"Damn, Aziraphale, you made them lug all of this on board? I'm surprised this boat can still float."
"Humph. They didn't complain."
"Well they wouldn't, not to you — you're an angel."
"That never seems to stop you."
The two beings stood in the entrance to one of the ark's middle-sized chambers, which Aziraphale illuminated with an ethereal blue glow. Clay tablets lined its walls, stacked one on top of the other and secured with twine to keep them from shifting about on the waves.
Aziraphale watched as the demon entered the room and studied the tablets at the top of each stack, running his slim fingers over the etched symbols.
"Yeah, I can make out a few words here and there," Crowley announced, "but not much."
"Well, that's what I'm here for," Aziraphale said. Once he'd made the decision to help the demon learn to read, he'd swung into full teaching mode. "Now, let's pick a good one…" He wandered around the room, glancing over the clay slabs until he alighted on one he had yet to read. Most of the tablets were accounts of genealogies, finances, and court life — but he preferred the stories.
"Ah, this one looks interesting. It's one of the Gilgamesh tablets — I've read several of them, they're wonderful things. But pagan," he added, "so take care not to fall for any of the lies they tell."
"Aziraphale. I am literally a demon."
"Ah," the angel said, remembering whom he was speaking to, "of course."
If only Noah's sons hadn't gotten all the tablets out of order when they'd brought them aboard, they could start with one of the earlier of the Gilgamesh tablets. As it was, this one would do. Together, they lifted the thick slab and brought it to the low table nailed to the floor in the center of the room. They sat down cross-legged before it, a healthy inch between them to keep their knees from touching.
"So…I suppose I'll read each line, and point to the glyphs as I say them," Aziraphale said. "Does that sound like the best way to do this?"
"Yeah, that sounds good," Crowley agreed, "since I already know the basics of how this works — I just need to learn the new symbols."
"All right." Aziraphale cleared his throat, feeling, for some reason, self-conscious. "Here I go. Er, 'Gilgamesh spoke to Utanapishtim, the Faraway — "
"Hang on, who's this Gilgamesh?" the demon broke in. "I've never heard of him. And what kind of name is Utanapissin?"
"Utanapishtim," Aziraphale corrected. "Gilgamesh is a great hero of the Babylonians — pagan, as I warned you, and this Faraway fellow, well…I'm not sure," he admitted. "We're beginning some ways into the story."
"If I don't even know who these blokes are," Crowley complained, "why the hell should I care about their stor — "
"Do you want me to teach you or not?" Aziraphale bristled.
"Okay, fine." Crowley crossed his arms. "Read away, oh brilliant teacher."
" 'Gilgamesh spoke to Utanapishtim, the Faraway: / 'I have been looking at you, / but your appearance is not strange — you are like me!'..." As Aziraphale read, he pointed to the words beneath his fingertips, pausing frequently to explain a grammatical point or to try to decipher a symbol he did not recognize himself. Despite his initial outburst, Crowley proved a decent pupil, leaning in to study the glyphs and keeping quiet except to ask questions.
As they read, the story became surprisingly familiar.
" 'The hearts of the Great Gods moved them to inflict the Flood," Aziraphale read, pausing an instant. And a few lines later,
"O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width."
"Sounds like this Utanapishtim is in the same boat we are," Crowley commented. "More gods involved, but…this could be Noah."
"Indeed," Aziraphale mused, scratching his head. "Perhaps whoever wrote this down was a prophet?"
There were plenty of discrepancies, however. When one line proclaimed that "The boat was finished by sunset," Crowley startled Aziraphale with a short laugh.
"Ha! By sunset? Looks like Noah lost that race — how long was he building his ark? A few years?"
Aziraphale ignored the outcry. "Do you want to try reading?" he asked.
"Er…maybe next tablet," Crowley said.
Aziraphale read on. As the storm swept over the earth with Utanapishtim safe inside his boat, various gods grieved. Aziraphale read aloud the lamentation of Ishtar, his voice growing weak as he spoke:
" 'No sooner have I given birth to my dear people
than they fill the sea like so many fish!'
The gods — those of the Anunnaki — were weeping with her,
the gods humbly sat weeping, sobbing — "
the angel's voice broke for a moment, then he continued —
"sobbing with grief,
their lips burning, parched with thirst."
He fell silent, his fingertip hovering over the line he'd stopped at. Neither he nor the demon spoke for a long moment.
"I know," Crowley said at last.
