behindcloseddoors | CLOSED ♔ and who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble

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CLOSED ♔ and who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble

WHO || Des, Azrael [Closed]
WHAT || Des learns some unfortunate things
WHERE || Chicago
WHEN || Sometime during the trial, immediately following this [backdated]
HOW || Actionspam. Single thread.

AND SUDDENLY DES FINDS HIMSELF... on a roof. Above what looks like is still Chicago. There's a bit of a chill wind out but it's still November, not the arctic chills of January, so they can deal. Azrael releases himself instantly and moves to sit on the ledge, looking down at the city.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Des chortles, fingers still tracing lines on the surface of the water.] Without death, there is no joy. You can't appreciate anything until you accept that you're going to lose it, but it ain't fair when it's not mutual. Time's not my enemy, Lucifer. That is.

[The utter unfairness of living and breathing and surviving, while everything around him fades- yes, he knows that agony well.] That's why it's a curse.

Ah, but you've seen otherwise now, Descant. That's true of the Savage Garden, but you know now that there can be joy without loss. Heaven is nothing but precisely that. Those souls are never diminished by suffering - but it does nothing to diminish their joy. Keep in mind that to an angel, this was all we had ever known - you on the other hand, have lived your life knowing nothing but the other way.

But you are right about the injustice of a one-sided arrangement. That is precisely my concern. [ he sits as well, staring down at the pool as he continues: ]

Now comes the Fourth Revelation, and remember my organization of these revelations is arbitrary. I cannot take you through the minutiae, as I've said. The Fourth Revelation I call the Revelation of Color, and it began with flowering plants. The creation of flowers; the introduction of an entirely more extravagant and visibly beautiful means of mating between organisms. Now understand mating had always taken place. Even in the one-celled animals there had been a mating.

But flowers! Flowers introduced in profusion colors which had never been before in nature, except in the rainbow! Colors we had known in Heaven and thought to be purely celestial and now we saw they were not purely celestial but could develop in this great laboratory called the world for natural reasons.

Let me say at this time that spectacular colors were also developing in sea creatures, in fishes in warm waters. But the flowers struck me in particular as exquisitely beautiful, and when it became obvious that the species would be numberless, that the patterns of petals should be endless, our anthems again rose to Heaven in such music that everything before seemed lesser, or not so deep.

This music had of course already been tinged with something dark... dare I say it - the hesitation or the shadow produced us in by the Revelation of Death and Decay. And now with the flowers, this dark element grew even stronger in our songs and exclamations of wonder and gratitude, for when the flowers died, when they lost their petals, when they fell to the earth, it seemed a terrible loss.

The spark of life had emanated most powerfully from these flowers, and from the larger trees and plants that were growing everywhere in profusion; and so the song took on its sombre notes.

But we were more than ever enthralled with the earth. In fact, I would say at this time that the character of Heaven had been changed utterly. All of Heaven, God, the angels in all ranks, were now focused on the Earth. It was impossible to be in Heaven merely singing to God as before. The song would have to have something in it about Matter and process and beauty. And of course those angels who make the most complex songs did wind together these elements - death, decay, beauty - into more coherent anthems than those which came from me.

I was troubled. I had a sleepless mind in my soul, I think. I had something in me which had already become insatiable. ...Those words, they come from an old poem that was sung of me, written in Hebrew, and now rarely found in translation anywhere in the world. Those were the words of the Sibylline Oracle when she described the Watchers... we angels whom God had sent to observe. She was right. I liked her poetry, so I remember it. I adopted it in my definition of myself. God only knows why other angels are more nearly content.

[ Lucifer's whole manner has become sombre, and he looks up at Des again. ]

But let me go on quickly through the Revelations, because I know that they aren't easy to grasp except as a whole.

The Fifth Revelation was that of Encephalization. Animals had differentiated themselves in the water from plants some time ago, and now these gelatinous creatures were beginning to form nervous systems and skeletons and with this formation came the process of encephalization. Creatures began to develop heads!

And it did not escape our notice for one divine instant that we, as angels, had heads! The thinking processes of these evolving organisms were centered in the head. So it was with us, obviously! No one had to tell us. Our angelic intelligence knew how we were organized. The eyes were the giveaway. We had eyes, and these eyes were part of our brains and sight led us in our movements, and in our responses, and in our search for knowledge more than any other sense.

I tell you, there was a tumult in heaven. 'Lord,' I said, 'what is happening? These creatures are developing shapes...limbs...heads.' And once again the anthems rose, but this time mingled with confusion as well as ecstasy, fear of God that such things could happen, that from Matter things could spring which had heads.

Then even before the reptiles began to crawl out of the sea into the land, even before that happened, there came the Sixth Revelation, which struck nothing short of horror in me. These creatures, with their heads and their limbs, no matter how bizarre, or various in their structures, these things had faces! Faces like ours. I mean the simplest anthropoid had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. This is a face, such as I have! First the head, now the face, the expression of intelligence within the mind!

