It may shock my readers to hear, but even as one of the Holy, Heaven does not provide enough variety for me. God is a friend and a companion, and I would prefer They stay with me, in my arm, on many travels, to all options I can find after the Resurrection…
—Safirah, Holy, An Uncommon Proposition
Yenatru’s breathing in the night air, looking out at the gentle curves of the desert. He could work on Theurgy again, he could, but he’s too tired. In fact, he’s too tired to get up and go to bed either, which is a problem.
He’s not too tired to recognize his friend’s footsteps, though.
“Hey,” Lucifer says. “Can I sit here?”
He smiles, looking up to her, the curls of her hair seeming to catch the stars. “Yeah.”
“What are you up to, at this time of night?” she asks, smiling back. “Not sleeping, obviously.”
Right; she doesn’t actually have to sleep. “Um… what do you usually do? When everyone else is asleep.”
“Stuff.” She shrugs. “I read, or walk around, or do some Theurgy—pretty much just the same kinds of things I always do when I’m alone, everyone else sleeping or no.”
Yenatru shifts a little, touching his finger to his lips.
“If you’re wondering if I get lonely... yeah, but that’s where also having friends comes in. That’s where you come in… as long as you still don’t mind. As long as you still want me.”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, then.” She smiles. “So, if you really are going for this eighty-ninth friend thing… what are your plans for after the Resurrection? A friend’s gotta wonder.”
Which means, he thinks: she has to know, in case he suddenly dies.
There’s a pang of sadness in him, eyes watering, wishing he could be soft enough to hold her, strong enough to never die…
“I’m guessing you’re not much of one for heaven, right?” Lucifer continues.
He isn’t; from everything he’s heard about God, They’re not really his type, and besides, he’s kind of happy here, in his own way. To sit under the stars and see, and hold, or want to hold…
He sighs gently, an honesty that he didn’t even know he had enfolding him. And he trusts Lucifer enough to say a thought he didn’t expect to think.
“I’d rather make my own heaven,” he says.
Because he would. He smiles softly, tilting his head to the possibility. To hold and hold, in a sweet meadow…
Lucifer laughs, the sound so kind, so knowing. Something in the shine of her eyes just seems so happy as she says, “See, this is why I like you. Just in case you were still wondering.”
I’d rather make my own heaven.
Getting back to the tarp is a little challenging, it’s turned out, when there seems to be a conversation in the way. One between Yenatru and Lucifer. One which Elīya figures she shouldn’t interrupt.
“You’re not going to keep going?” Tamar whispers, apparently having caught from Elīya’s emotions not only that she’s stopped, but the rough edges of why.
“It sounds serious, the stuff they’re saying,” she whispers back. “And they’re right between us and the tarp. Maybe let’s just… wait. There’s a rock right here, if we sit behind it…”
“…We’ll eavesdrop well?” Tamar finishes.
“I merely intend to not interrupt,” Elīya repeats, sitting down.
But it is true that Lucifer and Yenatru keep talking… and that she can hear every word.
And maybe she wants to know what Yenatru means, by making his own heaven.
Yenatru smiles and smiles, heart overflowing, the softness in his lips the same as the softness in his arms, the breeze which drifts a little away from them, rippling Lucifer’s circlet…
Oh no, I didn’t ask, I need to ask—
“I’ll visit, you know,” Lucifer says. “I’d love to. Heavens aren’t really my kind of place, not permanently, but I definitely will visit. That’s a promise.”
That’s so good. He would smile deeper, but—he blinks, a little afraid. “Um. I think my, um… new manifestation… is a little close to you. A bit. I don’t know if that’s okay, should I move a bit—”
Lucifer looks down, to where the breeze is still playing with the fabric of her circlet; she moves her hand toward it, touching it, it looks like, oh, oh…
“I like it,” she says. “I like you. You’re good.”
He… knew that, of course. But still, somehow, every time she says it, it amazes him.
“Hey,” she says, smiling gently. “At least you didn’t fall over this time.”
“I-it was only once.” But there’s something else he wants to ask. Something else he wants to do. And he’s blushing to think of it, but, but— “Hey, can I… hug you? With my new manifestation…?”
Lucifer grins. “I was starting to worry you’d never ask.”
And so, heart thrumming with the thought that she wants to see him, she really wants to see him, he reaches out.
