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On droughtless summer days like these, the Garden resembled a budding fresh terrarium for some ectothermic pet - the owner having left the heat lamp too close to the glass.
Eden leaves steamed, baking in honeyed sunlight with sap-sweat running down their trees' barked backs, where even the figs and peaches bled and rotted from the relentless affections of the sun. The droughted soil greedily drunk up all the humidity that hot rain-showers had provided a few yesterdays ago, and odd small creatures nestled in their burrows in the cool underbrush - only leaving a few times per day to visit the watering hole or nibble on a dropped plum.
One of such creatures - a small, hairless thing with scales and a glittering jellyfish-thin mane - peeked cautiously out from beneath its rock. Its head jerked dumbly left, then right, then up and all around, but only the wind greeted it. It started to scuttle out from beneath its rock towards the nearest fruit tree when a large brown shadow crashed down upon it - it squeaked and dove back under its safe slay rock as Adam's foot planted in the grass. The other crested over it, then that calloused, freckled ankle raptured again and out of the creature's sight, with Adam not having even noticed it.
Adam parted the drapery of vines curtaining one of the great oaks with a warmly-colored and muscular forearm as he stepped over a large, carcaus fallen branch teaming with ants and beetles - enjoying, after days of curled-up, mild, sweaty and silent work inside his and Eve's small dark hut, the fresh wet air.
Vert, cheerful bushes flanked the well-trodden path through this section of the forest, and morning birds still yet crooned overhead as the prince of God's creation passed. This day he cradled a ruddy clay water pot a few shades lighter than his palm against his shoulder. Hot stones lay smooth and flat under him as his balanced, shoe-less soles curled around them - gradually balancing on the fronts of his feet, his quadriceps had to flex to carry him up the last stretch, towards the looming shadow of the Trees.
Adam craned his chin up, for, as if he passed some invisible threshold, night had taken over the sky. Two twin spiral trunks speared the sky for miles, their foliage eclipsing the sun - one nearly twice the length of its counterpart, its wood spiralling into alien written words, its bulbous roots composing the hill nearly entirely, yet the neighboring and golden Tree of Knowledge still fought for its space. He allowed himself just a few seconds to admire the way its veiny branches overlocked themselves, high up in that canopied grove, with ripe red fruit dangling like ornaments - but it didn't need any watering, and Adam had better things to do than think about the things that never will be. He smacked at a buzzing mosquito by his chest and sidestepped towards the other tree - then stopped.
He blinked. Then squinted a bit in the shade, trying to make sense of what he's seeing. A large, white snake had coiled itself around the trunk. Its flat, round head rested on a loop of its own scaled flesh as if on an elbow and its tail swung lazily over an opposite branch, eyes closed, tongue slightly lolling to taste the air. For what must have been a few straight seconds Adam just stood, and stared, slack and utterly baffled. This part of the Garden was strictly off-limits to the animals who, (even in their feeblemindedness), were pushed by all fasets of their biology to respect the word of God which came through Adam. Even in this white and vibrant heat nothing had even approached the hill to take shade, and ripe Fruits of Life lay rotting on the ground.
So Adam stood and stared. For a second he whirled his head around this direction and that, lost like a child, as if to find some figure of authority to guide him - but unfortunately for Adam the only figure of authority around was himself.
Then the snake opened its eyes, and turned its head.
Two pits of starless sky stared back at him. Only a bit darker than his own, but stretched across the entire sclera, ('maybe its pupils had blown? Snake eyes do that, right?') and lightlessly deep - deeper and more thoughtful, something in Adam's mind concluded, than was natural. Like a chimera of animal body and human mind. The fine hairs on his back and arms shivered and stood with electrified cold.
The snake blinked, slow, like a cat. But then it just turned away again, and propped its head back down. Adam exhaled - his ribs still quivered, all 23 of them, but he kept himself together. ('What was it doing here? What was that?') He readjusted his grip on the pot and willed himself to step forward - but then hesitated - stepped, then hesitated, teetering like a toy solider, before finally trecking forward, slow and cautious.