How could a demon know, Aziraphale thought angrily — know what it was to carry out commands that helped set the world awash, wondering all the while whether the One you served even cared about all the humans He was submerging…why it had to be this way anyhow…
He remembered Crowley's bitterness earlier, when he'd mentioned those drowning outside the ark. He realized Crowley had been here, on Earth, as long as he had, had likely grown attached to this funny little planet even as Aziraphale had. Perhaps the demon did understand, to some extent.
"Yes, well," Aziraphale said, "let's continue, anyhow."
According to this epic, the flood lasted "Six days and seven nights." They shared a laugh at that.
"We're at, what, thirty days now?" Aziraphale said. "Perhaps this writer is not much of a prophet after all."
At last the angel came to the last line on the tablet, which did not offer a very satisfying conclusion.
"I'll try to find the next installment, if there is one," Aziraphale said, looking around at the stacks of tablets. "For now, let's go through this tablet again — but with you reading, this time."
To keep the demon from reciting from memory, Aziraphale pointed to random lines and had Crowley read them aloud. He did well, retaining perhaps half of the glyphs' meanings.
After a while of this, Aziraphale clapped his hands together. "I consider that a successful first lesson, don't you?"
"Yeah. Thanks, angel."
A week passed. The rain drummed on against the ark's roof, the humans became increasingly restless, and every night found an angel and a demon huddled over one tablet or another.
Aziraphale started avoiding the humans and spending more time with Crowley, with the animals, or organizing the storerooms — Noah's sons were quarreling over even the smallest things at this point. Shem continued to hint that someone had stolen his flute; it never turned up, but his frequent allusions to it kept the atmosphere tense.
On the fortieth night of their sailing, something happened.
Walking back to their quarters from the tablet room, Crowley stopped suddenly.
"Az, do you…do you hear that?" The demon's voice was full of awe.
"Hear what?" Aziraphale strained his ears. "I don't hear a thing."
"Exactly!" the demon cried, jumping into the air. "There's nothing," he cried gleefully. "Not a sound!"
"Are you all righ — " Aziraphale started to ask, and then it clicked. He began to jump up and down too, laughing. "No rain!" he cried.
"No bloody rain!" Crowley agreed, slapping the angel's shoulder.
They raced back to their quarters, and Crowley leapt onto the bed. Placing his hand on the ceiling, he willed a hole to open as Aziraphale watched, bouncing up and down.
Crowley pulled himself up through the opening, and reached an arm back down. Aziraphale accepted the proffered hand, allowing himself to be pulled up into the open air that was, miraculously, clear.
Aziraphale threw his head back and stared at the sky, which was free of clouds and blazing with stars. His companion also threw his head back, opening his mouth and releasing a mighty shout that echoed across the firmament. The waves below rang with their mirth as they laughed and yelled and danced about, clinging to each other to keep from slipping off the roof.
"Stand back," the demon suddenly exclaimed, and Aziraphale stepped back just in time to avoid being knocked over by the pair of dark wings that sprang from Crowley's shoulders. Bending his knees, the demon launched himself heavenward.
Aziraphale watched, mesmerized, as each powerful downbeat of wings set the demon's glossy plumes aglitter in the starlight.
"Join me, Az!" Crowley beckoned, golden eyes flashing.
Aziraphale didn't need to be asked twice. He unfurled his wings, a shade or two lighter than the demon's and not quite as sleek, and catapulted into the night sky.
Crowley nosedived towards the water, pulling himself up at the last second and skimming his fingers along the sea's surface.
"Isn't it beautiful, angel?" he called to Aziraphale, who hovered above.
"It is," the angel answered, watching the starlight ripple along his companion's lustrous black hair, the inky feathers of his shoulder blades. It really was.
Author's Note:
Crowley mentions that Noah's construction of the ark took "a few years." Based on Biblical analysis, the building of the ark seems actually to have taken anywhere from 20 to 120 years. (Seeing as Noah was 500-600 at the time and not dying any time soon, he could afford to take that long.)
The portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that they read is Tablet XI, which can be found here if anyone's interested: .
And now to confess to my great anachronism: as far as biblical scholars can judge, the Noah's Ark story is meant to have occurred somewhere from 2500-2300 BC (most likely closer to 2300BC). The earliest tablets of The Epic of Gilgamesh that we have recovered are from ~2100 BC — so they wouldn't have been around for Aziraphale to bring on the ark with him. But I wanted the epic in my story, so I took liberties — as I mentioned in the previous endnote, Good Omens uses the biblical timeline so historical dates are all screwed up anyhow.