The all-important disclaimer: I have pulled from many different belief-systems to write this story. Some people might disagree with parts of it (or all of it). However, since they are all just fairy tales anyway it doesn't really matter how I mix n' match them. I hope you enjoy revisiting the Good ol' boys from "The Creation"as well as meeting the new characters that populate the garden. I invite you to R&R. And please feel free to smite me if the mood strikes you. Everyone needs a good smiting every now and then.
Chapter 1 – It's Raining Man (and Woman)
"Do you like my garden?" asked God as he waved aside a giant, feathery leaf so that Michael could pass beneath it.
Michael passed huffily and wondered if God knew that Sataniel had given Gabriel and Raphael the idea for this garden. "For the millionth time, yes. It's spectacular. Why do you keep asking?"
"I just like to hear you say it. And for the record, who do you think gave Sataniel the idea in the first place?"
Michael shut his mouth and turned his thoughts in the direction of his suddenly super itchy skin. He reached behind his back and scratched at the place where his wing attached to his torso. It had been itching like crazy since shortly after their arrival in the garden and every time he scratched it it seemed to get worse. Yet he couldn't not scratch it.
"You know how the hairy animals made me sneeze? I think I'm allergic to something down here, too," he muttered.
"Probably," said God.
"Why probably?"
"Because you're a wuss."
"Gee, thanks. I have no idea what that means but I'm going to assume it's not something good."
"It's not."
Michael thought for a moment and snapped back, "Well, neither are allergies but hey, they can't all be winners." God flashed Michael an angry look and kept walking. They both knew Michael was talking about Sataniel and the fallen angels, as they had come to be known. And also about the initial freak show angels who were even now up in Xanadu warbling and wailing and generally murdering what could have been a beautiful hymn. The wounds were still fresh. Apparently God wasn't ready to talk about it.
Michael caught up to God and they continued in silence. They had come down to the garden shortly after God had sent Adam and Lilith down. Almost immediately after they left God had looked pained and said that something was wrong. He had grabbed Michael and dived off of a cloud, taking Michael with him. And now they were walking in the garden and Michael still really had no idea why.
"What are we looking for, anyway?" asked Michael.
God stopped and smiled and then took off to the left. "There it is."
Michael followed slowly, clambering over exposed roots and under low branches slung with curtains of moss. He didn't have far to go to see what had brought God to earth. God knelt on the bank of the river beside a pile of something that might have been skin and might have been mud. Or perhaps it was muddy skin. Either way it looked wrong.
"What is that?" he asked, though he felt certain he already knew the answer.
"Adam and Lilith had a little accident. Apparently humans don't bounce. I certainly didn't see that coming."
"Well, now we know not to push them off of clouds. At least they still landed in the garden. So now what?"
"Now we make them again. Help me put them back together."
"No, I really don't think that's necessary. Just wave your hands or something and say 'abracadabra' and make them look right again." Michael backed away from the misshapen pile of ex-people.
"No, Michael," God said with such force that Michael was rooted to the spot. "We need to put them right, reshape them, and then breathe into them once more."
"You can do that. I'm good here. I'll keep watch for . . . for whatever badness might be lurking out there."
"This is the garden, Michael. There is an angel with a flaming sword at the gates. No one and nothing is getting in here that I do not wish to have passage. Remember that. Now get down here and get your hands dirty. It will do you good."
Michael felt that tingle in his soul that he had come to despise. It compelled him to obey, to respond as God would have him respond. He knelt down beside God and grimaced as his hands moved of their own accord and started pulling pieces from the pile. Some were firm and identifiable: a leg here, an arm there, a handful of errant fingers, a half-crushed skull. Some bits were just mush and Michael could only guess at what they had been before the fall. Luckily there was very little gore. It seemed that, upon impact, a great portion of both bodies had returned to the clay from which they had been formed. And for that he was grateful.
"You're welcome," said God as they worked.
Michael shook his head. He would never get used to God plucking the thoughts from his brain. They worked together in silence, each unearthing items from the pile and placing them aside into a vaguely human shape. Once all of the identifiable parts were in place God took a hunk of clay and placed it in the empty spaces in Man's body and began to shape it to fill in the gaps. Michael noticed that Man's head had remained perfectly intact in the fall but God started adding clay to reshape the nose anyway. Michael smiled to himself and bit his tongue. God had been adamant that Man would look like him instead of Sataniel. And now he was making good on that promise.
