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

Really? [GOD, DAD.

He rolls his eyes.] Fine. Tell it.

[ ♬ distant (rubicon 2) - vnv nation

the landscape is changing again. as lucifer looks at him, the world around them is filled with new sounds. there are humans in the vicinity, men with flocks of goat and sheep, and far off in the distance, the walls of a town are visible, and above on a hill, yet another small settlement.

lucifer stares at des, the sun beating down on the three of them. azrael and lucifer are covered in a faint shimmer. ]

Look down at your clothes. They're robes, and better suited for the desert. I want you to come there, just over those hills... with me.

[ he stands up, and starts off, through what is unquestionably the Holy Land. they pass dozens upon dozens of small groups of people, fisherman near a small town on the edge of the sea, others tending sheep or goats, or driving small flocks towards nearby settlements or walled enclosures.

everything looks distinctly familiar. beneath the layers of grit that cover all, he's surrounded by forms and styles and manners of behavior seen often in Scripture, engraving, embellished illustration, and from film enactment.

they can see people standing before caves in which they live high on the hills. here and there little groups sit in the shade beneath a copse, dozing, talking. a distant pulse comes from the walled cities. the air is filled with sand. sand blows into des' nostrils and clings to his lips and hair.

lucifer has no wings. his robes are soiled and so are azrael's. they all seem to be wearing linen - it's light and the air passes through it. the robes are long and unimportant.

the sky is vividly blue, and the sun glares down on des with all its being. the sweat feels alternately good and unbearable.

they walk up rocky hills, climbing steep paths, and crossing over outcroppings of rock and ragged tree, and finally there appears before them a great patch of unwatered sand, burning and shifting slowly in a comfortless wind.

lucifer comes to a halt at the very threshold of the desert. he puts his left arm around des, his fingers spreading out firm and large against his shoulder. ]

After I was cast out, I wandered. [ his eyes are fixed on the desert and what seem the barren, blazing rocky cliffs in the distance, hostile as the desert itself ] I roamed the way you have often roamed, Descant. Wingless and brokenhearted, I drifted along through the cities and nations of the earth, over continents and wastes. Sometime or other I can tell you all of it, if you wish. It's of no consequence now.

Let me say only what is of consequence, that I did not dare to make myself visible or known to Humankind, but rather hid amongst them, invisible, not daring to assume flesh for fear of angering God again; and not daring to join the human struggle under any disguise, for fear of God, and for fear of what evil I might bring on humans. On account of the same fears... I didn't return to Sheol. I wanted in no way to increase the sufferings of Sheol. God alone could free those souls? What hope could I give them?

But I could see Sheol, I could see its immensity, and I felt the pain of the souls there, and wondered at the new and intricate and ever-changing patterns of confusion created by mortals as they departed one faith or sect or creed after another that miserable margin of gloom.

Once a proud thought came to me - that if I did penetrate Sheol, I might instruct the souls there so thoroughly that they themselves might transform it, create in it forms invented by hope rather than hopelessness, and some garden might be made of it in time. Certainly the elect, the millions we had taken to Heaven, they had transformed their portion of the place. But then what if I failed at this, and only added to the chaos? I didn't dare. I didn't dare, out of fear of God and fear of my own inability to accomplish such a dream.

I formulated many theories in my wanderings but I did not change my mind on anything I believed, or felt, or had spoken to God. In fact, I prayed to Him often, though He was utterly silent, telling Him how much I continued to believe that he had deserted His finest creation. And sometimes out of weariness, I only sang His praises. Sometimes I was silent. Looking, hearing... watching...

Lucifer, the Watcher, the Fallen Angel.

Little did I know that my argument with Almighty God was only begun.

[OH MY GOD. FUCK YOU, LUCIFER. HE DID NOT ASK FOR THIS. Des looks at the robes and makes a whining sound, and mutters under his breath:] So would a leather jacket.

[But he tromps on, listening. This is a blast from the past he did not want or need, but here he is. Wandering. He crosses his arms over his chest petulantly.]

At a certain time, I found myself wandering to this place, into Jerusalem, which by the way is only six or seven miles west of where we stand.

