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

[ 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.

We are those who communicate in the most direct way with God, and also with Earth. That's why we have been labeled Guardian Angels, as well as Archangels, and sometimes in the religious literature we are given a low rank. We don't have a low rank. What we have is the greatest personality and the greatest flexibility, between God and man. Remliel. Zerachiel. They have their place now in lieu of us among the Archangels, but I cannot possibly explain how the selection was done to you now. You'll know all that when you're dead anyways. And also it's almost too much for a human mind, such as your own, to comprehend. But what I'm saying is that the names refer to actual entities. Now let me continue. Let me stick with the schemes. We, as I told you, are God's Messengers, and Most Powerful Angels, and we [ she gestures to herself and lucifer ] were fast becoming God's Accusers, as you can see! And Satan, and all those dreadful names that we don't like are in some way connected with that idea.

[ lucifer nods ] Accuser. And the early religious writers, knowing only bits and pieces of the truth, thought it was man whom I accused, not God; but there are reasons for this, as you'll soon see. You might say I have become the Great Accuser of everybody. [ He seems mildly exasperated, but then his voice resumes, very calm and measured. ] But my name is Lucifer, and there is no angel more powerful or clever than I am and there never was.

[ somehow there doesn't sound like any boast in his statement, despite its words. then again, it's difficult to doubt. ]

The Nine Choirs, making up the bene ha elohim, they are all there. And very well described by Hebrew and Christian scholars, thanks to times of revelation and perhaps disaster, though one would be hard put to determine the nature of each event. The First Triad is made of Three Choirs, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones or Ophanim, as I prefer to call them. And this First Triad is in general locked to the glory of God. They are in His thrall, thrive in the light which can blind or dazzle others, and almost never get very far from the light at all.

At times when I am angry and making speeches to all of Heaven, I accuse them... if you'll pardon the expression again - of being held to God as if by a magnet and not having a free will or personality such as we possess. But they have these things, they do, even the Ophanim, who are in general the least articulate or eloquent - in fact, Ophanim are likely to say nothing for eons - and any of these First Triad can be sent by God to do this and that, and have appeared on Earth, and some of the Seraphim have made rather spectacular appearances to men and women as well. To their credit, they adore God utterly, they experience without reserve the ecstasy of His presence, and He fills them completely so that they do not ask questions of Him and they are more docile, or more truly aware of God, depending on one's point of view.

The Second Triad has Three Choirs which have been given the names by men of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers. But to tell the truth, there is very little difference between these angels and the First Triad. The Second Triad is a little farther from the Light of God and perhaps as close as it can come, given its endowments, and perhaps it is not so clever when it comes to logic or questions. Who knows? Certainly, the Second is more docile altogether; but then there is more coming and going from the Second Triad, from Earth to Heaven, then from the devoted and magnetized, and sometimes arrogant Seraphim. You can see how this could lead to much discussion.

Both triads sing continuously when they are in Heaven, and most of the time when they are on Earth; their songs rise to Heaven spontaneously and continuously; they don't erupt with the deliberate jubilation of my song or the songs of those like me. Nor do they fall silent for long periods as our kind - Archangels - are apt to do.

When you're dead you'll be able to hear the song of all these triads. It would destroy you now if you did. We've let you hear part of the Din of Heaven, but that's all it can be to you, a din - the sound of song, and mingled laughter, and seemingly erratic eruptions of beautiful sound.

The Lowest Triad is supposed to include Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, but this is misleading, as I said. For we, the Archangels, are in fact the most powerful and the most important, have the most personality, and are the most questioning and concerned.

The other angels think we are flawed on that account. It does not occur to the average Seraph to plead for mercy for mankind.

But here you have a rough scheme of things. The angels are innumerable. And there is mobility among angels, some drifting closer to God than others, and then away when the majesty is too great for them, and they choose to slip back and sing a softer song. It's continuous.

Now the important thing is that the Guardian Angels of Earth, the Watchers, those who became intent upon Creation, came from all these ranks! Even from the very Seraphim there have come Guardians who have spent millions of years on Earth and then gone Home. Going and coming is common. The disposition I describe is innate but not fixed.

Angels aren't perfect. You can see that already. They are Created Beings. They don't know everything God knows, that's obvious to you and everyone else. But they know a great deal; they know all that can be known in Time if they wish to know it; and that is where angels differ, you see. Some wish to know everything in Time, and some care only for God and God's reflection in those of His most devoted souls.

In other words, everyone's right about it, and everybody's sort of wrong - but more right than wrong. Angels are individuals, that is the key. We Who Fell are no single species, unless being the brightest, the most clever, and the most comprehending makes us a species, which I don't think it does.

[Des draws one knee up to his chin, nodding along with her explanation.]

You all just stopped drinking the kool-aid and got thrown out, so you wouldn't rock the boat.

You might say that.

So, a gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves an entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels. There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what was making me so angry with God.

I can't give you the number of how many we were. But when we reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.

What united us was our interest in the statement of God that Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn't see how this was true. We went exploring.

Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of Earth, disembodied and confused?

Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshiped other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to please or displease.

Now I can't say this was a very big surprise to me. I'd seen the early signs of it. After all, I too had seen the millions of years Lucifer telescoped for you in the Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see the care and deliberation of the sacrifice - the slaying of a ram or a deer - I was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.

They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. They didn't know what He was like but they knew. And this instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.

Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's own death - this had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans; and this individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let such a thing have no meaning in the world.

