Chapter Text
36 days Before
There was the world. There was everything. Earth, air, shadow, light, water, stone—for the very first time, existence. There was life. It was spirits made visible, made into forms, plants and animals. Moving, breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling. Needing—but that, life, was far too big a thing to comprehend all at once. Best to take it piece by piece.
First, there were the plants. They were everywhere. In the beginning, the world was all a garden. They could only be described by words that had never existed before. They were all colors and shapes, brown stalks stretching way up high, green triangles and diamonds waving in the breeze. Splashes of red, purple, dots of blue, yellow. There were textures and scents. They changed every day, every minute, the plants grew and grew, just when the whole world seemed about to overflow, they grew more, and expanded the garden with them.
Then there were the animals. More shapes, more textures, yet none of them could be defined by these alone. They all had names. There were so many words, in this world. The animals scurried and scuffled, some drifted through the waters, some fluttered through the air. They feared and fought and searched for things and built even more. There were so many choices being made.
There was the world, and there was so much of it. It was all there, all for you to see, to feel. To live in.
It all stood before him. Crawly stared with wide eyes, taking it all in, for the very first time. Existence. The world. Whatever you wanted to call it. He’d had no idea.
He was on a hill that overlooked a forest, a mass of green that undulated with the breeze. Air was something he hadn’t been expecting, either. The way it surrounded you and held you, constantly, as though it were keeping you there, a part of this place. Those who were ‘alive’ needed it. He took a deep breath. The effect of that alone was staggering. It filled you. One moment, you had no form at all, and the next, you were something that could be filled to the brim.
Crawly let out the air. He blinked and slowly walked forward. Walking—this was new, too, but apparently his form came equipped with it. His form…it was a strange thing to have. He felt contained, but he didn’t mind. It felt solid. He wasn’t sure about how he looked yet. Supposedly all the angels, and used-to-be-angels, looked similar, in this new world of vision, but he had not seen anyone else to compare. There were words to describe how each form moved, like ‘walk’, and some were words that the angels had already used, like ‘run’, for those whose words had moved the quickest in heaven. Crawly was named after the way he had edged around trouble, sliding in between the cracks and sinking himself lower just to avoid conflict. It was not a name he had given himself. He wondered what ‘crawl’ would come to mean in this physical world.
He continued down the hill. Technically, he was not in The ‘Garden’ yet. That would not be allowed so easily, but at this stage, the boundaries were not very clear. Life had taken over nearly everywhere. It was as though the creation of life was still spilling out across the earth, racing to cover every nook and cranny. Plants spread first, animals were soon to follow. Crawly was shocked to catch a glimpse of some sort of spirit whenever any beast came near enough for him to look into its eyes. They all scrambled away, afraid of him, but he didn’t mind, being wary, himself. He knew there would be more like him that he might run into, eventually—not exactly like him, of course. There would be no other demons here, himself being the one that Below had sent to do the task, but there were some angels around to protect His creation. Crawly would deal with them later. There were also, of course, the humans. The purpose of his mission—well, the mission he had been sent to do. He had not come up with the idea, and he had certainly not volunteered, but he hadn’t protested as much as the other demons would have, either.
He had been curious. It was the same kind of curiosity that had driven him to make each seemingly small decision that had ended, eventually, with his ‘fall’. Too many questions for a proper angel. But this time, curiosity had been completely worth it.
Crawly walked until he reached the bottom of the hill. Here, if he kept on going, the forest would swallow him completely. He kept on going anyway.
It was vast and green and cool. He liked the coolness. It felt so refreshing, after all his time…Down There. There was even more to see of the plants up close, more shapes and textures. The air was different, and there was more light than he had been expecting, peering in from between the leaves. Light. That was a good one. He’d known that God had created light, he’d heard it from the others who had been more involved with monitoring the ‘plans’ of the other side. They said light would be something to help the humans get by, something to help them see, and to keep them warm. Oh, but it was so much more than that. Crawly stopped in the shadow of a particularly tall tree. In front of him, on the ground and on the smaller shrubs and ferns that grew there, the light from the sun only reached the earth in patches, dapples that shimmered when the leaves moved in the wind. Everyone had heard how God had created light by now. Without having seen it, they said, ‘it was good’, but if they only knew. If they could see the way it moved around with the darkness, the shadows and shade, the dancing spots of sun through the leaves. None of them could have a single clue.
Crawly smiled in amazement. He had been uncertain, at first, about his task. ‘God—against whom you have recently, and somewhat absent-mindedly, rebelled—God, the All-Powerful, has Created something entirely inconceivable. There is a new form of being which the entire legions of heaven have been sworn to protect. You. Small one they call Serpent who is trying to blend into the corner. Go mess it up.’ ‘Serpent’ was another name they called him. It referred to creeping and twisting, the way he would twist his words. He had gone, though, not just because the other demons would likely have done unspeakable things if he hadn’t. But he had fallen from heaven partly because he had wondered things that he shouldn’t have. Now, he had wondered what all this fuss was about. So he had gone.
Maybe this would end up being something he should not have wondered, too. Perhaps he would end up killed by angels, destroyed by his own kind for having bungled his terribly unclear job, or banished into nothingness by the Lord Himself. Crawly took a moment to learn what fear felt like in this new, physical world. But then he moved on. There was none of the heavenly host around now. Only the new creations.
Crawly entered the new world with a grin.