And the times were immediately known to me, that the Romans governed the land, that the Hebrews had suffered a long and terrible captivity, and that those tribes going back to the very first settlements here - who had believed in the One God - were now under the foot of the polytheists, many influenced by Shadow World religions. They did not take legends of God with any seriousness.

And the Tribes of Monotheists, themselves, were divided on many issues, with some Hebrews being strict Pharisees, and others Sadducees, and still others having sought to make pure communities in caves in those hills beyond.

If there was one feature which made the times remarkable to me - that is, truly different from any other - it was the might of the Roman Empire, which stretched farther than any empire of the West which I had ever witnessed, and remained somehow in ignorance of the Great Empire of China, as if that were not of the same world.

Something drew me to this spot, however, and I knew it. I sensed a presence here that was not as strong as a summons; but it was as if someone were crying out to me to come here, and yet would not use the full power of his voice. I must search, I must wander. Maybe this thing stalked me as we watched you, I don't know.

But I came here, and wandered Jerusalem, listening to what the tongues of man had to say.

They spoke of the prophets and holy men of the wilderness, of arguments over the law and purification and the will of God. They spoke of Holy Books and Holy Traditions - all creations of men. They spoke men going out to be 'baptized' in water so as to be 'saved' in the eyes of God.

And they spoke of a man who had only lately gone into the wilderness after his baptism, because at the moment that he had stepped into the River Jordan, and the water had been poured over him, the skies had opened above this man, and Light had been seen from God.

Of course, one could hear stories like this all over the world. It was not unusual, except that it drew me. I found myself as if directed, wandering out of Jerusalem to the east, into the wasteland, my keen angelic senses telling me that I was near to the presence of something mysterious, something that partook of the sacred in a way that an angel would know upon seeing, and a man might not. My reason rejected it, yet I walked on and on, in the heat of the day, wingless and invisible into the very wastes.

[ he draws des with him into the sand, which is not as deep as it looks, but is hot and full of little stones. he moves into canyons and up slopes and finally comes to a little clearing of sorts where rocks have been gathered, as if others were wont to come here from time to time. a landmark in the desert, so to speak, a monument to something, perhaps.

lucifer slows his pace until they stand well over a stone's throw from the little gathering of rocks. ]

[Des follows along, picking over the sand and rocks and grumbling a bit about it. When they arrive at the little monument, he stares at it and then looks at Lucifer expectantly.]

Closer and closer I came to those markers there that you see, and with my angelic eyes, I spied from a long way off a single human man. But my eyes told me this was no human, that on the contrary this man was filled with the fire of God.

I didn't believe it, and yet I walked on, closer and closer, unable to stop myself, and then stopped where we are now, staring at the figure who sat on that rock before me, looking up at me here.

It was God! There was no question. He was sheathed in flesh, dark skinned from the sun, dark haired, and had the dark eyes of the desert people, but it was God! My God!

And there he sat in this fleshly body, looking at me with human eyes, and the eyes of God, and I could see the Light totally filling Him and contained within Him and concealed from the outside world by His flesh as if it were the strongest membrane betwixt Heaven and Earth.

If there was anything more terrible than this revelation, it was that He was looking at me and that He knew me and had been waiting for me, and that all I felt for Him, as I looked at Him, was love.

We sing over and over again the songs of love. Is that the one song intended for all Creation?

I looked at him in terror for His mortal parts, His sunburnt flesh, His thirst, the emptiness of His stomach and the suffering of His eyes in the heat, for the presence of Almighty God inside Him and I felt overwhelming love.

'So, Lucifer,' He said in a man's tongue and with a man's voice. 'I have come.'

I fell on my face before Him. This was instinctive. I just lay there, reaching out and touching the very tip of the latchet of His sandal. I sighed and my body shook with the relief of loneliness, the attraction to God and the satisfaction of it, and I began a giddy weeping just to be near Him and see Him and I marveled at what this must mean.

'Stand up, come sit near me,' He said. 'I am a man now, and I am God, but I am afraid.' His voice was indescribably moving to me, human yet filled with wisdom of the divine. He spoke with the language and accent of Jerusalem.

