Chapter 15 #2
“They are gone, and with them the tapestries they had woven and unraveled through thousands of years when fledgling humans breathed life into them through the power of belief.” Lucifer turned to stare out the window to stare upon the tiny dragon still throwing a fit on the highest spire of the castle.
“That is where you are different—and you are special. Nobody needs to believe in you for you to endure throughout the ages. But in every future where my father’s precious daughter survives, there is one commonality.
That commonality is you. The only futures where my darling persists through the ages have one commonality: the Christ survives.
So, heed my words, Crystal. I use you, but I use you for the most important person to me in any existence.
I won’t ask your forgiveness in this. I won’t mean it, because I will do everything in my power to cherish and protect her.
I meant every word of my vow to her. Together we remain until death do us part, and I will tear up every stone on this world—and every world—to delay her death for all eternity. My hell is a life without her in it.”
I could accept that—and I admired the Devil’s devotion, the depth of his love, and his willingness to bare his soul to me.
More importantly, I appreciated his stance and wished for the same for myself, a partner who turned my paradise into a true heaven but brought with him the price of existence becoming the true definition of hell without him in it.
“That is what I want in life,” I confessed.
“A love that deep, a love that pure—a love worth preserving the world for just so that he had a place to stand with me. But that’s not so easily found, is it? ”
“It’s not. The only reason I have her is because of my father. He knows every crack in my soul, and he made her to fill them in and make me whole.”
“Yes, I did,” a still and quiet voice whispered from the air itself.
“I have waited from your first breath for this moment. But first, another matter. Crystal, your precious babies are safe. I have seen to them myself. There were a few fated to perish this day, and I escorted them through the valley myself, where their seeds have been replanted and will grow in the garden you tend. But the little lives you worried for, imperiled from the storm you feel is of your making, will sleep well this night and wake refreshed and ready to live their lives as nature intended. They are of great importance, but so is this moment and this discussion, so I did as I needed for all to be well.”
“Father,” Lucifer greeted. “I see you are meddling again.”
“I am. We both wish for the same thing. He who stood in my place made a mistake, and should I correct that mistake, the End of Days will not come to pass. I am a loving god, and no loving god wishes the end for his children. No loving god wishes an eternity of suffering beyond the end of time. I am a loving god.”
The pain in His voice astonished me, as did the tendrils of guilt that shimmered around a presence, one I couldn’t quite make out.
I tilted my head to the side. I closed my eyes, and once again, the sensation of power manifested around me.
He reminded me of a star in the sky, burning in the night.
I recognized the truth of the matter: that light could destroy as readily as it could illuminate.
The guilt, however, slithered through the air and left dark marks.
I seized the strand and began the tedious process of pulling it free until I found the connection point.
Countless severed threads frayed where the taint lingered.
When I concentrated, the impression of roaring water filled my head, destroying all in its wake and leaving the world in ruin.
Humanity had recovered, as had life, but the moment had left its mark on His soul.
I could understand, then, why the stories used the rainbow as the symbol of His promise to never punish humanity for its sins again.
The spray of rushing water in the light of the sun created the beautiful and shimmering colors.
The promise had been made, but His doubt remained.
With that insight, I understood how the End of Days might come. For as long as that doubt remained, for as long as that darkness lurked near His radiance, He might be the hand that ended everything—and ushered in Lucifer’s living hell.
But what could I do?
I toyed with the shadowed thread, and I wondered what the Fates would have done. A sinking feeling began deep in my gut. “Lucifer, did the Fates ever do anything other than exist? Did they actually weave those tapestries, or did they allow the tapestries to weave themselves?”
“Every rare now and again, they weaved, but it was only in moments of greed or revenge. They cared nothing for the tapestries they tended, not really. They existed because humanity forced them to exist,” the Devil replied.
“They had no love for humanity, for in their view, their tapestries should have been woven and unraveled in the natural order of life and death. They… were the very thing they were brought to life to prevent. They were paradoxical in nature, and this wore away at their very souls. And now they rest. They tried to rest as they could even when they still lived.”
I pondered his words, taking care to keep my eyes closed so I would not lose track of the shadowed tendril I held, the thinnest thread of future destruction that could corrupt His shining radiance into becoming the deepest darkness.
In some ways, it reminded me of the node before I had begun untangling it and keeping it from strangling itself.
As I hadn’t been eradicated from existence for being informal with Lucifer’s father, I asked, “What is your name?”
“Before I woke up as God, my name was Hugh. Then I became Yahweh, but souls tend to view me as Him. It makes the burden of my presence easier to bear. Humanity decided speaking my name is a sin. It is not.”
A sparkle, deep within the shining radiance, captured my attention. I kept the dark thread in my left hand, and I seized the sparkling thread, gossamer in its thinnest yet strong like the finest of silk. I expected it could, with the wrong blow, shatter.
That thought pained me, and I considered the problem before me. “Hugh, how do you feel about the flood?”
I wondered if He understood my real question, and that I wanted to know what he, the glimmer of mortality within the expansive presence of divinity, felt of the event that had birthed the shadows within him.
“All my children deserve free will, and no loving father punishes his children for using the free will gifted to them. It is my greatest sin.”
If I were to judge by the light within Him, it was His only sin.
I held the answer in my hand, but I wondered if I could also plant seeds for the future I wished to preserve, not just for me, but for Lucifer and everyone else who deserved to be able to live without the awareness of impending destruction looming on a distant horizon.
“If you knew, before you had become Yahweh, of that sin and of that remorse, would you have offered your forgiveness?”
The silence stretched, and after a while, He sighed. “Yes.”
I wondered what sort of battle he’d fought with himself before deciding that was his truth.
Careful that I worked with a fragile strand, one of irreplaceable value, I eased it from the core of the radiance so that I could get a closer look at the glimmer to see what made it stand out in the light of a star.
A hint of color, and then another, played over the surface, as though it strained to hide the rainbow within.
Smiling at the thought of the rainbow becoming a true promise for a bright future one day, I touched the seeking end of the darkness to the tapered end of the glory that had once been simple, plain, and quite probably boring Hugh.
For but a moment, the strands clashed and battled, but then bit by bit, the gossamer shimmer grew in intensity.
Hoping I wasn’t about to make a mistake, I began tugging apart the shadowed cord, unraveling it so I might be able to braid its remnants into new glory and a new beginning.
I fed the doubt and the sin to the light born from honest forgiveness, and when I reached the tattered and frayed ends near the core, I brought them back into the weave as well.
In time, I could only hope He would find peace, but that journey was one only He could make.
“Then forgive yourself and the Him who came before you. That way, perhaps the End of Days will become just a memory among many, one forgotten with time.” Only when confident the light had devoured all hints of darkness did I release the strands. “Thank you for caring for the alligators, Hugh.”
“Great or small, I made them all, and they are my children as much as this one is my beloved son. Like you, their passing would have brought me pain, for they had done nothing to deserve that fate. But that is why you acted. You did not recognize it then, but you understood that tornado was not part of the natural order. You did not fight to change fate, but you fought to restore their right to choose their own fate. Her death would not have been a consequence of her making but one of yours. And now that you know this, what will you do?”
I considered his question, and I opened my eyes to stare out over the lake and at the little dragon pitching a big fit over the power still coiling around and through his castle.
“I expect tornadoes will have a short lifespan around me. I do not like them in my turf, and should the storms be wise, they will behave in accordance to my rules—and my rules say no tornadoes in my neighborhood. This is my paradise, and I will preserve it.”