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go_exchangeTitle: on thamnophis elegans terrestris (the common garden snake)
Summary: In which Crawly's quest to cause mischief bring him into contact with the guardian angels of the gates, three of which he doesn't care for, but one of which he does.
Rating: G
In the beginning, Crowley isn’t yet Crowley, but is instead still called Crawly, which he thinks is a very uncreative name for someone currently dedicated to spending their time as a snake, but he can’t really think of anything better, so he hasn’t bothered with changing it.
Anyways, Crawly’s current instructions are to “get up there and make some trouble”, which is something he should probably be good at by nature, but the fact of the matter is, there just isn’t much trouble to get into. The garden is, as much as he hates to admit it, perfect, and the other animals don’t really offer much mischief to get into. And as far as he can tell, there’s only one human right now (Adam), and he....well, he hasn’t got much going on (if you catch his drift). Mostly he’s preoccupied with naming all the animals.
(The one bit of mischief he’s been able to get into with that is the name of some emerald and blue bird, but according to the prophetic demon who made the suggestion, it’s going to be a while before that really hits.)
So the animals are a miss, and the one human is woefully too slow for him to really have much to do with, which leaves....well. There’s other occult beings in the garden besides just Crawly. Angels aren’t exactly the kind of people he’d prefer to be messing with, but he’s about to go absolutely mental if he doesn’t find something else to do, someone else to talk to.
The first angel he meets is at the northern gate, flaming sword stuck in the earth next to them as they lean against the wall that surrounds the perimeter of the garden. Their angel marks are some of the most visible Crawly has ever seen, gold flecked across their face and lips, which gives him pause, because that usually means this is someone important.
Regardless of who he might have been Before, Crawly isn’t really someone important now, but they hear him rustling through the grass and pick up their sword, eyes narrowed.
“Halt, who goes there?” the angel calls.
“Do you always yell if you hear a noise in the bushes?” Crawly can’t help but say. “There’s animals bloody everywhere in this garden, what with all the naming business going on. I can’t be the only one rustling around in the grass.”
“You’re the only one that stinks of sulfur, demon,” the angel replies. “Show yourself.”
“Dunno about that, I’ve smelled some pretty ripe beasts while I’ve been here,” Crowley mutters.
The angel starts towards the bush he’s hiding under, sword held aloft as if to strike him down the moment they lay eyes on him, and he beats a quick retreat, and from then on, he gives the northern wall of the gate a wide berth. The last thing he wants is to run into that cranky angel again.
The second angel he meets is the one at the southern gate, several weeks later (when he’s tried to entertain himself with Adam and failed, yet again). This one doesn’t have any obvious angel marks, and is standing up straight in front of his gate, looking bored to absolute death. His eyes are kind of unfocused, like he’s not really paying attention, which is what allows Crawly to slither up behind him, almost close enough to be touching.
“What are we looking at?” he asks, his head right next to the angel’s, and he’s gratified when he screeches and jolts away, purple eyes wild when he looks at him.
It’s enough to have Crawly dropping back to the ground, cackling with laughter. “W-who goes there?” the angel manages to stammer, which just tells Crawly that all the angels must have the same script.
“Clearly no one you’re looking out for,” he snickers. “What’re you looking at that’s so fascinating?”
“Nothing,” the angel says defensively, his posture even more stiff now that he’s seemingly recovered from the surprise. “I was just....thinking.”
“Your lot tends to discourage that, I’ve found,” Crawly mutters. “You’re supposed to be on guard duty, what could be so important that you’re distracted from that?”
The angel looks suspicious, folding his arms over his chest, and pointedly doesn’t answer. That doesn’t mean that Crawly has no guesses as to what’s going on in his head, especially not when he can taste the doubt hanging in the air when he flicks his little snake tongue out.
“Not sure what the point of all this is, eh? What are you even supposed to be guarding this place from?” Crawly asks, smiling as much as a snake is capable of smiling.
“It’s part of the divine plan,” the angel says resolutely. “Now be gone with you, before I fetch Uriel from the northern gate. I’ve heard they’d love to get a chance to speak with you, demon.”
“Spoilsport,” Crawly hisses, but he knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth (although horses haven’t been named yet) and slithers back into the depths of the garden.