'Oh, Lord, what can I do to ease your pain?' I said, for the pain was obvious. I stood up. 'What have you done and why?'

'I have done exactly what you tempted me to do, Lucifer,' He answered, and His face wore the most dreamlike and engaging smile. 'I have come into the flesh. Only I have done you one better. I was born of a mortal woman, planting the seed myself in her, and for thirty years, I have lived on this earth as a child and a man, and for long periods doubting - no, even forgetting and ceasing to believe altogether - that I was really God!'

Oh, Jesus.

[This is both an oath and a statement of fact.]

'I see you, I know you, You are the Lord my God,' I said. I was so struck by His face; by the recognition of Him in the mask of skin that covered the bones of His skull. In a shivering instant I recovered the exact feeling of when I'd glimpsed His countenance in the light, and I saw now the same expression in this human face. I went down on my knees. 'You are my God,' I said.

'I know that now, Lucifer, but you understand that I allowed myself to be submerged in the flesh utterly, to forget it, so that I could know what it means, as you said, to be human, and what humans suffer, and what they fear and what they long for, and what they are capable of doing and learning either here or above. I did what you told me to do, and I did it better than you ever did it, Lucifer, or Azrael ever did it, I did it as God must do it, to the very extremity!'

'Lord, I can scarcely bear the sight of you suffering,' I said quickly, unable to rip my eyes off Him and yet dreaming of water and food for Him. 'Let me wipe the sweat from you. Let me get you water. Let me take you to it in an angelic instant. Let me comfort you and wash you and clothe you in a finery fit for God on earth.'

'No,' He said. 'In those days I thought myself mad, when I could scarce remember I was God, when I knew I had yielded my omniscience deliberately in order to suffer and to know limitations, you might have persuaded me that that was the path. I might have seized upon your offer. yes, make me a King. Let that be my way of revealing myself to them. But not now. I know Who I am and What I am, and I know What Will Happen. And you are right, Lucifer, there are souls in Sheol ready for Heaven and I myself will lead them there. I have learnt what you tempted me to learn.'

Well, ain't that precious.

[Des drops to sit down on the sand, drawing his knees up and resting his arms across them. If he eyerolled any harder, his eyes would vanish into his skull.]

'Lord, you're starving. You're suffering from terrible thirst. Here, turn these stones into bread by your power, that you can eat. Or let me get you food.'

'For once will you listen to me!' He said, smiling. 'Stop talking of food and drink. Who is human here? I am! You impossible adversary, you argumentative devil! Hush for now and listen. I am in the flesh. Have pity at least and let me speak my piece.' He laughed at me, His face full of kindness and sympathy.

'Here, come into the flesh too, with me,' He said. 'Be my brother and sit beside me, Son of God and Son of God and let us talk.'

I did as He said at once, creating a body thoughtlessly that matched what you see now, as that was as natural to me as thinking was natural, and I gave myself a similar robe, and I realized that I was sitting on that rock there by His side.

'How long have you been in this wilderness?' I asked. 'The people in Jerusalem say almost 40 days.'

He nodded. 'That's about the right number,' He answered me. 'And it's time now for me to begin my ministry, which will last 3 years. I will teach the great lessons that must be learnt for admission to Heaven - awareness of Creation and the Understanding of its deliberate unfolding; an appreciation of its beauty and laws which make possible an acceptance of suffering and seeming injustice and all forms of pain; I will promise a final glory to those who can attain understanding; to those who can surrender their souls to the understanding of God and what He has done; to mankind, should they follow in my footsteps here. I will give that chance to Men and Women, which is precisely, I think, what you wanted me to do.'

[Des is so through with God's bullshit right now, he just looks apprehensive and disgusted by this entire exchange.]

I didn't dare to answer Him.

'Love, Lucifer, I have learnt to love them as you told me as I would. I have learnt to love and cherish as men and women do. I will talk more of love than any other subject. I will say things that men and women can twist and misunderstand. But love, that shall be the message. You convinced me and I have convinced myself that this is what elevates Human above animal though animal is what Humankind is.'