I was aghast! I raised the worst arguments. 'Is this something you want to happen? Where will this end? What are these creatures? The spark of life from them grows even stronger, flares hotter, and dies hard! Are you paying attention!' Some of my fellow angels were horrified.

They said, 'Lucifer, you are pushing God too far! Obviously there is a kinship between us, magnificent as we are, the Sons of God, the inhabitants of the bene ha elohim, and these creatures. The head, the face, yes, it's evident. But how dare you challenge the plan of God?'

I couldn't be comforted. I was too full of suspicion, and so were those who agreed with me, Azrael included. We were puzzled, and back down to Earth we went, persuaded by the earth to wander, to walk. I could now measure myself in size by the scale of things as I earlier mentioned, and I could lie amongst soft bowers of plants, listening to them grow and thinking about them, and letting their colors fill my eyes.

Yet, still the promise of disaster haunted me. Then an exceptional thing happened. God came to me.

God doesn't leave Heaven when He does this. He merely extends Himself, so to speak; His light came down and took me in where I was, rolled me up into it and against Him, and He began to talk to me.

Of course this was immediately comforting. I had denied myself the bliss of Heaven for long periods, and now to have this bliss come down and enfold me in perfect love and quiet, I was satisfied. All my arguments and doubts left me. Pain left me. The punitive effect upon my mind of death and decay was eased.

God spoke. I was of course fused with Him and had no sense of my form in this moment; we had been so close many a time in the past, and were this close when I had been made, and came forth out of God. But nevertheless it was a profound, merciful gift for it to happen now.

'You see more than other angels,' He said. 'You think in terms of the future, a concept which they are just beginning to learn. They are as mirrors reflecting the magnificence of each step; whereas you have your suspicions. You do not trust in me.'

These words filled me with sorrow. 'You do not trust in me.' I had not thought of it as distrust, my fears. And no sooner had I realized this than the realization was sufficient for God, and He called me back to Heaven and said that now I should watch more often from that vantage point and not go so deep into the foliage of the world.

[ he doesn't seem comforted now, as he explains. only eager to go on with his tale. ]

I did go back to Heaven, but as I told you, the entire composition of Heaven was now changed. Heaven was focused on Earth. Earth was the Heavenly Discourse. And never was I so aware of it as on this return. I went to God, I knelt in adoration, I poured out my heart, my doubts, above all my gratitude that He had come to me as He had. I asked if I was free again to return to the World below.

He gave one of His sublime noncommittal answers, meaning, 'You are not forbidden. You are a Watcher and your duty is to Watch.' So I went down.

[ He pauses again. ]

Come, let us continue on our journey. You can step on the rocks as you cross the stream.

[Des keeps his eyes on the pool, staring at his own reflection, silenced again by the memory of Heaven. After a moment, he looks up at Azrael and opens his mouth to ask a single question- is this why I was cursed? Was everything grooming hin for this, regardless of his pride? And if this is Lucifer's design, then what was Michael's? Was he always going to end up in a chess game?

His stomach knots uncomfortably and he stands with a backbreaking weariness, following Lucifer over the rocks. I should... probably roll a dex check here but I don't have any dice rn.]

[ azrael clearly hears the unvoiced question, and as he moves towards the rocks, she wraps her arm through his as if to support him as he picks his way over, fixing him with a patient look that promises answers to his question to be forthcoming. ]

Was Heaven boring compared to Earth? Never... it's just that the Earth was the focus. One could not be in Heaven and forget about Earth because everybody in Heaven was watching Earth and singing about it. That's all. No, Heaven was as fascinating and blissful as ever; in fact, the sombre note which had been introduced, the solemn acknowledgement of decay and death had added to the infinite variation of things which might be said and sung and dwelt upon in Heaven. Heaven expanded with these revelations. Always. And remember the music, never, never think that that is a cliche of religion. The music was reaching new heights all the time in its celebration of wonder. It would be millenia before physical instruments would reach a level where they could make even a pale imitation of the sounds of the music of the angels - their voices, mingling with the beat of their wings, and some interplay with the winds that rose Earth.

.... The understanding of mortals of Heaven fails again and again because you are not all taught this, that Heaven is focused upon the earth. Most of you hear nothing but the contrary, the denigration of matter, and that it is a prison for the soul.

But let me continue:

The Seventh Revelation was that the animals came out of the sea. That they came into the forests which now covered the land and they found ways to live in it. The Reptiles were born. They became great lizards, monsters, things of such size that even the strength of angels couldn't have stopped them. And these things had heads and faces, and now they not only swam with their legs - legs like ours - but they walked upon them, and some walked on two legs instead of four, holding against their chests two tiny legs like our arms.

