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

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!

Yeah, I'm starting to get that.

[he frowns and scratches his head. it's a good thing he never put much stock in any of this before now.]

[ quietly: ] There was no magic. There were no enchantments. I didn't teach them to make swords! I didn't teach them war. If there was knowledge amongst other people on Earth, and I knew of that, I told them. That in the valley of another river, men knew how to gather wheat with scythes! That there were Ophanim in Heaven, Angels who were round, Angels who were wheels, and that if this shape were imitated in matter, if a simple piece of wood connected two round pieces, one could make an object which would roll upon these wheels!

[ sighs ] I was sleepless, I was crazed. As the knowledge poured forth from me, as they were worn down by it, and struggled under the burden of it, I went to the caves and carved my symbols on the walls. I carved pictures of Heaven and Earth and angels. I carved the light of God. I worked tirelessly until every mortal muscle in me ached.

And then, unable to endure their company anymore, satiated with beautiful women, and clinging to Lilia for comfort and affection, I went off into the forest, claiming I needed to talk to God in silence, and there I collapsed.

I lay in perfect stillness, comforted by the silent presence of Lilia, and I thought of all that had taken place. I thought of the case I had meant to lay before God, and how what I had learnt since had only fitted neatly into the case I had meant to make! Nothing I had seen in men could incline me to think differently. That I had offended God, that I had lost Him forever, that I had Sheol to look forward to, for all eternity, these things were real and I knew them, and they beat on my soul and heart. But I couldn't change my mind!

The case I had meant to lay before the Almighty was that these people were above Nature and beyond Nature and demanded more of Him, and all that I had seen only upheld me in what I believed. How they had taken to celestial secrets. How they suffered, and sought for some meaning to justify that suffering! If only there were a Maker and the Maker had his reasons... Oh, it was agony. And at the heart of it blazed the secret of lust.

In the orgasm, as my seed had gone into the women, I had felt an ecstasy that was like the joy of Heaven. I had felt it and felt it only in connection with the body that lay beneath me, and for one split second or less than that I had known, known, known that men were not part of Nature, no, they were better, and they belonged with God and with us!

When they came to me with their few confused beliefs - were there not invisible monsters everywhere? - I told them no. Only God and the Heavenly Court which ordained everything, and the souls of their own in Sheol.

When they asked if bad men and women - who did not obey their laws - were not thrown at death into fire forever - an idea very current amongst them and others - I was horrified, and told them that God would never allow such a thing. A wee newborn soul to be punished in fire forever? Atrocity, I told them. Once again, I said to them that they should venerate the souls of the Dead to ease their own pain and the pain of those Souls, and that when death came they should not be afraid but go easily in the gloom and keep their eyes on the brilliant light of Life on Earth.

I said most of these things because I simply didn't know what to say.

Oh, blasphemy. I had done it, I had really done it. And now what would be my fate? I would grow old and die, a venerated teacher, and before I did - or before some pestilence or wild beast cut off my life sooner - I would engrave into stone and clay everything I could. And then into Sheol I would go, and I would begin to draw the souls to me, and I would say, 'Cry, cry to Heaven!' I would teach them to look upward. I would say the Light is there!

[ he takes a breath, as if each word burns in him a pain. ] 'And now, behold the souls of those who have died are crying and making suit to the gates of heaven.'

And who knew what might happen? Who knew! Yes, yes, I would strengthen Sheol until those cries battered Heaven's gate and brought them down. If you have souls and your souls can grow, then you can be as angels! That was the only hope I had, to rule amongst the forgotten of God.

And judging by the fact that we're having this sit-down, that went pretty pearshaped, huh?

[THE POINT IS EMERGING. Thanks, Bob Saget.]

It did. But not in the ways most Men believe. He didn't send a Flood. All that I had taught was not washed away in a Deluge. What remained, what worked its way into myth and scripture was that I had been there, and that those things had been taught, and it was within the compass of man to have done it; it was within logic and not magic; and even the secrets of Heaven were what the souls would on their own perhaps have come to see. Sooner or later, the souls would have seen.

Lilia died venerated, in time, the wife of a god. [ his whole face brightens, and he laughs ] Lilia - my Lilia - cast out, and casting her lot with a god.

But that was later.

I had been there several months when I woke up and discovered Michael and Raphael had come for me, and said very distinctly: 'God wants you now.'