'Do you mean to leave them with specific guidance how to love? As how to stop war and come together in one form of worship and overcome what they have learnt from Nature and give them proof of your--'

'No, not at all. That would be an absurd intervention and would undo the entire grand scheme which I have put into motion. It would stop the dynamics of the unfolding of the universe.

Lucifer, to me we human beings are all still part of Nature, as I said, only Humans are better than animals. It's a matter of degrees. Yes, humans cry against suffering and they are conscious of it when they suffer, but in a sense they behave exactly like the lower animals, in that suffering improves them and drives them towards evolutionary advance. They are quick-witted enough to see its value, where the animals only learn to avoid suffering by instinct. Humans can actually be improved within one lifetime by suffering. But they are part of Nature still. The world will unfold as it always has, full of surprises. Some of those surprises will be horrid, and others wondrous, and some beautiful. But what is known for certain is that the world will continue to grow and Creation will continue to unfold.'

'Yes, Lord,' I said, 'but surely suffering is an evil thing.'

'What did I teach you, Lucifer, when you first came to me saying that decay was wrong, that death was wrong? Don't you understand the magnificence of human suffering?'

'No,' I said, 'I see the ruin of hope and love and family; the destruction of peace of mind; I see pain beyond endurance. I see man buckle under this, and fall into bitterness and hate.'

'You haven't looked deep enough, Lucifer. You are only an angel. You refuse to understand Nature, and that has been your way since the start. I will bring my Light into nature, through the flesh for three years. I will teach the wisest things I can know and say in this flesh and blood body and brain, and I will suffer, suffer as no man has, and not falter, not break. And then - I will die.'

Oh my G- [Des cuts himself off.] Jesu- [He cuts himself off again.

Then he just rolls his eyes.]

Goddammit.

'Die? Why do that? I mean, what do you mean, die? Your soul will leave--' I broke off, uncertain.

He smiled.

'You do have a soul, don't you, Lord? I mean, you are my God inside this Son of Man and the light fills every particle of you, but you... you don't have a soul, do you? You don't have a human soul!'

'Lucifer, these distinctions don't matter. I am God Incarnate. How could I have a human soul? What is important is that I will remain in this body as it is tortured and betrayed and slain; and my death will be evidence of my Love for those whom I have created and allowed to suffer so much. I will share their pain and know their pain and teach them how much it is possible to bear, so that they might replicate what I have done, and prove their worth.'

'Please, Lord, forgive me, but there seems to be something wrong with this whole idea.'

Again, he seemed amused. His dark eyes were filled with a sympathetic and silent laughter. 'Wrong? What is wrong, Lucifer, that I shall take the form of the Dying God of the Wood, whom men and women have imagined and dreamed of and sung of since time immemorial, a dying god who symbolizes the very cycle of nature itself in which all that is born must die.

'I shall die, and I shall rise from the Dead, as that god has risen in every myth of the eternal return of the spring after winter in nations all over the world. I shall be the god destroyed and the god uplifted, only here it will happen literally in Jerusalem, not in ceremony, or with human substitutes. The Son of God himself shall fulfill the myths. I have chosen to sanctify those legends with my literal death.

'I shall walk out of the Tomb. My resurrection will confirm the eternal return of the spring after winter. It will confirm that in Nature all things that have evolved have their place.

'But Lucifer, it will be for my death that I am remembered. My death. It's going to be terrible. It won't be for my resurrection they'll remember me, you can be sure of it, for that is something many simply will never see or believe. But my suffering, my torment, my death will spring full blown into a confirmation of mythology, underscored by all the myths which have preceded it, and my death will be a sacrifice by God to know His Own Creation and to instruct them in how to achieve their own salvation. Just what you told me to do.'

'No, no, wait, Lord, there's something wrong with this!'

'You always forget yourself and to whom you are speaking,' He said kindly, the mixture of human and divine continuing to obsess me as I looked at Him, falling into His beauty and staggered by His divinity, and overcome again and again by my own sure belief that this was all wrong.

