God

This is the first chapter of my new story God. I think it fits. To read it please go to: https://www.inkitt.com/stories/fantasy/967598#position-1

I stretch my forelegs above my head, and my hind legs out beyond my tail. My eyes force themselves open. Bright light blazes into my pupils, forcing them to contract. My mouth strains as a silent yawn tumbles past my whiskers.

“God, God, where are you?” a deep, throaty voice calls.

Adam, I think to myself, is wanting me again. I created him from clay, breathing life into his nostrils. There are some days I wish I had not created a human in this garden. Adam, my creation, can be one of the most downright annoying creatures ever. Adam can be so needy.

I gain my legs, glancing down at my body. From the tips of my ears down to the end of my tail I am covered in sumptuous, black, satin fur. I take a few steps. The light is particularly blinding today. With a thought, I dim it down. My eyes are sensitive, and my head is softly pounding from the previous evening’s dinner of a knowlt.

Ah, yes, the knowlt. The fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. If my feline face could have grinned, I would be wearing that now. The knowlt. The knowlt looks nothing like the apple that people believe it to have been. The knowlt has no skin and was not physical in composition. If the knowlt had resembled any fruit that humankind knows today, it would have looked somewhat like a cluster of grapes. The knowlt is a bunch of tiny energies that grow along the branches of the Tree of Knowledge. The small river encircling the tree drips up, catching on the branches. These water droplets catch the light that shines on, in and through, the garden. This is how a knowlt is made.

“Yes, Adam. I’m coming. What is it?” my mind sent a telepathic boom across the garden. Insects, small rodents, and mammals scattered every which way. My mind voice mirrored Adam’s voice. It was a few decibels lower. Both Adam and the woman seemed to respond best to that frequency.

“The woman. The woman you gave me. She is missing,” Adam yelled, facing opposite to my direction. I can not yet see him, as he is in a corner of the garden, far from the Tree. How I know he isn’t facing me, is that his voice has bounced back at me from an upwards angle.

Adam and the woman are forbidden from eating the knowlt. Their bodies are not ready yet. They are only still adjusting to the light in the garden. Too much light in a body who is not prepared is nothing short of a disaster.

That woman that I created for Adam, her name is Eve. I have never created another creature so dull in my existence. I pulled her from him, not making her a creature of her own mind, simply so that the poor boy could have some company. In a way, she was to Adam, as to what Adam was to me.

Eve came with her own set of problems. Eve was continually wandering off in some part or other of the garden, usually where the angels would integrate into one of the animals. When the angels wanted to experience physicality, or some energetic part of the garden need maintenance or adjusting, they would need to download their consciousness into a being. The angels were the caretakers of the garden but could not adjust energy without a physical body. The problem for Eve, and the angels, is that it raised questions for Eve about the other creatures in the garden. She was not ready for the answers.

I leap across the water, prancing upon the golden blossomed groundcover, towards where Adam should be. I move through dense shrubbery. The leaves move apart to allow me passage. Foliage from dark to light green, gold, orange and red cover the bushes and trees. Flowers blooming with petals blue, black, purple and green undulate in the breeze as I gallop past, gaining speed.

With a thud, I hit Adam’s calves. “Hey, Cat!” A large, red-haired, pitch-black hand reaches down to scratch me between the ears. Purrs erupt. “Why is it, whenever I ask for God, you show up?” Adam stoops down to look from his golden eyes into my blue ones. Without using my claws, I leap onto his arm, and with a thrust of my hind legs, drape myself around his neck.

Adam strolls through the garden, me keeping his shoulders warm, despite the fact the garden never gets hot or cold. The temperature is always perfect in the garden. “Hey, Ladybug!” Adam yells as we pass a small field of grown wheat. Not one ladybug, but dozens of purple bodied, yellow-spotted lady bugs cover the wheat stems. Rafaels colours mean Rafaels presence. Still, to date, Adam had never seen the angels take on the form of a creature. For that matter, Adam had never seen an angel in angelic form, and was still blind to their existence. I gave Adam carte blanche, upon his creation, to name the animals what he would. The names I use in this narrative, are not the true names he gave the creatures. Because I am aware of you, my readers, as God, knowing that humans in the 2020’s and beyond are reading, I must use terms, phrases, and language that you will understand.

