When Šehhinah was created, it was like a song, a crescendo; each angel glowing with our own personal power and with God’s fire inside us. Michael carved the first sand-swept basin, Uriel the greatest mountains, and of course you already know what I made. Each of us 144,000 were a flurry of creation, shaping first the great sphere of the planet and then giving it atmosphere, rain, detail; helping collect God’s own energy and manifestations into the core of the sun to drive its fusion. Lucifer, I recall, made obsidian, flint, and many of the meteors at the edge of the solar system… hey, has anyone heard if they’ve gotten any more comfortable around angels, because I still really want to chat with them…
—the angel Jibril, A Thousand Open Letters, Just Because
Yenatru’s watching the twilight darken outside his window and trying not to think when he hears what sounds like a knock on his door.
But it can’t be. No one has ever knocked on his door.
So he continues staring out his window, the first few stars coming out above the mountains—
There’s a knock again.
Breathe, Yenatru, he reminds himself. He pats down his hair, trying to make sure it’s not a mess, and then he walks over to the door and opens it.
For half a second he doesn’t recognize the person in the hallway, then in the blink of an eye their entire body shifts and changes and it’s Lucifer.
Wait, how does she even know where he—
“There’s a directory,” Lucifer says. “That lists where students live. So you can stop looking so surprised.”
Yenatru nods, still trying to process her presence, here. She’s visiting him, which means she actually wants to… but, right, he has responsibilities in this situation. “Please come in,” he says with another nod, aiming for graciousness as he steps aside to let her in.
His room really is small, with white walls and almost no decoration—mostly there are just two beds, one for a theoretical roommate who was never even assigned here, and a chest in the middle of the floor that’s kind of like a table, maybe.
“Sorry about… well, all of this. I don’t really even have chairs…”
“It’s fine.”
“But, um, what… brings you?” He tries to ask the question casually, but the truth is that he can’t imagine why someone would want to visit him. What would the point be?
“Didn’t see you yesterday. Was wondering how you were doing.” She sits down next to the chest, crossing her legs. “Though there’s also something else I want to ask about.”
He sits across from her, tears almost in his eyes, already. Because, flames, she’s a person, she’s his friend, and she’s right here. “What… do you want to ask about?”
“I’d rather know how you are first.”
“I’m,” Yenatru starts, but then realizes he doesn’t know how to finish. He sets his hands in his lap. “I’m not sure.”
Lucifer raises her eyebrows.
Yenatru glances to the window. The sky’s darker now, almost completely black. Maybe it’s too dark in here for Lucifer? So he gets up, turning on his electric paper lanterns. “Thought it might be good to have some light in the room,” he explains.
“Would be fine either way for me. Don’t mind the dark. But do you have any elaborations on your not being sure about how you are?”
Yenatru shrugs, sitting back down. “You said there was something you wanted to ask about?”
“You’re not getting out of it that easily. Unless you really want to.”
Yenatru shifts a little, but she’s still looking at him, eyebrows slightly raised.
“I, um,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve thought about it much today. About anything.” He looks around the room, at the window, at the shadows—anywhere other than Lucifer’s eyes.
“Two days ago, Elīya said you showed her your manifestation?”
“You… talked to Elīya.”
“Not by choice,” she says, raising her hands in mock defeat. “She just shows up sometimes, you probably know how it is. Though now she’s decided to show up even more regularly, and that’s partially my fault. Apparently she thinks it’s easier to learn Theurgy if I’m helping her, can you imagine?”
Yenatru fails to restrain a sigh, something in his heart sunk and distant.
“Yenatru? What’s—oh. Oh fuck.”
Yenatru briefly flickers his eyes to her, but she’s actually looking away, almost biting her lip as she exhales.
“If I’m right,” Lucifer says, “you’re sad, at minimum, because you think I’m spending more time around Elīya than you. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that’s true. ’S not what I want, honest.” She exhales again. “And you wouldn’t have told me this, because you also feel like it’s bad for you to want more of my time, right?”
How in all God’s names does she know? He nods faintly.
Lucifer rubs her forehead. “I already said I was pathetic. Not sure I added that I’m also still bad at this. At friends, I mean. Like, having them.”