And it was this very same tenacity - the tenacity of this individuality - that made the human soul stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together, so to speak, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according to the only word it knew.

Man had invented or discovered God. [ Her voice is calm, polite and almost humbly instructive, no trace of the arrogance she carries in her voice on earth now. ] And in some instances, tribes worshiped more than one such deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of the world. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; and they did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. They brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls. They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the birthing of a child, in all things.

And as we angels peered into Sheol, as we passed into it, invisible, our essence causing no disturbance in a realm that was purely souls at that point... souls and nothing but souls ... we realized that these souls were strengthened in their survival by the attentions of those living on earth, by the love being sent to them by humans, by the thoughts of them in human minds. It was a process.

And just as with angels, these souls were individuals with varying degrees of intellect, interest, or curiosity. They were hosts as well to all human emotions, though in many, mercifully, all emotion was on the wane.

Some souls, for example, knew that they were dead, and sought to respond to the prayers of their children, and actively attempted to advise, speaking with all the power they could muster in a spiritual voice. They struggled to appear to their children. Sometimes they broke through for fleeting seconds, gathering to themselves swirling particles of matter by the sheer force of their invisible essence. Other times they made themselves visible in dreams, when the soul of the sleeping human was opened to other souls. They told their children of the bitterness and darkness of death, and that they must be brave and strong in life. They gave their children advice.

And they seemed, in some instances at least, to know that the belief and attention of their sons and daughters strengthened them. They requested offerings and prayers, they reminded the children of their duty. These souls were to some extent the least confused, except for one thing. They thought they had seen all there was to be seen.

No hint of Heaven. And no light from Heaven penetrated Sheol, nor any music. From Sheol one saw the darkness and the stars, and the people of Earth.

Not unbearable if you think you are a god to your children, of course, and can still derive strength from the mere sight of the libations they pour on your grave. Not if you feel pleasure in those who hearken to your advice and anger at those who don't, and not if you can communicate occasionally, sometimes with spectacular results.

Gods they seemed to their children. Ancestral gods of a certain kind. Not the Creator of All. Human beings had distinct ideas on both questions, as I've said.

I became greatly absorbed with this whole question of Sheol. I traveled the length and breadth of Sheol. Some of these souls didn't know they were dead. They knew only they were lost and blind and miserable and they cried all the time like infant humans. They were so weak I don't even think they felt the presence of other souls.

Other souls were clearly deluded. They thought they were still alive! They chased after their kindred, trying vainly to get the oblivious son or daughter to listen, when of course the kindred could not hear or see them; and these, these who thought they were still living, well, these had no presence of mind to gather matter to make themselves appear or to come to the living in a dream, because they didn't know they were dead.

To continue, some souls knew they were ghosts when they came to mortals. Others thought they were alive and the whole world had turned against them. Others simply drifted, seeing and hearing the sounds of other living beings but remote from this as if in a stupor or dream. And some souls died.

Before my very eyes, some died. And soon I realized many were dying. The dying soul would last a week, perhaps a month in human time, after its separation from the human body, retaining its shape, and then begin to fade. The essence would gradually disperse, just as did the essence inside an animal upon its death. Gone into the air, returned perhaps to the energy and essence of God.

Perhaps. Perhaps their energy went back into the Creator. Some might fancy that they were like the light of a candle returned to the eternal fire. I don't know. But that I did not see, little flames wafting to Heaven, drawn aloft by a mighty and loving blaze. No, I saw nothing of the kind.

From Sheol, the Light of God was not visible. For Sheol, the consolation of God did not exist. Yet these were spiritual beings, made in our image and His image, and clinging to that image, and hungering for a life beyond death. That was the agony. The hunger for the life beyond death.

Not that it was the case at all that the absence of this hunger would extinguish any souls at the time of death. The hunger, in fact, seemed innate. The hunger had to die out in Sheol before the soul would disintegrate. Indeed, souls went through many, many experiences in Sheol, and those who had become the strongest were those who perceived themselves as gods, or humans passed into the realm of the good God, and attentive to humans; and these souls gained power even to sway the others and strengthen them sometimes and keep them from fading away.

[ She pauses as if not sure how to proceed. Then, goes on. ]

There were some souls who understood things in a different way. They knew they weren't gods. They knew they were dead humans. They knew they didn't really have the right to change the destiny of those who prayed to them; they knew that the libations essentially were symbolic. These souls understood the meaning of the concept symbolic. They knew. And they knew they were dead and they perceived themselves to be lost. They would have reentered the flesh if they could have. For there in the flesh was all the light and warmth and comfort that they had ever known and could still see. And sometimes these souls managed to do exactly that!

I witnessed it in various different fashions. I saw these souls deliberately descend and take possession of a stupefied mortal, take over his limbs and brain and live in him until the man gained the strength to throw the soul off. You know these things. All men do - what is involved in possession.

[Des rests his forehead against his knee and inhales through his nose, but says nothing. She's touching on things he's often stayed awake at night thinking about. You want to die so badly, but you don't understand a lick of what happens after. Has it ever occurred to you that it might be more terrifying than being alive?

But it never makes the ache fade. The minute such a simple notion could penetrate his stubborness, he would want to live and the curse would be lifted when next he sought death out, or so his understanding went.]

[ as heaven is wide - garbage ]

But this was the dawn of such invention. And to watch these clever souls learn the rules of it, to see them grow ever more powerful, was something to behold.