Michael started in with Woman. Her torso had disintegrated upon impact and so he started there, forming the clay into the general shape of a flat, firm stomach and rounding it out to fit into the swell of her still-intact hips. Due to the lack of privacy, when Michael formed her watermelons he tried to think of other things, things like clouds and the sounds of the nearby river, and baseball. What's baseball? He wondered. He decided to concentrate on that as his hands clasped her now voluptuous mounds because he had run out of ideas.
"It's a game, my child," said God softly, "It's played with balls."
"Aren't all games played with balls?"
"The good ones are . . . There!"
Michael jumped and fell backwards. "What?"
"We're finished."
Michael looked and, indeed God was correct. As Michael had been distracted his hands had moved on their own to complete Woman's body. Though she was now mottled gray and brown and beige and glistening in places with river slime, he could see that she would once again be the beauty she had been before. Except for one thing.
"Why are they connected?" Michael asked. It looked as if God had built a bridge of clay between Man's and Woman's shoulders. "That looks wrong."
God shrugged and ginned, "I thought it could be kind of exciting to watch. Like if they tried to run. We can connect them at the hip instead and give them three legs. You have to admit that it would be fun to watch them stumble around . . ."
"God, I have to say this and please don't get offended, but you're kind of an asshole." Michael thought he might as well say it out loud since God already knew what he was thinking. He thanked Sataniel for giving him the courage to speak out loud without wincing or wallowing in guilt.
At the thought of his fallen brother Michael winced. Sataniel had been a huge pain and a lot of work but at the same time he had taught Michael more about the nature of angels than God had ever offered.
Without looking up from his creations God said softly, "I did not fail you, Michael, no matter what you may think. And his name is no longer Sataniel. If you must refer to him at all then call him Satan. He is no longer your brother, but your adversary. You would do well to remember this in the future."
"You're changing his name?" Michael asked in a hushed voice. For some reason the name change struck him as more permanent than his brother's actual fall from Xanadu.
"And I'm changing the name to Heaven. Satan was a dick but he was right, Xanadu is a stupid name."
"See, why do you do this? How are you so many different people at the same time? You change so quickly I have no idea how I'm supposed to approach you at any given moment."
"I know. It's awesome, isn't it?"
"It's exhausting."
"Awesomely exhausting." God gestured to the prone clay bodies before them. "You ready for this?"
"Almost," Michael answered. He reached over and used his fingers to scrape the clay bridge that connected her to Man. "OK, now I'm ready."
God sighed, "Party pooper." Then he leaned over and breathed into Woman's mouth. As God exhaled into her slightly parted lips her clay skin began to pale. It softened and became smooth. Her chest rose. Then it rose again. And again. She was alive. Michael noticed that when God sat back up he had a puzzled look on his face, as if something were concerning him. But Michael didn't have a chance to ask because God immediately gave Man the breath of life. And it wasn't until God sat back on his haunches that Michael felt normal time return to the world.
"Amazing," Michael breathed.
"I know," said God as he stood up and went to sit on a nearby rock.
A moment later Woman sat up. Michael jumped. But he couldn't take his eyes off of her. He had felt Sandalphon's invisible body. He had seen her in his mind's eye and he had seen the prototype in the flesh, but to see that flesh then moving on its own was startling.
"Welcome to life, Lilith," said God. At the noise her head swiveled and she leveled her brilliant green-gold eyes at God.
"Hello, God," she said. Then she turned to Michael and smirked. There was something odd about that smirk that Michael couldn't quite place. It felt familiar, as did her voice, which was just weird. "Hello, Michael," she said.
"How do you know my name?" he asked but she didn't get a chance to answer because Man chose that moment to gasp loudly and bolt upright. Michael jumped again and immediately felt foolish when neither God nor Lilith moved at all.
"Hi," said Man.
"Adam, my child, this is yoooooour liiiiife!" announced God in a ridiculously silly voice. Adam grinned but Michael only raised an eyebrow. He was used to God's bizarre sense of humor by now and asking rarely brought the answer into focus.
Adam turned to Michael, "Who are you?"
Michael thought it was weird that Adam didn't seem to know him but Lilith had known him immediately. He glanced at Lilith and she smiled and winked at him, which just made the kind of sense that didn't.
"I'm Michael," Michael said, returning his focus to Adam.
"Nice to meet you, bro." Adam then turned to Lilith and a wide smile split his face. "Nice watermelons," he said appreciatively.
Lilith's face became deadly serious. "My eyes are up here," she said and once he had torn his gaze from her chesticle area she rolled her eyes with great fanfare.
