raphael and uriel

Oh, raphael is there, but raphael is god-who-heals, gentlest of the cardinal four, and the war appalls him—michael had to beg him to captain the field hospital, had to go to him on his knees, and michael does not beg. It is a sign of how badly the war is going that he dared approach raphael at all.

but raphael is skilled in healing, second only to the father himself in the laying of hands, and so raphael does his duty, washes the blood from his brothers’ bodies and amputates broken wings and prays over the dying and slowly a cavern opens up inside him, filled with blood and things that cannot be mended.

(he flinches at the sound of distant shelling now, growing thin beneath his robes, dull-eyed and desperate to be anything but this—

so he runs to earth, runs to gabriel, who lets him mope around for a century or two before saying, if you’re staying, at least make yourself useful—there’s a kid called tobiah who needs help catching a fish.)

(humanity is a species made of porcelain and spun sugar, surviving on scar tissue and stubbornness. raphael loves them for it, learns again how to heal.)

and uriel—uriel is a seraphim under gabriel’s command, known for being particularly humorless and exacting (which is feat, considering the competition.) she’s stationed at the gates of eden with the fiery sword, which suits her—it got quiet after adam and eve left, so it’s just her, the stars and the wind and the smell of rotting apples.

at least, until eve shows up. uriel almost does not recognize her—time has lined her face and warped her body, made snow of her once-black hair. In her arms she carries an urn of stone, which she sets down at uriel’s feet. I have come to bury my husband and son in the place god promised them life.

you know I cannot allow you back into the garden, uriel tells her, amused by the first daughter, who thinks that her clenched jaw and squared shoulders discomfit a servant of the lord.

then help me, eve says. help me come as close as I might.

uriel does not move; she sees no point. instead she watches as once-blessed eve digs—first with the scapula of some animal, cleaned and sharpened, then with a stone once the bone shatters. eve sings as she works, tells stories to the wind (to uriel, but uriel does not realize that), speaks to the stone urn as though it were truly adam and abel. often she rests, sleeping or drinking from the water the uriel brings.

I am old, eve explains, when uriel asks what has happened to her, why she moves so stiffly, why her back bows and her face is lined. this is the apple’s poison at work—a slow rotting into silence.

(uriel does not know what to say to that)

on the third morning, eve does not rise.

eve? uriel calls. her voice sounds very small, amid the stars and wind. eve, wake up. eve. EVE.

eve does not stir, her body still curved around the urn as though it were a child, a lover. uriel watches her until the day comes, when uriel puts down her sword, picks up the shard of stone. starts digging.

(thousands of years later, she will check the lintels of eve’s daughters for blood, that death might pass over them. she has grown tired of burials.)