And what I could not fail to be frightened by, being the Accuser that I am, and horrified by Nature, as God calls it, what I could not ignore was that these souls did have an effect on living women and men! There were those living humans already who had become oracles. They would smoke or drink some potion to render their own minds passive, so that a dead soul might speak with their voice!

And because these powerful spirits - for I should call them spirits now - because these powerful spirits knew only what Earth and Sheol could teach them, they might urge human beings on to terrible mistakes. I saw them order men into battle; I saw them order executions. I saw them demand blood sacrifice of human beings.

I saw, essentially, the Creation of Religion out of Man. Insofar as Man can Create anything. Let us not forget Who Created us all. [ there's nothing mocking in her tone, which may or may not be surprising ]

We gathered, the other angels and I, exchanged stories in amazement, then went off again on our own explorations; we were more entangled with the earth than we had ever been. But essentially, the reactions of angels varied. Some, the Seraphim mainly, thought the whole process was downright marvelous; that God deserved a thousand anthems in praise that his Creation should lead to a being who could evolve an invisible deity from itself who would then command it to ever greater efforts at survival or war.

Then there were those who thought, 'This is an error, this is an abomination! These are the souls of humans pretending to be Gods! This is unspeakable and must be stopped immediately.'

And then there was my passionate reaction: 'This is really ghastly and it is headed for worse and worse disasters! This is the beginning of an entirely new stage of human life, bodiless, yet purposeful and ignorant, which is gaining momentum every second, and filling the atmosphere of the world with potent interfering entities as ignorant as the humans round whom they swirled, with no direction from God, as their truly divine counterparts in Toril.'

Of course, some of the angels were vehemently in agreement with me, but as Michael said, 'Trust in God, Azrael, Who has done this. God knows the Divine Scheme.'

Michael and I had the most extensive dialogues. Raphael and Gabriel and Uriel had not come down, by the way, as part of this mission. And the reason for that is fairly simple. Almost never do all of those four go the same way, save for on the most powerful of divine missions. It's a law with them, a custom, a... a vocation, that two are always on hand in heaven for the call of God; and never do all four leave at once for any considerable time. In this instance, Michael was the only one who wanted to come.

Michael may be on the side of God, but those who side with us are no stranger to him. In fact, you might be surprised by how compassionately Michael can understand our endeavors - even though he still works against them. But our endeavors are not unreconcilable to heaven, surely, or we would not be allowed to do what we do.

All those of the bene ha elohim whom I describe to you are alive now. They are immortal, save their souls are smited by the hand of the Creator himself, I do believe. Now, there were souls in Sheol at that time who no longer exist, not in any form I know of, but perhaps they do in some form known to God.

Anyways, as I watched all this, as it filled me with fear, I tried to think of it in terms of God's statement about nature - that we would begin to see humankind were part of nature.

But I couldn't make such a relation except in terms of the endless exchange of energy and Matter. The souls were energy; yet they retained a knowledge from Matter. Beyond that, I could not reconcile it. But for Michael, there was another view. We were on a stairway, were we not? The lowest molecules of inorganic matter constituted the lowest steps. These disembodied souls occupied the step above man yet below angels. It was all one flowing procession to Michael, but then again, Michael trusted that God was doing all this deliberately and wanted it this way.

I could not believe this! Because the suffering of the souls horrified me. It hurt Michael too. He covered his ears. And the death of the souls horrified me. If souls could live, then why not let all know! And were they doomed forever to exist in this gloom? What else in nature remained so static? Had they become as sentient asteroids forever orbiting the planet, moons that could scream and cry and weep?

I asked Michael, 'What will happen? Tribes pray to different souls. These souls become their gods. Some are stronger than others. Look at the war everywhere, the battle.'

'But Azrael,' he said, 'primates did this before they had souls. Everything in Nature eats and is eaten. This is what God has been trying to tell you since Lucifer first began to cry out in protest at the sound of suffering from the Earth. These soul-god-spirits are expressions of humans, and part of humankind, born of humans and sustained by humans, and even if these spirits grow in strength to where they can manipulate living people exquisitely, they are nevertheless born out of Matter and part of Nature as God said.'

'So Nature is this unspeakable unfolding horror,' I said. 'It is not enough that a shark swallows whole the infant dolphin and that the butterfly is crushed in the teeth of the wolf who chews it up, oblivious to its beauty. It's not enough. Nature must go further, and spin from matter these spirits in torment. Nature comes this close to Heaven, but it is so far short of it that only Sheol will do for the name of this place.'

This speech was too much for Michael. One cannot speak this way to the Archangel Michael. Just doesn't work. So at once he turned away from me, not angrily, not in cowardice that God's thunderbolt might miss me by a fraction and shatter his left wing. But he turned away in silence, as if to say, Azrael, you are impatient and unwise. Then he turned and mercifully said, 'Azrael, you do not look deep enough. These souls have only begun their evolution. Who knows how strong they may become? Man has stepped into the invisible. What if he is meant to become as we are?'

'But how is that to happen, Michael?' I demanded. 'How are these souls to know what are angels and what is Heaven? Do you think if we made ourselves visible to them and told them that they... ' I stopped. Even I knew this was unthinkable. I wouldn't have dared. Not in millions of years would I have dared.

But no sooner had this thought occurred to us, had we begun brooding over it, than other angels gathered with us, and Zerachiel said, 'Look, living people know that we are here.'

'How so?' I demanded. As sorry as I felt for humanity, I didn't consider mortal men and women very smart. But these angels explained immediately.

