Eve was dark, of course: there's nothing like running around naked in an always-sunny equatorial garden for getting a really good tan.
But it's like this, all right? Sometimes the sun picked red out of her black hair, in secret gleams, and here and there the deep hot brown of her skin shaded richly towards the raw color of clay. And after she ate the apple, she looked down at her body, noticing (for the first time) that her breasts were really terribly floppy, weren't they, and goodness, who'd thought leaving knees out in the open like that was a good idea?-
-and the blood rose in Eve's cheeks.
Understand: there has never been a blush like the first blush. The red filled her like wine a glass, from toe to crown, shining through her flesh. The serpent lingering overhead blinked, for the first time in its existence, and slithered away before she could look up again, feeling faintly awkward and terribly uncool.
There was a silence.
It was broken by Adam, emerging from the bushes behind her.
"Gosh," he said. "Are you feeling all right? That looks uncomfortable."
She turned, slowly. It took more time than it might have, because parts of her body were trying to hide behind other parts of her body, which is not really conducive to generalized muscle coordination, or, indeed, anything but falling over humorously. Eve didn't do this, but that was only because whatever else one says about His prose style, He does know when a metaphor is best left a metaphor(1).
"Hallo, Adam," she said. "Um. I'm... fine."
Adam beamed at her, but nothing should be read into this, since it was his default expression. "That's nice," he said, meaning 'good': no one had yet come up with a reason for precision, although this was about to change.
"I ate something," she said. "I think-" She frowned. "I think you should try it too."
"That so?"
She looked at him for a long, unnerving moment, although Adam noticed that she was keeping her gazed fixed firmly on his face, for some reason, and turning redder by the minute.
Then: "Yes," she said, and sing-songed, "Close your eyes and open your mouth."
Adam's smile did not dim, but it became a trifle warier.
"Animal, mineral, or vegetable?" he asked, with, it must be said, some justification: the last time they'd had this conversation, it had ended with her delicately placing a live newly-named newt on his tongue, and he still hadn't gotten the taste of slime out.
"Vegetable," she said.
"Oh," he said; "all right, then." And he closed his eyes, and he opened his mouth.
(1) Which is just as well. Bread and wine are all right, but cannibalism can be a real turn-off for potential converts, and no one likes to find themselves suddenly standing in a field, feeling a bit, well, stalky, with nothing better to look forward to than being scythed down and separated from the chaff(2).
(2) Or, as in the unfortunate cases, from the grain.
There were no knives in Eden. No one likes to talk about it, but the fact of the matter is, The Fall of Man most closely resembled the drunken bobbing for apples that takes place at a particular kind of Halloween party.
This was probably symbolic of something. It's possible, after all, that even frat boys have free will.
Later, after the speedy rise and fall of fig-leaf couture, the advent of furs as a attractive, comfortable, God-given alternative, and a lot of shouting, they sat together in the depths of the woods. Adam tried to sulk, but he was distracted by the way she held the sword, tilting the blade back and forth. In her bright black eyes were reflected tiny tongues of scarlet flame, like pomegranate seeds, or-
No, he thought.
They listened together. To the spit and hiss of the sword, and to the thunder, and to, far-off, the noises made by lurking animals who seemed to have far fewer friendly, expressive eyebrows in this new darkness, than Adam remembered them as having when he'd named them.
The one he'd called wolf howled. It was a different sound, out here, without the lush smoothnesses of the Garden to reverberate off of: here it became thin, somehow, and hungry.
Eve's fingers tightened on the handle.
Don't let the sun go down on you there, the angel had said.
The two humans huddled closer, and Adam reached for a dry branch, and together, they set about making war on the night.
There was also another, in the clearing, who did not yet have a shape or a mind or anything but a will.
Nevertheless, it watched Eve hack at the kindling.
It watched her wrist tremble under the weight of the sword while her grip grew surer of the balance of the sword.
And it extrapolated.
They would ask, its coworkers, where it picked up that form; the others switched from time to time, adapting to the face of the age. But War believed that some looks never went out of style, and first of them, always, was the lady in red.
And later still, there were Pepper and Adam.