I watched this happen as someone watches a fire grow. From the tiny blaze, giving warmth, I now saw a conflagration!

Insects in all forms developed. Some took to the air with a form of flight very different and monstrous compared to our own. The world swarmed with all these new species of the living and mobile and the hungry, for creature fed upon creature just as it had always been, but now with the animals, the feasting and killing was far more obvious and happened not merely in minuscule but with giant skirmishes amongst lizards who tore each other to pieces, and great reptilian birds who could glide down upon the lesser crawling things and carry them away to their nests.

The form of propagation began to change. Things were born in eggs. Then some spawn came live from the mother.

For millions of years I studied these things, talking to God about them, more or less absently, singing when I was overwhelmed with beauty; going up to the heavens, and generally finding my questions disturbing to everyone as before. Great debates happened. Should we question nothing? Look, the spark of life flares monstrous and hot from the giant lizard as he dies! And again and again into the womb of God I was taken, just when I thought my agitation would give me no peace.

'Look at the scheme more closely. You are deliberately seeing only parts of it,' He said to me. He pointed out as He had from the beginning that waste was unheard of in the universe, that decay became food for others, that the means of interchange was now Kill and Devour, Digest and Excrete.

'When I'm with you,' I told Him, 'I see the beauty of it. But when I go down there, when I roll in the high grass, I see differently.'

'You are my angel and my Watcher. Overcome that contradiction,' He said.

I went back down to the Earth. And then came the Eighth Revelation of Evolution: the appearance of warm-blooded birds with feathered wings!

[ it's almost entertaining, the expression on his face, the knowing, patient expression, and the emphasis with which he describes the wings. ]

Feathered wings! First we see our faces on the heads of insects, of lizards and monsters! And now behold, there is a warm-blooded creature, a creature completely more fragile and pulsing with precarious life and it has feathered wings! It flies as we fly. It rises, it spreads its wings, it soars.

Well for once mine was not the only outcry in heaven. Angels by the thousands were astonished to discover that little beings of matter had wings so like our own. Feathers, such as the feathers that covered ours, made them soft and made them move through the wind... all this now had its corollary in the material world!

Heaven was stormy with songs, exclamations, outcries. Angels took flight after birds, surrounding them in the air, and then following them and imitating them and following them to their nests and watching as chicks were born from these eggs and grew to full size.

Now, you know we had seen this entire question of birth, growth, maturity in other creatures, but in nothing that so resembled ourselves.

This time, God was not silent. This time He called us all together and He asked us why we had not learnt enough by now that we were not insulated from such horror and pride. Pride, he said, is what we suffered; we were outraged that such puny, tiny-headed things, things that had really very limited faces, actually, had feathered wings. He gave us a stern lesson and warning: 'Once again, I tell you, this process will continue and you will see things that will astonish you, and you are my angels and you belong to me and your trust is mine!'

The Ninth Revelation of Evolution was painful for all angels. It was filled with horror for some, and fear for others; indeed it was as if the Ninth Revelation mirrored for us the very emotions it produced in our hearts. This was the coming of mammals upon the earth, mammals whose hideous cries of pain rose higher to Heaven than any noise of suffering and death that any other animal had ever made! Oh, the promise of fear that we had seen in death and decay was now hideously fulfilled.

The music rising from Earth was transformed; and all we could do in our fear and suffering was sing in even greater amazement, and the song darkened, and became more complex. The countenance of God, the light of God, remained undisturbed.

At last the Tenth Revelation of Evolution. The apes walked upright! Was not God Himself mocked! There it was, in hairy, brutal form, the two-legged, two-armed upright creature in whose image we had been made! It lacked our wings, for the love of Heaven; indeed the winged creatures never even came close to it in development. But there it lumbered upon the earth, club in hand, brutal, savage, tearing the flesh of enemies with its teeth, beating, biting, stabbing to death all that resisted it - the image of God and the proud Sons of God, his angels - in hairy material form and wielding tools!

Thunderstruck, we examined its hands. Had it thumbs? Almost. Thunderstruck, we surrounded its gatherings. Was speech coming from its mouth, the audible eloquent expression of thoughts? Almost! What could be God's plan Why had He done this? Would this not rouse His anger?

But the light of God flowed eternal and unceasingly, as if the scream of the dying ape could not reach it, as if the monkey torn to pieces by its larger assailants had no witness to the great flaring spark that sputtered before it died.

'No, no, this is unthinkable, this is unimaginable,' I said. I flew in the face of Heaven again, and God said, very simply, and without consolation, 'Lucifer, if I am not mocked by this being, if it is my creation, how can you be mocked? Be satisfied, Lucifer, and enjoy amazement in your satisfaction, and trouble me no more! Anthems rise all around you which tell me of every detail my Creation has accomplished. You come with questions that are accusations, Lucifer! No more!'