'Some have sensed our presence. They sense it as they sense the presence of a dead soul. It is the same part of the brain which perceives other things invisible; I tell you we have been glimpsed and we shall now be imagined by these people. You will see.'

'This can't be God's wish,' said Michael. 'I say we return to Heaven at once.'

The majority agreed with him instantly, the way angels agree, without a sound. I stood alone looking at the entire multitude.

'Well?' I said. 'God has given me my mission. I cannot go back until I understand,' I insisted. 'And I don't understand.'

There ensued a huge argument. But finally Michael kissed me as angels always kiss, tenderly on the lips and cheeks, and went up to Heaven, and the whole league ascended with him.

And I remained, standing on the earth alone. I did not pray to God; I did not look to men; I looked to myself and I thought, What shall I do? I do not wish to be seen as an angel. I do not wish to be worshiped like these surviving souls. I do not wish to anger God; but I have to fulfill His commandment to me. I have to understand. Now, I am invisible. But what if I can do what these clever souls do - that is, gather matter to me to make for myself a body - gather sufficient tiny particles from all the world - and who knows better than I do what a man is made of, having seen him evolve from his earliest stages, who knows better the makeup of tissue and cell and bone and fiber and brain matter than I know? Except God?

So I did it. I focused my entire will and strength upon constructing for myself a living sheath of human flesh, complete in all parts and I chose - without even thinking about it - to be male. [ she casts a small smirk in his direction ] Does this require an explanation?

Edited 2014-02-03 20:53 (UTC)

Nope. [Des still has his head on his knee, wheezing out a laugh. He's starting to get a feel for this story, though he still feels distanced from it. Like a person of privilege in a room full of people who have nothing, he sympathizes but can't possibly understand.

And he knows the story is unfolding towards the real truth- the truth that haunts him with every breath. Why was he cursed? And that keeps his head down and his eyes shut.]

[ a nod ] I thought you'd understand. I had seen enough, as I'm sure you have, of rape, childbirth, and helpless struggle to make the wiser choice then. But sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if things would have been entirely different if I had chosen to be female at the time. I could have. The females resemble us more, truly. But if we are both, then surely we are more male than female. It is not in equal parts.

So, I became sheathed in flesh. It took a little longer than one might suppose. I had to consciously evoke every bit of knowledge in my angelic memory; I had to construct the body, and then insert my essence in it exactly in the manner in which the natural life essence would have been inside it; and I had to surrender; that is, encase myself within this body; really go into it, and fill out its limits and not panic. Then I had to look through its eyes.

The process involved no pain. Only submission. And for no good reason, really, or should I say from simple Nature, to use God's favorite word, I sheathed my own self, my own essence in flesh. Only the wings did I leave out of the scheme altogether, and so I stood as tall as an angel, and as I walked to the water of a clear pool near me and looked down in it, I saw Azrael for the first time in material form. I saw exactly myself, my fair hair, my eyes, my skin, all the gifts God had given me in invisible form made manifest in flesh.

I realized immediately that this was too much! I was too large all over; I was blazing with the essence inside me! This would not work. And so instantly I began to reshape and scale down the entire body until it resembled more myself the size of a man.

It is neither an impossible, nor terribly simple operation. It is not like pressing the keys of a complex computer program and sitting back and watching the machine execute the commands one by one. On the other hand, it is not cumbersome and overly conscious. It merely takes angelic knowledge, angelic patience, and angelic will.

Now a man stood beside the pool, naked, blond of hair and light of eye, very similar to many of those who inhabited the region, though perhaps more nearly perfect, and endowed with physical organs of reasonable but not splendid size.

Now as my essence went into these organs, into the scrotum and the penis, to be specific, I felt something which had been utterly unknown to me as an angel. Utterly unknown. It was compounded of many realizations. I knew gender. I knew maleness; I knew a certain human vulnerability firsthand now rather than from watching and sensing; and I was very surprised at how powerful I felt.

I had expected to be quaking with humility in this form! To be shivering with indignity at the mere smallness of myself, and my immobility and a host of other things. But I didn't feel this. I had never been material. I had never, never thought about doing it. I had never, never even thought of wanting to see what I might look like in an earthly mirror. I knew my image from its reflections in the eyes of other angels. I knew my parts because I could see them with my angelic eyes.

But now I was a man. I felt the brain inside my skull. I felt its wet, intricate, and near-chaotic mechanics; its layers and layers of tissue, involving as it does the earliest stages of evolution, and wedding them to a wealth of higher cells in the cortex in a manner that seemed utterly illogical and yet totally natural - natural if you knew what I, as an angel, knew.

Such as that emotions stirred in the limbic part of my brain could take hold of me without having first made themselves known to my consciousness. That can't happen with an angel. Our emotions cannot slip by our conscious minds. We cannot feel irrational terror. At least I don't think so. And whatever the case, I certainly didn't think so then when I stood on the earth, in the flesh of a man.

I was in a wild, wooded area, as I was in this very valley which is Palestine, if you would know it, before it was ever called Palestine, as I was here, I was aware that this body was food for wild animals, and so I did create around myself, of angelic essence, an extremely strong shield. It behaved electrically. That is, when an animal approached me, which happened almost immediately, it was repulsed by this shield.

And thus shielded, I decided to start walking all through the nearby settlements of men and to look at things, knowing full well no one could hurt me or push me or attack me or anything else. Yet I would not appear miraculous. On the contrary, I would seem to dodge the blows if any were dealt, and I would seek to behave in such a manner that nobody noticed me at all.