'Lucifer, I've just told you what no one knows but Me,' He said. 'Don't speak to me as if I can be wrong. Don't waste these moments with the Son of God! Can't you learn from me in the flesh as you learn from humans in flesh? Have I nothing to teach you, my beloved Archangel? Why do you sit here questioning me? What could possibly be the meaning of your word, wrong?'

'I don't know, Lord, I don't know how to answer. I can't find all the words. I just know this is not going to work. First of all, who will do this torturing and killing?'

'The people of Jerusalem,' He said. 'I will succeed in offending everyone, the traditional Hebrews, the callous Romans, everyone will be offended by this blinding message of pure love and what love demands of humans. I will show contempt for the ways of others, for their rituals and their laws. And into the machinery of their justice, I will fall.

'I will be condemned on charges of treason when I speak of my Divinity, that I am the Son of God, God Incarnate... and for my very message I will be tortured with such embellishment that it will never be forgotten; my death, my crucifixion, my sacrifice, is going to be the same.'

'By crucifixion? Lord, have you seen men die in this way? Do you know how they suffer? They are nailed to the wood and they suffocate, hanging as they do, weakening, unable to lift their own weight on their nailed feet, and finally strangling in blood and in pain?'

'Of course I've seen it. It's a common form of execution. It's filthy and it's very human.'

'Oh, no, no!' I cried out. 'This can't be. You don't mean to climax your teachings with such spectacular failure and execution, with such cruelty and sacrifice!'

'This is not failure,' He said, 'Lucifer, I shall be a martyr to what I teach! Blood offerings of the innocent lamb to the good God have been made since Humans began! They instinctively render to God what is of great value to them to show their love. Who knows better than you who spied on their altars and listened to their prayers and insisted that I listen! Sacrifice and love are connected in them.'

'Lord, they sacrifice out of fear! It has nothing to do with love of God, does it? All the sacrifices? The children sacrificed to Baal, and a hundred other hideous rituals the world over. They do it out of fear! Why would love demand sacrifice?'

I had clamped my hands over my mouth. I couldn't reason further. I was horrified, and uncertain what he meant by expecting man to follow in his footsteps. I could not sort out the thread of my horror from the overall stifling weave. Then I spoke, thinking aloud:

'It's all wrong, Lord. That God should be so degraded in human form, that in itself is unspeakable; but that men should be allowed to do this to God... But will they know what they're doing, that you are God? I mean, they couldn't... Lord, it will have to be done in confusion and misunderstanding. That spells chaos, Lord! Darkness!'

'Naturally,' He said. 'Who in his right mind would crucify the Son of God?'

'Then what does it mean?'

'Lucifer, it means I subjected myself to the human for the love of those whom I made. I am in the flesh, Lucifer, I have been in it for thirty years. Would you explain yourself to me?'

'To die like that, it's wrong, Lord. It's a filthy killing, Lord, it's a bloody horrible exemplum to lay before the human race! And you say yourself they will remember you for this? More than for your rising from the death, from the light of God exploding out of your human body and making this suffering fall away?'

'The Light won't burst from my body,' He said. 'This body shall die. I shall know death. I shall pass into Sheol and there for three days remain with those who are dead, and then I shall return to this body and raise it from the Dead. And yes, it will be my Death they will remember, for how can I Rise if I do not Die?'

'Just don't do either one,' I pleaded. 'Really, I'm begging you. Don't make yourself this sacrifice. Don't dip down into their most misguided blood rituals, Lord, have you ever drawn near to the stench of their sacrificial altars? Yes, I used to say to you, listen to their prayers, but I never meant that you would dip down from your great height to smell the stink of the blood and the dead animal, or to see the dumb fear in its eyes as its throat is slit! Have you seen the babies heaved into the fiery God Baal?'

'Lucifer, this is the way to God which man himself has evolved. All over the world the myths sing the same song.'

'Yes, but that's because you never interfered to stop it, you let it happen, you let this humankind evolve and they looked back in horror on their animal ancestors, they beheld their mortality, and they seek to propitiate a god who has abandoned them to all this. Lord, they look for meaning, but they find none in this. None.'

He looked at me if I was mad, truly. He stared in silence.

