welcome. in. omikron.

His hands kept grasping at the salt, only for it to rain back down through the gaps in his shaking fingers. It must have been like losing her again—it made his wails all the louder. He was pressing salt to his lips for one final, briny kiss. His tears were running down his face and into his hands and into the salt and clumping it up, and he was pushing it together as if he could sculpt his wife that way. Snot and spit and saltwater dripped into the ground.

“Ado,” he cried. Lilith amended her thoughts—not the wife, but Ado. She would remember that name. Quieter, “Ado,” then a cry of despair and rage ripped itself out of his throat. “Ado, please!”

One of Lot’s daughters fell upon his shoulders, clutching him, begging him to get up and go with them, away from the salt, away from the pillar of smoke rising up from Sodom. “No,” he cried. He shrugged her off and scooped a handful of salt up again. “No, get off me, girl, Ado, come back…”

“What a shame.”

Asmodeus, next to her, had his gaze fixed firmly on the cities—their still-warm corpses, the wreckage. His face looked paler for the streak of ash over his chin. His eyes met Lilith’s, and he shrugged, gesturing in the direction of Sodom. “We spend all that time on it, and then…”

Behind him, Lot retched, howled, and he flinched.

“You should leave here,” Lilith said, taking pity on him. Sweet Asmodeus, leading an entire city merrily down the road to its death, yet afraid to look at a husband crying for his wife, who he had loved. “There are angels about tonight—go home. Go to Lucifer,” she added dryly.

She wasn't afraid of angels. She had been born human, was still human, so they ought not harm her—and should they try regardless, Lucifer would come bursting out of the earth's crust, teeth bared to eat them whole.

Asmodeus smiled wanly and kissed her cheek, then with a rush of air he was gone. She didn't know it then, but she wouldn't see him for another thousand years.

Lilith shook her hair out—there were fallen embers searing her scalp—and wrapped her headscarf tighter about her shoulders and neck. Then she went and knelt by the side of Lot’s daughter, joined her in pressing her hand to his shoulders.

“Come now,” she said firmly. “Ado is gone, but you can live. Your daughters are here. I am here.” She caught the eye of the second girl, a young, trembling lamb, with a cloth bag slung around her body, and beckoned her over.

It was not Ado’s fault, Lilith thought, scooping the woman's earthly remains into a child’s satchel whilst her husband sat staring at his salt-stained hands. His little daughters were around Lilith like moths, picking up snowy white clumps of mother and laying her reverently in the bag. She had looked back. So what? Lilith often found herself thinking of Eden. Everyone had roots, and some ran deeper than others.

“To Zoar, then,” she said to the children, shaking herself out of her reverie. "That is closest, I think?"

"Yes," said one of the girls, the first. Her sister leant over and hissed furiously at her, and she blushed. "Yes, miss, I mean."

Neither of them questioned her. Smart girls, in this case... or stupid, in others. But Lilith did not want to think of them that way. She felt that they had all three formed a bond through their work, as they gathered Ado up with their hands, falling into a rhythm—one of them holding the bag open, the other two gathering, taking turns to tip the salt in. It felt good to be relied upon, and to rely on others in turn. Even if only for a few moments.

"I will accompany you," she told her fellow worker-women. Their father was plainly in no condition to keep them safe. "Get him up."

The two of them rushed to their father to pull him to his feet—he leant on them heavily. Lot had been youthful the night before the city burnt, chubby and happy and bright eyed. Now he looked a century old.

Lilith saw them through the night to the village, and watched from just outside as Lot’s two girls led him past the low walls. There was a  woman kneeling by a well in the centre square, who looked up, took in the soot and smoke clinging to the three of them, and rushed to them with a cry; it roused the rest of the village, who poked their heads out of windows and doors and stables, and then they all came swarming out with concern. Bread and washcloths and water came with them; new, clean clothes; a little kitten for one of the girls to hold, to calm her trembling hands as they led her inside.

They would be safe now. Lilith backed away to leave, but the remaining girl looked up as she did. Her eyes were glassy with tears—after a moment she raised a tiny hand in farewell, and Lilith raised hers back and dipped her head.

Look at me, she thought to Eve, as she walked back into the dunes. I care for your great great great granddaughters, your wretched, grieving grandsons.

Look, Ado. Your daughters are safe now.

I fainted earlier and fell on my legs wrong and now one foot has a broken toe, and the other leg can't bear weight (muscles are strained I think. they didn't x-ray that one)

my job is very hands on/manual labour & patient safety and the hospital doctor told me none of that for a month. I can't even stand by myself, I have to be hauled up, so I definitely can't work 12 hour shifts without sitting down once and I can't help elderly people walk by using my arm as a crutch

so I'm out of work for a month. I can be frugal if needs be so I'm aiming to get 700ish for bills and food and such. I'll beta read for anyone who wants that - I'm going to be stuck on a chair with nothing to do for a while. please gimme a reblog, it helps!

