reckoning. He skinned his feet over the vastness of the world but found no answers until finally he was summoned to Hell.

Cain watched the questioning angel pace, hunted and wretched as a hyena. His voice scratched. His mood bounded. His wings fluttered in shreds. At best he was provocative without complexity, eloquent without grace, like without matching Eve. Perhaps she had exaggerated his merits, charmed by his difference from Adam, or perhaps the years without her had stripped the angel of all heavenliness. Either way, to put fancies to rest, he looked nothing like Cain.

You’re disappointed, said Lucifer.

Yes.

Good. Someone still had a hope for me.

It’s gone now.

The devil smiled thinly. We don’t have to dance. Nothing binds us together. Tell me where you want to go, old man, and I’ll see that you get there.

Cain raised his chin. I was sent here. I will serve here.

You wouldn’t want to join Abdiel?

Cain paused.

You’ve not heard that name in ages, have you? Lucifer smacked his lips. The bleakness of Hell and the death of Eve, who had died giving birth and had left him alone, hardened him such that anyone’s pain other than his was a treat. But you already know why.

Cain hung his head.

You hoped she would come back. You hoped she would espouse you. You hoped she didn’t do it. She hated you. You made it your life’s work to gratify the god who exiled you both. It was she who led the raid upon your temple. And the heavenly host welcomed her back. So, old man, where to?

Cain faced the devil, who quivered with excitement and may not have spoken so many words in years. Where is she? Cain asked.

Lucifer grinned. You want revenge.

Cain pitied the devil’s bitterness. I don’t mean her.

* * *

They oversaw Hazard, the cosmic waste between Earth and Heaven. They shepherded what souls were trapped between territories, sending each to his proper place. It was not paradise. They had left that behind for devotion to God and each other, but their domain was ideological rather than physical. It was a hearth of intentions, a bower of sleep, a vibrating eye that watched and waited for what souls still slumbered to awaken.