'You disappoint me,' He said softly and gently. 'You wound me, Lucifer, you wound my human heart.' He reached out and put His roughened hands against my face, hands of a man who had worked in this world, labored as I had never labored in my brief visit.

I shut my eyes. I did not speak. But something had come to me! A revelation, an insight, a sudden grasping of everything here that was in error, but could I reason it out? Could I speak?

Edited 2014-02-07 03:12 (UTC)

[Des cracks his knuckles in annoyance, glowering at the rocks as if he can see God there and God can see the disdain and anger in his eyes.]

Easy for Him to say.

I opened my eyes again, letting him hold me, feeling the callouses on his fingers, looking into his gaunt face. How he had starved himself; how he had suffered in this desert, and how he had labored these 30 years! Oh no, this was wrong!

'What, my Archangel, what is wrong!' He demanded of me with infinite patience and consternation.

'Lord, they chose these rituals which involved suffering because they cannot avoid suffering in the Natural World. The natural world is what must be overcome! Why must anyone suffer what humans suffer? Lord, their souls come to Sheol distorted, twisted by pain, black as cinders from the heat of loss and misery and violence which they have witnessed. Suffering is evil in this world. Suffering is decay and death. It's terrible. Lord, You can't believe that to suffer like this would do any good to anyone. This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God!'

He didn't answer. He lowered his hands.

'My angel,' He said. 'you draw from me even more affection now that I have a human heart. How simple you are! How alien you are to the vast Material Creation.'

'But it was I who urged you to come down! How am I alien? I am the Watcher! I see what others angels don't dare to look at for fear they'll weep, and it will make you angry with them.'

'Lucifer, you simply don't know flesh. The concept is too complex for you. What do you think taught your souls in Sheol their perfection? Was it not suffering? Yes, they enter perhaps twisted and burnt if they have failed to see beyond suffering on Earth, and some may despair and disappear. But in Sheol, over the centuries of suffering and longing, others are purged and purified.

'Lucifer, Life and Death are part of the cycle, and suffering is its by-product. And the human capacity to know it exempts no one! Lucifer, that the illuminated souls you brought from Sheol knew it, that they had learnt to accept its beauty, is what made them worthy to come to the heavenly gates! And it will be so again, for with the blood of my sacrifice, the angels will water a new tree which will be planted in Eden, and this will be a tree of Absolution, Lucifer. And I will show these human souls all that they are capable of bearing, until one human soul arises to prove what evolution has made of them - souls as strong as God's Incarnate! And my angels will guide these human souls through all I have suffered - betrayal, loss, hatred, poverty, and despair, and in the end, this soul will still choose to sacrifice themselves, all they are, their very memories, in crossing the River of Lethe to reach Eden and eat of this Tree.

'And when they do this, Lucifer, they will show that mankind has overcome their Original Sin! They will represent all that man may encapsulate, true strength and love and growth in the face of suffering! They will be my Chosen One, and they will redeem mankind, and guide them to rise above Nature and truly earn their race's place in Heaven. You will see, Lucifer. You will see what mankind may be, how they will rise to my challenge.'

They want it to be me, don't they? [Des doesn't even hesitate to think that. It makes sense, doesn't? If they're forcefeeding him eternities of suffering over and over again, then surely that's the endgame.] It could be anyone, but I'm a contender. I gotta be after all this.

[If not, then it's even worse than he thought. He's suffering as an experiment and some other asshole is going to get it twice as bad.]

[ lucifer casts an inscrutable look at des, exchanging a glance with azrael ]

For many reasons, Descant, it can't be you. Not only did you come before these new rules were established, but you don't fulfill God's criteria so to speak. It requires maintaining hope, grace, and love of God throughout ... as well as much more, from which you have already been rendered unqualified. You did, however, you might say serve as inspiration for the idea.

You could have lied to me. Made me feel all important. [BECAUSE NOW HE'S JUST THE ASSHOLE THAT SOME OTHER SCHMUCK HAS TO PLAY SUFFERING BINGO WITH.] Although if he wasn't a freakin' pointy-eared bastard with his own gods, Rafael could have made bank on this.

He would never have fit the bill either. [ lucifer is doing his best to not laugh at you des, you're adorable. ] He was looking for a Saint, not a cynic.