I waited for nightfall, and went to the nearest encampment, which was the largest in the area and had grown so in strength that it now exacted tribute from other encampments nearby. This was a huge circular walled gathering place, full of individual huts in which men and women lived. Fires burnt in each hut. There was a central place where everyone gathered. There were gates to be locked at night.

I slipped inside, slumped down beside a hut, and watched for hours what the people of this encampment did in the twilight and then by dark, I crept from place to place. I peered inside the little doorways. I watched many things.
"The next day, I watched from the forest. I tracked a band of hunters, so that they did not see me, but I could see them. When I was glimpsed, I ran, which seemed the acceptable and predictable behavior. Nobody chased me.

I hung around the thriving life of these humans for three days and three nights and during this time, I knew their limits, I knew their bodily needs and aches, and I had gradually come to know their lust, because all of a sudden, I discovered it flaming inside of me.

This is how it happened. Twilight. The third day. I had come to an entire score of conclusions as to why these people were not part of Nature. I had an entire case to make to God. I was almost about to leave.

But one thing which has always fascinated angels, and which I had not experienced in the flesh, was sexual union. Now as an invisible angel one can come quite close to those coupled, and see into their half-shut eyes, and hear their cries, and touch the flushed flesh of the woman's breast and feel her heart race.

Countless times I'd done this. And I realized now that passionate union - a true experience of it - could be crucial to my case. I knew thirst. I knew hunger. I knew pain. I knew weariness. I knew about how these people lived and felt and thought and talked to each other. But I really didn't know what happened in sexual union.

And at twilight on the third day, as I stood by this very sea, here, far, far from the encampment, looking towards it miles to our right, there came towards me as if out of nowhere a beautiful woman -a daughter of man.

[ her voice softens ] Look upon her, Des. I want you to see her, as I did.

[Des raises his eyes, simultaneously curious and a bit uncomfortable, and does as Azrael asks.

If this gets porny, he is out. He did not agree to that.]

[ when des raises his eyes, it would strike him first and foremost that azrael herself (himself??? angel's shit be confusin') has changed forms to tell the rest of this part of the story. as a man, he has the same flowing blond hair, the same piercing blue eyes, and it would seem suddenly obvious that there's always been something masculine about the presence and posture of the angel, even as a female. while lucifer is attractive in human form, azrael in either form seems to go above and beyond, fulfilling every physical ideal of a gorgeous human. his voice is a surprise at first, as he continues on smoothly in a completely different timbre, but the same familiar intonations.

but his eyes are fixed up the beach, on a ghostly image that walks along it at a distance, oblivious to them. the woman is remarkably striking and as she walks and he describes her with a sort of reverence, she'd fade away slowly, as if never there at all.

♬ sanctified - nine inch nails ]

Now, I had beheld scores of beautiful women! As I told you, when we first beheld the beauty of women... before men had become quite so smooth and hairless... it had been one of the shocks of Physical Evolution for angels. And of course during these three days, I had from afar studied many beautiful women. But, in my subterfuge, I hadn't dared to go very close. After all, I was in the flesh and trying to go unnoticed.

But three days, mark me, I had had this body. And the organs of this body, being perfectly made, responded at once to the sight of this woman, who came walking boldly along the banks of the sea, a rebel woman, without a guardian male or other females, a young, bold, slightly angry, long-haired and beautiful girl.

Her garment was no more than a coarse animal skin, with a chewed leather belt around it, and she was barefoot and her legs were naked from the knee down. Her hair was long and dark, and her eyes light - a beguiling combination. And her face very youthful, yet full of the character imparted to a face by anger and rebellion - a girl filled with pain and recklessness and some desire to do herself harm. You know precisely the kind.

She saw me.

She stopped, realizing her vulnerability. And I, never having bothered with garments, stood naked, looking at her. And the organ in me wanted her, wanted her immediately and violently; and I felt the first promise of what that union might be like. That is, the first stirring of real desire. For three days, I had lived by the mind as an angel. Now the body spoke and I listened with an angel's ears.

She meantime did not run from me, but took several steps closer; and in her reckless heart made a resolution, based upon what experience I couldn't know, not yet being able to read into a soul, but she made it; that she would open her arms to me if I wanted her. And with the smoothest, most graceful movement of her hips, and with a gesture of her right hand, lifting her hair and then dropping it, she let me know.

I went to her and she took my hand and led me up those rocks, there, to where the cave is, you can see it, just over your left shoulder and up the slope. She took me there, and by the time we reached the entrance, I realized that she was flaming for me as I was flaming for her.

She was no virgin, this girl. Whatever her story, she was not ignorant of passion. She knew what it was, and she wanted it, and the lunge of her hips towards me was deliberate, and when she kissed me, and put her tongue into my mouth, she knew what she sought.

I was overcome. For one instant I held her back, merely to look at her, in her mysterious material beauty, a thing of flesh and decay that nevertheless rivaled any angel I'd ever seen, and then I gave her back her kisses, brutally, making her laugh and push her breasts against me.

Within seconds, we had fallen down together on the mossy floor of the cave as I had seen mortals do a thousand times. And when my organ went inside of her, when I felt the passion, I knew then what no angel could possibly know! It had nothing to do with reason, or observation, or sympathy, or listening, or learning, or trying to grasp. I was in her flesh and consumed with lust, and so was she, and her tender muscles clamped down upon me as if she meant to devour me, and as I thrust inside of her, again and again, she went blood-red in her consummation, and her eyes rolled back into her head and her heart stood still.