And she’s warm around him, just like she was the last time he hugged her, just like hugs always are. It’s so warm and he knows the wind in his arms, he moves it and lets it move until it swirls around him, rippling all the grass where they sit.
She makes a sound; something soft, something contented.
A new manifestation—Elīya had no idea. And how did he make one so fast?
And… what is it?
She finds herself straightening her back, raising her head just a little over the rock. Not trying to be seen, of course not, but this new manifestation…
The grass around Yenatru and Lucifer ripples.
Gently, calmly—just like the feeling of Yenatru’s lips.
But wind. This time, it’s wind. But yet it’s nothing like any wind Elīya could imagine being—
Lucifer moves as if to turn her head, and Elīya ducks back down quickly. Just in case.
Yenatru’s doing this. He’s really doing this, something that makes her feel better, something he’s doing matters—
“Hey, Yenatru?”
“Mm?”
“You… you care about keeping people safe, right?” She sounds concerned, a little pained even.
“Y-yeah? Wait, am I doing something wrong?”
“No, no, definitely not. It’s just,” she sighs, “there’s… something I need to tell people eventually, if I’m friends with them. And so maybe now would be a good time to tell you, although I don’t want to, I really don’t want to—”
“Then don’t?” Yenatru suggests.
“But it’s important,” she says, holding onto him tighter. “It’s so important.”
“Elīya,” Tamar hisses.
“What?” she whispers back.
“I think you’ve gone too far. I don’t think we should be here.” The set of Tamar’s mouth looks serious, really and legitimately serious, in the light of her eye-fire. “This isn’t stuff we should be hearing.”
“Are you sure?” It’s not like Tamar cared about that when she went off stalking, when she ignored all of Elīya’s advice for years and years.
“Trust me, I’m a professional at eavesdropping these days.”
That’s when Lucifer starts crying. Gently, like sighs one after another, but they sound wet and—
Tamar’s right, Elīya realizes.
Tamar’s actually fucking right.
They shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t be overhearing this. But how are they going to get away without it being obvious that they were behind this rock all along? Maybe Elīya’s ethics class should have been covering this instead of the fucking trolly problem…
And Tamar’s standing up.
“Tamar what the fuck are you doing,” Elīya hisses.
“Trip me,” Tamar hisses back.
“What?”
“Trip me, Elīya! It’s good deniability! Quick, before my eyes give me away, I’m gonna walk toward you, and you’re gonna trip me—”
“Fine,” Elīya whispers, but maybe she shouldn’t have bothered, because Tamar’s already taking some normal-looking steps forward, and all Elīya has to do is stick her leg out. All she has to do is send the friend who left her without a word careening to the ground.
No, I refuse to remind myself of reasons to take joy in this, she tells herself. Emotions themselves aren’t unethical, no matter what, but cultivating them the wrong way can be.
So she makes sure to think only of the fact that Tamar asked her to do this as she sticks her leg out—
And Tamar falls with a legitimately satisfying flop, some of the grass near her head smoking.
“Fuck!” Elīya shouts. “Don’t start a brush fire!”
“It’ll be fine,” Tamar says, getting up and brushing some dust off her shirt—but flames, there’s definitely at least one patch of grass that’s a little ember-y—
Elīya moves to stamp it out with her foot.
And two very, very surprised pairs of eyes are staring right at her.
“Uh,” she says.
Lucifer’s standing up, disentangling from their position in Yenatru’s arms. Their eyes are no longer wide, but narrow in the starlight, crossing their arms as they look first at Tamar, and then at Elīya. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“No, we were—”
“—heading back to the tarp and falling over,” Tamar finishes.
Elīya can’t help but glare at her, even though she can’t see it, even though it doesn’t support their clause at all. Lucifer or no, she just can’t quite stomach outright lying.
“So, you were eavesdropping,” Lucifer says.
“H-how can you accuse them of—” Yenatru starts.
“Yeah, a little bit,” Elīya admits.
“Elīya!” Tamar says.
“We mostly didn’t want to interrupt you by walking through your conversation to the tarp,” Elīya says.
“And now you are doing just that.”
“Because she tripped.”
Lucifer just shakes their head. “May I suggest actually going to sleep instead of listening in on a private conversation?”
Yenatru doesn’t say anything; he’s probably uncomfortable, probably scared that two of his friends are fighting.
“Insult us all you want,” Tamar says, making her way to her feet. “But I was listening quite a bit less in than usual, since I couldn’t even read your thoughts.”
