The Other Mother
They'd sent him to make some trouble, but it seemed that Up Here they didn't really need him for that.
There was an Adam, and from the yelling, Crawly gathered that Adam came first. And as the yelling progressed, Crawly surmised further that Adam came first in all things. But the She, who had come second and also not at all, wasn't agreeable with that position (or the other one that Adam was suggesting.)
Crawly listened to the argument with interest. It went around and around, but from what he understood, it was a matter of Above and Below. It always was.
Then the She, in complete frustration, threw up her hands and walked away. Before Crawly could slither from his hiding place and suggest something (like how arguing could work up an appetite and why not try the lovely produce on that Tree over there), she said the Ineffable Name of God and flew into the air.
Adam was stunned. Crawly wished They'd issued a shape with more legs than zero.
When Adam begged God to retrieve his runaway mate and the angels showed up, Crawly flattened himself into the tree branch and decided it would be best to wait this one out.
Aziraphale had been surprised and grateful about the guard duty assignment since his days had been empty after the angelic choir director had firmly invited him to turn in his harp. It was a nice duty. The weather was always pleasant and there really hadn't been any attempts at entering on his side of the Garden.
Then He had tapped him on the shoulder with the celestial finger and asked him to join two of the other angels assigned gate duty, Sensoi and Sansanui, for a special assignment. And now here he was; part of a team, an appendix on the celestial body.
Aziraphale was apprehensive. Samangluf always worked with Sensoi and Sansanui. And who was he to impose on what seemed to be a well-worked out understanding? But an angel didn't disagree with Him. Not recently in any case.
"Well then, how shall we go about this?" Aziraphale said to the other two. Teamwork. He could do this.
Sensoi and Sansanui opened their mouths in unison. "We will do as He commanded. We will find the woman and we shall say, 'Woman, You will return to Man.'"
"All at the same time?" Aziraphale asked. "Will there be a signal?"
They said nothing. They stared into the distance, then they both said, "She is resting beside the Red Sea."
"That's not a very nice place." It was an understatement, but Aziraphale hadn't yet gotten the hang of descriptive words that weren't pleasant. God had been quite keen on the Garden but had left the rest of the world to go about as it pleased. And the Red Sea area was pleased to be the current habitat of all sorts of Things.
But Sensoi and Sansanui were already gone.
Crawly decided that the whole Garden set up was completely unfair. All Lucifer had asked was, "Why?" and looked where hed ended up. Adam, on the other hand, had asked for a new She even before the three angels were back, and God had obliged his new creation.
But Adam had got it in spades. NowMan was green and Crawly was glad his digestive track was extremely rudimentary.
Ashes and dust, these humans were, but in the middle there were shiny slick blobs, yards and yards of thick tubes whose purpose Crawly did not know. There werethings that quivered and expanded and thin red liquid poured throughout them.
Crawly swallowed again. He was aware of anatomy, since demons were very curious in a certain way, but he'd never seen someone put together from scratch. It involved glistening organs appearing out of thin air, blood globules floating around like tiny dust motes, muscle and ligament building on top of bone, then the skin covering it all up like some kind of pinkish sausage casing.
Seeing all those wiggly bits like that could put a demon off for minutes.
Apparently Adam felt the same way; this She was banished from the Garden almost as soon as she was complete.
Crawly caught a glimpse of her tear-stained face when she walked by his tree. And she hadn't done nothing, he thought.
The whole thing was ineffable. Emphasis on the eff.
The She was in a very bad temper. Aziraphale had figured this out by the way she was tossing rocks at the water. Her body language suggested that she wished the sea was smaller and more man-shaped and, perhaps, could scream in pain.
It was Aziraphale's first experience with non-celestial firmament so his landing wasn't as impressive as it might have been. Sensoi and Sansanui waited for him to stand back up, a bit impatiently, Aziraphale thought. Then they proclaimed together, "Woman, You will return to Man."
"- to Man." Aziraphale winced. They could have rehearsed at the very least.
"I'm not going back!" she shouted angrily.
"Then you will be punished most horribly," They said.
"- horribly?" Aziraphale finished. "I'm sorry? What was that?"
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine then. It sounds better than being with him."
"Excuse us for a moment," Aziraphale said to the She. He turned to the two other angels. "Isnt that harsh? It is her first - "
The indignation radiated off of them. "We are the three of God! We have direct communication with the Metatron!"
"We do?" he asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the She watching the whole thing in a disconcerting way.
"We do not deviate from what we are told to do!"
"Well, I - "
"WE! There is no I!" theyshouted.
"Is that how Adam and I are supposed to work?" She asked suddenly. She thought that the two angels did not understand when their mouths dropped open, not that they were so shocked that she would dare interrupt them, so She continued. "Are Adam and I supposed to talk at the same time? Think the same thing?"
"We dont thi -" They stopped and glanced at each other, fear crossing their features simultaneously.
