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Aziraphale was familiar with tall tales. Intimately familiar. He’d lied to God. Which...might still be sinking in, if he was perfectly honest.
The last time that angels had lied, it had led to the Fall; everybody knew that. So it followed, logically, that lying was bad. And that anyone who did it—well. But Aziraphale had had to lie, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have just said that he’d given away the sword, not when it had been entrusted to him; and yet, he couldn’t have not given it away, either, not when Adam and Eve had needed help. If there was someone in need of help, and you were able to provide it, how could you possibly say no? Well, in any case, Aziraphale didn’t have it in him.
All of which was to say, Aziraphale was an angel who was familiar with lies, and they were bad things; things that you only said when you had no other choice. They could cause a lot of pain. Which begged the question:
“Why are Adam and Eve lying to their child?”
Crawly, reclining next to Aziraphale as they watched the humans a short distance away, only shrugged.
“Couldn’t say. They’re human. Why do they do anything?”
Aziraphale folded his arms.
“That’s no excuse at all. Look. Adam and Eve know better. They know about God, and the Garden, and Heaven and all that. So why tell the child something different? Lies can cause a lot of harm; just look what they did to Satan, and to your sort.”
Crawly frowned.
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” he said. “And anyway, that’s completely different. The situation isn’t the same at all. They’re not trying to stir up trouble—I don’t think. Why would they want to hurt the child? It’s theirs. It came from their bodies. Er.”
Both the angel and the demon exchanged an uncomfortable sort of look. The whole reproduction thing was still new and a little odd, if you asked them.
“Well,” said Aziraphale, “I suppose the only way to find out is to ask.”
“Ask!?” Crawly sat up. “You can’t just go down there and ask, Angel.”
“And why not? Are there rules about it? Did your side tell you that you were forbidden from interacting with the humans? Because mine didn’t. My side told me that I was to look after them; to guide them. A great honor. And I can’t exactly do that by avoiding them for the rest of their lives.” And with that, Aziraphale stood from his seat in the grass and made as if to go over to Adam and Eve right then and there.
“Agh—Angel—!” Crawly scrambled to his feet as well. “Wait—Wait. You can’t just go over and start demanding why they’re lying—not in front of the kid.”
“And why not?” Aziraphale looked down his nose at the demon.
“Because, because—well. That would—I mean.” Crawly took a breath. “Look. The kid’s got to trust them, right? Believe they know what they’re doing; that they know what’s best for them. It’ll help it survive. So if you go over there with accusations of lies—”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
Aziraphale sat back down again in the tall, brown grass, and looked down the hill at where Eve was sitting on a stone, an infant in her arms, leaning down to tell her elder child lies about where the animals had come from. The child looked up with big brown eyes and accepted every word as if it was gospel.
“I still don’t like it,” said the angel.
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to. You just have to wait, right? So wait.” Crawly gave a boneless sort of stretch, and yawned a bit. “Actually, I’m a little curious,” he said. “I think I’m going to go and get a closer look.”
And with that, the man-shaped being was no more, and instead a large serpent was in his place.
“Crawly!” the angel hissed, but the serpent ignored him and slithered away through the grass towards Eve and Adam and the children. The angel huffed, made a complicated little motion with his hand, and followed after him.
“Crawly, Crawly, wait up!”
The angel tramped through the tall grass, following the dark flicker of the serpent’s tail. It stopped at the base of the hill behind a bush.
“Couldn’t resist either, Angel?” said the serpent, and Aziraphale scoffed.
“Hardly. I was chasing after you.”
“Mmhm,” said Crawly, and then craned his neck forward to peer through the leaves and listen closely. Eve was speaking, continuing the story she’d been telling before they approached.
“And so the jackal told your father, ‘watch closely, and I will show you how to catch a hare.’ And your father listened, and he watched, and he saw how the jackal followed the hare’s tracks; how he crept silently through the grass. Your father watched well, and he learned, and once the jackal had finished, and caught his meal, your father told him ‘Thank you. Don’t come back this way,’ and sent him on his way. And that is how your father caught us breakfast for the morning.”
The child blinked up at Eve with those big brown eyes, pulled their thumb from their mouth, and asked, “But why? How did Papa know that helping the jackal would mean the jackal would help him too?”
Eve smiled and leaned down to press a kiss into the child’s curls.
“Your father is a wise man, and a good one. Usually he has a reason for things. But in this case, he was kind for the sake of being kind, and the jackal saw that, and he helped.”
“Crawly,” said Aziraphale, and Crawly, who’d been listening with rapt attention, startled, jostling the leaves on the bush. Neither of the humans noticed, though, because Aziraphale didn’t want them to.
“What?” said Crawly, grumpily, the top of his head smarting from where it had smacked into a branch.
