21. Hotel Eden
There is a little cottage in Eden.
It stands on the shore of an azure pool with a little waterfall. It's made of clay bricks and wooden shingles that are held together without nails, just by their interlacing design. The roof is shaded by fruit trees, but the porch opens towards a sunny clearing.
The interior is simple, but cozy. The glass windows let in enough light and the curtains soften it as it falls on the rug in the middle of the room. There is a hearth with a chimney and a shelf with clay pots next to it. There is a table with chairs and another shelf that seems to contain heaps of papyrus, some empty, some covered in writing. There is a closet and a bed with blankets that look like a slightly clumsy attempt at a tartan pattern.
And there is an angel lying in the bed.
His wings are spread over the mattress and his eyes are closed. He looks asleep, his chest rising and sinking slowly, but he doesn't move or change his position at all. His wings are missing most of their feathers. He is pale and a little too thin for the loose pajamas that he is wearing, with the same almost tartan-like pattern as on the blanket.
A demon enters the cottage, carrying a linen bag as if he has just returned from an environmentally conscious food store. An all bio, raw and vegan one, by the looks of it.
"I got more spices, angel," he says. "Would you like the carrot & coriander soup? Or the minty pea one?"
There is no response from the angel.
"Okay then. Minty pea it is, we had the coriander one two weeks ago, didn't we?"
The demon puts the groceries on the table: fruit, vegetables, nuts, leaves, seeds. Everything fresh, with no packaging whatsoever. Then he gets to cooking.
Crowley found the spot by the pool after he healed Aziraphale and then slept long enough to be able to think coherently. Well, no, actually. He found it after the breakdown he had once he was able to think coherently and it hit him how close he had been to losing Aziraphale. He hurried to the Eastern "gate" then, to put the stones back and mask it as well as possible. He got a little lost on the way there. That's when he discovered the pool.
It was a pleasant spot, sunny but surrounded by trees to give shade. The ground was warmed by the sun, the air was fresh but not cold and the view was just lovely. After closing the hole in the wall (making him feel much safer) and checking on Aziraphale (no change there), he prepared another bed of moss and leaves in that place, just where he could control whether the spot was in sunlight or in shadow by moving a few branches. He brought Aziraphale there and laid him down. Had another breakdown when he saw how angry and red the snake-shaped scar on the angel's pale chest was in the light of the sun in its zenith. All the other scars were gone, but he could not heal that one, no matter how hard he tried.
He wished for a blanket to cover it. The angel would be more comfortable lying under a blanket, too. And bed sheets and mattress… and speaking about it, a bed. And some shelter as well. Crowley tried to create the blanket first. No success. He could heal or manipulate things that already were in Eden, but not create new ones.
And so he started to inventory the resources of Eden, never leaving Aziraphale for more than two hours. There were plants and mushrooms. All plants he remembered from the rest of Earth, and even some extra. No animals, though. It seemed that the animals shared the fate of humans and were driven out of Eden - probably because of their new dietary habits. No place for things like food chains in Paradise. No place for rot and death, either. That was making him a little calmer when leaving Aziraphale, actually. There were no fallen leaves on the ground, no dead trees (with just that one ironic exception). The plants bore fruits and flowers at the same time and the fruits never fell down from the branches. Only when he picked one, a new fruit grew almost immediately in its place, without any involvement of bees or other means of pollination. It seemed that plants were not allowed sex here.
He found both linen and cotton plants. They still refused to magically transform into cloth, no matter how much he yelled at them. He had a hard time remembering how the humans did it to go from a plant to something that could be worn as a fashion statement. Cotton seemed easier to work with - it already had the fluffy parts ready. He started with those. Cleaning them from seeds and dirt was manipulating something that was already there, so he was able to do it with a miracle. From that point, he was able to miracle yarn, since it was just a matter of twisting and stretching the little threads of fluff. But going from there to cloth required knowing how to intertwine the yarn together. That needed him to remember all the times he saw a loom and the people working it. After several failed attempts, he figured it out and voilá, he had cloth! But it wasn't enough for a blanket, unless he wanted a blanket for a mouse. At least he knew it worked.
