Chapter Text
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
--Matthew 19:24, the Bible, New International Version
Sorey peered over the edge of the cliff at the world below, a kaleidoscope of shining colors and cultures and humans more numerous than the stars in the sky. Behind him, Edna let out a put-upon sigh. Her wings rustled and cast the faintest of glowing shadows across Sorey, her aura warm and pleasant. “You’re never gonna make it. Dummy.”
Sorey could not tear his eyes away from the cities heaped upon cities. Even at this great distance the cacophony of daily life wafted into his ears with a kind of melody to it, energetic in its haste. “I bet I could,” he said, partly to egg her on. “Angels have gone to Earth before, right?”
“Only stupid ones.”
He finally glanced back at her with a lopsided grin. The light of Heaven stood behind her, casting a glow of celestial light around her silhouette and obscuring her features. Sorey didn’t need to see her face to know her lips were turned down in disapproval. “You did just call me a dummy,” he pointed out.
Sure enough, Edna tossed her head, the eyeroll so strong it took place on four different faces. “You have to have a reason to go to Earth.”
“Isn’t curiosity reason enough?”
“Curiosity killed the cat, and you’re nothing but a kitten.”
Sorey closed his eyes and let the words roll over in his head. Curiosity killed the cat had a rhythm to it that reminded him of the melody from Earth, but it struck him as unfinished. There was a catch at the end, a bit that pulled one’s tongue outward and insisted that something else was coming, but he couldn’t understand what. It was the same feeling the cat had probably felt, he reasoned, that had left it so curious.
Assuming a cat could be curious. Perhaps that was why it had died? Experiencing an emotion that was fundamentally incompatible with its nature? The archangels used to use that sort of idea to explain why angels and humans could not understand one another. Sorey wouldn’t know; he had never known a cat.
“Hey, Edna,” he asked, “what’s a cat?”
“You think I know? It’s just something my brother would say to me.” She grimaced in distaste. “Don’t tell me you’re going to obsess over it now.”
“I won’t tell you,” Sorey replied, because he could not fathom ever lying to Edna. He kept staring over the cliff’s edge at the world below, watching it turn beneath the milky swirl of clouds and galaxies.
He was interrupted a moment later by Edna, who felt her point hadn’t been properly made. “You should forget about Earth,” she said. “You can’t just pop down to Earth and expect the archangels to be forgiving.”
“But forgiving is our job! Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much.”
“I don’t always worry,” she muttered. Then her shoulders sagged, and she turned on her heel, her four wings aligning in preparation for flight. “Fine. See if I care what you do. But when you’re stranded on Earth over your head and you can’t tell your elbow from your knee, don’t expect me to help you.”
She leapt from the ground and took off into the sky before he could reply, disappearing into a shower of photons. Sorey watched her go for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the world below.
Angels had been to Earth before. He’d heard the tales of knights and submarines and light technology that could reveal the deepest organs of the body. He’d heard of beautiful gardens and ancient temples, and creatures that lived so deep in the jungle that even humanity had only legends to describe them. They had all made it back somehow, right? You didn’t have to Fall to go to Earth. Surely, you didn’t.
Sorey got to his feet, his robe falling back into place around him, and gazed once more over the edge of the world.
He wondered.