“I’m fairly certain that Adam cannot talk to animals. The Almighty didn’t make jackals with brains large enough to handle language—or the vocal cords.”
“Tha’sss not the point,” said Crawly slowly. “I don’t think. See, remember early on, when it was just Adam and Eve? And they were alone outside of the Garden, and there were no fruit trees, and all that they had was your sword?”
“Yes, of course,” said Aziraphale. “I was there.”
“Right,” said Crawly. “Well, d’you remember the first time Adam did catch a hare? How he did it?”
“He messed up an awful lot,” said Aziraphale.
“Yeah, but do you remember how he got better?”
Aziraphale’s eyes lit up.
“You’re saying that it’s not really a lie! Not completely, anyway. Because he did watch the jackal and learn from it!”
Crawly nodded.
“That’sss what I was getting at,” he said.
“So—so—” said Aziraphale, “it’s less of a lie, and more of a, more of a—a lesson?” Crawly nodded. “And Eve said that being kind for the sake of being kind is the sort of thing that gets rewarded, too—oh, that’s awfully clever, fitting that all in there.”
On the other side of the bush, the child was asking other questions; about birds, and plants, and why all the streams flowed into bigger lakes—are they lonely? And Eve, with the help of Adam, who was sitting by their fire skinning breakfast, fielded all of them.
Birds traded away their hands in order to fly, and snakes lost their legs escaping a tight spot, and frogs croaked because they talked so much that they lost their beautiful voices.
Aziraphale and Crawly listened raptly to all of it—or at least, Aziraphale did. At some point, Crawly slithered away to sun himself on a rock a short ways away. Aziraphale, though, was absorbed with these lies which weren’t lies. Lies that held little truths of their own, which were beautiful and creative, and which Eve and Adam crafted so easily and naturally. Seeing these things that the humans made—intangible though they were, mere sounds in the air with no permanence of their own—it inspired a kind of wonderment the like of which Aziraphale had not felt since he had watched the Almighty shape life out of nothing. It—it didn’t compare, of course, not to God—nothing could compare to the wonder of God, no matter the creativity, or the feelings they inspired in Aziraphale himself—that was obvious. Simply obvious. Nothing could be more inspiring than God. And yet...
“I’ve never seen you so enraptured by anything,” said Crawly. It was evening, now, and the angel and the serpent had ended up back on their hill again, as the humans had turned to other things. “Not even when talking about Heaven.”
Aziraphale’s face made an odd, uncomfortable-looking twitch.
“What—I—how dare you, you serpent! I—I am an angel! There is nothing more foremost in my heart than God. It’s simply...that these lies-that-aren’t-lies are new. They’re interesting. I’m just...interested.” Aziraphale wasn’t looking at Crawly.
“Huh,” said the serpent.
“What?” snapped the angel.
“Nothing, nothing. So. Are you still going to, er, talk to Adam and Eve about it? Accuse them of terrible, terrible lies?”
“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Well, no. That is, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I am going to talk to them. I just won’t fling around any accusations. That would be quite unnecessary.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“So, what are you going to ask them, then?”
“Oh,” said the angel. “Well, a bit more about these not-lies, I suppose. It’s just, how do they come up with them? The way that they tell them, it’s wonderful.”
The serpent made a noncommittal sound and rearranged his coils on the warm stone.
“If you say so,” he said. “I mean, they’re not bad. But wouldn’t it be more interesting to ask them about those net things that they made out of reeds?”
“Not particularly,” said the angel. They fell silent for a time, watching the shadows grow long and creep across the grass. Eventually Crawly became man-shaped again, his patch of sunlight gone. The sun sank down behind a distant hill.
“The little ones are asleep,” Crawly said eventually, leaning forward to peer down at the humans. And indeed they were, with the elder child curled up on a soft pile of furs as Eve ran her hand through their hair, and the babe swaddled beside them.
“Aren’t you going to go talk to them?” prompted Crawly, and Aziraphale hummed. “Don’t tell me you’ve got cold feet.”
“Well, it’s just that we haven’t actually spoken to Adam and Eve since the Garden,” said the angel. “What if they don’t want to see me?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” asked the demon. “You helped them, gave them your sword and all that. It’s me they wouldn’t want to see. And besides, it’s not like they could bloody well get rid of you. You’re an angel. You could do whatever you wanted to them, and they couldn’t stop you.”
“I would never!”
“And yet the point still stands. What happened to the angel I knew, who did what he wanted? Where did he go?”
“Nowhere,” said Aziraphale sullenly. “Stop pestering me, you serpent. I’m going.”
Crawly laughed as Aziraphale got to his feet, smoothing his hands perfunctorily down the front of his white robe. Then, with a sniff, he marched away down the hill, the demon’s snickers echoing behind him.
