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In the year Three House and the twenty-ninth year of the Huey Tlatoani’s reign, the great lord Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, he who shoots arrows into the sky, who through the strength of his obsidian club and his shield had caused all the great lords of Anahuac to tremble and prostrate themselves at the feet of the Triple Alliance, perished after a long and debilitating bout of illness. Wasting no time at all, his viceroy and brother, Tlacaelel, humbly beseeched the two other great lords of the Triple Alliance to come and help him determine the matter of succession: Lord Totoquihuaztli, who ruled over the nation of Tepanecas from Tlacopan, and Lord Nezhualcoyotl, who ruled over the nation of Acolhuas from Tetzcoco. The island-city of Tenochtitlan was abuzz with excitement as these reverend lords, their courts, and most importantly of all, their money, which would bring once-in-a-lifetime profits to the various merchants in the city.
Such was the situation that one Motolinia, née Aziraphale, found himself in. He had arrived in town but a few years prior, establishing himself as a small-time seller of fine paper and books with one of the local merchant guilds. Everyone thought he was a bit of a strange fellow—dissuading his potential customers from buying any of his books with rhetorical tricks and flourishes that would even make a royal courtier want to weep—but somehow he always turned a profit at the end of each market-week which he generously shared with his guild mates, and so no one gave him too much trouble.
“Motolina!” One of his fellow merchants, a stout man named Tetepon, cried out from across the market square, barreling his way through the busy crowd to make it to the disguised Angel’s stall.
“Are you alright, my dear chap? Are your creditors giving you a fright again?” Aziraphale told the man, bidding him to sit on a reed mat he kept next to his stall. It looked like he must have run halfway across the entire island-city, his face having gone a marigold-orange color.
“Water!” Tetepon finally wheezed. Motolina offered Tetepon a calabash filled with water, which the other merchant almost inhaled in a single large gulp. The other man looked at him with an exhausted smile, saying, “No, Prince Axayacatl isn’t giving me trouble. Give me more water, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“You’re going to make yourself sick if you drink too fast, love!” The hidden Angel exclaimed, refilling the calabash with his angelic powers while the other man’s back was turned. “Here, I’ll give you sips while you talk.”
Tetepon didn’t make an argument as Motolina tipped the calabash-bottle to his lips and let him drink again. “There’s someone looking for you. An Acolhua dignitary from the court of Nezhualcoyotl: tall guy, red-dyed hair, fancy looking cape dyed black.”
“An Acolhua dignitary? Looking for little old me?”
“Yes, specifically you,” Tetepon said, pointing to the great temple-pyramid which dominated Tenochtitlan’s skyline. “He said that he would be coming as soon as the sun hangs over the Great Teōcalli.”
“How oddly specific!” The hidden Angel giggled to himself, before coming to a full stop, the calabash full of water clattering to the ground. “Wait a minute, Tetepon. What color did you say his hair was again?”
“Erm—” was all that Tetepon managed to get out before a man materialized from the crowd, sashaying over to Motolina’s stall. He was precisely as Tetepon had described: tall and of noble mien, skin tanned a deep brown like roasted cacao beans, and wore around his shoulders a timatli-cape dyed inky black. His hair was dyed deep red with cochineal, and his face obscured by a mask made of mosaic tiles.
“My lord!” Tetepon cried out, falling upon his face with reverence. Aziraphale stood his ground, refusing to even bow his head or acknowledge him. People looked on in horror across the market-place, standing as far away from this spectacle as possible, lest they were implicated in Motolina’s insanity.
“Hey, Tele-pole. Didn’t you let my boyfri—erm, I mean, friend know that I was coming?” The red-haired nobleman said in utterly broken Nahuatl, pointing at the sun hanging just above the Great Teōcalli, setting ablaze the white-washed staircase so that it looked like it was flecked with streams of gold.
“I did, my lord!” Tetepon cried out.
“You sure?” He replied, looking the hidden Angel up and down, eyes lingering on his bare buttocks for a little too long. “He looks a little… out of it?”
Motolina continued to pointedly ignore this foreign dignitary, even as he literally pulled the reed mat out from under him, causing him and Tetepon to stumble onto the cobblestones. The poor merchant looked like he was about to pass out from fear.
“I am sorry, my Lord Popocatl!” Tetepon shouted in affected agony, finding a little dirt to smear his face with. “Where have I walked upon the hair, over the head of our lord?”
“Where did you—what?” The ‘lord’ Popocatl asked, scratching his head before turning to Motolina and saying, “Hey, Angel. What the hell is this bloke talking about?”
“Just leave me alone, Crowley,” Motolina muttered under his breath with a sniff. “You’ve already literally pulled the rug from under me. What else do you want?”
“I want to talk to you, duh!” The Demon replied, taking off his mask so that Aziraphale could see the snake-slit eyes. “You’ve been off the grid! In Mesoamerica, of all places! How else was I going to find you?”
“By humiliating me in front of one of my friends and the whole town!” Aziraphale hissed back, seizing him by his shoulders. All around them gasped with terror, including his friend Tetepon, who looked like he was about to pass out and die.
The Demon, just remembering that other people existed, looked around and shrugged.
“Oops?”
The Angel snapped his fingers, causing all the various characters in the scene to pause in their tracks, the sun stopping just at it crested below the great pyramid-temple of Tenochtitlan. He brushed off his loincloth, collected his pack of books from the stall, and began to walk away.
