Hell Fled
The angel Virgil gazed down from where she stood at the top of one of the many trees of Eden, a crease between her eyebrows, evidently displeased with what she saw. She curled her lip at the spectacle of Adam and Eve gambolling about beneath her like fools, Eve brandishing a bunch of grapes and occasionally throwing one into the gaping mouth of Adam, who laughed and leapt about like a maniac. Virgil sighed and soared away from the sight that was so contemptible to her. She soon found herself with two of her angel brethren, Cadriel and Gabriel, who were in the midst of discussing the subjects she had just fled from, and their perceived threat from the fallen angel, Lucifer.
“Have you seen him?” Cadriel was saying. “He crouches in the form of a bird in a tree some miles from here. No doubt our Lord shall be dispirited by his presence. All I can hope is that those wingless fools do not take him at his word. He’s bound to try and trick them, and frankly, they’re not very intelligent.”
“Don’t speak so!” cried Virgil, frowning at Cadriel despite the fact that he voiced her inner thoughts. “They were created by the Lord, so when you insult them you insult him also.”
“It is not an insult, it is the truth. There is no other way of putting it. Besides, the lord created them to be simple-minded as it means their bliss is more complete and they’re less likely to rise up against their subjugation. Although, from my point of view, if they had been moulded in a cannier frame of mind, they’d be even less likely to disrupt their position, as they would appreciate its nature in contrast to the foul surges of knowledge.”
“Don’t criticise the Lord,” interrupted Gabriel, who had been strumming absentmindedly on a small harp.
“I’m not criticising Him,” Cadriel protested, “I just think they have been created in a way that makes them no match for Lucifer.”
“They have a wonderful existence, why should they be tempted by the fallen one?” Gabriel demanded, a crease between his brows.
“He may offer them knowledge,” Cadriel said softly, scowling across the scene they stood guardians over. Its rippling bounteousness fell cold at his eyelids, as he feared what was to come.
“With knowledge comes sin. If they are manipulated by Lucifer in their sinless state, then surely they would be vastly more influenced if they were more intelligent?” Gabriel countered.
Cadriel did not deign to reply, but continued to gaze out, seemingly in deep meditation, across the paradise. Meanwhile, Virgil listened to Gabriel’s resumed harp playing with a curious feeling in her heart as she tried to discern the flapping of a bird’s wings somewhere in the distance, without success. She had heard talk of Lucifer for her entire existence. His fall from grace obsessed her, and she possessed a strange and disturbing impulse to meet this dark angel. This was the reason she had been avoiding the Lord, for in situations like this his omniscience was not only difficult, but also posed a threat to her content existence in Eden. No one had noticed her marked absence from their master as of yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. She did not know which course of action was best – to meet Lucifer and talk to him and realise his evil nature, or to suppress her stewing interest in this creature and continue ignorantly in the Lord’s service. She was deeply aware of the risk of angering her master, and she chewed her lip whilst the pleasant music produced by Gabriel’s skilled hands throbbed in her ears.
Cadriel was simultaneously lost in thought, but his disobedience spanned a different terrain; in the corner of his eye his appreciation and inner turmoil was caught like a fly in a web by the pleasing form and features of Virgil. Her closeness was torture to him, especially as the angels were forbidden to share any relations beyond simple friendliness. Gabriel alone was free of the blunt blade of shame, and instead pondered uneasily the words of his companions, and wondered anxiously whether Adam and Eve were truly at risk of being tempted by Lucifer. He contemplated the possibility of talking sense into his previous fellow but recoiled at the thought. Lucifer was as far gone down the path of immorality as was possible to go, and Gabriel knew instinctively that he would not be able to alter the trajectory of unfolding events. He only hoped blindly that Adam and Eve would not come into contact with Lucifer, or that the Lord would banish him like he had done before. He ceased his harp-playing, bringing Cadriel and Virgil sharply out of their reveries, and pitching them instead into a clear and horrible awareness of their current threats and difficulties.
“Are you coming? Selaphiel is giving a sermon tonight, and our Lord is in attendance. I’m sure He would enjoy the pleasure of your company,” Gabriel asked, nodding at Cadriel and Virgil respectively. Eyes wide, they both gave excuses as to why they could not be present at Selaphiel’s sermon, and Gabriel left, golden wings casting him easily into the sky. Soon he was out of sight, and Cadriel and Virgil were left alone with their shouting heads, feeling as if they were both rushing down a white passage of sensation.
***
“Don’t you see?” Lucifer demanded, and Virgil wished with all her heart that he would change from his bird form so she would be somewhat able to read his facial expressions, but the languid, liquid voice coming from the bird’s sharp beak was all she could absorb, as the face had no expression and the green gleaming eyes stared blankly. “How else could I have resisted the lord if we truly were completely inferior? We’re all gods like him!”
Virgil gasped and backed away. Despite the horror he had induced with his words, the terrible sap of realisation was oozing poisonously through Virgil’s consciousness, sweetening and sickening her reality and making her feel dizzy. The nectar of the words was like a calming balm to her unspoken, deeply repressed musings.
“You’re wrong. There’s only one like him. We’re inferior, different,” Virgil finally said, transfixed by the cormorant, who was watching her from the side, unflinching. She was trying to persuade him, as much as she was herself.
“Why do you think he gave us wings?” Lucifer whispered softly. There was a gentle hiss, a caress in his voice, but also, seemingly, a genuine bubbling contempt. “We can create earth, like him, but he confined us to the skies with our wings, so we never see ourselves as part and possible creator of the ground you see before you. You’re just like him, but limited to fly, to play harps on high, rather than caress and trample the sweet earth we are drawn to.”
“I can walk! I don’t have to fly all the time,” Virgil protested weakly, but at the same time she was distracted by the discomfort of small stones on her rarely used feet.