He hesitated at the edge of Adam and Eve’s little campsite. In truth, he was rather nervous; it had been some time since he’d spoken to anyone at all, other than Crawly. Why, even in the Garden, he hadn’t had much in the way of company. And now he was going to barge in there, as if he had any right, and—and what? Demand answers? He didn’t think that he could do that. And yet, he couldn’t not. Not with Crawly surely watching him from the hilltop above. He allowed himself to harbor a nasty sort of feeling towards the demon for a moment, before he pushed it away and reminded himself that he was better than pettiness and grudges. He stepped slowly into the light of the campfire, no miracle this time to shield him from sight.
Adam and Eve looked up as he stepped past the bushes. Their lips parted in surprise.
“Er. Hello,” said Aziraphale, uncomfortably. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it? The little one’s gotten big, and you’re...you’re here. Er. You seem to be doing all right for yourselves? Been putting that sword to good use?”
Adam had climbed to his feet as Aziraphale spoke, and Eve had returned to running her fingers through the child’s hair.
“We have been.” Adam’s voice was slow, deep and soft, but his lips curled up in a smile as he gestured the angel forward. Aziraphale approached somewhat stiltedly. “We owe you a great deal, Angel of the Eastern Gate.”
Adam reached behind him, then, to pick up the sword from where it lay beside the flames. Aziraphale flinched back, but the man only turned the sword in his grasp and extended the handle towards the angel.
“You want it back. We were wondering when you would come.”
“What?” Aziraphale raised his hands, as if to push the sword away. “What, no, no, of course not. You need it far more than I do; I couldn’t possibly take it. Especially when you have children to look after. I—I meant what I said before. You need it.”
Eve and Adam exchanged a look, and then Adam slowly lowered himself back down beside the flames, the sword placed carefully back on the packed dirt beside him.
“Then what can we do for you?” he asked, an uncomfortable degree of awe still in his voice.
“Oh. Yes. I was hoping we might talk? I was—I was curious, I suppose. I’ve been watching over you to the degree that I’m allowed, you see. And I was wondering—the, the things you tell the child, about talking animals, and the reasons birds have feathers and fish have fins—they’re not true, of course. But they are beautiful, and I… Oh. Perhaps I just needed to tell you that.”
“You don’t mind, Angel of the Eastern Gate?” asked Eve. “That they’re not the stories of your God?”
“Of—of my—well. No. Not now that I understand their purpose. And please do call me Aziraphale. That’s my name, and Angel of the Eastern Gate is rather...clunky.” It was also said with rather too much reverence for Aziraphale’s taste; it made him uncomfortable. He might be an angel, but he had never made such lovely things as Adam and Eve had managed in their short time, with clever hands and beautiful voices.
“Aziraphale,” they echoed, and he nodded.
“So, you called them stories, these truths-within-lies?”
“Stories,” said Eve, “tales; fables. Yes. And you...like them?”
“Like them? My dear Eve, they are incredible; why, I’ve never heard the like—I haven’t been so, so impressed with anything—well. Not since the Almighty, of course. Nothing, er. Nothing could compare to the Almighty.” He chuckled uncomfortably. “In any case, I, I quite love them. How do you come up with them?”
Again, Eve exchanged a look with Adam, and then they turned curious gazes towards the angel.
“It’s...natural?” Eve said, eyebrows furrowed slightly. “They come easily, if you have an idea. After that…” She shrugged slightly, a small lifting of her shoulders.
“Oh,” said Aziraphale, and thought, ‘Oh, it’s no wonder that God favored you.’
The angel spoke with Adam and Eve for much of the remaining evening, until he noticed them grow weary, though he himself did not. Then he allowed them their rest, and retreated to the hill. Crawly was waiting for him.
“So,” asked the demon, “did you get the answers you wanted?”
Aziraphale smiled, looking down at the little campfire below them.
“Not really,” he said.
“And you’re not bothered by that?”
The angel only shook his head.
“I’m more eager, I think, than anything,” he said, “to see what they come up with next. And this is just the beginning. Humanity has a long future ahead of them. Imagine the tales they might come up with! Well. That is, I can’t. But I am looking forward to them.”
By Crawly’s puzzled expression, he didn’t really grasp what Aziraphale was saying. Not yet, anyway. But Aziraphale was sure that he would come to in time. After all, the future stretched ahead of them: vast and full of possibilities. And he had seemed rather impressed with the weaving that Eve and Adam had done. So perhaps his interests simply lay in other directions.
But it was no matter. Things would turn out how they would, and Aziraphale would enjoy his stories in the meanwhile. And it no longer mattered whether they held divine truth at all, so long as they held their own littler, but no less valuable, ones.