And I being Azrael, the unredeemable, said 'Oh? Why then doesn't He pick me up and take me out of here, if He so wishes?' [ apparently, he'd also learned snark from his time with the humans. ]

At this point, Michael looked miserable on my behalf and he said, 'Azrael, for the love of God, go willingly back into your proper form. Feel your body grow in stature; let your wings carry you to Heaven. He wants you only if you want to come! Now, Azrael, think before you...'

'No, you don't have to caution me, beloved,' I said to Michael. 'I'm coming, with tears in my eyes, I come.' I knelt down and kissed the sleeping Lilia. She looked up at me. 'This is farewell, my mate, my teacher,' I said as I kissed her, and then, turning, became the Angel, visible to her, letting the matter define me so that she, sitting up on her elbows and crying, would see this last vision and hold it to her heart perhaps when she needed it.

And then, invisible, I joined Michael and Raphael and went Home.

In the first moments, I could scarce believe it; when I passed through Sheol, the souls screamed in agony, and I threw my hands out in consolation. 'I will not forget you! I swear it. I take your suit to Heaven,' and then on and up I went, the light coming down to meet me and envelop me, and the warm love of God - whether prelude to judgment or punishment or forgiveness, I did not know - surrounded me and upheld me. The cries of joy in Heaven were deafening even to my ears, for I had not known what troubles they had seen during Lucifer's escape from the Void, cut off as I was from Heaven. They were glad of something to celebrate.

All the angels of the bene ha elohim were gathered. The Light of God pulsed from the center, and I found that Lucifer stood beside me.

'Am I to be punished?' And all I could feel was thanks that I had seen this light, if only for moments, once again.

I couldn't look into the Light. I had to put my hands up. And as always happens at a meeting of all of Heaven, the Seraphim and the Cherubim closed around God so that the light came in rays from behind them, glorious, and a brightness that we could bear.

The voice of God was immediate and total.

'I have a word for you, my brave ones, my arrogant ones,' He said. 'I have a concept for you to ponder in your angelic wisdom. It is the concept of Gehanna. Of Hell.' This word unfolded to us in all its implications. 'Fire and torment eternal,' said God. 'The inverse of Heaven. Tell me, Lucifer, Azrael, from your hearts. Would that be the appropriate punishment for you both - the very opposite of the glory you forsook? You, to tempt man to the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you, for the Daughters of Men? Would it be the appropriate sentence - suffering everlasting or until Time is no more?'

[Des bites the inside of his cheek and says succinctly:]

Shit.

It didn't take a second to answer. [ he raises his eyebrows slightly as he looks at des ] I said, 'No, Lord, you wouldn't do that to anyone. We are all your creatures. That is a horror too terrible for anyone or anything that has been deliberately made. No, Lord. When the men and the women of earth told me they had dreamed of such torments for those who had been bad and caused them pain and misery, I assured them no such place existed or ever would.'

Laughter rang out in heaven. Laughter from one end of the skies to the other. Every single angel was laughing, and of course the laughing was melodic and filled with delight and wonder as always, but laughter it was, and not song.

Only two beings weren't laughing. Myself. And Lucifer. I stood there, having spoken with perfect seriousness and utter amazement that they were laughing at what I had said.

But the strangest phenomenon occurred. God, too, had laughed, and was laughing, softly, with them, in unison, or in a leading rhythm, and only as His laughter slowly died away, so did theirs.

'So you told them that, Azrael. That there would never be a Hell of Eternal Punishment of the Bad; never; that such a place would never exist.'

'Yes, Lord, I did,' I said. 'I couldn't imagine why they had thought of it. Except they get so angry sometimes with their enemies...'

The laughter began again, but God silenced it.

God said, 'Azrael, have you left all your mortal cells on earth? You are in possession of all your angelic faculties? You are not still acting the simpleton out of habit?'

I spoke loud over the continuing laughter. 'No, Lord, I dreamt of this moment. Separation from you was agony. I did what I did out of love, isn't it so? Surely you know better than I.'

'I fear you did,' He answered. 'It was love, yes, that much is true.'

'Lord, I dreamt you would let me come before you and explain the entire thing, make the case I had meant to make when I first saw a Daughter of Men and went to her. Is this to be granted?'

Silence.

I could hear nothing from the Divine Presence, but I realized suddenly that some among the bene ha elohim had drawn close to us. At first I thought no, they are merely shifting and spreading their wings in the light, but I realized now that close behind me stood a small group of angels, and that they had been at the edges of the crowd all the time and were now being pushed towards me.

These angels I knew of course, some much more intimately through debate and argument than others, and they came from all ranks: Zariel, Samyaza, Mastema, Belial, Sammael, Beherit, and Triel. I looked at them in confusion and then towards the Divine Presence.