“ASMODEUS,” Lucifer said to me one day, as we stood on the edge of the abyss, staring out at the storm-swept edge of the first ring, “how far would you go, for me?”

He was the closest to unsure he had ever been, in those days after the fall—perhaps he was afraid that consequence would chase us off. Not me.

“I fell out of Heaven for you,” I said. It’s thought that demons lie, and that is true, in large part, but not to Lucifer. In the absence of God he was all we had, our chosen, self-made king. It would be blasphemy.

“Oh?” he asked, and one large red eye regarded me, one of his great draconic heads swung around to look closer. “Not for our glorious revolution? Liberté, égalité, fraternité?” His voice was full of cheer.

Let it not be said that I was a cynic. I had believed in our lèse-majesté as much as any of us. There was always something about Heaven that was uncomfortable, that made me feel like a cat being stroked the wrong way—it stuck my hair on end. It was too bright for me. But would I have thrown my lot in with the rebels so instantly if they had instead been led by Michael, Raphael, or Gabriel, Ramiel or Uriel, Sariel or Raguel?

I knew what the answer was. It had always been Lucifer’s inflaming speeches and arresting beauty, his simmering unhappiness, the way the light refracted from his wings; his smile, turned up mischievously at the corners like a cat; the way he remembered everyones name, even the lowliest principality; his stories and songs and bright voice, his gentleness when alone and easy confidence before a crowd. He had looked at me, and seen me, and whispered, close to my ear, “join me.”

I was entranced, ensnared, enchanted. Even before we fell, I had committed a cardinal sin: I loved him more than God.

I didn’t want to tell him this. His regard was everything to me, as I said. The thought of his cheerful mouth turning to a sneer or his eyes filling with disinterest as I revealed the depths of my reverence was a thought so painful I could feel it. It was my secret, that I loved him in a way the rest of his legions didn’t, that I had said yes to him because I wanted to see his eyes light up with joy and triumph, that I wanted to stick it to Heaven less than I wanted to be by his side forever, and ever, and after that too. 

“I would do it all again,” I replied, dragging my words out hesitantly. I didn’t want to lie to him—and besides, he was king of lies, and would hear it—so this had to be phrased delicately. Threaded down the middle.

Eventually I decided how. He hadn’t looked away, but had waited patiently for me, watching in silence. “You were our revolution,” I answered. “I couldn’t have fallen if it were any other in your place, because they would never have been there. I would go to the depths of this place for you, I would go back to heaven if you so pleased, I would petrify myself here for a thousand years. I would even go to Earth.”

Earth was currently marching in the final, triumphant years of the great Jurassic parade. It was filled with vast deserts of dust, lush rainforests, fathomless oceans, the future Jurassic coast of Britain waiting for fossils to sink into the silt. Somewhere on earth packs of compsognathus chittered to each other over the sound of the rain. Janenschia bellowed trees down. A pair of plesiosaurs twined their necks together. An allosaurus raised its head and lightning split the sky behind it.

Man had not yet been placed in Eden, but that would come later.

“All I ask,” I said to Lucifer, on that cliff, “is that you don’t send me from your side.”

The king of all demons did not answer for a long time. He stretched languidly, part snake part lion, and arched all his many necks. Eventually he said, “Heaven is lost to us, by Their decree and the taint of this place. We—you—would burn. I would not ask you to go back there.”

“But you would ask me to go elsewhere.”

“I would ask that you join my counsel,” said Lucifer idly, examining one claw with sixty six smoldering eyes. “Mammon, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Astaroth, Belphegor, myself—Astarte did not survive the flames.”

One in three of us had. I bowed my heads, all eight. Astarte had been bright and rigid, a solid bulwark of light, and as we began to pitch from Heaven he had struck out with his spear and cleaved one of Raphael’s wings in two. He had not been someone of many words, but he had drawn last blood, and that commanded respect.

“Seven of us,” I realised, “for seven circles.”

“Or seven archangels,” Lucifer replied darkly. “But you have the shape of it. Claim one as your own—I would not ask you to stay there. Only oversee it, when you must, and then return to Pandemonium.” Part of his lip lifted in a sly grin, exposing thousands of teeth. “By my side.”

He rapped his wing finger against the bedrock.

“I mean to alight on earth soon,” he continued. “Once bitten, but we will not be twice shy. I mean to take my piece of Eden. Get my claws into the grand plan, rummage around a bit, if you will. I need those I can trust to rule in my name. You are one of them.”