“We will find, Eve, we will. Eve can’t be far,” Adam mumbles to me, as he rubs his strong chin on my nose. The air becomes hot and dry. The landscape has turned into a desert. In the distance, near the ground, lines and dots can be seen in the sky. This denotes the limit of the garden. Red, thick, viscous lava is flowing on the arid ground before us. “Hi, Salamander!” Adam whispers, cautiously approaching, a large, long, thin, amphibian with a red body and a green mouth. I catch the eye of the beast. It twinkles green at me. Michael is present.

“Eve! Eve!” Adam calls, as we approach a vast body of water. A fin appears in the distance, approaching where we are standing. As it arrives, I see that the tip of the fin is orange. The next moment, a blue body rears out of the water, balancing on its tail. “Hi, Dolphin!” Adam giggles, clapping his hands. The dolphin, in Gabriels colours, splashes back into the liquid.

Moving into a thicket of clinging trees, Adam moves past some hanging vines. The flora does not move aside for him as it did for me. The luminescence from the garden struggles to penetrate past the foliage. A rustle in the leaves and a shadow darts out from beneath the brush. “Hi, Squirrel!” Adam makes cooing noises, as he descends to his knees. Grabbing a nut from a nutshroom, he holds it forward. The creature, in mottle green, brown and black fur darts toward Adam, and snatches the nut. There is a tiny pentagram etched in relief upon its snout. It scuttles backwards a short way and captures my eyes. A light beamed forth from its pupil into mine. It is Auriel.

Something is very wrong if four out of five of my main archangels are busy in the garden. It must be out of balance. But how? The garden has never been out of balance before. Not like this at least. One, or maybe two archangels at most, are ever what is necessary, and then, only to supervise the legions of angels beneath their command. Archangels rarely, if ever, do the work themselves. Slipping a claw down, I reach down the front of Adam and sink it into his chest.

“Ouch, Cat!” Adam complains. Adam reaches up, over and behind to dislodge me from my perch and deposit me on the ground. “You can’t be doing that to me. What kind of cat are you? No animal has ever done this! I need to tell God, that not only can we not find the woman, but the animals also attack me.”

I dash off into the trees and make my way back towards the Tree of Knowledge. As I approach the tree, I notice a thin, studded, papery, tube laying on the ground beneath it. It is a snakeskin. The only time the snake sheds its skin is when Lucifer inhabits it to maintain balance in the Tree.

There are times when I regret choosing my most high musician and favoured angel to maintain the Tree. Sometimes, when he returns to heaven after doing a stint, he seems changed, wiser. Perhaps a bit too wise. And argumentative. Of late, we have been arguing about Adam and Eve. Lucifer has said that Adam and Eve may eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and would overthrow us in heaven, as they would have the minds and power of Gods. That, however, would not make them Gods. They are human and can not ascend to that without uniting fully with me, thus losing themselves in the process.

I tuck my cat body into a space beneath the ground and an exposed, gnarled root of the Tree. There, I know neither Adam nor Eve will disturb or dislodge it. The Angels and Archangels will not bother it either. They know my preferred beast. I curl up, tucking my nose between my front paws, and laying my tale across my eyes, closing them. There will be no feasting on a knowlt today.

On the exhale of the cat’s body, my spirit wooshes out. The cat will not breath while I am gone. There is no fear of decomposition in the garden, as time does not operate in this realm.