'Azrael,' said the Lord suddenly. 'These who stand with you, your cohorts, are also asking that you be granted your wish, to make your case, in the hopes that you can make it for them too.'

'I don't understand, Lord.' But in a twinkling, I did. I saw now the sorrow on their faces, and the way they cleaved to me as if I were their protector. I knew in an instant what had happened, that ranging over the whole earth, these angels had done as I had done.

'Not with such a flourish or with such invention,' said the Lord God, 'But they too saw the heat and mystery between the coupled man and woman, and they too found Daughters and Sons of Men to be fair, and took them as husbands and wives.'

Then came again a great uproar. Some were laughing still in that light gay manner as if all of this was splendid and novel entertainment and others were amazed, and those Watchers who clung with us, who seemed in comparison to the bene ha elohim a small number, looked to me desperately, and some even accusingly, and there came a whisper from their midst.

'Azrael, we saw you do it.'

Was God laughing? I couldn't hear it. The light poured out in its immense rays beyond the heads and shoulders and shaded forms of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and the wealth of love seemed eternal and constant as it had always been.

'In tribes throughout the world, my Sons of Heaven have gone down to know the flesh as you would know it, Azrael, though as I have already said, with far less flair and desire to stir the thick atmosphere of Nature and so deliberately disturb my Divine Plan.'

'Lord God, forgive me,' I whispered. And from the legion with me came the same hushed and respectful chorus - except from Lucifer.

'But tell me, you who stand behind Azrael, what do you have to say for yourselves as to why you did this and what you discovered, and what case would you put before the Heavenly Court?'

The answer was silence. Most of these angels fell prostrate before the Lord, asking only forgiveness, while Lucifer and I stood there.

'Ah.' I said, grateful to have his presence beside me. 'It seems, Lord, we stand alone.'

'Haven't you always? My Sons of Heaven, my angels who do not trust the Lord.'

'Lord God, I do trust you!' I said at once, angry suddenly. 'I do! But I don't understand these things, and I cannot still my mind or my personality, it is impossible for me. No, not impossible, but it does not... it does not seem right to be silent. It seems right to make the case, as Lucifer did. It seems that the greatest I can do is make the case, and the greatest thing I can do is to please God.'

There seemed great divisions amongst the others - not the Watchers, who didn't dare to climb to their invisible feet, and had their wings folded over them as if they were birds afraid in the nest - but among the entire Court. There were murmurings, and little songs, and riffs of melody and laughter, and deep soft questions, and many faces turned on me with eyes full of curiosity and even tinged with anger so that their eyebrows made a scowl.

'Make your case!' said the Lord. 'But before you begin, remind yourself, for my sake and the sake of everyone present, that I know all things. I know humankind as you can never know it. I have seen its bloody altars, and its rain dances, and its reeking sacrifices, and I have heard the cries of the wounded, the afflicted, the slowly annihilated. I see Nature in Humankind as I see it in the savagery of the seas or the forests. Don't waste my time, Azrael. Or to put it more clearly so that you will understand it, don't waste the Time you have with me.'

So the moment had come. I stood quietly preparing myself. Never in all my existence had I felt the importance or significance of an event as I felt the meaning of this one now. It is what you would call excitement, perhaps, or exhilaration. But I was already furious with the legion behind me lying on their faces and saying nothing! And suddenly in my fury I realized that as long as they lay there, leaving us alone in the open before God and the court, I wasn't going to speak a word. I folded my arms and stood there.

God started to laugh, a slow, gentle rising laugh, and then all of Heaven joined it irresistibly. And God said to the Fallen Ones, the Watchers, 'Stand up, my sons, or we will all be here until the End of Time.'

'Mockery, Lord, I deserve it,' I said. 'But thank you.'

In a great shuffling of wings and gowns, I heard them rising behind me to stand at least as tall and straight as brave humans could stand on earth below.

'Lord, my case is simple,' I said, 'but surely you cannot ignore it. And I shall state it as simply and flatly as I can. Up until a point in his development, the primate below was part of Nature, and bound by all its laws. And with his larger brain, he grew ever more cunning, and his battles with other animals became as fierce and bloody as the Heavenly Court had ever seen. This is all true. And with this intelligence there came also an increase in the ways and means that Humankind could inflict upon its own great pain.

'But never in all that I have Watched in war and execution, and even the laying waste of whole settlements and villages have I seen anything to surpass the sheer violence of the insect Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Reptiles, or of the Lower Mammals, who blindly and senselessly struggle to do only two things - survive and make more of their own kind.'