"... Um. Excuse me." He called out to the shape coiled around the trunk, and it moved to face him again. He shifted the water pot to his left arm instead - a bit spilled over, then cleared his throat. ".... Hey. Hey, uh, there. Little one." The words were scratched and strained in his mouth as he tried to mimic Eve's gentle way of cooing to the animals - her always bent over their vegetable garden to shoo away stray baby gophers, or chatterboxing with the angels that sparsely visited them as he silently served hibiscus tea. He stepped closer, but the 'little one', (who was almost twice as long as Adam was tall), didn't move. "You're, ah.... You aren't supposed to be here, it's forbidden ground." He finally reached out to gently take it. "Come on now, let me-" "Why?"
Adam halted, arms outstretched. Then retracted them, staring up. The adder flicked its tongue out and hiss-sizzled like a heated rock in amusement at Adam's wide-eyed brown face beneath it, then opened its mouth again. "Why, gentle Sovereign? I was only taking my afternoon nap." It leaned over the edge of the branch, watching the flickering gold spots of sunlight drift over Adam's toned bare chest with immense pleasure. "Not that my dream is sweeter than your visage."
Adam laughed out of instinct- almost dropping his water pot entirely. A disobeying snake Adam had never seen, of course, but a talking one he hadn't even imagined - nontheless he covered his outburst with a cough, (politeness's sake), flushed cerise at the sudden compliment. "W-well, it's just The Name's order, that's all."
He could have sworn the serpent almost smiled. "The Name? You give yourself to a being that doesn't even give you a name back?" It chuckled, and his face heated further beneath the sun. The adder, seeing that, felt silent and sheepish, shifting on its perch. "Oh forgive me, patriarch - I shouldn't tease you." It slithers over the shoulders of the tree and around to the other branch, letting it have a closer look at the man. "Though, I am surprised. I believe my exhaled Mistress Eve - true flower of beauty, she is - usually waters this tree."
"Oh, she usually does." Adam shifts on his feet, suddently feeling as though he had to explain himself. He looked down at his bare, bug-bite speckled legs and veiny forearms. He slowly sank to his knees, on a smooth, cool rock - tipping his pot over, gingerly and practiced, and let the water clean and nourish the roots of the Tree of Knowledge. "But she isn't feeling well enough to go out." She didn't look at him this morning as she informed him. Was it still that necklace he lost? God. "A stomachache." For once in his competitively short life he resented their closeness.
".... I see."
"But please, do leave that tree alone, if you can." Adam changes the subject again - craning his chin up at the other, making his neat black cornrows fall about his handsome face. "Our Lord God told me explicitly- what They said was that I should never eat from it for I shall die, and so shouldn't anyone else."
"Did they now?"
"That They did."
"Well isn't that odd." The Adder tilted its head, humming consideringly, as Adam watched the hypnotic way its body slithered over the rough, uneven bark of its thick branch - closer to him, slightly. "Because I have been eating these fruits for days and I'm perfectly healthy."
"You- you HAVE?" Adam's eyes bulge and his jaw drops open again, reeling - the very idea was inconsiderable, preposterous, mind-breaking! It practically went against the laws of nature - but there it was, tail lazily swinging, having admitted to the most heinous crimes with the confidence of a divine messenger. It giggled. "That I did~ Why?"
"But They told me I would surely *die*! That I would die if I eat, are..... Are you...." He tilted his head, squinting at it, suspicious and terrified. "....Dead?"
"Mmmmm......~" Down the trunk, the snake's body slithered - thick, muscular and warm from the summer heat."... Not to my knowledge, sacred Master, no."
"But that makes no sense!" Adam cried with sinless, slightly frightened confusion - he met the snake's gem eyes and jolted at how close it had suddenly gotten to him - that wide, deep, unblinking stare inches from his nose and aching, aching, wishing to devour every mole on Adam’s golden face. Adam bit his lip and turned away. "Th-.... The Lord had said whoever eats of it will die. Perhaps you are dead and just unaware of it...?"