“I’m worse,” Yenatru says quietly. He tries to smile; it comes out distant, wistful.
“At least you’re young enough to have an excuse. Try being as old as the world and still fucking up.”
Yenatru’s still mostly not thinking, so it’s not intentional when he says, under his breath, “Maybe I will try it.”
“I’d like to see that,” There’s a smile in her voice, soft and kind. “You after the Resurrection. I’ll so love to see what you’ll do.”
Yenatru accidentally smiles in response. “I didn’t think I was talking about the Resurrection. Actually, I don’t know what I was talking about.”
“Feels like I’ve been waiting forever for it, honestly.”
“But… we don’t know what’s going to happen then.”
“Don’t we?” Lucifer tilts her head a little. “Everyone’s life serves as an argument for what they want after the Resurrection. That’s what”—she looks like she has to force the next word out, closing her eyes and swallowing hard—“God decided on. And honestly, despite everything, I can respect that. Fuck, I do respect that.”
“Then why do you act like you think you know?”
“I’ve been alive for a while. Seen people live, known some closely. Our lives argue for us, and I’ve seen thousands of years of those arguments.”
“But no one agrees.”
Lucifer laughs. “Exactly. Or, almost exactly. Part of what I’m getting at is that there’ll be a lot. There’ll be—well, hey, my life gets to be an argument too, actually. I mean, especially given that I’m half the reason the Covenant was made at all. ’Course, it would’ve been someone else if it wasn’t me, but still, technically I was the first to totally fuck up all the plans. They actually thought I’d want—” Lucifer shakes her head. “Anyway, I’ve got some ideas as to what kind of argument my life is interpretable as.”
“Which is?”
Lucifer just smiles.
“Honestly, I don’t know what I want.” Yenatru looks to the window, but now that the lights are on, all he can see in it is his reflection.
“Actually, I think you might. But it’s just a suspicion. And I don’t want to tell you. Could be wrong, and I wouldn’t want to convince you of something about yourself that isn’t even true.”
Yenatru nods. He’s curious, but he can understand that.
And, as tends to happen when he’s tired, he finds himself deciding something that surprises him. “Um, Lucifer?” Flames, has he ever even said her name to her before?
Her gaze and posture both suddenly orient to him, stronger than they did before. “Yes?”
“Uh, well, um.” Yenatru takes a deep breath, trying to pull himself together. Maybe he should just not ask—but flames, he’s pretty sure he would like to—breathe, Yenatru. “Well. Would you. Um.”
He looks back; she’s just watching him patiently.
He closes his eyes tight, trying to see if he can force it out. “Would you like to,” he starts, his voice catching again. Flames. “I mean, you wouldn’t have to.” He shifts a little, trying to come up with a way out of this. He’s not sure changing the subject would work. Maybe instead he should just run to the door and leave.
Alternatively, he could just finish saying what he’s trying to say.
“I, uh. I could… show you my manifestation,” he says. He almost winces, though he tries not to anticipate her response.
“If you want to,” Lucifer says, her voice kind, “then absolutely.”
Yenatru nods, blood rushing to his face.. “I mean, if it’s definitely okay.”
“If it’s okay with you.”
Yenatru makes a small noise of affirmation, nodding quickly.
A moment passes. Right. This means actually doing it now.
So Yenatru finally shifts his way closer to her. “Um… your hand. Please.”
Lucifer smiles at him and stretches her arm toward him.
Yenatru grabs her hand and slowly lifts it to his lips and kisses it, then gently lets go. He tries not to look into her eyes. Tries not to guess what she thinks about it, how obviously underwhelming his Theurgy is, how pointless or wrong or—
“Ah,” Lucifer says, her smile settling in her eyes. “I thought your soul might feel like that.”
She, uh, that, those words—
One of Yenatru’s hands flies to his mouth and the other to his chest, and it feels like probably all the blood in his body is in his cheeks. His heart, his heart, oh God, his heart. She thought— she knew— she could tell— he—
Yeah, okay, he’s crying now.
“Aah,” he says. “Um. I.” He has no idea how to respond.