“Yes, but in granting you the gift of flight, the Lord ensured that you would pass the majority of your time in the air, so as to be distant from the very concept of earth and creation.”
Virgil did not respond but frowned at Lucifer. Her heart was drawn to him more than ever.
“Please can you take your true form?” she asked before she could stop herself. She wished she could read the response to her words in that face, but it was nigh on impossible. All he did was readjust his folded wings slightly and move from foot to foot. He did not respond.
Blushing to the roots of her hair, she contemplated his words, and more to suppress the swelling silence than anything, she spoke. “If, as you say, we are gods like him, then why are you confined to that hell, along with demons and agony? Why were you able to be banished by him, if you were truly his equal?”
The cormorant blinked its eyes and tilted up its head, as if to ponder the very nature of the realm encasing them. Without moving he replied. “I am not his equal.”
“What?”
“I am not his equal,” he repeated, and turned to look once more upon Virgil. “If my banishment shows you anything, it shows you that. More than anything, one cannot conquer the creator when one is within the sphere they have created. It is part of the supreme strength of the lord that he is always protected when he is within his own realm. When I rose up against him, I was signing my own order of exile. But,” he paused, and Virgil fancied that if he had been in his true form, a smirk would have flitted over his countenance, “I would rather be exiled for eternity than serve him in his domain.”
Virgil stared at him, utterly transfixed. The power of his conviction sent shivers down her spine, and mutiny was surging in her breast. Panicked by this feeling, she burst out, “What is to be done? He will know I resist him in my heart now! I am doomed!”
“Do you know nothing?” he demanded, eyes flashing. “He is omnibenevolent as well as omniscient. Therefore, he will not condemn you unless you act to uproot his order.”
“Will he detest me?”
“He cannot hate,” the cormorant re-joined bitterly. “Something that… good, cannot hate. Hate festers in the heart… It is… an evil thing.”
Virgil mused on his words with surprise in her heart. “How can you speak so well of a being you loathe?”
“I know what it is to loathe. I know what it is to loathe existence, and to loathe one’s fellows, and to loathe oneself. When one hates as long as I, it is impossible to revert to the pure state once more. The wound is infected and putrid and cannot be healed. I live with the scent of my own rotting existence, which drives me to cause the same wounds in others. You know who I am.”
“Can’t you…” Virgil began tentatively, “repent? He would take you back, if he does not hate as you say.”
The cormorant let out a fierce cry and outstretched its large wings, soaring into the sky with beating flight, away from the words he feared. Virgil found herself breathless in his unexpected departure, and realised her heart was pounding. She sat mutely on a bent tree bough, running over the conversation in her mind. Was it true that the lord would not exile her for the mutiny lying dormant within her? Before her rebellion could take root any further, she took flight also, heading in a direction opposite to that of the cormorant, back to the other angels on high.
***
As Virgil and Lucifer met more and more frequently, Virgil becoming further indoctrinated with Lucifer’s self-advancing ideals, they were unaware of the fact that they were being watched. Cadriel’s yearning for Virgil’s company had only increased since their last meeting, and he had grown uncomfortably accustomed to monitoring her activity from afar. When he had seen Virgil talking earnestly and emphatically to the cormorant in a tree in the far corner of Eden his surprise had known no bounds. His alarm only grew as he witnessed the increasing regularity of their meetings, as well as the thinness and pallor of Virgil. Her eyes were almost blue from lack of sleep and in her features Cadriel could see an unhealthy excitement that marked the influence Lucifer had over her.
Cadriel determined to prevent this foul camaraderie from blossoming any further, but for some time was uncertain as to how he could accomplish this. It was only when he perceived both the cormorant and the girl’s absence from their accustomed tree that he realised he may have been too hesitant. Instantaneously it occurred to him with terror where they had likely vanished to. A dogged frown on his brow, he took flight immediately, and left the boundary of Eden for the first time in his existence.
Cadriel paused on the threshold of the inferno, pulse faltering and pale robes fluttering in the surging, seething breath of the flames beneath him. He could see no sign of life beneath him, but his heart seemed to stretch to the utmost depth of the abyss in its desire to bring Virgil safely back to Eden. Wincing slightly and gritting his teeth, he threw himself into the howling nothingness, scorching his wings, hair and face as he did so. It was so smoky within the chamber of hell that he could not for some moments discern anything of his surroundings. He heard a familiar voice wailing inconsolably and without pausing, flew towards the sound.
Virgil’s form emerged from the thick smoke far beneath him, tears streaking her sooty face, wings blackened, and hair half burned away. A look of unparalleled relief crossed her face when she saw Cadriel, only to be replaced by despair a millisecond later as the reality of her predicament confronted her.
“He clipped my wings!” he heard her cry out in desolation. He struggled to get closer as the smoke filled his lungs. At last he managed to grab hold of her waist and pulled her up with him out of her prison.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed as his eyes watered and his wings thrashed against the rising heat of the inferno.
“He’ll forgive you,” he replied.
***
When they had returned to Eden and had washed away the soot and dirt and treated their stinging wounds, they re-joined the other angels to discover that an astonishing event had transpired – Adam and Eve had been tempted by Lucifer and had eaten the forbidden fruit. They had just moments ago been cast from Eden.
Cadriel and Virgil exchanged looks of horror and wonder and feared all the more the conference with the Lord that must take place. However, this was unnecessary, as Virgil found a letter in her chamber that granted forgiveness for her crimes yet ordered that in penance, she would not have her wings restored, and was from then on bound to walk the ground of Eden like a human. Virgil accepted this with grace and gratitude, and to this day Cadriel and Virgil tread together the earth of heaven, sharing fruit and talking. Cadriel has not used his wings once since Virgil was given her sentence.