'Lord, that's not true,' I said to him. 'You've gotten it wrong. Utterly. Oh I see what's happened.'

'You do? What are you trying to say to me? That I, the Lord God, having spent 30 years in this body, have not struck the truth?'

'But that's just it! You've known all along you were God. You mentioned there were times when you thought you were mad or almost forgot, but those were brief! Too brief! And now as you plot your death, you know Who you are and You won't forget it, will you?'

'No, I won't. I must be the Son of God Incarnate to fulfill my ministry, to work my miracles, of course. That's the whole point.'

'Then Lord, you don't know what it means to be flesh!'

'How dare you assume that you do, Lucifer.'

'Lord, when you left Azrael in his fleshly body, when you cast him down for the Daughters of Men to heal and care for, in the early centuries of this very land, he had no promise you would take him back to Heaven. Lord, you're not playing fair in this experiment. You've known all along you're going back, you're going back to be God! You cannot expect man to do as you have done, without that assurance! Man will break under such pressure.'

'Who better than I can understand what this flesh feels!' He demanded.

'Somebody who doesn't fully rest assured that He is the immortal Creator of the Universe,' I said. 'Any mortal man hanging on a cross now on Golgotha outside Jerusalem would know better than you!'

His eyes grew wide as He stared at me. But He didn't challenge me. His silence unnerved me. And once again, the power of His expression, the radiance of God in man dazzled me, and drew upon the angel in me to simply shut up and fall at His feet. But I wouldn't do it!

'Lord, even when I went to the Void,' I said, 'I didn't know whether or not I'd ever come back to Heaven. Don't you see? I don't claim to have your understanding of anything. We wouldn't be talking here if I did. But I didn't have any promise I would be allowed back into Heaven, don't you see? So the suffering and darkness spoke to me and taught me, because I took the risk that I might never overcome it. Don't you see?'

He considered this a long time and then He shook His head sadly. 'Lucifer, you are the one who has failed to understand. When is Humankind closest to God than when they suffer for the love of another, when they die so that another might live, when they plunge towards certain death for the protection of those they leave behind or those truths about Life which Creation has taught them?'

'But the world doesn't need all that, Lord! No, no, no. It doesn't need the blood, the suffering, the war. That wasn't what taught Humans to love! Animals already did all that bloody, horrible catastrophe to one another. What taught Humans was the warmth and affection of another, the love for a child, the love in a mate's arms, the capacity to understand another's suffering and want to protect the other, to rise above savagery into the formation of the clan and tribe that would mean peace and security for all!'

There came a long silence. And then very tenderly He laughed. 'Lucifer, my angel. What you and Azrael learnt of life you learnt in bed.'

What an asshole.

[Des is pretty much done with God at this point.]

I didn't answer for a moment. The comment was charged with contempt and humor, of course. Then I spoke.

'That's true, Lord. And suffering is so terrible for humans, injustice is so terrible for the balance of their mind that it can destroy those lessons learnt in bed, magnificent as they are!'

'Oh, but when Love is reached through suffering, Lucifer, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.'

'Why do you say that? I don't believe it! I don't think you grasp it, Lord, listen to me. There's one chance for this to be proven my way. One chance.'

'If you think for one moment you will interfere with my ministry and my sacrifice, if you think you can turn the tide of the vast forces already moving towards this event, then you are no more an angel, but a demon!' He said.

'I don't ask that,' I said. 'Go through with it. Minister, outrage them; be arrested, tried, and executed on the cross, yes, do all of it. But do it as a man!'

'I intend to.'

'No, you'll know the whole time you're God. I'm saying Forget that you are God! Bury your divinity in the flesh the way it's been buried intermittently. Bury it, Lord, leaving yourself only your faith and your belief in Heaven, as if it had come to you through Revelation immense and undeniable. But bury in this desert the true certainty that you are God,. Then, you'll suffer it all as a man suffers it. Then you'll know what this suffering is at its heart. Then will the joy be stripped from agony! And you will see what men see when flesh is ripped, and torn and blood flows, and it is your own, and you will be broken as well and not ask this of your Creations!'