Lucifer chuckles a little, but it’s a strangely kind laugh. “A soft, warm breeze through a meadow,” she says softly, and Yenatru’s entire heart and mind and everything catches in his throat, because that’s him and—
Yenatru falls over to the side, away from the chest. Even thinking is almost too hard; maintaining balance is beyond him. “Aah,” he says again, covering his mouth with both hands this time. He presses his eyes closed; he’s grinning, silently laughing.
“Um, did I kill you?” Lucifer asks, concern in her voice.
Yenatru nods, still grinning and laughing or crying or whatever’s happening there.
“Should I stop talking? Get a blanket or something?”
Yenatru shakes his head, which is a little difficult when it’s against the ground.
“Wait, no,” Lucifer continues, “it’s probably too hot for a blanket. Was actually gonna say something else but then you kind of fell over and, please be okay.”
Yenatru nods again. That’s the gesture that’s more likely to mean he’s okay, right?
“Uh, fuck, wow. I really should know what to do here. That whole thing about me being pathetic and not knowing what I’m doing? Still true.”
Yenatru nods more purposefully. That definitely means he’s okay. He thinks.
“I made a boy collapse in two sentences,” Lucifer mutters. “That’s a new one.”
In the back of Yenatru’s mind, part of him’s still worrying that he’s done something wrong, or maybe that this isn’t even a real friendship at all. But for now, the almost floating happiness of her knowing drowns all that out.
“Yeah, fuck it,” Lucifer says, and lays down next to Yenatru—and hugs him.
“Aaaa?” Yenatru says.
“Oh, fuck,” Lucifer says. “Did you not want that? I’ll stop now—”
“N-no,” he says. “Is… is good.” But maybe easier if he sits up. So he tries to do that, even if she’s seen him, she expected him to feel like himself, he is himself—
Somehow he leverages himself up, though, collapsing into her arms.
And she holds him, warm, so warm—he should have known she would be, even fallen angels produce body heat, but yet it surprises him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks. “Are you sure no one hurt you, are you sure—”
He nods.
And she holds him warmly and softly, and he doesn’t move or speak at all. What could he possibly say? This is nice, he admits to himself. He doesn’t even know why it’s nice. He doesn’t know why he closes his eyes and hopes with each second that she won’t move away just yet.
Amazingly, she stays there for a long time.
She’s still there when she says, “Yenatru, how long has it been since someone’s hugged you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, very quiet. He has no idea.
She holds him a little tighter and almost snarls. “The world doesn’t know what it’s missing when it doesn’t pay attention to you.”
That makes him blink; he pulls away. “Oh.”
“Yeah, I said it. You’re worth paying attention to. Deal with it.”
“I’ll, um… I’ll try.” Yenatru looks at the floor. “But it really was okay, that I showed you…?”
“Yes.” Lucifer smiles. “You know… I really like people. We’re all so different. So good.” But the smile in her eyes is somehow sad.
“Hmm?” Yenatru says. “You alright?”
She shrugs. “’S not really something I meant to express, but I guess I should say it now. ’S just, there’s eighty-eight friends I’m waiting for. At the Resurrection.”
Oh. “That few?” Eighty-eight isn’t really that many, he thinks, for the six thousand years since Lucifer’s fall.
Lucifer laughs. “I pace myself.”
Yenatru wants to reach out, make it better somehow, but he isn’t sure he can. “Sorry I’m going to die.”
“Don’t be. And you won’t be gone and dormant that long.”
“I will to you.”
He thinks he catches her blink away a tear. “Well, yes. But you’re here now, and I don’t want to think about that.”
“…Sorry.”
“I’m the one who brought it up. And all this, ’s my choice.” She laughs a little. “I mean, this is me we’re talking about, making a choice is what got me in your history books. But yeah, most of the Fallen—most of the angels too, even—really tend to just befriend their own kind. Actually, there’s one group of angels, Senoi’s crew, that tends to spend time with Lilith, but it’s not like she’s really mortal anymore, even if she’s technically human. What I’m saying here is, once again, I’m the odd one out.”
Yenatru nods.
Lucifer’s eyes flash mischievously, a small smile showing back up on her face. “Hey, something I haven’t told you.”