I was humbled. The word 'accusations' frightened or caused a long pause in my thoughts. Do you know that Satan means in Hebrew 'the accuser'?"

[Des's expression twists into something vaguely offended. On behalf of the primitive screwheads... RUDE. BUT he doesn't voice this. Rather he just smirks bitterly.] What a swell guy

Let me continue. To me this was a wholly new concept and yet I realized that I had been flinging accusations at God all along. I had insisted that the whole evolutionary process could not be what He wanted or intended.

Now He had told me plainly to stop, and to examine further. And He also gave me to know again, in wide perspective, the immensity and diversity of the developments I witnessed. In sum, He visited upon me a flash of His perspective, which mine could never be.

As I said, I was humbled. 'May I join with you, Lord?' I asked. And He said, 'But of course'. We were reconciled, and slumbering in the divine light, yet I kept waking as an animal might wake, ever on alert for its lurking enemy, waking and fearing, But what is happening now down there!

Lo and behold! Are those the words I should use, or shall I speak like J, the author of the book of Genesis and say 'Look!' with all its fierce power. The hairy upright ones had begun a strange ritual. The hairy upright ones had begun all kinds of different patterns of complex behavior. Allow me for this moment to skip over to the most significant. The hairy upright ones had begun to bury their dead.

[ he's so deeply invested in his tale that he looks for the first time convincingly unhappy, and yet his face retains its beauty. One couldn't say unhappiness distorted him. Nothing could. He studies Des for a long time, and it's possible to sense his frustration, that he can't begin to get across to him all that he wants des to know. ]

This meant...many things, [ at length he whispers, shaking his finger emphatically ] For this ritual of burying came along with a kinship we had seldom if ever witnessed in any other species for more than a moment - the caring for the weak by the strong, the helping and the nourishing of the crippled by the whole, and finally, the burial with flowers. Des, flowers! Flowers that were laid from one end to the other of the body softly deposited in the earth, so that the Eleventh Revelation of Evolution was that Modern Man had commenced to exist. Shaggy, stooped, awkward, covered with apelike hair, but with faces more than ever like our faces, modern man walked on the earth! And modern man knew affections such as only angels had known in the universe, angels and God who made them, and modern man showered that affection upon his kindred, and modern man loved flowers as we had, and grieved as - with flowers - he buried his dead.

When I was with God, I saw as God sees - I saw the humans with their families; I saw the humans gathered to witness and assist the birth; I saw the humans cover the graves with ceremonial stones. I saw as God sees, and I saw as if Forever and in All Directions, and the sheer complexity of every aspect of creation, every molecule of moisture, and every syllable of sound issuing from the mouths of birds or humans, all seemed to be nothing more than the product of the utter Greatness of God. Songs came from my heart which I have never equaled.

And God told me again, 'Lucifer, stay close to me in Heaven. Watch now from afar.'

'Must I, Lord?' I asked. 'I want so badly to watch them and watch over them. I want with my invisible hands to feel their softening skin.'

'You are my angel, Lucifer. Go then and watch, and remember that all you see is made and willed by me.'

I looked down once before leaving Heaven, and I do speak now in metaphor, we both know this, I looked down and I saw the Creation teeming with Watcher angels, I saw them everywhere, engaged in their various fascinations as I have described, from forest to valley to sea.

But there seemed something in the atmosphere of Earth that had changed it; call it a new element; a thin swirl of tiny particles? No, that suggests something greater than what it was. But it was there.

I went to Earth, and immediately the other angels confirmed for me that they, too, had sensed this new element in the atmosphere of Earth, though it was not dependent upon the air as was every other living thing.

'How can this be?' I asked.

'Listen,' said the Angel Michael. 'Just listen. You can hear it.'

And Raphael said, 'This is something invisible but living! And what is there under Heaven that is invisible and lives but us!'

Hundreds of other angels gathered to discuss this thing, to speak of their own experience of this new element, this new presence of invisibility which seemed to swarm about us, unaware of our presence yet making some vibration, or that is, inaudible sound, which we struggled to hear.

'You've done it!' said Zerachiel. 'You've disappointed God with all your accusing and all your rages, and He has made something else other than us that is invisible and has our powers! Lucifer, you have to go to Him and find out if He means to do away with us and let this new invisible thing rule.'

'How can that be so?' asked Michael. Michael is, of all the angels, one of the most calm and reasonable. Legend tells you this; so does Angelology, folklore, the whole kit and caboodle. It's true. He is reasonable. And he pointed out now to the distressed angels that these tiny invisible presences of which we were aware could not conceivably equal our power. They could scarcely make themselves known to us, and we were angels, from whom nothing on earth could possibly hide!

'We have to find out what this is,' I said. 'This is bound to the earth and part of it. This is not celestial. It is here, dwelling close to the forests and hills.'