'Lucifer, men die on Golgotha every day. What is important is that the Son of God knowingly sacrifices himself in the body of a man.'

'Oh, no, no!' I cried out. 'This is disaster!'

He seemed so sad suddenly that I thought he might weep for me. His lips were parched and cracked from the desert. His hands were so thin I could see the veins. He was not even a great specimen of a man, only an ordinary one, worn down by years of toil.

'Look at you,' I said, 'starving, thirsting, suffering, tired, lost in all the darknesses of life, the true spontaneous evils of nature, and dreaming of glory when you exit this body! What kind of lesson can such suffering be? And who will you leave with the guilt for your murder? What will become of all those mere mortals who denied you? No, please, Lord, listen to me. If you won't leave your Divinity, then don't do it. Change the plan.

'Don't die. Above all, don't be murdered! Don't hang from a tree like the God of the Wood in the Greek stories. Come with me into Jerusalem and know women and wine and singing and dancing and the birth of little ones, and all the joy the human heart can contain and express!

'Lord, there are times when the hardest men hold infants in their arms, their own children, and the happiness and satisfaction of those moments is so sublime that there is no horror on earth that can destroy the peace they feel! That is the human capacity for love and understanding! When one can achieve harmony in spite of everything, and men and women do this, Lord. They do. Come, dance with your people. Sing with them. Feast with them. Throw your arms around the women and the men and know them in the flesh!'

'I feel pity for you, Lucifer,' He said. 'I pity you as I pity the mortals who will kill me, and those who will inevitably misunderstand my sacrifice and my laws, and what I would ask of them. But I dream of those who will be touched to the core by my suffering, and who will never forget it and seek to replicate it, and will know what love I felt for mortals that I would let myself die among them and grant them the chance to redeem themselves from Sin and Sheol. I pity you. Feeling as you do, your guilt will become too terrible to bear.'

'My guilt? What guilt?'

'You're the cause of all this, Lucifer. You're the one who said I should come down in the flesh. You're the one who urged me on to do it, who challenged me, who asked me to offer these humans a way to reach Heaven, and now you fail to see the miracle of my sacrifice.

'And when you do see it, when you do see souls perfected by suffering ascending to Heaven, when you see my Chosen One cross the River of Lethe of their own volition, after suffering all a soul may suffer, what will you think of your paltry little discoveries made in the arms of Daughters of Men? What will you think? Don't you see? I will redeem suffering, Lucifer! I will give it its greatest and fullest potential within the cycle! I will bring it to fruition. I will allow it to sing its own magnificent song!'

'No, no, no!' I stood up and railed at Him. 'Lord, just do as I ask. Go through with it, yes, if you must, found this miracle upon a murder, do it that way, if that is your will, but bury your certainty of your Divinity, so that you really, really do die, Lord, so that when they drive the nails through your hands and feet you know what a man feels and no more and when you enter the gloom of Sheol yours is a human soul! Please, Lord, please, I'm begging you. For all humanity, I'm begging you. I can't see the future, but I have never been more frightened of it than I am now.'

[ he breaks off, looking into the distance, his words echoing. ]

[Des rests his chin on his knees, saddened by the ignorance coming from someone who claims to Know All.]

You weren't asking much. [Suffer like us, then maybe you'd get it.]

And yet.

When He died He was man, but that man was never without the power of God.

[ lucifer seems too shaken to say more just yet. but something has changed in the landscape. a figure is seated in the circle of stones, the figure of a dark skinned, dark eyed man, emaciated and covered with the sand of the desert, and he's looking at them. and without one fiber of his flesh being other than human, He is obviously God.

His presence is petrifying, but not frightening. He merely looks at des with the softest sympathy in His face, and the same unbounded acceptance of them that had been felt in Heaven.

The Son of God.

"Come here, child," he calls out softly, over the desert wind, in a human voice. "Come closer." ]

[Des gets to his feet, but remains rigid, staying closer to Lucifer, but looking to Azrael as if unsure if this is part of the test or not. His fingers clench and unclench, and he ventures closer, anger outweighing his fear of what might happen if he gets too close.]

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