“Mm?”
“But you might’ve guessed anyway—that my body’s a manifestation?”
“All angelic bodies are, right?”
“Aw, I was hoping to surprise you. Yeah, they are. Though… mine is better than most of the others.” Her smile gets wider.
Yenatru’s fairly sure she wants him to ask. “Better?”
“Of course. Most of ‘em don’t change. Took a while for me to figure out how to get this to work, it actually involves two different manifestations, but fuck am I glad I did.”
Yenatru’s seen her change, of course, but he didn’t know it was so unusual. “So, then… why do you always look the same to me?”
Lucifer grins. “Guess.”
Yenatru tries to remember when he’s seen her body change, if there’s any pattern to it. He thinks he might have an idea. “I don’t want to get it wrong.”
“’S not like I’d be offended if you did.”
“Still.” He’d rather she just say.
“Come onnnn.”
“A-alright,” he says quietly. “Do you… look different to everyone?”
Lucifer flashes her eyebrows, her grin widening. “Fuck yeah, I do.”
“But it’s always the same for any given person.”
“Yup.” She nods. “You got all that right. What that doesn’t say, though, is why I do this.”
Yenatru flushes a little again. “I really can’t guess that.”
“Please do, though?”
“But that’s—” he starts, then cuts himself off. Really personal, he finishes in his head.
“I get it, I get it. You’re a Theurgist, so you know how this stuff is. You don’t have to guess, if you really don’t want to. Would be fun, though.”
“I can’t just guess at your soul…”
“Okay, okay. If you’re sure you don’t want to.”
Yenatru takes a deep breath. He really is terrified to, but—
“You do want to!” she says, excitement in her voice. “Please do then, I’m really not going to get upset or anything.”
“Well, um.”
Lucifer clasps her hands together, turning to face him. “Pleaaase.”
“Okay. Well, um. You, uh, possibly… want to be different for each person?”
“Not totally wrong.”
Yenatru brings a hand to his mouth. “Ah, I’m sorry—”
“No, don’t be, don’t be! Want me to just tell you, then?”
“If you’re alright with that.”
“Then let’s start with a fun part. What do you think my gender is?” She grins at him.
“Uh… I don’t think I’d thought about it. I mean, I think when people talk about you, in general, they usually use ‘they,’ but then I met you, and… oh no. When I’ve talked about you to Elīya, I’ve usually used ‘she,’ as a pronoun…”
“Oh, good! “Good, good. Please keep doing that.”
“So you’re,” Yenatru starts.
“Female? Well, yes…” She shrugs, then flashes her eyebrows at him. Maybe she’s suggesting he continue?
“Um. It sounds like that’s not everything, and I’m not really sure I know the actual answer.”
“Well, the answer is,” Lucifer pauses dramatically, “all of them.”
“All of—”
“Every gender.”
Yenatru blinks. “Is that because of being an angel…?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. A lot of the angels and Fallen have genders, but not all of ‘em do. Actually, fun fact”—she takes a deep breath—“God was not expecting that. I mean, genders. It took Them a while to even notice some of us had ‘em. They weren’t even looking.”
“So you just happen to. Have all the genders.”
“Yup.”
“But you… want me to see you as female?”
She smiles. “Absolutely. Just like I want Elīya to see me as—ah, there isn’t really a word for this one, but one of those really subtle ones, almost close to masculine but not really, it’s pretty subtle.”
“Huh. That’s… I’m not sure I should say it’s interesting, I don’t know if that comes across strange—”
“Please call me interesting all you like.”
“Okay.”
“So, I’m not sure you really have enough information to put the pieces together here, but you know how I said this body requires two manifestations? One’s the body itself, of course, but do you have any idea what the other is?”
Yenatru shakes his head.
Lucifer smiles. “It’s really small. Just a little bit in the air around me.”
Yenatru’s throat catches. “You’re…”
“Yes, yes, a very small amount of my soul is touching you, a little.”
“Isn’t that,” Yenatru says. “Not to be, not to say, but isn’t, um.”