Everyone agreed. We were beings from whom the composition of nothing was secret. You might take thousands of years to understand cynobacteria, or nitrogen, but we understood them! But we didn't understand this. Or let me say, we could not recognize this for what it was.

We listened; we reached out our arms. We perceived that it was bodiless and invisible, yes, but that it had to it a continuity, and individuality, indeed, what we perceived were a multitude of individualities. And they were weeping, and very gradually, that sound was heard within our own realm of invisibility, and by our own spiritual ears. [ he pauses again ]

You see the distinction I make? They were spiritual individuals.

And as we pondered, as we opened our arms and sang and tried to comfort them, while stepping invisibly and artfully through the material of Earth, something momentous made itself known to us, shocking us out of our explorations. Before our very eyes, the Twelfth Revelation of Physical Evolution was upon us! It struck us like the light from Heaven; it distracted us from the cries of the covert invisible! It shattered our reason. It caused our songs to become laughter and wails.

The Twelfth Revelation of Evolution was that the female of the human species had begun to look more distinctly different from the male of the human species by a margin so great that no other anthropoid could compare! The female grew pretty in our eyes, and seductive; the hair left her face, and her limbs grew graceful; her manner transcended the necessities of survival; and she became beautiful as flowers are beautiful, as the wings of birds are beautiful! Out of the couplings of the hairy ape had risen a female tender-skinned and radiant of face. And though we had no breasts and she had no wings, she looked like US!

[ he stands facing des in stillness, and it's easy enough to know what he means: their large beautiful faces and smooth limbs, and their tender expressions, particularly when they were in their real forms in heaven, do embody the empowered feminine if ever a creature could. He and Azrael are as marble angels, as the statues of Michaelangelo, the absolute preciseness and harmony of the feminine was in their physiques. lucifer is clearly agitated, looking almost as if he's on the verge of wringing his hands. he looks at des intently, as if he would look into him and through him. ]

[Des gets it. Des is, unfortunately, also an uncouth lout who spent a lot of his English-speaking days in the grips of America's worst locales that don't teach their sons and daughters any degree of tact. So when Lucifer gets upset about this clearly grievous of insults, he looks from Azrael and back to him and then says, flatly:]

Well, I've probably had that reaction to a dame a time or two.

[He knows why this is bothersome, but being human, it's a hard concept to wrap his head around. He suspects Lucifer knows this, that all this gnashing and ranting is necessary to understand a stable whole. Right now, however, Des feels he knows where this is leading and wishes it could get there faster.]

[ a knowing smirk comes across azrael's face at the comment, and she looks greatly entertained. ]

And in short order, the Thirteenth Revelation of Evolution made itself known. Males mated with the loveliest of the females, and those who were most lithe, and smooth to touch, and tender of voice. And from those matings came males themselves who were as beautiful as the females. There came humans of different complexions; there came red hair and yellow hair as well as black hair and locks of brown and startling white; there came eyes of infinite variety - gray, brown, green, or blue. Gone was the man's brooding brow and hairy face and apish gait, and he, too, shone with the beauty of an angel, just as did his female mate.

[ lucifer turns away from des, but it seems impersonal, as if he requires of himself a pause and a renewal of his strength. his wings arch high, drawn close together, their lower tips just above the ground where they stand, each feather still faintly iridescent. He turns around to face Des finally, and folding out of the angelic shape, his face is a graceful shock. ]

There they stood, male and female, He created them, and except for that, Descant, except for - that one was male and one was female, they were made in the Image of God and of His Angels! It had come to this! To this! God split in Two! Angels split in Two!

Imagine for yourself a fellow human growing life in a laboratory, and finding that in the end, they were not only growing new living beings but creatures who were merely crawling torsos, or waists with legs! A muscular system that writhed separate from organs. You would cry abomination!

I don't know how long the other angels held me, but finally they could no longer, and I went up to Heaven, ablaze with thoughts and doubts and speculations. I knew wrath. The cries of suffering mammals had taught me wrath. The screams and roars of wars amongst apelike beings had taught me wrath. Decay and death had taught me fear. Indeed all of God's Creation had taught me all I needed to speed before him and say, 'Is this what you wanted! Your own image divided into male and female! The spark of life now blazing huge when either dies, male or female! This grotesquerie; this impossible division; this monster! Was this the plan?'

I was outraged. I considered it a disaster! I was in a fury. I flung out my arms, calling on God to reason with me, to forgive me, and save me with assurance and wisdom, but nothing came from God.

Nothing. Not light. Not words. Not punishment. Not judgment.

I realized I stood in Heaven surrounded by angels. All of them were watching and waiting.

Nothing came from Almighty God but the most tranquil light. I was weeping. 'Look, tears such as their tears,' I said to the others, though of course my tears were nonmaterial. And as I wept, and as they watched me, I realized I wasn't weeping alone.