The angel of the western gate he meets… well, not at the western gate. He actually sees the two final angels of Eden at the same time, near the center of the garden where Adam spends most of his time. The taller of the two is a woman, with long brown hair and her angel marks spotting her throat before disappearing down underneath the collar of her robe. The other angel is a man, with pretty blond curls and a sweet looking face, and while he doesn’t have visible angel marks, his eyes are such a lovely shade of blue, Crawly can’t help but notice them.
They seem to be having some sort of pointed conversation, and Crawly, smelling mischief in the air, sneaks up behind them as best as a snake can.
“-you doing? The fruit trees here were planted for the humans to consume.”
That has Crowley perking up, because humans? Plural? Did they finally get around to making that other one?
“Well,” the male angel says, twisting his hands. “There’s only the two of them, and it seems such an awful waste not to enjoy the bounty that the Lord has created. I’ve never seen anything like it, so many shapes and colors and textures!”
The female angel doesn’t look nearly as moved by this argument as Crawly feels like she should be, nor does she look properly endeared.
“Yes, all the things that the Lord has created here are marvelous,” she agrees, but her tone is flat. “However, it was not made for us. It was made for the humans to nourish themselves with, something we have no need for.”
“Oh, but you’d understand if only you’d just try a taste,” the angel says, a smile coming to his face. “I believe Adam has decided to call them figs, but there’s a tree just over here, they’re really so scrumptious-”
“I won’t warn you twice,” the angel says, cutting him off, which is just so rude. “If I catch you again-”
Well, since the angel is so fond of cutting people off, Crawly can play at that game. While he’s a snake and shouldn’t be able to snap his fingers, the gesture is implied, which is really all it takes to get a miracle working, and a deer goes galloping past them, scooping up the female angel’s sword in its antlers as it goes.
The two angels are kind of stunned for several precious seconds, but the female takes off after the deer, muttering furiously under her breath as she goes, leaving the male standing there agog, still staring in the direction the deer went.
(For those wondering, the deer will be fine. It just so happens that the flaming swords aren’t very flame-y most of the time; it takes a deliberate thought from the angel who wields it to ignite the blade, and during her lecture, the female angel’s sword was just a regular, boring sword.)
Crawly starts to leave, but without the other angel yelling at him, the man clearly hears him, and turns in his direction. “I say, was that you?” the angel asks.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Crawly wisely says from under the nearest bush.
“The deer, that wasn’t.....they don’t do that,” the angel says, facing the bush properly but without approaching.
“How do you know? They’ve not been around long enough for you to know what they do and don’t do for sure,” Crawly shoots back.
“That’s....hm, a fair point,” the angel sighs. “Well, regardless of what you, or the deer, did or didn’t do, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously,” Crawly says, because the last thing he needs is that getting back to someone, literally anyone. “What was she fussing at you over?”
The angel turns the most fetching shade of pink. “I....oh, I’ve just been sampling some of the fruits on the trees around here. There’s so much, Adam and Eve couldn’t possibly eat it all, and they make it look so delicious.”
“Yeah? I’ve not tried any of it myself,” Crawly says, because it hardly seems like anything interesting, at least not to him, not before now.
“You really should, it’s delightful,” the angel says, glancing around before approaching one of the nearby trees, reaching up to pluck one of the fruits from it’s branches. Returning to the bush, he stops a few feet away and sets it down, clearly cautious. “I really must be getting back to my gate, but please, do try it.”
Crawly waits until he’s sure the angel is gone, watching as his white-clad figure disappears from sight amongst the foliage, before slithering out to examine the sweet-smelling fruit. Because he’s a snake, he swallows it whole, which isn’t how the humans eat it, and while he doesn’t see what the angel finds so delicious about it, the fruit (a fig, he’d said to the female angel) leaves his stomach feeling nice and full and warm, and he likes that.
Almost more important than the fruit, though, is the idea he has, and when he meets the new human, Eve, he drapes himself over her shoulders, his nose close to her ear, and whispers:
“Just try a taste. What could it hurt?”
Summary: In which Crawly's quest to cause mischief bring him into contact with the guardian angels of the gates, three of which he doesn't care for, but one of which he does.