He started gathering more cotton, which meant picking the few heads that he found, waiting for a moment until they grew again, picking them again and so on. He was getting impatient as he was already away from Aziraphale for a longer time than he was comfortable with. Annoyed, he tried a shortcut - and this time, he was able to miracle a cloth from nothing!
That's how he realized what was the matter with Eden's restrictions on miracles. The no-miracle field around prevented him from bringing any object from the outside world to it, that much was clear. Inside, miracles actually worked just fine, but the reality here was 6000 years behind the rest of the world. To test the theory, he tried to miracle a stone into existence. Yup. There it was, a nice round stone, quite suitable for hitting an Archangel or two in the head. But when he asked for a blanket, the reality of Eden just didn't know what he wanted. He had to show it how it was made, step by step, to define it, and then he was able to materialize it.
He had gotten to defining cotton cloth so far. Some manipulation with a thread, a stuffing of raw cleaned cotton fluff, and he had the definition of a blanket and a lot of plans to keep himself busy. That was good. When he was busy, working to ensure all the comfort he could to his angel, memories were less likely to return. Guilt was less likely to hit him in the gut when he was in the middle of some important project, like finding out what plants can be used as dyes to make a tartan pattern.
Sometimes the memories did return and the guilt hit him, still.
Between that, he made a bed with blankets and everything. Wood was a bit tricky to work with at first, as there was no dead and dry wood here (with that one ironic exception again). In this case, a bit of yelling at the trees was actually effective. They agreed, for their own good, to grow some extra branches and withdraw the sap from them. He had to miracle the stone tools to cut them down and define what he meant by wood as a material.
Metal proved impossible to miracle. Aziraphale did have a sword here, long ago. Crowley tried to use that somehow, but it seemed it didn't work when the sword wasn't here anymore. There was some ore in the ground under Eden, but he knew that getting pure metal from it wouldn't be possible without destroying parts of the land. He contented himself with stone tools.
Slowly, the little cottage by the pool took shape. Crowley put wards on it, to alert him in case of danger, although it seemed that there was no possible danger to them in Eden. But most of all, they were supposed to alert him if Aziraphale woke. He still thought it could be at any moment. But as the days passed and turned into months, he stopped thinking about it much. He stopped counting them, too. But once the wards were in place, he became more comfortable with leaving for a longer time and taking on bigger tasks, not worried anymore that Aziraphale would wake alone in a strange place he wouldn't recognize.
One of the bigger tasks was making sure they were as safe as possible in their private paradise. He found the place with loose stones in the wall again and strengthened it with mortar from the inside. Then he made a long rope ladder, flew to the top of the wall and fastened it there. The no-flight zone started right beyond the wall, so he used the ladder to climb down and worked for several hours to pile sand in front of the weak spot. He was only content when it was fully concealed.
Once the basic things were done, he worked on improving everything in the cottage from the first makeshift version. He made a closet and filled it with his best attempts at clothes that Aziraphale might like. He also made new clothes for himself - just a loose tunic with simple pants. He wanted them black, but couldn't get it quite right with the dyes from oak bark, walnuts and indigo. He ended with some weird shade of grey that he contented himself with in the end. The suit miracled by Satan was burnt as soon as he learnt to make cloth and found the time for it.
Not everything went as smoothly, though. Sometimes he got frustrated with his inability to create something basic because he didn't know how it was actually done the human way. Shoes, for example. He couldn't make them from leather, since there was none. He tried it from other materials, but couldn't make them hold together properly and couldn't even get the shape of the cut right. He had his snake scales, but it bugged him that Aziraphale would have to walk barefoot when he woke.
He felt like a failure. He couldn't get anything right for his angel. No wonder Aziraphale wasn't waking.