Who was with me? I turned round and round looking at them: I saw all the choruses of angels, the Watchers, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, the Ophanim, all. Their faces were rapt and mysterious, and yet I heard a weeping!

'Where is that weeping coming from!' I cried.

And then I knew. And they knew. We came together, wings folded, heads bowed, and we listened, and rising from the earth we heard the voices of those invisible spirits, those invisible individualities; it was they - the immaterial ones - who wept! And their crying reached to Heaven as the Light of God Shone on Eternal, without change upon us all.

'Come now and witness,' said Raphael. 'Come watch as we have been directed.'

'Yes, I have to see what this is!' I said, and down I went into the earth's air, and so did all of us, driving in a whirlwind these tiny wailing, weeping things that we could not even see!

Then human cries distracted us! Human cries mingled with the cries of the invisible!

Together, we drew in, condensed and still in a multitude, invisibly surrounding a small camp of smooth and beautiful human beings.

In their midst one young man lay dying, twisting in his last pain on the bed they'd made for him of grass and flowers. It was the bite of some deadly insect which had made his fever, all part of the cycle, as God would have told us had we asked.

But the wailing of the invisible ones hovered over the dying victim. And the lamentations of the human beings rose more terrible than I could endure.

Again I wept.

'Be still, listen,' said Michael, the patient one.

He directed us to look beyond the tiny camp, and the thrashing body of the feverish man, and to see in thin air the spirit voices gathering and crying!

And with our eyes we saw these spirits for the first time! We saw them clustering and dispersing, wandering, rolling in and falling back, each retaining the vague shape in essence of a human being. Feeble, fuddled, lost, unsure of themselves, they swam in the very atmosphere, opening their arms now to the man who lay on the bier about to die. And die that man did.

[ there's a hush for a moment, as he stops, a shuddering stillness, and he turns his eyes on des, looking as if he can barely finish the tale. he continues slowly. ]

And a spirit rose from the dying man. The spark of life flared and did not go out, but became an invisible spirit with all the rest. The spirit of the man rose in the shape of the man and joined those spirits who had come to take it away.

[ He gives a deep sigh and then throws out his arms. He sucks in his breath as if he means to roar. He looks heavenward through the giant trees.

The forest sighs in its fullness around them. Des can feel his trembling, feel the cry that hovers just inside him and might burst forth in some terrible clarion. But it only dies away as he bows his head.

The forest has changed again. The forest is the recognizable forest of a world less primitive. These are oaks and the dark trees of our time and our world; and the wildflowers, and the moss he knows, and the birds and the tiny rodents who dart through the shadows. ]

The air was thick with these spirits, for once having seen them, once having detected their faint outline and their ceaseless voices, we could never again not see them, and like a wreath, they surrounded the earth! The spirits of the dead, Descant! The spirits of the human dead. Souls. Souls had evolved from matter. In His image. Souls, essences, invisible individualities, souls!

[ he gathers himself together, wiping his face with the back of his hand. ]

Come with me.

[ He wipes his face with the back of his hand. Azrael reaches for Des' hand and he'd feel her wing, distinctly for the first time, brush the length of his body, sending a shiver through him akin to fear, but not fear at all. ]

Souls had come out of these human beings. They were whole and living, and hovered about the material bodies of the humans from whose tribe they had come.

They could not see us; they could not see Heaven. Whom could they see but those who had buried them, those who had loved them in life, and were their progeny, and those who sprinkled the red ochre over their bodies before laying them carefully, to face the east, in graves lined with ornaments that had been their own! And those humans who believed in them, those who worshiped the ancestors, they felt their presence. They sensed it. They suspected their ancestors were still in spirit form.

[ it almost seems for a second that lucifer is laughing, but the sound is small and mournful, private and full of pain. perhaps he's singing softly, as if the melody is a natural emanation of his thoughts. it seems to come from him as scent rises from flowers - and it's easy to tell he is suffering. he looks up to the sky, watching the clouds moving above them, as heavy and white as any clouds des has ever beheld. he turns back to des. ]

How could He not have known, Descant! How could He not have known! And who do you think flew to the very heights of Heaven to tell Him? And had He ever been surprised, or caught unawares, or increased or decreased or enlightened or darkened by anything I had ever brought to his Eternal and Omniscient attention?

[Des's knees buckle at the touch of Azrael's wing, but he manages to keep standing, staring straight ahead, frowning as Lucifer rants. He feels very small and insignificant again, standing before this distressed angel as the scenery changes around them.

He swallows, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth has gotten.]

I can take a guess at what happened next.

[ He sighs again, and seems on the verge of a tremendous outburst, one that would make all his others look small. But then he's calm again and musing.

They walk on. The forest shifts, mammoth trees giving way to slender, more gracefully branching species, and here and there are patches of high, waving grass.