They sat cross-legged, and side by side, in front of Adam's little black-and-white television set. They were watching an educational program about Genesis, Chapter Three, which consisted of a great deal of amazingly high-quality footage of a, well, presumably it was a re-enactment, even if the setting did look lusher than anywhere on Earth, lusher than New Zealand on steroids; a perplexed commentator who had begun filming in the expectation of this episode being about Babylonians and who was troubled by the amount of revisions his notes had undergone, overnight, complete with scrawled encouraging notes in the margin like "an' don't forget the bit about the snake crawling on its belly in the dust, like, 'cos that's a good bit"; and Adam, looking innocent.
Pepper didn't notice this suspicious development, because she was intent on the show. She didn't know why. It was just interesting, was all. No law against it being interesting, seeing as how she wasn't in Sunday School and didn't have her reputation to think of just then.
"I know her from somewhere," she said, near the end, jabbing her thumb at the actress playing Eve, who was not so much cowering as glowering at the tip of Godly beard that was just visible in the upper left corner of the screen, despite the commentator's helpful narration.
"That so?" said Adam.
Pepper's brow furrowed in furious concentration. She toyed with the two crossed sticks she still sometimes used for swordfights; it had been a year, but the tape was holding up something marvelous, and it'd be a shame to waste all that effort she put into it. She remembered putting an effort in, all right, even if the surrounding circumstances were somewhat hazy.
"Yeah," she said, eventually. "On a... on a motorbike? With a sword. I wish I could remember what movie-"
"I dunno," said Adam. "I dunno about that. I think," said Adam, with all the assurance of someone who has control of the buttered popcorn, here, and isn't afraid of holding it hostage if that's what it takes to keep a Peppery elbow out of his ribs, "I think, she looks like you. Not any nasty character on a motorbike."
Pepper didn't admit to blushing. Ever. In any case, it was always hard to make out, under the freckles.
But she did say, on that late summer afternoon, "You think so?"
"Def'nitely," said Adam.
"Huh," said Pepper.
"It's the red," Adam added.
It took a minute for this to register. Then Pepper carefully set the sticks aside and punched him on the arm. In the ensuing scuffle, the hostage's fluffy, delicious white guts were unfortunately spread all over the room, but that was all right; Adam didn't really like hostage negotiations, anyway. They got in the way of the real fun.
"You think you're real funny, don't you," Pepper said, breathlessly, when they were both flat on their backs. The program was winding to a highly uncanonical end involving a general surreptitious reallocation of available weaponry, which departure from the text of the Good Book(1) would make R.P. Tyler write no fewer than six angry letters to various purveyors of news by the end of that week, but it no longer seemed very important. "Huh. Red," she muttered.
Adam didn't answer. He was grinning up at the ceiling like an idiot.
Pepper glared at the side of his head for a while. Then she sat up and snuck a glance at the screen. It was as gray and grainy as ever. No doubt about it.
But-
And then the actress playing Eve turned to look directly at the camera- at Pepper- and everything Pepper had been about to think about the places red could get flew out of her head, because the actress was looking right at her, and she was saying, not to any of her fellow cast members but to Pepper,
"It's only fair, you know, how it worked out with you. And we didn't get to be children for such a long time. I mean, look at this!" She poked the area of belly framed by fig leaves. "No belly button! I ask you."
Ask me what? Pepper wondered. She couldn't- quite- bring herself to talk back to the telly, but it was a close thing.
But maybe the actress heard her anyway, because she said, "Anything. Anything at all."
"Anything?" Pepper whispered.
"Of course," said the woman. "I didn't eat that apple for nothing, you know."
"I know?" said Pepper.
"Exactly," said Eve. She winked.
Then there was only static, and Adam, whistling a little tune.
Pepper shook her head, like Dog did when he was trying to get the water out of his ears. "I'm tired of learnin'," she said. "Let's go be jewel thieves."
"Jewel thieves is boring," said Adam.
"You think of something, then, if jewel thieves is so boring," she said, but her heart wasn't in it. She was already looking to the window, the sun, the apple tree outside, heavy with unripe green fruit, tinged pink at the edges.
"I guess I will," said Adam.
"Let's go," Pepper said, ignoring this.
"Right," said Adam.
They went.
(1) As it was currently printed in every surviving English edition besides the Buggre Alle This Bible, anyway; you couldn't trust those old Hebrew scrolls that kept popping up and contradicting each other: those were for'n.