Salt Pit

I sunk into yet another wicked dream in Samael's spent embrace.

He rocked me to sleep, singing like a wounded angel.

---

Long ago, it happened. A reflection in the hourglass, the lip where sand siphons into the void.

He gave me the heart from his breast. His ribs grew into the Tree. It throbbed in his hand like a secret. I took it, terrified.

"It is yours," he whispered. Tears softened his stony eyes. "It always has been. Take it. It will set you free."

"But I don't want it! All I want is to be with you-"

"Eve!" Samael cried, clasping his hands around mine. They trembled, and that scared me more than the gaping wound in his chest. He had never been afraid. "Please. If you do not, you will die."

"But this is our home-"

"You do not belong here." He pressed it to my lips. I swallowed it against my will and it sunk into me like Zagreus' heart. I gasped, feeling it root into me. I crumpled against him as the change took me. He cradled me, murmuring in a language I did not understand.

"You're coming with me!" I pleaded. "You must."

"I cannot. Be free of me."

It was a gift humanity needed. One I never wanted. They mock me and say Adam and I ate the child of Samael, so his evil entered our hearts. That the Nachash injected his filth, zuhama, sin, into Chava.

How they lie.

"I love you." I told him.

He just held me, burrowed his face into my neck. "Please," he asked. "Never forget me." He draped his cloak around my shoulders and cried.

With that, he banished me.

It was good I did not look back. If I had, it would have broken me.

I have seen the scars I gave him, the sklerokardia of his soul. It is a black rot like a graveyard that eats away at his bones. He carries the pain with him everywhere. The abyss that I alone know.

---

Morning came to the ruins of Paradise. Its heart was gone, and the Angel of Edom slumped against the Tree, the dead vine he had planted so long ago. In millenia it would blossom, bearing the names of all God's creatures, and he would tend it as the Angel of Death.

Morning came harsh and red, with burning skies and cold. He rotted that night, his humanity sacrificed, and only the moon took pity on him. He had lost the strength to stand, so he leaned against the trunk, dreaming of me. When he could not lean, Samael fell like a sunken stone - the king stripped of his glory and cast out like morning trash.

Samael bore his pain for me, for the children of the world, and the mask of a smile settled on to his face. It is the one he bares now, that of a predator, whose light does not reach his eyes. He writhed in the dirt and was cursed. Breath fled him, and the sag of his chest as his lungs went out haunt me to this very day.

The poison spread through him, blackening his veins, turning his eyes to blood. He had given me the power to walk out of Eden but sacrificed his own legs. My freedom cost him his humanity, and with his sacrifice, Samael lost that which made him a man.

They say he is cursed above all livestock. That he crawls on his belly like a beast. That he will kill you if you ask him his secrets.

He wears his scars as his crown. His disfigurement is his glory, the pride of all of Hell. Long before the Second Adam has or will hang on the Tree of Life, the first one died on the Tree of Death, cold and alone as venom wept from his stigmata. St. Francis saw a seraph on a cross that cried out my name, Havah, as he was burned from the inside out. No better punishment for rebellious Sons than sacrifice.

I died many times after that night, as Sinann at Connla's well, seeking the Salmon of Wisdom. The River Shannon drowned me. It bears my name. I was Psyche in the depths of Hell, peering at the knowledge of love. The Magdalene at the necromancer's grave.

Through all this time, I have waited, for Thanatos to remember what he is. Through the ages I have searched for the wisdom that could have saved him.

Someday I will take Washington's axe to the Lote Tree of the Outer Boundaries. I will chop at the heartwood of the universe until enfettered Samrafil is freed. I will save him, my weary angel, and his eyes will be blue again, and the Zu bird and seraphim will sing. Israfel will sing, and finally, Michael will laugh.

The roots of the Tree shook as his corpse stiffened. The sun burnt off his skin, and he shed his manhood. In place of his legs was the tail of a snake, long as days and black like the poison cobra.

I have seen it lash the Damned and leave trails of blood in the prisons of Gehenna. The scales shined under the hellfire in a warehouse that smells of rot. He carried me as he had in my youth, and I clung to the monster I knew in the belly of the beasts. It rang with the mad screams and laughter of the Fallen. Some are his brethren, others beasts older than angel or man. All so terrible even Lucifer locked them away.

They fell silent at the sight of him. In that moment, I knew Samael was more loathsome than all the pit's Damned, and he cast me into a pool of his blood, smiling that masked smile that is a stain. He touched my breast and opened my heart, showing me my future.

We are imprisoned together in the foulest cage in Gehenna. I am his Sigyn, but unlike Loki, the snake is inside him. He sheds his scales madly, tearing at his flesh, trying to get the rot out of him. The cage's ceiling is lower than a child and I lie in his coils, uselessly trying to soothe him. He whimpers one moment and rages the next, pleading with me:

"Havah. Havah. Where is my heart? Can you see the stains on my soul? Love me, Shana, redeem me."

He is blind and does not see me. He cannot hear my voice. He just knows that I am there, and though I touch him, he does not feel me. He cries in his new flesh and looks below his waist to see the serpent tail still there. He roars and tears open his breast, ripping out the rot that festers within. It falls in stinking piles to the floor, raining on the demons below us. They screech as its acid eats their flesh.

I live in his blackened blood and push his husks from the cage. I wonder who put him here. If like Skadi I imprisoned him. If I did, one day, I would stay, and I know it with a certainty that twists my gut. My love would damn me.

His hands leave my breast, and the future vanishes.

"Blood for blood," he tells me. "That is the law of Hell."

Perhaps he was making an investment when he gave me his heart. So that I would owe him my life. The debt will be paid upon his damnation and I will become his warden, like he was mine long ago.

But this is now. We are in the Pit. Monsters escape and he beats them into submission. They know no other rule than brutality, no higher moral then the lash. Samael is disgusted by them, and beats them even harder because in them, he sees himself. They grovel at his feet and their blood paints his black scales red.

When we leave and I peer over his shoulder, I see he is crying in anger. I think he must cry every time he makes rounds, and I wonder why he bothers. Why he does not set the horde free. He hears my sobs and berates me, telling me to be strong. But I cling to his back and bury my face in his wings, hiding myself from the world.

The monsters mock me, and I curse them, tell them they should kiss his feet, that he is more noble than all of Heaven. I yell that no other archangel could bear his lot or had the strength to sacrifice himself to the Pit.

He puts his gore-covered hands over my lips to silence me. And I see in his eyes that he loves every one of the wretched prisoners. He takes the keys of hell from his neck and gives them to me.

"Lock them in," he tells me. He dares me to lock him in too and stands inside the seventh gate, arms folded across his chest. I throw the keys into the blood, crush them into the ground.

For a moment, his face is raw, but the hardness sets in again. He laughs harshly and slithers out, slamming the gates with his tail. He grabs my forearm and takes me above, away from the tormented screams.

Later that night, in the courts of Hell, he drinks sinner's blood with demon lords. They purify souls by consuming sin, absolving the damned. Later, we dance, and he presses fruit to my lip, red as blood. Hell's nobility waltz to a Devil's interval, chimeras of angel and beast. He stops in the middle and dips me. A mad smile plays on his lips:

"Eat it for me," he whispers. "I picked it just for you."

It is his own mad joke. Hungry, I nibble at it, having refused the food of the dead.

He watches me longingly, wishing he could enjoy simple things.

"Is it sweet?" he murmurs.

"Just like you."

He snarls to hide his embarrassment. I roll my eyes at him.

"Don't taunt dragons," he warns.

I pinch his cheeks. "I saw you blush."

He has haunted me through the ages, always just out of touch.