Happy Holidays, mystmoon!
Dec. 4th, 2017 05:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeSummary: In Eden, there is a serpent and an angel; a man and a woman; a tree - and another tree.
In Eden, there are also more questions than answers.
Rating: G
Characters: Crawly, Aziraphale, Eve
“See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever--
therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.”
— Genesis 3:22-24
“Get up there and make some trouble.”
Why they’d sent him, he didn’t know. He wasn’t even certain where his orders were coming from, and no one seemed to want to help him clear up the matter. If it was meant to be a punishment, it wasn’t a very punishing one, though he didn’t think he’d done anything to warrant punitive action lately. For that matter, it if was a reward, it was equally disappointing.
Perhaps they were simply waiting to see what would happen.
He wound through the sunlit grass, lush trees looming all around him. It felt strangely peaceful, this place. The Man had seen him already, pointed and called him something. Serpent, that was the word. Not one he’d recognized. It must have been new. He went along with it, because he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to be called now anyways. He’d had a name, before, but that didn’t matter now. Already it felt gone, intangible. Not torn from him, necessarily, but separate, irrelevant. Did he miss it? He wasn’t sure.
He, the serpent, frowned, or at least the feeling he expressed to himself was a frown, since serpents didn’t have the muscles to frown. The only grace from this, he thought, was that he felt more like himself here. Not quite so disoriented or blind. The past few days (Weeks? Years? Hours?) had been a blur, but now, he almost didn’t remember them, like an overworked muscle with a faint ache.
Everything here was bright, and new, and familiar yet not familiar at all. He felt comfort from the light around him. It was no longer the harsh stone darkness of Below, yet not the powerful consuming white of Above. It was somewhere in between, and he liked that.
Did serpents have vocal cords in the way Man and Woman seemed to? He wasn’t sure. Either way, he was eager to talk to someone.
Here, there was much to be revealed.
…
"They call me Aziraphale, by the way. Do you have a name?"
"Erm..."
"No name, then? That's a shame. Perhaps they haven't gotten around to it yet." There was a pause. "Didn't they have a word for things like you? The ones low to the ground? They... ah, crawl. Perhaps they'll call you Crawly."
"Crawling involves legs."
"Hmm?"
"Legs. I don't have them. I can't crawl without legs."
"Oh."
"I just sort of glide. Slither, I think is the word."
"I see. Well, I don't think Slithery is a very good name."
"No. Me neither."
He was talking to a tree. Well, he was talking to something above a tree, something pulsing with an invisible but powerful holiness. It was its own distinct force, barely brushing the tips of the gargantuan ash, which stretched far into the sky. Given the positioning, however, he felt like he was talking to the tree itself, and this was weird for him.
“You seem like a rather nice fellow. Down to earth and all that, in a manner of speaking. Not strictly in a literal sense, you understand.”
“Mm. Is that why you’re not doing anything about me?”
“Pardon?”
“You are an angel, and all. And I’m… me. Though I don’t even know why you’re here, in this spot.” He squinted up into the branches.
“Ah! Well, naturally, this is the exact center of the garden. I’ve been placed here to, erm… keep watch.”
“What, over them? The humans?”
“In a sense. So far as I’ve been told, there’s a tree, and they aren’t allowed to touch it.”
“Oh, that nonsense? I was around when he did it. That one, over there.” He gestured with his tail, to a tree some way behind the haloed ash. “And do you know what? I’ve been meaning to talk to someone about that. I just don’t understand how he can possibly—”
He was startled out of his tirade by the vague sense that the thing above him was blushing, a remarkable achievement considering it had no face or distinguishable features to speak of. “No… no, I’m fairly certain it was this tree, right here. I could almost be sure.”
“Wait, honestly? Not the one God Himself descended from the skies for specifically so he could say ‘keep your bloody mitts off’?”
“Well, if He has decreed it, then surely they won’t disobey. There’s no need for concern.”
Something within him said that wasn’t quite correct, but he didn’t want to argue with a force of pure angelic power. “But then, what’s so special about this one?”
The force shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure. They haven’t told me. It’s called The Tree of Life, and that’s about all I know.”
What a strange garden. What a strange idea, to have one tree forbidden and another a mystery.
He felt like he needed a second opinion.
…
“And so he makes this great big bloody deal of it, but really, what’s it all for? He says you can eat the fruit from any tree, then He comes back along and says ‘no, sorry, change of plans, now it’s any tree except this one’? I mean, my only question is why?”
The sunlight in the clearing was watery, dappled through the leaves of the tall oak. She looked at him with deep brown eyes, a small frown drawing itself together between her dark brows. “He said we’d… die. But I don’t know what that means.”
There was something in her gaze that he could see, beneath the surface, that told him she wasn’t just another animal. He liked her. He really did. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she disagreed, sometimes she didn’t understand, but she always listened. She made him feel like maybe he was right, maybe there was something deeper going on there, a question being asked with no clear answer.
“Death? It’s sort of like… like leaving. Going to another place, I suppose. It’s a new thing. We don’t have it anywhere else.”
“Another place?” She looked confused. “I thought there was only here.”
“Nah. There’s loads of other places.”
“Oh.” She frowned into the distance. Her gaze, perhaps by coincidence, seemed to fall on the spot where the tree lay. “Well… he did tell us not to. Maybe it’s best if we leave it alone. It’s not our place.”