"....My prince." Its face relaxed, lids half-closed as the snake slid closer still, its very gaze slow and hot. This time, Adam let it. "I promise you, divine child - for I simply couldn't lie to such a regal figure - that I'm alive." It slid its scaley, segmented body onto Adam's shoulder, the one closest to the tree. "More than that - I feel as if my life before this tree was waking, childhood sleep that I have only now woken from." Wrapped itself around him - circling down, down his muscular and freckled torso, then up again, to his neck. "For the past week I've sat here, growing wiser by the day. I watch the Garden fade from gloom morning, to azure day, to golden evening." It squeezed him gently with its body and Adam shivered. He gazed down, watched the slow slide of scales against his skin, watched its tail wrap around his thigh. "Ah-" "In cold, clear nights, I serenade the moon. I calculate the movement of the stars, from Libra to Orion, and watch the angels roost in Heaven." Adam tilted his head back, slowly, eyes fluttering shut. The canopy was green and mellow above him, and swayed gently in the breeze. He curled his fingers into the dirt, gripping for solidity. "Ah… H-hey-" "For once, I think of myself. The myself that exists for the first time, unanchored from survival instincts, and realize my fullness of character - holding such Good, and such Evil - yet my sparseness of life."
"I watch you two - your wife and you, sweetest fruit of the whole tree." Adam cries out as the serpent bites into his neck - his first violence, he should be terrified but his body trembled with delight. "Oh~" The serpent kisses his neck. Its body morphs around him, squeezing, skin unfurling into limbs which unfurl into digits and claws. "I watch you both without obedience of fear, and fall in love with you."
Adam cried out, hips bucking "My poor prince. You haven't even known what it feels like." The devil cooly humms, parting the soft dry hair at Adam’s temple and kissing his throbbing pulse. Adam melts against him - just clay after all, clay softening under the sun like a date fruit. He throbbed as Lucifer’s scarred, starch-gloved hand traced circles on the pocket of fat just above his pubic hair. "To taste love in its sensual appeal."
"I love my wife." Adam whispered, trembling, like a shield - confused and starved. He loved her, of course, his rib - even with her lost flower jewels, even with his dinners having too much salt for her, even with her staining his favorite wall artwork, although he’s never pleasured her before. He loved the part of her that was him.
"You love your wife with childish carelessness. Always letting someone else tell you what to do." Lucifer’s pale legs stretched out to either side of Adam’s - left side cracked from fall damage, right side porcelain, at which Adam stares in rapturous awe. “Never standing for yourself. As if you are dead already, while still in your placenta.” Two large, fine paper wings furled around them like a quilt and pressed Adam in against Lucifer’s ivory chest as his serpentine hands soothed and pleasured his body. Adam groans, falling back into the embrace - refreshingly cool against the thick, watery air. "Shhh.... It's okay. You must grow up together, Adam.” Lucifer kissed him again - his jaw, and Adam whined. “You are an adult now. You have been, for some time, and can no longer remain ignorant."
"Please." But he was already guiding Lucifer’s russet hands down further, body flushed and shuddering, parting for him, and sucked in sweet air when the devil’s nimble fingers brushed against the head. He looked back at him for the first time - that silvered angel, gleaming in colors reflected by the snow, Adam’s face pained, but gleaming deep within his eyes. "I… I’m scared."
"Don't be scared." His fingers closed around his slick shaft and Adam’s eyes fluttered close. Lucifer started moving his wrist and he moaned his approval, gripping the devil's hand tight. When had he last told Eve he loved her? “Just follow my lead.”
The angel leaned in close, and molded Adam’s mouth to his, sharing breath, tasting of pomegranate fruit.
Warm, vivacious, insatiable Adam turned fuller - shoulder jabbing against clavicles - closer, and kissed back, reached out as if to take his face in his hands, but froze inches short. Lucifer chuckled against his mouth and brought Adam’s hand down fully, against his porcelain cheek. He stroked him faster, moaning his vicarious pleasure, as Adam pushed his tongue inside the devil’s blushed mouth - hot delight blooming inside Adam at the noises he could draw from him.
Feathers against fresh skin and wandering hands, and soft, eventual laughter in the pleasures of first young adulthood, as midday rusted to flaxen dusk. Adam came in his hands as lazy crows circled above, below the rolling ruby sun, kiss-drunk and clear as glass. Apple cores lay beside them in the wildgrass beside grey, scorching feathers, and ropes of snakes winded through the brush.
The snake did still keep watch, in his tree, for that week of placid heaven before upstairs realized what they've done, as knowing Eve or Adam visited him, or talked late into the night, or cried together for the first time, or made saccharine love on the dew-dropped miner's lettuce.
Sweet honey in each other’s arms, and in the rolling sunlight, two humans of Earth, standing tall against the hills.