The next instant, my presence is residing on my quartz crystal throne. The throne is large. The modern human would think it fit for a giant. The back of the throne is tall, reaching back, up and down into infinity. The arms, thin and long, with bulbous curves in place of the hand rests. It is surrounded by my immediate guardians: a lion, an ox, a man and a flying eagle (King James Bible, 1611/2022, Rev. 4). Lidless blue eyes covered these beings like barnacles on rocks. Each eye pulsed with a benign intelligence of its own. Even the six wings of each the creatures were encrusted with eyes. There was nothing these eyes missed.

The only indicator to the other inhabitants of heaven, of which there are suspiciously few today, that I am here, is the rainbow emerald dancing, cavorting in joy at the re-emergence of my presence. It wraps itself around me, draping itself on my body, shimmering.   

There are only two-thirds of my elders are in attendance today. As they became aware of my presence, they each stood up, and began falling down before me, standing up again and performing obeisance again.

“Holy, hole…,” started my guardians in their monotone voice.

“Enough!” I yelled. My fists slammed hard on the armrests. The rainbow emerald skittered away, leaving me naked, but not unclothed with my own, inner glory. I had created everything. Everything testified to my glory. And glorious I was. But sometimes, I wanted less of the holy-holy and obeisance and more equality between my creations and myself. It was something I had yet to master, creating an equal to myself apart from myself. All my creations were parts of me, that I had externalized, but they were not me, nor could they be my equals.

I look at the expanse of ordinary angels. A third is missing. The grumbly, lazy, third that are Lucifer’s cronies. This both pleases me and fills me with dread. Lucifer was turning into a problem, always second guessing my commands, saying that he could run heaven and the garden better than I could, or his four archangelic brothers. The third of the angels that worshipped Lucifer, or sided with Lucifer, I could never tell which, were also difficult. They were always causing troubles in the ranks of angels. It seemed that if an angel did not agree with them, the third of angels that followed Lucifer, did their best to interfere in the behaving angels angelic duties, while ignoring their own.

“Where is Lucifer?” I hollered at my elders, whom I had startled with my previous yell. My voice had frozen some of them with knees half-bent. Every eye on the creatures that guard throne rotates towards me. I shiver in their unblinking stare. The next time I make a throne, the eyes on the creatures will have lids.

“Lucifer!” My voice echoes through heaven. A current ripples before the angels that are standing. Four well-loved and trusted shapes become clear. In a softer voice, I greeted the arrivals. “Raphael, Michael, Gabriel and Auriel, what a pleasant surprise. I noticed you were busy in the garden as I made my way around it with Adam, searching for the woman.”

A fire, red at its core and green on its tips, moved towards me from the ranks of angels. “Holy, holy, holy art though God of heaven and creator of the garden,” Michael’s voice cackled out, breaking as a fire would on each syllable. “The garden is out of balance, and we can not discern the reason why, nor can we rebalance the garden.”

“Is it a problem with the light? Is the light to bright? Is there too much light being poured into the garden?” I queried in a level voice. The rainbow emerald slithered onto my lap, curling. My hand cradled an end of it, stroking it. A quiet purr rumbled.

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of all creation. No, there is not too much light. We have found, in fact there are areas of the garden that get no light at all. This makes that parts of the garden heavier and denser.” I gazed upon Michael as he answered. Whenever he said ‘Holy’, the flame that he was burned bright, reached up and extending down into Ain Soph and Kether. When he wasn’t glorifying me, his fire contracted, dancing before me, not even able to fill the space in front of the throne.

I rested my chin on my fist, tapping at my cheek with a finger. “What is the consequence if a part of the garden does not get enough light?” I quested out loud.

A purple shrouded yellow cloud stepped out from the ranks of the angels. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord. The endarkened area of the garden will become dense and collapse,” Raphael delivered his husky opinion.

I frowned. As I played with my lower lip, my magnificence began to take on the countenance of Adam, except for, as where he was black, with red hair, I was whiter than white, with white hair and a white beard. “Is there a reason for this endarkenment?” I prodded.