“Don’t just walk away from me!” Crowley shouted, crookedly sauntering behind Aziraphale down the streets of Tenochtitlan.
“Go away, Crowley. I’m not having any of your funny business today.”
“I come bearing gifts! A book for you!” the Demon said, producing a book from underneath his cloak. “One hour back at my apartment, and I’ll let you look at it.”
The Angel’s stopped in his tracks, eyes going wide upon seeing the amoxtli-book, which was made of the finest quality paper in Anahuac.
“You stole a book from the tlatoani Nezhualcoyotl’s palace!” The Angel shouted, throwing up his hands. “I can’t believe you! You horrible, wretched man!”
“He’s not going to notice!” the Demon replied, rolling his yellow eyes at Aziraphale. “Especially if you keep the flow of time stopped like this! Besides, he has like thousands of the things.”
The Angel took another look at the book, feeling his heart swell with temptation, before turning around and crossing his arms.
“No.”
“No? What do you mean ‘No’? The stolen-book-I-pinky-promise-to-give-back gambit always works on you!”
“That was last-century me,” the Angel replied. “I’m turning over a new leaf, Crowley!”
“Are you sure? Because to my eyes, it seems like it’s the same-old-same-old with you,” the Demon snapped back. “You’ve opened up bookshops all over the world: Rome, London, Paris, Chang’an, Kyoto, Baghdad—even all the way in Timbuktu! Literally!”
“We loved it in Timbuktu, didn’t we?” Aziraphale said dreamily. “The desert air was light on my lungs, and the mutton was to die for. Shame that Mansa Musa kicked us out when you cheated in that game of mancala!”
“That bloke had too much gold as it was,” Crowley replied drily. “He was practically begging for someone to take it off his hands.”
“That’s your problem, love!” Aziraphale whined, stamping his feet on the ground. “You have no delicacy when it comes to human beings. You just waltz in like you own the place, cheat and steal whatever you want, and then leave when you’re bored. I bet even that mask is stolen! It looks like the one worn by Tezcatlipoca!”
Crowley looked down at the mask with its rictus grin and obsidian eyes. “Hmm, that really explains some things. Everyone always screamed when I came up to them wearing this.”
“My point is proven!” Aziraphale huffed, setting the load of books on his back down so he could pause for a breather. “It’s like you delight in nothing more than messing things up for us!”
“Guilty as charged, Angel,” Crowley laughed with another devilish shrug. “I could say the same about you, Zizi. You go to these wonderful, beautiful locales and do what? The same thing you do everywhere else in the world: sit your ass down and read books all day. Why?”
“Why read books?” Aziraphale cried, light brown face drenched in the perpetual evening light. “If you knew the first thing about me, Demon, you would never ask such a preposterous question!”
“I’m being serious, Angel!” Crowley said, still staring at Aziraphale’s behind as it swished behind the white loincloth. “You came all the way to Anahuac, a land so distant from home that it’s not even mentioned in God’s precious Torah, unless you got some apocryphal books lying around I haven’t seen yet.”
“I’ve heard there were some golden tablets buried somewhere around here…” Aziraphale said, before shaking his head. “No, you’re right. It’s never been mentioned in any of the scriptures, even the super long versions.”
“Rrright,” the Demon said, rolling his r’s for as obnoxiously long as possible. “You’re looking for the reason that Asherah forgot to mention half the world in her scriptures, right?”
Aziraphale pouted his lips like a crestfallen puppy. “Was I being that obvious?”
“Yes, you were,” Crowley replied succinctly. “I’m just more than a little offended you didn’t think to ask me first! I have a clue for you right here.”
At that, Crowley unfolded the book from Nezhualcoyotl’s library for the Angel to see. It took Aziraphale less than a second to grasp its meaning: it showed the square-jawed angel Gabriel bowing before Lord Nezhualcoyotl, detailing an oracle about the rise and fall of the Triple Alliance, before flying away on a cloud with a goofy grin on his face.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said with a frown. “How odd.”
“Yeah, Gabe told him everything that’s going to happen. Even who they’re going to put in charge of Tenochtitlan next.”
“Well, I’d assume it would be one of Motecuhzoma’s sons—”
“Wrong!” Crowley said, making a big X with his arms. “It’s going to be his grandson Axayacatl. His brother Tlacaelel has arranged the whole thing.”
Aziraphale’s eyes went as wide as a coyote’s at night. “Tetepon’s in debt to Axayacatl! We have to tell him!”
Crowley smirked, offering the Angel a hand. “Back to the marketplace then?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
Suddenly, Aziraphale drew the Demon into a long and indulgent kiss, lips messing up Crowley’s carefully made up face. Aziraphale whispered into his ear, “You weren’t being subtle about staring at my behind, Demon.”
“It’s very… uhm,” Crowley said slowly, cupping his lover’s ass like stolen goods. “Shapely?”
“We have all the time in the world to kill before you get us kicked out of yet another city,” Aziraphale huffed. “Your apartment or mine?”
“Excuse me for saying this, but a nobleman’s apartment is very likely going to be a little bit better than a paper merchant’s apartment anywhere you go in the world—”
Crowley’s blabbering was cut off by another, even more aggressive kiss. Aziraphale bit the Demon’s lower lip so hard that it began to bleed and said, “Your apartment it is, then.”
The pair of lovers flew through the streets of the island-city of Tenochtitlan, the jewel of Anahuac, whose streets were bathed in a perpetual evening through the miracle of their existence.