I came at the same moment. I felt the seed shoot from my body into her. My body continued to writhe with the same rhythm, and then the feeling, the indescribably and wholly new feeling, slowly ebbed and went away.

I lay exhausted beside her, my arm over her, and my mouth sought the side of her face and kissed her; and I said in her language, in a rush of words, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, sweet and beautiful creature, I love you!'

And to this she gave a yielding and respectful smile, and snuggled close to me, and then seemed about to weep. Her carelessness had led her to a tenderness! Her soul suffered insider her, and I felt it through the palms of her hands!

But in me there was a tumult of knowledge! I had felt the orgasm - felt the highly developed physical and emotional sensations that come to fulfillment when humans sexually mate! I stared at the ceiling of the cave, unable to move, unable to speak.

Then very gradually, I realized something had startled her. She clung to me, then she rose on her knees, and she ran away.

I sat up. The light had come down from Heaven! It was coming down from Heaven and it was God's light and it was looking for me! I rushed to my knees and to my feet and ran out into the light.

'Here I am Lord!' I cried. 'Lord, I am full of joy! Lord, God, what I have felt, Lord!' And I let out a great anthem, and as I did so the material particles of my body dissolved about me, shorn off by me, almost as if by the power of my angel voice, and I rose to my full height and spread my wings and sang in thanks to Heaven, for what I had known in this woman's arms.

The voice of God came quiet yet full of wrath.

'Azrael!' He said. 'You are an Angel! What is an Angel, a Son of God, doing with a Daughter of Men!'

Before I could answer, the light had withdrawn and left me with the whirlwind, and turning, my wings caught in it, I saw the mortal woman was only there, at the bank of the sea, and that she had seen and heard something inexplicable to her, and now in terror she fled.

She ran and I was carried upwards to the very gates of Heaven, and then those gates for the first time took on height and shape for me as they had for you, and they were slammed shut against me, and the Light struck me and down I went, forced down, plummeting as you plummeted in my arms, only I was alone, alone as I was slammed again, invisible, but bruised and broken and crying, against the wet earth.

'You, my Watcher, what have you done!' said the voice of God, small and certain by my ear.

I started to weep, uncontrollably. 'Lord, God, this is a terrible misunderstanding. Let me...let me lay my case before you....'

'Stay with the mortals you love so much!' He said. 'Let them minister to you, for I will not listen until my anger is cooled. Embrace the flesh you crave, and with which you are polluted. You won't come into my sight again until I send for you, and that shall be my choice.'

The wind rose again, swirling, and as I turned over on my back, I realized I was wingless, and in the flesh once more and the size of a man.

I was in the body I had created for myself, generously reassembled for me by the Almighty, down to the last cell, and I lay hurting and aching and weak on the ground, moaning, and sad.

I had never heard myself cry before with a human voice. I was not loud. I was not full of challenge or desperation. I was too sure of myself still as an Angel. I was too sure God loved me. I knew He was angry, yes, but He'd been angry with me many, many times before.

What I felt was the agony of separation from Him! I could not at will ascend to Heaven! I could not leave this flesh. And as I sat up and lifted my arms, I realized I was trying to do this with my whole being, and I couldn't do it, and then sadness came over me, so great, so lonely, and so total that I could only bow my head.

[well everyone's gay for brad pitt i guess...

Des is so full of NO at most of this story, but by the time Azrael reaches the end, he's troubled.]

Did He ever call you back?

Eventually. But at that time, I had no concept of when or where that would be.

The night had begun. The stars filled the firmament and were as distant from me as if I had never known Heaven at all. I closed my eyes, and I heard the souls of Sheol, wailing. I heard them pressing near me, asking me what I was, what had they witnessed, whence had I been thrown to the earth? Before I had gone unnoticed, my transformation having been quiet and secret, but when God had thrust me downwards, I had fallen spectacularly as an angel and immediately into the shape of a man.

All Sheol was crying in curiosity and foment.

'Lord, what do I say to them? Help me!' I prayed.

And then came the perfume of the woman near me. I turned and I saw her creeping towards me cautiously, and, when she saw my face, when she saw my tears and my distress, she came boldly towards me, slipping her warm breasts against my chest again, and clasping in her trembling hands my head.

She took my back to the encampment. She brought me inside the gates. Men and women rose from the campfire and children ran towards me. I knew that I possessed angelic beauty, and their admiring glances didn't surprise me. But I did wonder what in the name of Heaven they meant to do.

I was seated, and given food and drink, which I needed. For three days, I'd drunk nothing but water, and eaten only a few berries gathered here and there in the woods.

I sat down cross-legged with them and ate the cooked meat they gave me, and she, my woman, my Daughter of Men, crushed up against me, as if daring anyone to challenge the pair of us, and then she spoke.

She stood up, threw up her arms, and in a loud voice told them what she had seen. Her language was simple. But she had plenty enough words to describe it - how she had come upon me on the banks of the sea and seen that I was naked and she had given herself to me in sanctity and worship, knowing I could not be a man of the earth.