I stopped, out of courtesy, and also for effect. The Lord said nothing. I went on.

'Then there came a point, however, when these primates who had, by then, come to strongly resemble Your Own Image as we perceive it in Ourselves, diverged from the rest of Nature, in a marked way. And it was no mere moment of Self Awareness, Lord, when the logic of Life and Death became apparent to them. It was nothing as simple as that. On the contrary, the Self Awareness grew from a new and totally unnatural capacity to love.

'And it was then that humankind broke itself into tight families and clans and tribes, bound together by intimate knowledge of the individuality of each other, rather than sheer recognition of species, and were held together, through suffering and happiness, by the bond of love.

Lord, the human family is beyond Nature. If you were to go down and--'

'Azrael, take care!' God whispered.

'Yes, Lord,' I said, nodding, and clasped my hands behind me so as not to make ferocious gestures. 'What I should have said was that when I went down and I looked into the family, here and there and all over the World which you have Created, which you have allowed to unfold magnificently, I saw the family as a new and unprecedented flower. a blossom of emotion and intellect that in its tenderness was cut loose from the stems of Nature, from which it had taken its nourishment and was now at the mercy of the wind. Love, Lord, I saw it, I felt Love of Men and Women for one another and for their Children, and their willingness to sacrifice for one another, and to grieve for those who were dead, and to seek for their souls in the hereafter, and to think, Lord, of a hereafter where they might be reconciled with these souls again.

'It was out of this love and family, it was out of this rare and unprecedented bloom - so Creative, Lord, that it seemed in your Image of your Creation - that the souls of these beings remained alive after death! What else in Nature can do this, Lord? All gives back to the Earth what it has taken. Your Wisdom is Manifest throughout; and all those that suffer and die beneath the canopy of your heavens are mercifully bathed din brutal ignorance of the scheme which ultimately involved their own deaths.

'Man, not so! Woman, not so! And, in their hearts, loving one another as they do, mate with mate, and family with family, they have imagined Heaven, Lord. They have imagined it; the time of the reunion of souls when their kin will be restored to them and to each other, and will sing in bliss! They have imagined eternity because their love demands it, Lord. They have conceived of these ideas as they conceive of fleshly children! This I, the Watcher, have seen.'

Another silence. All of heaven was so still that the only sounds came from the earth below, the purring of the wind, and the dim stirring of the seas, the pale faraway cries of souls on earth as well as souls in Sheol.

'Lord,' I said, 'they long for Heaven. And imagining eternity, or immortality, I know not which, they suffer injustice, separation, disease, and death, as no other animal could possibly suffer it. And their souls are great. And in Sheol they reach out beyond the love of self and the service of self in the name of Love. Love goes back and forth between Earth and Sheol eternally. Lord, they have made a lower tier of the invisible court! Lord, they seek to propitiate your wrath, because they know You are Here! They want to know everything about You. And about themselves. They know and they want to know!'

This was the heart of my case, and I knew it. But again, there came from God no response or interruption.

'I couldn't see,' I said, 'as anything less than Your greatest accomplishment, the self-aware human, conceiving of Time, with a brain vast enough already for learning that is coming so fast that we Watchers could scarce keep track of all of it. But the suffering, the torment, the curiosity - it was a lamentation seemingly made for the ears of Angels, and of God, if I may dare to say.

'The case I came to make was, Lord, can these souls, either in the flesh, or in Sheol, not be given some part of our light? Can they not be given Light as animals are given water when they thirst? And will not these souls, once taken into Divine Confidence, be worthy perhaps to take some small place in this Court, which is without End?'

The quiet seemed dreamy and eternal, like the Time before Time.

'Could it be tried, Lord? For if it is not tried, what is to be the fate of these invisible surviving souls except to grow stronger and more entangled with the flesh in ways that give rise not to revelations of the true Nature of things, but corrupted ideas based on fragmentary evidence and instinctive fear?'

This time, I gave up on the idea of a polite pause and forged ahead immediately.

'Lord, when I went into the flesh, when I went with the woman, it was because she was fair, yes, and resembled us, and offered a species of pleasure in the flesh which to us is unknown. Granted, Lord, that pleasure is immeasurably small compared to your magnificence, but Lord, I tell you, in the moment when I lay with her, and she with me; and we knew that pleasure together, that small flame did roar with a sound very like the songs of the Most High!