"I dont believe you and Adam are supposed to be like any angel," Aziraphale said.
"Then what are we supposed to be?" Her lower lip wobbled, but because this was the first She they had dealt with, they did not understand the warning sign.
"That is not for us to say," Aziraphale said, when no one else spoke up.
"Then who says?" She shouted, her voice cracking. "Adam says he's in charge, but that doesn't seem right because I was made in the same way as he was. I asked Him" -and here She pointed at the sky - "but He didn't say anything. Adam says that means hes right, but silence isn't an answer. That's just the absence of an answer!"
Aziraphale had heard an echo of this line of thinking before and it had led to dangerous places.
"I just - I just want to - I just want to -" And She burst into tears.
Sensoi and Sansanui stepped back in horror.
But Aziraphale stepped forward. This was the first She hed ever dealt with, and he hadn't been aware that they were capable of leaking around the eyes like that, but he knew that the Ineffable Plan was not something that you got used to in a day.
"Why don't we sit over here and -" Aziraphale led the She away to some sandstone that would do as a bench while Sensoi and Sansanui said absolutely nothing.
Adam and Eve had come to a quick decision about Above and Below, leaving Crawly time to wish he had some hands. He'd gotten up this tree alright, but wasn't looking forward to getting down.
To while away the time, He considered the best way of going about tempting. It would be the first time that it had been done in the Garden and it would be the first time that it'd be done to one of the newest of creation. Two firsts in one blow.
He had been given an important task by Below and it had to be done tright. There were many reasons for this, the most pressing being the threat of bodily and incorporeal harm.
And he had to do it with style.
He didn't have much time to fine-tune his performance. Eve was walking right towards him.
Sensoi and Sansanui were very quiet.
"I think we came off a bit strong with the horrible punishment there. I apologize."
The breeze coming in off the Red Sea carried bits and pieces of conversation to the two angels.
"I completely understand."
They couldn't hear what She said, but Aziraphale leaned over and patted the She's hand. "That doesnt sound polite at all."
They did not discuss what they were hearing.
"Of course, my dear."
Knowing that they would answer their own questions with the same words was quite the conversation killer.
"If you'll excuse me? Thank you." Aziraphale walked towards them and said quietly, "She isn't going back unless we can promise that Adam will apologize to her. And She wants some changes."
The two angels exchanged glances. They looked a bit pained when they said simultaneously, "We can't promise that."
"I know." Free will, Aziraphale thought, certainly made things interesting. If you liked that sort of thing. "And even though I've explained that this place is not nice and there are all sorts of Things she might run up against, She is adamant that She will stay here."
There was a painful pause until Sensoi and Sansanui both said, "Then it is decided."
"I'm sure we can work a few things out to both her and Adam's liking," Aziraphale began, but the other angels interrupted.
"No. It is decided," the angels said. "She has no place to return to."
Aziraphale couldnt argue with it. They were speaking for the Metatron, who spoke for Him. That was it and he told her so.
She seemed to take it well. She squared her shoulders, sat on a rock, and thanked them. She also said, "And if you see that Man, tell him...tell him that..."
"I'll tell him that last time I spoke to you, you were doing very well." It was a truth of sorts, and what he didn't know was that it would be - would always be - the best thing to say in such a situation.
They flew back to the Garden. From the sky, he could see black spots on the ground below, blots of un-grace, that were already heading towards She.
Things happened very quickly after the three angels returned to the Garden, so it was some time later when Aziraphale explained to the demon who would become Crowley that his first experience with free will was like watching a blind person cheerfully walk off the edge of a cliff even after youd shouted out a very specific warning detailing all the things that would go wrong.
Later still Crowley would tell Aziraphale that he had met her, after She had been named, but before all the outrageous things had been associated with her name. She'd taken up with a few demons, had a spat of spawn, and only cursed Adam very irregularly.
"Heart wasn't into; seemed more like habit," he concluded. "Right now she's settled in as a dark mother deity in a properly heathen country. She seems - "
"Happy?" Aziraphale asked hopefully.
"Content with causing only a little mayhem here and there," Crowley elaborated.
"So the first sin of the Garden wasn't disobedience," Aziraphale said sadly, "but bitterness."
Crowley said nothing. He knew Aziraphale was still touchy about his first assignment. And because he was a demon and not an angel, he silently reflected that the original sin was actually right bastard-ness.
Even if humans knew the truth, the concept would never work as original sin. Not toeing the line was a simpler idea for the first of the worst and, better yet, you could still be a right bastard while being completely obedient. Proof number one of that was co-op association boards.
"I wonder whatever did happen to the second one?" Aziraphale asked.
Crowley poured himself another glass."Considering what happened with the other two, she's probably happy to remain anonymous."
And because it was late in the evening, they drank to anonymity, then went their separate ways.
Author's Notes: This was based on the old mythology and religious takes of Lillith. But mostly it was supposed to show why Aziraphale got to stay behind and interact with humanity above any other angel.