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July, AD 68
Deep in the summer-greenest heart of never-charted mountain forest, amidst the snow-fir and rowan and the silver-shot bamboo, inside a heartbeat when only moonlight dares to linger on the rough leaf-littered rock, there is a little pool, fed by a spring. On this night, only an ordinary, nameless night, the water lies uncommonly dark and still and quiet, the moon a cloud-crossed piece of silver on its face. Steam rises, even in the humid air.
A pale face emerges from the depths, pale hair dripping. Midnight-garden eyes, opening wide, then shutting tight. Weary, but resentful of rest.
He senses something. A brush of energy against his, so soft and feather-light he could pretend never to have noticed; silk whisking against cotton, the breath before a knock on the door, a question needing no voice.
Always the questions, that one. Always questions he can never quite answer and doesn't dare ask.
Well, perhaps tonight's as good a time as any.
He goes under again. In the mineral water, hot and rhythmic with the steady pulse of the earth, this corporation grasps at the memory of a primitive peace; he floats until his lungs start to burn. He breaks the surface with a gasp.
A kitsune nods to him in greeting from its languid seat on the rocky shore. Robed all in black, it gleams in sleek vermilion fur in faint, reflected light.
“Hope I'm not interrupting anything,” says the kitsune, whiskers twitching beneath dark spectacles. “Though I haven't come empty-handed.”
Beside him on the lichened rock is a wooden tray with an earthenware jug and two small cups.
“Is that wine?” asks the angel, drifting closer. “Only I'm not quite in the mood for wine tonight, I'm afraid.”
To anyone for whom this secret pocket in the fabric of reality might possibly buckle at the seams, anyone who might possibly catch the fleetest fevered glimpse inside and court the ire and the madness of the spirit world, in the water is another kitsune, this one gleaming pure white like a pearl, blinding like a mirror catching the midday sun. As it comes to rest its pretty paws on the rock-lined edge of the pool, its face upturns to the red kitsune like a lily turning to the sky and the first of several snow-white tails furls longingly above the water.
“It's something new they've started working on in these parts. Thought you might like to try it.” The demon opens the jug and fills the cup on the other side of the tray. The angel watches, curious despite itself. The liquor is thin and murky white. “Very promising. If I didn't know better, I'd consider it divinely inspired.”
The demon holds out the jug.
Dressed now in pale hues of iris and earth, the angel takes the jug and fills the other cup. They lift, toast in silence, and sip.
The angel hums in surprised pleasure. The drink is lukewarm and subtly sweet, and simmers in his gut. The demon smiles, refills his cup.
The slow breeze rustles the fir, the rowan, the silver-shot bamboo, and scatters their leaves across the ground.
The demon rolls a mouthful of liquor on his tongue before swallowing. “A last breather before you go back Up, then?”
The angel is on his third cupful already. “Sorry, what?” He finds his round, startled face mirrored in the demon's lenses.
“My side are getting terribly excited. They say loads of you are getting recalled these days.” The demon lies back and stares up, savouring his drink. He always has liked looking up at the stars. Tonight is so clear the Ama-no-gawa stretches clear and bright, all rosy glow and purple cloud, another old scar from the birth of the universe.
The angel gazes heavenward, too. “Something like that. Lots of us putting in for a holiday these days, needing a bit of a break. Some of us have been pulling double shifts. Management is a bit swamped.”
The demon eyes him over the rim of a cup. “And you?”
“Me? Oh, perhaps later. Not nearly enough of us down here at the best of times, as you know.” The angel fidgets with the cup in his hands. It's pottery glazed in a method he hasn't seen before, but even that fails to hold his attention. “Besides, I don't imagine any of them would be particularly happy to see me just yet, to be honest.”
The demon puts his cup down, while the angel drains his. Silence stretches between them.
“Nero wasn't your fault, angel.” The demon speaks low and not unkindly, a kitsune's purr.
“Oh, wasn't it though?” quavers the angel, covering his face with shaky hands, and only because it's so very quiet in his little sanctuary, so very safe, he's seen to it, for the sake of his very existence he's seen to it, and for that of the demon now putting away his glasses and looking somber. And perhaps the drink is a mite stronger than the angel is altogether used to. “Silly me, I thought it would improve him. The art. The music. The poetry. The theatre. I thought it would save him. His mother was... such a piece of work. The politics, the rebellions—I thought it would help him, Crowley,” and the tearful angel turns toward the demon now sitting by him, wordlessly pressing into his side. “He wasn't perfect, they never are, but he was doing almost well. And he seemed so taken with Poppaea, they were already going to have another child. The people almost liked him. But somehow...”
The tremulous echoes of his voice fade away around the pool, swallowed up in the insular night.
“There's only so much any of us can ever do,” muses the demon, as though speaking only to himself. “He wasn't the first one to lose his head with power, and he certainly won't be the last. My side will see to that, if nothing else.”
The angel sighs, twisting the ring on his little finger. “You must think me so stupid.”
“Ngk, hmmm,” demurs the demon. “Was a shit job right out of the gate. You just drew the short straw.” Pensively, he refills both cups with a wave of his hand. “Born into an old nest of vipers, and that's coming from me. Nobody he could really trust, nobody who could ever set him straight, and all the world at his feet. That's no fit place for a human to be.” He sips his liquor. “He must have been scared out of his wits half the time. Humans get weird when they're scared.”