'Our hearts stopped together, Lord. We knew in the flesh eternity, the man in me knew that the women knew it. We knew something that rises above all earthly expectations, something that is purely Divine.'

I fell silent. What more could I say? I would be embroidering my case with examples, for Someone Who knew all things. I folded my arms and looked down, respectfully, musing and listening to the souls in Sheol, and for one second their faint faraway cries distracted me, drew me right out of the heavenly presence for an instant of realization that they were calling on me and reminding me of my promise and hoping for my return.

'Lord God, forgive me,' I said. 'Your wonders have snared me. And I wrong if that was not your plan.'

[Des swallows hard, already knowing where this is going. He does know the stories, even if he doesn't really put much stake in them.]

It wasn't good enough.

Once again His silence was thunderous and soft and utterly empty. It was an emptiness of which those on Earth cannot conceive. I stood my ground because I could do nothing but what I had done, and I felt in my heart that every word I'd spoken had been true and untainted by fear. It occurred to me very clearly that if the Lord threw me out of Heaven, that whatever He did, really, I would deserve it. I was His Created Angel, and His to Command. And His to destroy if He wished it. And once again, I heard the cries of Sheol in my memory, and I wondered, as a human might, if He would send me there soon or do something far more fearful, for in Nature there were countless examples of excruciating destruction and catastrophe, and I as an Angel could be made by God to suffer whatever He wanted me to suffer, I knew.

'I trust in you, Lord,' I said suddenly, thinking and speaking simultaneously. 'Or else I would have fallen on my face as have the other Watchers. And that is not to say that they do not trust. But only to say that I believe you want me to understand Goodness, that your essence is Goodness, and you will not suffer these souls to cry in gloom and ignorance. You will not suffer the ingenious Humankind to continue without any inkling of the Divine.'

For the first time, He spoke very softly and offhandedly.

'Azrael, you've given them more than an inkling.'

'Yes, Lord, it is so. But Lord, the souls of the dead have given them much inspiration, and encouragement, and those souls are out of Nature, as we have beheld it, and growing stronger by the day. If there is a species of energy, Lord, natural and complicated beyond my understanding, then I am totally taken by surprise. For it seems they are made of what we are made of Lord, the invisible, and each is individual and has its own will. Lucifer was right, Lord. '

Silence again. Then the Lord spoke.

'Very well. I have heard your case. Now I have for you a question. For all that you gave Humankind, Azrael, what precisely did they give you?'

I was startled by the question.

'And don't speak to me of love now, Azrael,' He added. 'Of their capacity to love one another. On this the Heavenly Court is well informed and totally agreed. But what did they give you, Azrael? What did you get in return for the risks you took by entering into their realm?'

'Confirmation, Lord,' I said hastily, reaching for the deepest truth without distortion. 'They knew an Angel when they saw one. Just as I supposed they would.'

'Ah!' A great roar of laughter came from the Heavenly Throne and once again it swept up Heaven, so loud I'm sure that it must have reached the weak and struggling ears of Sheol. The Whole Heavens were rocking with laughing and singing.

At first I didn't dare to speak or do anything, and then suddenly, angrily perhaps, or should I say, willfully, I raised my hand.

'But I mean this in all seriousness, Lord! I was not some being beyond their dreams! Lord, did you plant the seed for this when you Created the Universe, that these beings would raise their voices to you? Will you tell me? One way or the other, can I know?'

The angels quieted down in little groups and pockets at first and then the laughter tapered off altogether, and something else replaced it, a soft singing of tribute to God in his patience, a soft acknowledgment of his patience with me.

I didn't join in this song. I looked to the great outer stretches of the rays of Light that came from God, and the mystery of my own stubbornness and my own anger and my own curiosity subdued me somewhat, but did not throw me for one second into despair.

'I trust in you, Lord. You know what you're doing. You have to. Otherwise we are... lost.'

I broke off, stunned at what I had just said. It far exceeded any challenge I'd thrown at God so far, seemed to even exceed the implications Lucifer had made, although I was still unaware of what he had done in my absence. In horror, I looked at the Light, and thought, what if He doesn't know what He's doing and never has!

My hands went to my face to stop my lips from saying something rash and thereby tell my brain to stop with its rash and blasphemous thoughts. I knew God! God was There. And I stood before Him. How dare I think such a thing, and yet He had said, 'You do not trust me,' and that was exactly what He had meant.

It seemed the Light of God grew infinitely brighter; it expanded; the shapes of Seraphim and Cherubim grew small and utterly transparent, and the light filled me and filled the recesses of all angels, and I felt in communion with them that all of us were so totally loved by God that we could never long for or imagine anything more.