"My children!" God shouted suddenly and they all turned toward him as if just realizing that he was still there. "Welcome to Xanadu!"
"Wait. I thought that was Xanadu," Michael said, pointing up toward the sky.
"No. Keep up, will you, Michael? I already said that that," God also pointed at the sky, "Is now Heaven. But Xanadu is such a great name that I can't let it go to waste. So why not use it here?"
"I like Eden better," said Lilith, "So that's what I'm going to call it." She nudged Adam, whose gaze had drifted downward once more, "What do you think?"
"Whatever she said," muttered Adam without moving his eyes.
God raised an eyebrow and studied his creations. "I think I underestimated the power of those things."
"Without a doubt," said Michael.
"Okay," said God suddenly, hopping down from his perch on the rock. "You guys stand up now and I'll show you around."
Adam and Lilith stood slowly and shakily on their new legs. Michael felt inclined to help Lilith but stopped himself when he saw Adam taking her arm. They needed to learn to depend on each other, he told himself, because the angels would not always be there to pick them up.
Once they were standing God continued. "So, here's the deal. This place is your home. Call it whatever you want. Don't leave the garden and lastly, see those trees over there?" God gestured to the two trees across the wide and shallow river from them.
Michael knew that one of them was the Boner Tree . . . or rather . . . the Tree of Life. He didn't know what the other tree was for. Maybe it was the Tree of Death? Either way the two trees were identical down to the pattern of fruit upon their branches, and he wasn't even sure he could tell which one was which. Given God's penchant for cruelty and games there was no way that that was an accident.
"Yes," said Lilith, smiling. "Isn't one of them the Boner Tree?"
Michael's head swiveled back to Lilith so quickly that his neck cracked. "The what?" he asked in confusion. How would she know unless . . . Oh no, he thought, she didn't.
"She did," said God darkly. God was not pleased.
"But how?" Michael asked. The complete question would have been, 'How did Sandalphon get inside Lilith's body?' but he wasn't about to ask it with Adam staring at him with wide, innocent eyes.
"Never mind that, boys," said Lilith, "You just run along back to Heaven and don't worry about us. We'll be just fine." There was an edge to Lilith's voice that hadn't been there before. Sandalphon's voice had always been light and airy and musical. Now it sounded hard. Maybe that was the effect the physical body had upon angelic voices. Michael looked over to God, whose face told him that things were not going as planned and someone was going to pay. The only questions were who? And how?
"Fine," said God, "Have it your way." He turned to Adam, who had been watching the exchange in fascination and confusion, alternately broken by stolen glances at Lilith's/Sandalphon's body. "Don't eat from those trees."
"The Boner Trees? Why not?"
"They are not boner trees!" God screamed suddenly and the previously cloudless, blue sky darkened.
"God, forgive him, for he knows not what he does," said Michael.
For once the fact that God was easily distracted worked in Michael's favor. God shook his head and the sky cleared. "Ooooh," he said, "I like that quote. I'm totally stealing that someday."
"It's yours," said Michael, "So are we finished here?"
"Yeah. See you later, you crazy kids," he said. And then he leaned in close to Adam and whispered in his ear, "Good luck with that one. You're going to need it."
And then God snapped his fingers and bore himself and Michael up to Heaven in a brilliant display of white light made of pure godly awesomeness.
The two newly-formed humans stood silently on the banks of the river until sight returned to their eyes. God was really bright. And when the world returned to them once more they sized each other up.
Lilith could tell that she made Adam nervous. And she reveled in it, which was nice because there wasn't much of a feeling of power in this body, despite what Satan had promised her she would feel if she agreed to do this for him.
Without speaking Adam kicked a small pebble with his bare foot and it rolled into the river and came to rest among the other rocks.
"So, what do you want to do now?" Lilith asked, stretching and wondering how long she'd have to wait before something interesting happened.
Adam just stared at the spot where it had disappeared and spoke slowly, as if his mouth had trouble forming the words, "I want to say something. I'm going to put it out there; if you like it, you can take it. If you don't, send it right back." He took a deep breath, finally looked up into Lilith's eyes and said, "I want to be on you."
Lilith licked her lips as her eyes took in Adam's lanky form from his head to his feet and back up again. Looks-wise he certainly didn't compare to Sataniel, though he was probably about on par with Michael. But neither was he as creepy-looking as the Cherubim and Seraphim up in heaven. Maybe she should at least give him a shot. Besides, what else did she have to keep her busy?
She shrugged, "Okay, but I get to be on top."