“You would know that.” With red-rimmed eyes, the angel shoots a reproachful look at the demon, who wryly salutes with his cup.
“That's what you lot are for. 'Be not afraid' and all that sort of thing.”
“You should have seen him in his last days. Terrified. Madness would have been mercy. And oh, the blood, when he finally ended it.” The angel shudders, his eyes shut in remembrance. He hasn't had wine since; the very sight of it turns his stomach. He hadn't even known corporations could work that way. “When it was over he looked straight past me like I wasn't there, like I hadn't been there through it all. He was singing the most horrible song as they were dragging him down into the darkness. He was calling for his lyre, calling for his wives, his mother. Cursing her, in the same breath.”
The demon understands now why this place, so carefully unyoked from the material of the world, is so empty and still. The howling ache in the angel's heart more than fills the air.
“It sounded like an easy job at first. Simple. Surely, I thought, so much passion couldn't go wrong. He thirsted for it all. Tried so hard. At everything—painting, sculpture, speech. Before him, they only ever liked war and conquest. I thought, surely this devotion to finer pursuits would guide his steps, enlighten his mind. All the beauty in this world, the dreams and stories and great things—surely, in his love for these, he would only bring forth more. He was still just a boy.” The exhausted angel barely notices how he's leaning into his companion, pale curly head low on a slender, steady shoulder, black robe silk under his wet cheek. “He was only a boy, for so much of his life.”
“Few can be so cruel as a human child. Most of the time my side don't even have to do anything.” The demon raises his cup to his lips, but very gently, so as not to dislodge his audience. “I don't think it will ever be simple, angel. Bigger men than that are going to crumble yet for less. Nothing's simple down here.”
“How do you do it?” whispers the angel, as if afraid even now, even here, to be overheard. “Doesn't it shake you, even just a little bit, every time? You don't even believe in the Ineffable Plan. And I know your lot wouldn't even begin to understand you, let alone agree with you. How do you keep going, the—the way you are?”
The demon smiles at that, an insult from any other being, almost a psalm of praise from this one.
“Once I'd Fallen,” he says, because he likes answering questions, “suddenly things started to make a little more sense.”
The angel sniffles. Well, sometimes no one likes the answers they get.
“But, ehh,” adds the demon, because he likes answering questions properly, “it does help to be reminded, every now and again, what the simple truths are. Up and Down. Black and white.”
“Where the lines must be drawn,” murmurs the angel unhappily.
“Exactly,” agrees the demon. “So the likes of me can step right over them.”
“Comedy and tragedy.” The angel is warming to the subject despite himself.
“Everything else gets all muddied up around here,” the demon concurs, feelingly. “It won't do to get turned round.”
The angel nods, sniffles again. Anyone boldly stealing a look into this equally stolen paradise would see—before the madness forever descended—proud long tails curving toward each other, blazing white and blood red, a sacred knot even gods might hesitate to tear asunder.
“A good solid drink once in a while can also be tremendousssly therapeutic,” further advises the demon, more cheerfully.
“Yes, and that one seems a jolly good start to something.” Then the angel frowns. “Hang on, were you calling me simple?”
The demon's laugh would rouse a whole continent's forests to waking. Perhaps they've both had a little too much tonight.
“Simple!” the demon cries, hastening to soothe ruffled white feathers, “like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is simple, like Beta Ursae Minoris pointing true north is simple. At least for another 400 years or so. The devil's in the details. No, Aziraphale, only an idiot would ever call you simple.”
Not entirely satisfied, although ever the forgiving sort, the angel pouts as he pours anew from the jug. “I don't know why I put up with you.”
“Oh, angel.” The demon grins as the angel passes him his cup. “Never change.”
The angel drinks, his mouth primly pursed. “You know we don't.”
They talk about other things after that, safer things, surer things: foods that pair nicely with fermented rice liquor, the relative merits of oysters from different parts of the world, recent human experiments in paper-making. The angel waxes particularly enthusiastic over the last subject. The demon lets him hold forth, only inserts a question now and then to keep him talking, waving his hands for colour and emphasis. The demon says something, the angel says something unintentionally funny back; they laugh together, far too loud, for far too long. They wipe tears from their eyes. The jug never runs out.
Overhead, two stars shine bright, the wide Ama-no-gawa flowing between them.
Too soon, the demon unsprawls himself from across the rock, muttering reluctantly about new assignments, reports to write, deadlines to meet. He puts his dark glasses back on and leaves first, a flurry of starless silk, vanishing so completely he might never have been.
The angel shivers, suddenly cold, and stays a while. Now he appreciates the new glaze on the pottery, how the surfaces shine in the moonlight, turned this way and that. The cups are small enough; he hides them away somewhere he can find them again. He's been called sentimental, and worse. He's learned to ignore it. Perhaps someday he'll have a place of his own where he can display these things with pride, recall these memories with fondness. Perhaps someday.
And when he finally leaves, the angel turns, folds it up, seals it all up tight—the trees and the moon and the spring and the stars—makes it small, so small and mean even the nosiest or most supercilious angel would never think to look twice, and dispels it back into the ether with a sigh and a smile. A fever dream of trees and summer wind, evaporating in the sunrise. A memory for two alone. There are perhaps more of those than one might think. And one hardly dares to think at all, or tempt the wrath of the spirits.
The red kitsune is now but a flicker in the mind. The pale kitsune shakes out his beautiful star-white tails, and is gone.
*