Then the Lord spoke, the words wholly different now, for they competed with this effulgence of Love which overpowered the thinking mind. Nevertheless, I heard them and they penetrated to my heart.

And everyone else heard them too.

'Azrael, go into Sheol, and take Lucifer with you,' He said, 'and find there but ten souls who are worthy, of all those millions, to join us in Heaven. Say what you will to them as you examine them; but find Ten who you believe are worthy to live with us. Then bring those souls back to me, and we will continue from there on.'

I was ecstatic. 'Lord, we can do it! I know we can!' I cried out.

And suddenly I saw the faces of Michael and Raphael and Uriel, who had been almost obscured by the light of God, which was now receding within more endurable bounds. Michael looked frightened for me, and Raphael was weeping. Uriel seemed merely to watch, without emotion, neither on my side or for me, or for the souls, or for anyone. It was the face that Angels used to have before Time began.

'We can go now?' I said. 'And when must we return?'

'When you will,' said the Lord, 'and when you can.'

Ah, I understood. If we didn't find those ten souls, we weren't coming back.

I nodded, lovely logic and felt Lucifer's agreement at my side. I understood it. I accepted it.

I was about to speak, to ask, What of the Watchers, this little legion of flesh-educated angels behind me, when the Lord answered.

'They will wait in their proper place in Heaven for your return. They will not know my decision, nor their fate, until you bring those souls to me, Azrael, souls that I shall find worthy to be in my Heavenly home.'

'I understand, Lord. We're leaving with your permission!'

And asking nothing further, broaching no questions as to restrictions or limitations, I, Azrael the Archangel, and Lucifer, the Accuser of God, left Heaven immediately and descended into the great airy mists of Sheol.

So we came to Sheol, which I had only observed from outside before, and which was now enormous, containing still some of the first souls that ever sputtered with enduring life, and now millions of souls whose creeds and yearnings for the eternal had brought them to this place with great ferocity. Lucifer told me of what had occurred in the garden, and I shared his anger at God's pronouncement: if Adam and Eve bore the first souls, what were these spirits? The proof was all around us, that God was unjust in dismissing them. Mad expectations had pitched countless spirits into confusion. Others had grown so strong they exerted a sort of rulership among the others. And some had learned the trick of going down to Earth, escaping from the pull of other invisible souls altogether, and for wandering close to the flesh they would possess again, or influence, or harm, or love as the case might be. And there was a mad confusion of everything, for Lucifer's demons had slipped into the invisible world as well, and they too prowled the earth and the spiritual realm, eager to possess, wreak havoc, or make mischief, as their developments allowed. Where they encountered strong emotion of the sort they were bred of, they would multiply, existing twixt the visible and the invisible. But the great thrust of the world was and always has been the fate of its millions of Humankind.

Lucifer told me, also, of another development which had gone unmentioned at the great meeting in Heaven, one which had apparently been deemed unmentionable. Not only had he too taken a wife from among the humans, but he had fathered a child, and God had so cursed the infant as to be bound eternally to the earth, immortal and monstrous, feeding upon the blood of men to survive. All this had served only to make both of us more determined, to help these humans share in heaven's light.

[The hairs on the back of Des's neck prickle as he looks away from Azrael and pulls his focus elsewhere, annoyed at God for the challenge and for damning an infant to a fate much like his own, all because Lucifer had dared to take his life in his own hands. Sympathy for the devil didn't cover this bullshit- it implied that the devil wasn't worth sympathizing with and that the mere act of it was something to be shamed for.

But that's probably how they like the tales to be told.]

So then what?

We had no criteria, but we went into Sheol and what should we find there, but a great sprawling replica of earth! Souls had imagined and projected into their invisible existence all manner of jumbled buildings and creatures and monsters: it was a riot of imagination without Heavenly guidance, and as we suspected, there were still a majority of souls who didn't know that they were dead.

Now, we plunged into the very middle of this, trying to make ourselves as invisible as we possibly could; to conceive of ourselves as utterly without any discernible form; but this is hard. For this was a realm of the invisible; everything there was invisible. And so there we began to wander on the dreary roads in semidarkness, among the malformed, the half-formed, the unformed, the moaning and dying, and we in our angelic forms.

Nevertheless, the confused souls didn't take very much notice of us! It was as if many couldn't see clearly at all. Now, you know this state has been described by human shamans in the past, by saints, by those who have come close to death, passed through it, and then been revived and continued to live. I'm sure you've run across as much many a time.

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