“You can’t feel it, so it’s not forcing the experience of me on you. And though what it does is get a bit of information from you, it’s set up to not pick up that information if you actually want to hide it. Took me a while to figure out how to do it right so that it wasn’t invasive, but I think I pulled it off.”
“…What information?”
“Your gender. That’s it.”
Yenatru nods slowly.
“And that’s synched up with my body, so every time I meet a new person, my appearance naturally goes to a presentation for a gender that’s really different from theirs. And then I use that appearance for them every time I see them. I can choose to control it if I want, but I usually just let it happen automatically. Unless I control it otherwise, I change to my form for a specific person when I make eye contact with them.”
Yenatru’s eyes widen. “That’s,” he starts.
“Interesting?”
He nods.
“I thought so too. Feels good to always be different from who I’m around in this way. I fucking love it. I mean, it’s Theurgy, so of course I do.”
“Yeah.” He knows exactly what she means.
She smiles. “Love how Theurgists get it.”
“So,” Yenatru says, “right now, around me, do you still feel… feel all genders?”
“Yeah. Female a little more, just by a bit, because it’s comfortable interpersonally around you. But I’m still all of them.”
“And the other Fallen, and angels, aren’t like this?”
“Nope,” she says. “Well, except my direct replacement, Metatron, he’s the same way almost exactly except that he matches the gender of whoever he’s talking to in presentation, and it’s a good thing that I avoid him, because the last time we met, we ended up staring each other down for like three days as I kept changing my form away from his, and he changed his to be similar to mine, and that just kept going on until he actually had to leave for some reason. Which did mean I won.”
Yenatru laughs a little.
“Gave everyone who watched a headache.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“But, right,” Lucifer says, “there is actually something I’d like to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“Well… Elīya happened.”
“Ah. I think I know how that is.”
“I’d suspect you do, yeah. So, you know how she’s doing Theurgy in exchange for me hooking her up with Tamar? Yeah, I was wondering if next weekend would be a good time for that, me taking you and Elīya camping with her?”
Yenatru nods slowly.
“‘Kay, cool. While I’m on this subject, then—is there anything I should know about Tamar? Before trying to contact her, I mean. Like, she’s not another Elīya, is she?”
“I think there’s only one Elīya.”
Lucifer gives an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“But there’s also only one Tamar.”
Lucifer turns to Yenatru and raises an eyebrow. “If I’m interpreting that right, that she’s almost as intense as Elīya in her own way… how the fuck did you, of all people, end up with those two?”
Yenatru shrugs. “It… just happened.”
“Tell me more about her, though.”
Yenatru makes a small sighing sound and looks to the side. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she became a Holy, and I don’t even know why she did.”
“Do… you know what her price was?”
“Her eyes. Her parents told me and Elīya that much, when we went looking for her. I think they were kind of… unprepared for her coming home the way she did. I mean, she was Holy, so that’s. It’s probably weird to be in that situation though, the parent of a child who just does that.”
Lucifer nods. “And then she… didn’t talk to you again? That sounds like a hard time for you.”
Yenatru blinks a few tears away. “Y-yeah. We were all pretty surprised.”
“…Alright then, I guess. But here’s the really important question: is she going to try to force me to do something, if I meet her? The way Elīya does? Or worse, would she look up to me?”
“That would probably be pretty unlikely. She was more likely to decide to climb a mountain completely by herself without any supplies than actually ask you to do it with her. Of course, I always followed, because that’s really dangerous to do alone…”
Lucifer nods.
“I could have imagined her becoming a Theurgist,” he notes. “That would have made sense.”
“More people should be Theurgists, honestly.”
“Yeah,” Yenatru says quietly.
“How are you feeling, by the way?” Lucifer asks, her eyes meeting his.
“Still… still good, I think,” Yenatru says, his voice still quiet. For some reason saying it makes him curl his arms a little closer to him. He smiles a little.
She smiles back. “Tell me, though, are you going to fall over every time I say something nice about you?”
“Probably.” Yenatru flushes a little.
Lucifer laughs a little, silently. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
And in Yenatru’s mind there’s something bright and clear, a thought that’s surprisingly settled in him: friend. It lets him close his eyes now and feel, for the first time in much longer than he wants to admit, something other than alone.