Rating: G
In the beginning, Crowley isn’t yet Crowley, but is instead still called Crawly, which he thinks is a very uncreative name for someone currently dedicated to spending their time as a snake, but he can’t really think of anything better, so he hasn’t bothered with changing it.
Anyways, Crawly’s current instructions are to “get up there and make some trouble”, which is something he should probably be good at by nature, but the fact of the matter is, there just isn’t much trouble to get into. The garden is, as much as he hates to admit it, perfect, and the other animals don’t really offer much mischief to get into. And as far as he can tell, there’s only one human right now (Adam), and he....well, he hasn’t got much going on (if you catch his drift). Mostly he’s preoccupied with naming all the animals.
(The one bit of mischief he’s been able to get into with that is the name of some emerald and blue bird, but according to the prophetic demon who made the suggestion, it’s going to be a while before that really hits.)
So the animals are a miss, and the one human is woefully too slow for him to really have much to do with, which leaves....well. There’s other occult beings in the garden besides just Crawly. Angels aren’t exactly the kind of people he’d prefer to be messing with, but he’s about to go absolutely mental if he doesn’t find something else to do, someone else to talk to.
The first angel he meets is at the northern gate, flaming sword stuck in the earth next to them as they lean against the wall that surrounds the perimeter of the garden. Their angel marks are some of the most visible Crawly has ever seen, gold flecked across their face and lips, which gives him pause, because that usually means this is someone important.
Regardless of who he might have been Before, Crawly isn’t really someone important now, but they hear him rustling through the grass and pick up their sword, eyes narrowed.
“Halt, who goes there?” the angel calls.
“Do you always yell if you hear a noise in the bushes?” Crawly can’t help but say. “There’s animals bloody everywhere in this garden, what with all the naming business going on. I can’t be the only one rustling around in the grass.”
“You’re the only one that stinks of sulfur, demon,” the angel replies. “Show yourself.”
“Dunno about that, I’ve smelled some pretty ripe beasts while I’ve been here,” Crowley mutters.
The angel starts towards the bush he’s hiding under, sword held aloft as if to strike him down the moment they lay eyes on him, and he beats a quick retreat, and from then on, he gives the northern wall of the gate a wide berth. The last thing he wants is to run into that cranky angel again.
The second angel he meets is the one at the southern gate, several weeks later (when he’s tried to entertain himself with Adam and failed, yet again). This one doesn’t have any obvious angel marks, and is standing up straight in front of his gate, looking bored to absolute death. His eyes are kind of unfocused, like he’s not really paying attention, which is what allows Crawly to slither up behind him, almost close enough to be touching.
“What are we looking at?” he asks, his head right next to the angel’s, and he’s gratified when he screeches and jolts away, purple eyes wild when he looks at him.
It’s enough to have Crawly dropping back to the ground, cackling with laughter. “W-who goes there?” the angel manages to stammer, which just tells Crawly that all the angels must have the same script.
“Clearly no one you’re looking out for,” he snickers. “What’re you looking at that’s so fascinating?”
“Nothing,” the angel says defensively, his posture even more stiff now that he’s seemingly recovered from the surprise. “I was just....thinking.”
“Your lot tends to discourage that, I’ve found,” Crawly mutters. “You’re supposed to be on guard duty, what could be so important that you’re distracted from that?”
The angel looks suspicious, folding his arms over his chest, and pointedly doesn’t answer. That doesn’t mean that Crawly has no guesses as to what’s going on in his head, especially not when he can taste the doubt hanging in the air when he flicks his little snake tongue out.
“Not sure what the point of all this is, eh? What are you even supposed to be guarding this place from?” Crawly asks, smiling as much as a snake is capable of smiling.
“It’s part of the divine plan,” the angel says resolutely. “Now be gone with you, before I fetch Uriel from the northern gate. I’ve heard they’d love to get a chance to speak with you, demon.”
“Spoilsport,” Crawly hisses, but he knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth (although horses haven’t been named yet) and slithers back into the depths of the garden.