No sooner had my seed come into her than a magnificent light from above had filled the cave. She had rushed in fear from it, but I had walked out into it, fearless, knowing it, and before her eyes I changed so that she could see through me, yet still she saw me. And I was grown tall, with immense white feathered wings! This vision - this creature through whom she could see as if through water - she saw only for an instant. Then I vanished. I was gone as surely as I sit here now. She had hovered, shivering, watching, praying to the ancestors, to the Creator, to the Demons of the Desert, to all powers for protections, when suddenly she had seen me again - transparent, to summarize her simple words, but visible, falling - winged and enormous - smashing towards earth in a fall that would have killed a man, though that is what I became - a man, solid as everyone could see, sitting in the dust.

'God', I prayed, 'What do I do? What this woman has said is true. But I am no God. You are God. What do I do?'

No answer came from Heaven, not to my ears, not to my heart, not to my cumbersome and elaborate brain.

As for the crowd of listeners, whom I judged to be about 35, exclusive of all the children, no one spoke. Everyone was considering this. No one was quick to accept it. No one was going to jump forward and challenge it either. Something in my manner and posture held them aloof.

No surprise. I certainly didn't cower or shiver or evince what I was suffering. I had not learnt to express angelic suffering through flesh. I merely sat there, aware that by their measure I was young, comely, and a mystery; and they were not brave enough to try to hurt me as they so often hurt others, to stab, or pierce, or burn me as I had seen them do enough times to their enemies, and to their own despised.

Suddenly, the whole group burst into murmuring. A very old man rose to his feet. His words were even simpler than hers. I would say he had perhaps half her working vocabulary. But this was enough to express himself and he asked of me simply: 'What do you have to say for yourself?'

The others reacted as if this question were an expression of pure genius. Maybe it was. The woman pulled very close to me at the moment. She sat down beside me and with an imploring look, she embraced me.

I realized something - that her fate was connected to mine. She was slightly afraid of all these people, her kindred. And she wasn't afraid of me! Interesting. That is what tenderness and love can do, and marvels also, I thought. And God said these people were a part of Nature!

I hung my head, but not for long. Finally, I rose to my feet, bringing her up with me, my mate, as it were, and, using all the words known in her language, some even that the children had been adding already in this generation that the adults didn't yet know, I said:

'I mean you no harm. I came from Heaven. I came to learn about you and to love you. And I wish you only all good things under God!'

There was a great clamour, a happy clamour, with people clapping their hands and rising to their feet, and the little ones jumping up and down. It seemed a consensus emerged that Lilia, the woman I had been with, could now return to the group. She had been cast out to die when she had come upon me. But she was now surely upheld. And she had returned with a god, a deity, a sky being... they aimed for it with many syllables and combinations of syllables.

'No!' I declared. 'I am not a god. I did not make the world. I worship, just as you do, the God who did.'

This too was accepted in jubilation. Indeed, the frenzy began to alarm me. I felt the limits of my body keenly with all these others dancing and screaming and shouting and kicking at the wood in the fire, and the lovely Lilia clinging to me.

'I must sleep now!' I said suddenly. And this was no more or less than the perfect truth. I had scarce slept an hour or more at any one time in my 3 days in the flesh and was bone weary and bruised and cast out of Heaven. I wanted to turn to this woman, and bury my sorrow in her arms.

Everyone gave their approval. A hut was prepared for us. People ran hither and thither gathering the finest skins and furs for us, and the softest chewed leather, and we were ushered into this place in silence, and I lay back down on the fur beneath me, the skin of a mountain goat, long and soft.

'God, what do you want me to do!' I asked aloud. There came no answer. There was only the silence and the darkness in the hut, and then the arms of a Daughter of Men around me, luscious and loving and full of tenderness and passion, that mystery, that combination, that purely living miracle, tenderness and lust rolling and rolling into one.

[ azrael stops, as if exhausted suddenly. he rises again and walks to the bank of the sea. he stands in the soft sand and pebbles, and des can see the outline of his wings flash for a moment, perhaps exactly the way the woman had seen it, and then he is merely azrael again, with his shoulders hunched as he stands with his back to him, his face apparently buried in his hands. ]

You lost her.

[it doesn't matter what happened with God- that's not the point. The point is he was cast down for loving a mortal and he still probably had to watch her die and accept this as natural and right.]

[ his voice is tense, almost as if his teeth were half clenched as he responds. ]

'Her house sinks down to death, and her course leads to the shades. All who go to her cannot return and find again the paths of life. Her gates are gates of death and from the entrance of the house she sets out towards Sheol.

None of those who enter there will ever return, and all who possess her will descend to the Pit.'

[ he turns, a spark of anger in his eye ] That's how she's come to be remembered. They call her Lilith instead, a name that translates in their tongue to night monster and wrote her down as a demon. For all that our names have been dragged through the mud throughout the ages, that is the one error I cannot forgive.

[ he walks slowly back to the shoulder, and sits down again ]

By morning, I had known her a half dozen times and lay half dead, and that in itself was another lesson. But I had no thought whatsoever on what I might do. While she'd slept, I had prayed to God, I had prayed to Michael and to the other angels. I had prayed and prayed, asking what I should do.

Can you guess who answered me?

[Des nods at Lucifer.] Your buddy Lulu here?

[ ♬ sin - nine inch nails ]

The souls in Sheol. Those are the spirits - the strongest souls of Sheol who heard my prayers to the Creator and heard the impetus and essence of my cries and my excuses and my pleas for mercy and forgiveness and understanding - heard all of it, absorbed it, drank it up, as they did the spiritual yearnings of their human and living children. And by the time the sun rose, by the time all the men of the group had started to gather, I knew one thing only:

Whatever happened to me, whatever was the will of God, the souls of Sheol would never be the same! They had learnt too much from the voice of this Angel fallen into Matter who had thoughtlessly cried to Heaven and to God.