They peer into an open place, a deep, wild valley, where they can see distant mountains, and green slopes, a ragged and rambling wood breaking here and there for spaces of blowing wheat or some other form of wild grain. The woods creep up into the hills and into the mountains, sending its roots deep into the rock; and as they grew closer to the valley, through the branches they see the glitter and twinkling light of a river or sea.

They emerge from the older forest. This is a marvelous and fertile land. Flowers of yellow and blue grew in profusion, caught this way and that in dancing gusts of color. The trees are olive trees and fruit trees, and have the low, twisted branches of trees from which food has been gathered for many generations. The sunlight pours down upon all.

They walk through tall grasses - the wild wheat perhaps - to the edge of the water, where it laps very gently without a tide, and is clear and shimmering as it shrinks back, exposing the extraordinary array of pebbles and stones.

He can see no end to this water either to the right to the left, but he can see the far bank and the rocky hills growing down towards it as if they were as alive as the roots of the straggling green trees.

The landscape behind them now was the same. The rocky hills, rising eventually to mountains, with miles upon miles of scalable slopes, copses of fruit trees, black, open mouths of caves.

Lucifer says nothing.

He is stricken and sad and staring down at the waters, and to the far horizon where the mountains come as if to close in the waters, only to be forced to let the waters flow out and beyond their sight. ]

[Des ducks his head and walks, sullen and quiet, and waiting for Lucifer to speak up again. When he doesn't, he looks at Azrael, hoping to find the end of the story with her, but he deems it a fruitless hope and turns back to stare at Lucifer's back.]

Keep going. [He coaxes, though surprisingly gentle, despite his growing lack of patience.]

[ he takes his time to respond, but finally does ] The Revelations of Evolution are, for the time being, finished. I've told you what I saw - the thin outline of all you'll know once you die.

Now what is left is the heart of our story, and I should like it to be told here. Here in this beautiful place, though the rivers themselves are long gone from the earth and so are the men and women who roamed at this time. And to answer your question, 'Where are we?' Let me say: Here is where He finally flung us down from Heaven. Here is where we Fell.

[Des sucks in a breath at the word die and kicks at a pebble, nodding somberly.]

Because you kept questioning.

I pushed too far. Now that Evolution had finally created man as you know it today, God was, apparently, satisfied by what He had wrought. He selected two of the species, one male, one female, and brought them to the center of the garden that you know of as Eden. He called the entirety of the angelic ranks to look upon them there, and declared them 'human', granting them that name, and told us that these two were the bearers of the first souls.

I was livid, as you can imagine, outraged at His distinction between these two 'paragons' of His and the souls that had already suffered and been lost to death, to hang forever about the earth in torment. What was more, I was horrified at the implications, given man's connection to nature - that he was an extension of it, in the worst ways, as well as the best.

He called all the hosts of angels to look upon Man, and ordered us to bow before them. Did I refuse?

Yes.

However, by insubordination was not born of pride, or envy over God's new 'favorites'. I was aghast that He could, that He would have created this system that granted spirits to these beings, that He would proclaim them His triumph, when they remained slaves to instinct, unable to distinguish between actions good or evil. What separated them from the beasts besides that their souls wore on eternally after their death, void of hope, directionless without conscience?

My words angered God beyond anything I'd seen in Him before. My refusal to bow down, my horror on behalf of these two creatures, was too far, even for His infinite patience. He banished me into the Void: an empty dimension that He created just for the occasion - of, as you might say, allowing me to think about what I had done.

Edited 2014-02-03 04:11 (UTC)

And you've been thinking on this for a long-ass time, buddy. [Another glance at Azrael.] Obviously.

[A shrug.] No reigning in Hell, huh?

[ just like you imagined - nine inch nails ]

Oh, I didn't stay there, Descant. For some time, of course, I remained, but I was not satisfied with imprisonment. Before I was cast into the Void, I was aware of God's foolish placement of his infamous tree in the Garden - the one he warned them never to touch. Moving beyond even the ridiculous nature of this test of his, my mind was consumed by the Nature of that tree.

Have you ever given thought to what that means - Knowledge of Good and Evil?

I don't like moral quandaries, so no. [That's probably why he's here. Ruthless, but with a conscience. Merciless, but with compassion. He's some kind of functioning composite of the best of worst humanity can offer.]

Conscience, Descant, is exactly what I'm talking about. It's what we have that animals don't - the ability to differentiate good actions from evil ones, and the freedom to choose between them.

You might call it free will.

That's what God denied mankind.

Should I feel now that I was in error then, granting them that much? If I'm meant to regret it, you can be assured, the day will never come.

[Des smirks.] Now you're speaking my language.

[ in the nightside of eden - him ]

I thought you might agree.

There I sat, in the Void, thinking on this, and in my determination, I came to discover something astonishing: that by exercising my will upon the Void, I could alter it in certain ways. I began to experiment, and found it linked to the strong emotions that had been born within me during all that occurred since Matter was first created. Eventually, I realized that I could create form out of the Void, and in expunging the fear, the anger, the doubt from my system, living beings took form.