The angel of the western gate he meets… well, not at the western gate. He actually sees the two final angels of Eden at the same time, near the center of the garden where Adam spends most of his time. The taller of the two is a woman, with long brown hair and her angel marks spotting her throat before disappearing down underneath the collar of her robe. The other angel is a man, with pretty blond curls and a sweet looking face, and while he doesn’t have visible angel marks, his eyes are such a lovely shade of blue, Crawly can’t help but notice them.
They seem to be having some sort of pointed conversation, and Crawly, smelling mischief in the air, sneaks up behind them as best as a snake can.
“-you doing? The fruit trees here were planted for the humans to consume.”
That has Crowley perking up, because humans? Plural? Did they finally get around to making that other one?
“Well,” the male angel says, twisting his hands. “There’s only the two of them, and it seems such an awful waste not to enjoy the bounty that the Lord has created. I’ve never seen anything like it, so many shapes and colors and textures!”
The female angel doesn’t look nearly as moved by this argument as Crawly feels like she should be, nor does she look properly endeared.
“Yes, all the things that the Lord has created here are marvelous,” she agrees, but her tone is flat. “However, it was not made for us. It was made for the humans to nourish themselves with, something we have no need for.”
“Oh, but you’d understand if only you’d just try a taste,” the angel says, a smile coming to his face. “I believe Adam has decided to call them figs, but there’s a tree just over here, they’re really so scrumptious-”
“I won’t warn you twice,” the angel says, cutting him off, which is just so rude. “If I catch you again-”
Well, since the angel is so fond of cutting people off, Crawly can play at that game. While he’s a snake and shouldn’t be able to snap his fingers, the gesture is implied, which is really all it takes to get a miracle working, and a deer goes galloping past them, scooping up the female angel’s sword in its antlers as it goes.
The two angels are kind of stunned for several precious seconds, but the female takes off after the deer, muttering furiously under her breath as she goes, leaving the male standing there agog, still staring in the direction the deer went.
(For those wondering, the deer will be fine. It just so happens that the flaming swords aren’t very flame-y most of the time; it takes a deliberate thought from the angel who wields it to ignite the blade, and during her lecture, the female angel’s sword was just a regular, boring sword.)
Crawly starts to leave, but without the other angel yelling at him, the man clearly hears him, and turns in his direction. “I say, was that you?” the angel asks.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Crawly wisely says from under the nearest bush.
“The deer, that wasn’t.....they don’t do that,” the angel says, facing the bush properly but without approaching.
“How do you know? They’ve not been around long enough for you to know what they do and don’t do for sure,” Crawly shoots back.
“That’s....hm, a fair point,” the angel sighs. “Well, regardless of what you, or the deer, did or didn’t do, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously,” Crawly says, because the last thing he needs is that getting back to someone, literally anyone. “What was she fussing at you over?”
The angel turns the most fetching shade of pink. “I....oh, I’ve just been sampling some of the fruits on the trees around here. There’s so much, Adam and Eve couldn’t possibly eat it all, and they make it look so delicious.”
“Yeah? I’ve not tried any of it myself,” Crawly says, because it hardly seems like anything interesting, at least not to him, not before now.
“You really should, it’s delightful,” the angel says, glancing around before approaching one of the nearby trees, reaching up to pluck one of the fruits from it’s branches. Returning to the bush, he stops a few feet away and sets it down, clearly cautious. “I really must be getting back to my gate, but please, do try it.”
Crawly waits until he’s sure the angel is gone, watching as his white-clad figure disappears from sight amongst the foliage, before slithering out to examine the sweet-smelling fruit. Because he’s a snake, he swallows it whole, which isn’t how the humans eat it, and while he doesn’t see what the angel finds so delicious about it, the fruit (a fig, he’d said to the female angel) leaves his stomach feeling nice and full and warm, and he likes that.
Almost more important than the fruit, though, is the idea he has, and when he meets the new human, Eve, he drapes himself over her shoulders, his nose close to her ear, and whispers:
“Just try a taste. What could it hurt?”
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-13 12:32 pm (UTC)Thank you, thank you, thank you, Secret Author - this is exactly what I'd hoped for! Supercilious Gate Guardians (apart from one of them, obviously), snarky Serpent, Aziraphale already finding it hard to resist temptation and having a sneaky few samples of the fruits... absolutely fantastic. It hits the mark from start to finish...
This really has made my day... ♥