He, too, looked across the orchard, through overgrown brambles and leaves bursting with color, nature climbing and intertwining joyously around itself. There was so much life here, so many different shades of green all overlapping, and the hush of it—the wind, the other animals, the plants breathing in their own way—seemed to imply there was something else underneath it all: a mystery, a marvel. A question with no answer.
He frowns at the glowing orb again. “But if you’re here to protect it from them, why not the other one, too? Seems like an oversight.”
“I don’t know. They said I wouldn’t have to watch it forever, you understand. Just until the time is right.”
“Isn’t it, though?” His voice was careful, poised. “I mean, surely it’s not the only thing in this garden that can kill you. Why put it here at all? Why show it to you, if you weren’t meant to see?”
Eve stood.
“There was another word,” she murmured, “that He said. About the tree. But I didn’t recognize that one either.”
“What was it?”
“Knowledge.”
…
It was a nice day, and clouds were massing east of Eden.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Yep. It’s me.” He—Crawly, he supposed—stopped short at the sight of the cherubim, who didn’t seem too perturbed by his appearance. “Are you required to smite me on sight?”
“The damage has already been done,” the angel said with a disapproving look on his face, “so no. I wouldn’t see the point.”
“Ah.” They sat in silence. “What’s going to happen now?”
Aziraphale sighed. “They’ve been shut out. Everyone has.”
“Oh. Is that why you’re out here?”
The angel nodded. “I’ve been reassigned.”
“Hm.” He thought. “Guess you were guarding the wrong tree after all.”
Aziraphale frowned. “I don’t think so. The orders, you see, they were very clear.”
“But that one didn’t do anything, did it? The other one shut down the whole operation.”
Aziraphale looked unhappy. “Yes, but you understand, there’s a reason for everything. Just because nothing happened doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have.”
“Seems pretty circumstantial to me.” He paused. “Did you ever find out what it did?”
“I’m not permitted to ask those questions.”
“Didn’t say you were. Questions aren’t the only way to gain knowledge.” Like eating fruit, for example, he thought sardonically.
Aziraphale frowned deeper. “It causes eternal life. That’s all I know.”
“Oh.” He squinted. “Hang on… but… they couldn’t die until they’d eaten the fruit anyway. That was what He told them. What kind of bloody nonsense answer is that?”
“I don’t see why you expect me to know these things.” The angel looked wretched. Crowley felt bad, suddenly.
“Sorry.”
“Yes.”
They were silent for a little while longer, watching the sky paint itself gray. “Listen, if it’s any consolation… I didn’t know.”
“Mm.”
“But, I can say one thing for certain: that went down like a lead balloon.”
…
They were both in the bookshop: Aziraphale reading, Crowley lounging. It was half past midnight.
“This Pinot is a little acidic, don’t you think?” Crowley considered. “And I think, therefore I am.”
“Do you know what I do think? You’re a bit drunk.”
“That’s neither there nor here. Hey, speaking of thinking, d’you ever think about what a strange word ‘neither’ is?”
“Not really.”
“And for that matter—” Crowley sat up. “—do you ever think about the bloody Garden? What happened there? And what was all that nonsense with your Tree of Life?”
Aziraphale sighed. “Sometimes. But not often.”
“Why did they put you there? Why’d they put me there? Me, of all people—demons? They knew I was useless.”
“You’re not useless, my dear boy.”
“I was non-useless completely by accident. Not by any scheming on my part. Just me, being a bloody snake. And I suppose her, being a bloody human. And I still don’t understand why, but I get the feeling that there was some weird other thing that happened that we don’t understand. Maybe eating the fruit wasn’t bad after all.”
“Perhaps it’s—”
“No. Don’t say it.”
Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow at him. “… ineffable.”
Crowley frowned furiously in silence, for many long moments. “Do you know,” he said. “Sometimes I really
hate Him.”
“I’m sure he finds that impossibly amusing.”
…
Somewhere in the dead heart of splendor, a tree grows—its roots many thousands of years old, its life endless. It has many names. And it waits.
Beside it, there is another tree, with every bud and every fruit intact except one.
Somewhere in Eden, they met. And together they stay, growing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 11:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 05:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 05:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 05:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 05:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 07:08 pm (UTC)Overall this has a poetic quality to it and it's just really nice
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-04 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-05 03:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-05 03:49 am (UTC)(also I love when Aziraphale blushed)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-06 05:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-06 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-07 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 09:40 pm (UTC)This: I was non-useless completely by accident. That's their manifesto, isn't it?
And the ending, with the two trees, just warmed my heart so much. Lovely work.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-19 07:06 pm (UTC)“Yep. It’s me.” He—Crawly, he supposed—stopped short at the sight of the cherubim, who didn’t seem too perturbed by his appearance. “Are you required to smite me on sight?”
“The damage has already been done,” the angel said with a disapproving look on his face, “so no. I wouldn’t see the point.”
Aziraphale, you lazy sod. Anything to avoid doing your actual job, and thank goodness, too <3
Somewhere in the dead heart of splendor, a tree grows—its roots many thousands of years old, its life endless. It has many names. And it waits.
Beside it, there is another tree, with every bud and every fruit intact except one.
Somewhere in Eden, they met. And together they stay, growing.
Those are some of the most evocative ending lines I've seen on a story in ages!
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-23 02:53 am (UTC)TREES <3 what if those two are entwined underneath o0o
However liked a lot what you did with the topic over time c:
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-25 12:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-03 12:54 pm (UTC)And "dead heart of splendour" is the greatest expression ever.