[ he sounds disgusted as he relates this bit, waving a hand ] I regret now that they were ever unleashed on this world, but that's how they came into being first - the demons. That's what demons are, compacted dark emotion, each a representation of a single feeling. Manifestations of the horrific possibilities God had awakened through his system of suffering.

But their creation was incidental: through my experimentation, I learned to control Matter in ways that would have once seemed impossible. Men would later learn this power from me and my disciples - it's what is often referred to in your age as arcane magic. But at that time, it was my means to an end, and I wielded this tool to rip open my cage - to tear apart the fabric between worlds, so that I might put an end to this madness and grant mankind what they so deserved.

I suspected God had angels on watch against my return, and so I conjured one of my new creations out of the Void - more powerful than any other that I had made thus far, who took the form of a Serpent. I set her free into the Garden, and well - you know the end of that story.

My actions had an unexpected and unintended consequence, however. The tear I had made between worlds was small at first, but it damaged the fabric between dimensions. God Himself was either unable, or more likely to, unwilling to repair it; and it has been the source of this... slippage between worlds that you are aware of, ever since.

[UHHH.

WELL.

Thanks, Satan????]

I feel so enlightened. [Deadpan. Because wow. He was not prepared for that bit of truthiness.] So that was all you- magic, demons, the Veil. [He rubs at his face.] I always knew that bearcat of a sorceress they've got out there was from the devil.

You can't imagine any of it went without consequence. God punished this "Original Sin" of his by damning mankind to a prison of their own: he created a mirror of Toril, the Shadow World, in this one, but intended it to be sealed off entirely. That's why trips here are one way, for those who slip through the cracks. This world was meant to be free of the magic I'd created, but that too, slipped through eventually. And what is more, he admitted he had been wrong regarding mankind, and began creating new races in Toril, each of which subsequently failed his 'test' just as spectacularly as the last. But by then, our focus was on the plight of Earth, and God himself had tied our fates to that world, having his own designs for the other.

But my story is not the only one that mattered, during all this. [ he looks to azrael and nods ] When I was punished, Azrael began a different journey, one that is not mine to share.

[Des turns to Azrael and mutters under his breath:] Tell me you're a better storyteller than him.

[But this is, apparently, where it gets super relevant. He hopes.]

[ she tosses him a wry look, but picks up immediately ] As Lucifer says: I was angered by his punishment, hurt by God's actions, and I rushed to defend him, hoping it would soothe God's rage.

God said 'Wait!' So I found myself stopped at the gates of Heaven, along with all my companions, the angels who generally went and did what we did, and Michael and Gabriel and Uriel, though not among our companions, were there too.

'Azrael,' said God, and the words were spoken with the characteristic gentleness and a great effulgence of light. 'Before you come into Heaven, and you begin your diatribe, go back down to this Earthly prison and study all you have seen thoroughly and with respect - by this I mean humankind - so that when you come to me, to defend Lucifer's actions, you have given yourself every chance to understand and to behold all I have done. I tell you now that Humankind is part of Nature, and subject to the Laws of Nature which you have seen unfold all along. No one should understand better than you and Lucifer, save I. But go, see for yourself. Then, and only then, will I call together a convocation in Heaven, of all angels, of all ranks, and all endowments, and I will listen to what you have to say. Take with you those who seek the same answers you seek and leave me those angels who have never cared, nor take notice, nor thought of anything but to live in My Light.'

[ Azrael pauses, as they walk slowly along the bank of the narrow sea until they come to a place where several boulders make a natural place to sit and to rest. She sits beside Des, turns to him slightly on her left, and her wings once again fade. But first they rise, and stretch out, the left far above his head and the whole wingspan startling. But then they disappear. There simply isn't room for them when Azrael is seated, at least not for them to be folded behind her, so they are gone. ]

Immediately following these words, there was a great commotion in Heaven over who wanted to go down and examine the Creation with me and who did not. Now understand, angels were all over Creation as it was, as we've told you, and many had already been years on Earth, and fallen in love with creeks, and valleys, and even the deserts which had begun to appear. But this was a special message the Lord had given me - Go and Learn All You Can About Mankind - and there was some question as to who was as interested or as passionate about the mysteries of the human race as was I.

Now, Lucifer jumped over this, but let me explain about the ranks and endowments of angels. Surely you've heard some of the truth from the lore, and guessed at more of it from those you have met. God created us first - the archangels - Lucifer, Azrael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and Jophiel.

[ lucifer speaks up, almost offhandedly ] And we were the First Made, as Azrael said, though who exactly came before whom has become a hysterical subject of argument in Heaven, and one in which I lost interest a long time ago. Besides, I'm convinced that I am the first anyway. But it doesn't matter.

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