When those thoughts faded a bit, he resolved to learn weaving the tartan pattern Aziraphale used to wear to make up for it. He managed it only partially. It was a pattern and it resembled tartan. To avoid another breakdown, he decided to try again later and took on another big project instead. The angel loved reading, he thought and started working on filling Aziraphale's bookshelf. The tries for paper were rather frustrating too - he couldn't figure out the proper glue that would keep the cellulose threads together. He was getting a bit better at avoiding breakdowns as time passed: papyrus was easier to work with and he had some practice from Egypt already, so he used that instead.
Making ink from oak bark was more of Aziraphale's domain while he had been acting as a monk in a medieval scriptorium, but Crowley had watched him doing it a few times. It was mostly a matter of figuring out how to get green vitriol (now called ferrous sulphate) from one of the hot sulphurous springs by the Northern wall. Oak bark was easy to find, so the rest wasn't that hard anymore. He wasn't a complete failure. Wahoo.
Since then he had dedicated some time each day to writing down all poems and plays he remembered. He regretted that he had not memorized any of Azirapahle's favourite novels. He did not want to write down the Little Prince.
Once there was a hearth in the cottage and the basic clay pots and kitchen utensils, he started cooking for Aziraphale instead of giving him fruit juice every time, too. After another breakdown, that is. That time it was the sight of Aziraphale being so close to fire that did it for him. He knew it was just a regular fire that he lit easily like any demon could, but the sight of flames and smell of smoke was too much for him. It took him a few days to get used to it and actually start cooking. It was becoming visible that the angel was losing weight by then, and that made him overcome his fear. That and moving the bed across the room, as far from the hearth as possible, which helped just a little bit.
What he regretted regularly was not having his phone here. Not that it would have been any use without any internet connection. It was most unlikely that there was any signal or even a wifi: eden with password: guest here. He was annoyed that he couldn't google the recipes for vegan soups, download illegal ebooks of the novels he wanted to copy for Aziraphale or look up the patterns for shoes. Then he remembered that the price for that was being safe here and he was a bit less annoyed.
And Aziraphale still didn't wake.
Crowley had been over the scenario a thousand times in his head. He considered every reaction that Azirapahle could have to seeing him, every word that he was going to say to the angel. The more he played those scenarios out in his mind, the more he felt that it might be better if Aziraphale didn't see him right after waking. He could remember his closed eyes, back in the desert. The angel purposely kept his eyes closed after he woke in Crowley's presence. As if he knew that seeing Crowley at that moment would make him afraid.
You hurt him! You almost killed him! Of course he is afraid of you! a nagging voice in his mind accused every time he got to that place in his thoughts. Even if he doesn't want to be and doesn't want to show it, deep down he is afraid!
And so he worked on making sure that the angel had everything he needs even if he wouldn't want to see Crowley. He left instructions everywhere, explaining what was where and how the miracles worked.
He made storage for groceries and labeled every clay jar. He discovered he enjoyed making clay jars in the process. He did it the human way, with a pottery wheel. It was relaxing. He didn't have to think about anything else while working on it.
He did all of that, and Aziraphale was still not waking.
The spark of angelic essence got a little stronger, but did not seem to improve beyond that.
The nagging voice changed its rhetoric then. What if he never wakes? it asked. What if instead of killing him, you hurt his essence so much that it will never come out again? He begged you to kill him, didn't he? And you didn't, you made him endure unbearable agony just so you could have him, you selfish demon."
"The soup is ready, angel," Crowley says softly, ignoring the voice. "And there's blackberry smoothie as a dessert."
He helps the unresponsive body to take in the liquid nourishment.
"I hope you liked that," he says later, when he has used a miracle to clean the dishes. "Maybe some strawberry juice to soften the smoothie next time, what do you think? And what do you feel up to now? Should I do your manicure again?"
He takes fine sandpaper and a jar with coconut butter mixed with jojoba oil. Without metal, he can't make scissors, but sandpaper (or rather sandpapyrus) is enough to file the nails. They don't grow, anyway.
As Crowley is massaging the lotion into his fingers, Aziraphale opens his eyes.