“Really?” Elīya asks.
“Yeah, the rock was in the way—”
“You two are terrible,” Lucifer says. Maybe you deserve each other.”
“H-hey!” Yenatru says.
Elīya sighs; maybe she really should be reasonable, and actually go to bed.
“Tamar, let’s just go.”
“Aww, I thought I was going to get a chance to try out some more ethical rationalizations, you-style—”
“I do not do that—”
“Yes you do. Like with the interruption thing you just said.”
Elīya purses her lips. Okay, maybe Tamar has a point—
“Ha! So I do get it now then, the way your mind works?”
Elīya’s pretty sure Lucifer’s still glaring at them, but that doesn’t matter. This is an important question, and she’s going to answer it. “To be quite honest, Tamar, I am still endeavoring to figure out some of the details of how my mind works. But no, I highly doubt you are all the way there either.”
She knows she’s speaking in all of those syllables because the question still stresses her a little. But she doesn’t care. It’s honest, and it’s real.
Tamar just shrugs. “Maybe not, then. I guess the only other person’s mind I’ve really got figured out these days is God’s—”
“Please go away,” Lucifer interrupts.
Elīya opens her mouth to say something, but instead ends up yawning. Yeah, that probably means something…
And then Tamar yawns too, which proves it.
“Let’s go.”
There’s something strange about lying next to someone whose eyes are made of flame, Elīya thinks. Especially when that grass started smoking earlier…
“So, you’re not going to set everything on fire while sleeping, right?” she asks.
Tamar shrugs, even while lying down. She really seems to have gotten into shrugging lately, much more than when she was in secondary school.
“…What does that mean?” Elīya asks when Tamar provides no actual answer.
“I mean,” Tamar shrugs again, “God-fire isn’t exactly the same as normal fire. Only really dry stuff catches on fire easily from it, so it’s not much of a problem.”
“Unless you’re in the desert. Which you are.”
“Eh, They also have a little control over Their manifestations, God does. Enough to not get Their Holies killed, at least.”
Elīya squints. “…But brush fires are okay.”
“Yeah.”
Elīya blinks. “Does… does God know about ethics? Do I need to pray to Them right now and tell Them—”
Tamar just laughs. “Don’t even bother. But don’t worry either, it’ll be fine. And if you do catch on fire, just roll around in the dirt.”
“You’re very helpful.”
“Thanks, I try my best.”
But there’s still something bothering Elīya. “So, if you weren’t reading Lucifer’s mind… how did you know to get out of there?”
Tamar narrows her mouth. “It sounded big, whatever Lucifer was going to say—but also, it sounded like he was going to say it. Instead of just running away, like usual. So, I figured that’s a big deal.”
“What do you mean, like usual…?”
Tamar shrugs. “It’s just, whenever God thinks about Lucifer, I get this sense of little flamey legs running away.”
“Flamey… legs.”
“Well, yeah, it’s God, so everything’s flamey, that’s just how it is. The important part here is the legs. And the running. That’s a Lucifer thing, running away—”
“What, like you?”
For a moment Elīya twitches at her own words, because maybe she’s already broken whatever is almost starting to work again between the two of them, she’s failed, she—
Tamar laughs. “Yeah, like me, I guess. Though I ran in the exact opposite direction.”
And now her sight will always be what it is now. Elīya shivers; she could never be trapped like that, in a single moment, in a single experience.
But it’s Tamar’s right to choose it.
“You’re… still happy with it, right?” Elīya asks. “The direction you, uh, ran?”
“You mean, not having eyes?”
“Yeah. And the rest. The stuff that… comes with that.” God, Elīya hopes she’s not screwing up again.
Tamar’s smile glows in the light of God’s fire. “Yeah. I saw Them, Elīya. That was me. I saw Them. And I might not know everything about myself—and I know what that knowing looks like, I’ve seen God—but that I’m someone who’s done that? That that’s part of me? Yeah, I’m pretty solid on that part.”
Elīya smiles back, blinking. That right there is definitely the most genuine thing she’s ever heard Tamar say.
“…Thank you for telling me.”
“Right. And don’t worry. I really won’t set anything on fire tonight. Probably.”
Elīya just sighs and rolls her eyes while closing them, hoping that she can trust Tamar or God or both on this one And when she rolls over, she makes sure to roll away from Tamar.