Of course the full impact didn't hit me. I didn't sit there reasoning it out. The strongest souls had had their first glimpse of Paradise. They knew now of a Light which made an Angel weep and beg in desperation, because he was afraid he would never see that Light again. I didn't think of it. No.

God had left me here. That is what I thought. God had left me. I went out into the crowd. The encampment was overflowing. In fact, men and women were coming from all the nearby encampments to see me.

And we had to leave the enclosure and go out into the open, into one of the fields. Look down to the right, where the land slopes? You see down there where the field spreads out and the water turns...

That's where we gathered. And it was soon clear that all of these men and women were expecting something of me, that I speak, that I work marvels, that I sprout wings, something, but what I didn't know. As for Lilia, she clung to me as ever, enticing and beautiful, and filled with vague wonder.

Together we climbed onto that rock - you see there, the boulders left there by the glaciers millions of years ago. There. We climbed up and she sat down and I stood before these people, and then I looked to Heaven and I opened my arms.

With all my heart, I begged God to forgive me, to take me back, to climax this intrusion with my merciful disappearance, that is, to let me take my angelic shape, invisible, and rise. I willed it, I pictured it, I tried in every conceivable way to assume my former nature. No luck.

In the heavens above, I saw what men saw. I saw the blue of the sky, and the willowy white clouds blowing eastward, and I saw the faint daytime moon. The sun hurt my shoulders. It hurt the top of my head. And something became known to me then in all its horror: that I was probably going to die in this body! That I had forfeited my immortality! God had made me mortal and turned his back.

I thought this over a long time. I'd suspected it from the first moment, but now with the haste of a man I became convinced of it. And in me a deep anger rose. I looked at all these men and women. I thought of God's words to me, to go with those I had chosen, with the flesh I preferred to Heaven. And a decision came into my head.

If this was to be my finish, if I was to die in this mortal body as men die, if some days or weeks or years were left to me - whatever this body could hope to survive amid the perils of life - then I must do with it the very finest thing that I know. I must offer to God my finest. I must go out like an Angel, if going out is what I had to do!

'I love you, my Lord,' I said aloud. And I racked my brain for the greatest acts I could perform.

What came to me was immediate and logical, and perhaps obvious. I would teach these people everything I knew! I wouldn't just tell them about Heaven and God and Angels, because what good would that do? Though of course I would tell them, and tell them to look for a peaceful death and peace in Sheol, for that they could attain.

But that would be the least of what I would do. For that was nothing! What was better was this - I'd teach them everything about their world that I could perceive logically but which had not yet become known to them.

Immediately I started speaking to them. I led them to the mountains and took them into the caves and showed them the veins of ore, and told them that when this metal was hot it bubbled forth from the earth in liquid, and that if they could heat it again they could make it soft and make things out of it.

Returning to the sea, I picked up the soft earth and shaped it into little people to show them how simple this was to do! Picking up a stick, I drew a circle in the sand, and spoke to them of symbols. How we might make a symbol for Lilia that resembled the flower for which she was named which they called the lily. And how we might make a symbol for what I was... a man with wings. I drew pictures everywhere, showing them how easy it was to do it, to connect an image with a concept or concrete thing.

By evening, I had gathered around me all the women and was showing them ways to tie their thongs of chewed leather which had never occurred to them, elaborate ways of plaiting it, and making it into big pieces of one fabric. All logical. All simply what I inferred from what I knew as an Angel about the whole world.

Now, these people already knew the seasons of the moon, but they didn't know the calendar of the sun. I told them all this. How many days to a year there should be according to how the sun and the planets moved, and I told them how they could write all this down with symbols. And soon we took the clay from the banks of the sea and we made flat plates of it, and on these plates with sticks I made little pictures of stars and heaven and Angels. And these plates or tablets were then allowed to dry in the sun.

For days and nights, I remained with my people. I began to teach them more and more and more. When one group was tired and could take no more lessons, I turned to another, and examined what they were doing, and tried to improve their ways.

Many things they would figure out for themselves, I knew. Weaving was very soon to occur to them, and then they would make better garments. That was all well and good. I showed them pigments similar to the red ochre they already used. I took things out of the raw earth that would make different colors for them. Every thought that occurred to me, every advance of which I could conceive, I imparted to them, greatly expanding their language in the process, obviously teaching them writing, and then I also taught them music of a wholly new kind. I taught them songs. And the women came to me, over and over again, the women - And Lilia stepped back - that the seed of the Angel might go into many, many women, 'the comely Daughters of Men.'

[ he pauses again, and his heart seems broken, remembering. his eyes are distant and totally reflect the pale blue of the sea. ]

[ lucifer speaks up, softly, reciting ]

'And Azazel... made known to them the metals, and the art of working them, and bracelets and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colored tinctures.'

[ azrael turned to look at des, almost unable to speak. his voice comes almost as softly as he continues. ]

'And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray...' [ he pauses a moment ] 'And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven.' [ he stops, smiling slowly and bitterly ] And what is the rest of it, Des, and what lies in between those lines we've spoken! Lies! I taught them civilization. I taught them knowledge of Heaven and Angels! That's all I taught them. There was no blood, no lawlessness, no monstrous giants in the earth. It's lies and lies, fragments and fragments, buried in lies!

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i lied 3/5??

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