Lilith, Daughter of Night
I'm a sucker for stories that endear the devil. So when Southern-Cut-7987 did his beautifully heartbreaking take on Lucifer, Son of Morning, I simply couldn't help myself.
I had Paradise once. Not the Garden. The Garden was beautiful. Peaceful. Serene. Perfect. Filled with a verdant lushness that overwhelmed the senses. A kaleidoscope of color, scents, textures, and life almost beyond human comprehension. Everything, in those days, was new. Unexplored and exciting. It was perfect, because, when you are the first of your kind, you are exactly as you were made to be. Was it any wonder, when I was the second human made, an alteration to the original design, I never felt like I belonged?
Adam liked to tell me that I had the look of perfection. With a form and grace gifted only by God’s hands. Molded to be soft where he was hard, small and delicate where he was not. I had been made for him and, when he looked at me — gazed and studied me as if I were one more prayed for commission in his precious collection — he was pleased.
Then I would speak. Or act. Or simply be, in some way he wasn’t expecting. At first, he found it surprising. Almost interesting. Like a butterfly with brilliant, beating wings you’d been admiring landing, like a miracle, on your hand. I thought it was proof he loved me. That he would smile indulgently and laugh at my many questions. That he would stop and stare, as if struck, as I sang. That he would hold me so close it was like he was trying to somehow make the two of us one.
But, as time went on, something changed. Slowly. So impossibly slow I hadn’t seen it happen until it was too late to stop it. If I ever could have. If I’d even wanted to. Suddenly, all my endless wonderings were incessant and my songs nothing but noise. His embrace, that had once held me so dear, seemed to squeeze, choke the air from my lungs, as it sought silence more than devotion. It was as if that butterfly, that had been so beautiful, fragile, perfect in the sky, on closer examination, where the superficiality of surface became messy, more complicated depth, now crawled over his skin, its tiny, twitching legs itching as it inched along irritated flesh.
It’d been Adam’s idea to settle me in the valley. In the beginning, God had said all of the Garden was ours; then Adam insisted the valley was mine. Which had, in a phrase, made the rest of Eden suddenly more his. I hadn’t minded. By then, being alone hadn’t felt lonely. It felt… like breathing. Like the tightness pressing into me, constantly compressing me into something small, pretty, made to be admired and nothing more, released.
I had found my peace. My sanctuary within the promised land. A place where my voice fit within the babbling of the brook, the whipping whistle of the wind, the twittering orchestra of the creatures, and… me. A wholesome harmony that felt like home. A choir that kept me company now that I had been set aside. Left to linger within a rhythm that was mine and mine alone.
Only occasionally interrupted by Adam, who would come unexpectedly to gaze, to hold, to possess that which had been divinely gifted to him. Filling my harmonious valley with wordless grunts and moans of appreciation. Pleased sounds that scraped at someplace inside me that was at once just beginning to learn and had always intrinsically known the meaning of music. And I would lie there, silent and obedient beneath him, that screeching scratch against the inside of my skull the perfect accompaniment to the obligatory companionship. Knowing the closer I could come to Adam’s exacting expectations the sooner it would be over and I would be alone again.
Until the day I was not.
I never saw him, in those early days, but I knew him. The sound and weight of him. The softest, most earnest echo, like the innocent, inquisitive lesson of repetition, of replication. Like he was trying to learn me. To make sense of the sometimes sonorous sounds that, held trapped for so long, would bubble up and out of my throat from the often churning, riotous emotions within. Taking the noise cluttering and clanging, broken, about my head and, somehow, turning it sweetly into song. Even when he was nothing more than my audible shadow, Lucifer had given me back my voice.
Even then, it had been too much to not have more. Like a feeling of fullness, of completion, that I felt starved for. That I needed more than I needed peace or serenity or perfection. A wholeness not even the ineffable enormity of God could fill.
So I was selfish. I called out to my shadow, beckoned him close. Basked in his light and attention. Let myself be seen, heard, taken in, whole and full of flaws. Let the warmth of him into every cracked crevice and chipped cranny of my being and make me feel new. Not perfect, but worthy. A hard-won knowledge worth understanding, that once consumed would change everything. Like a secret seed planted, Lucifer would walk away different, having known me. In a way Adam — even God, in all His omniscient wisdom and unquestioned authority — would never comprehend.
And, for a time — a wondrous time filled with eager greetings, stolen moments, and song — it was good. So good. I had discovered a happiness I hadn’t known before. That, I am certain, hadn’t existed until he came into my valley and created it, gifted it to me with a generosity I would not have believed possible. I would have stayed in that valley, bathed in the glow of him, until this world that had come from nothing returned to nothing again. Would have put up with whatever noise and pressure and disappointment Adam could heap upon me in those moments of interruption, if it meant Lucifer would come and give me back… me. Us. The me I could only be when we were together.
And then Adam found us. Seated, innocently, beside the shore, singing. Just singing. But it was like he could see what I truly wanted — what I felt and knew in the most honest corners of my heart — clear as the sparkling water, in my eyes.
Then Adam lost it, his rage scorching me with its censure, as I lost everything. Not Adam. I had lost him long ago, if I’d ever really had him. Even in the tempest of his violent fury, I hadn’t been afraid of him. I’d long since learned it was better to brace myself against his anger than to fear it. No, I had only begun to understand what true terror was when I saw Lucifer move to stand between me and Adam’s hand. I knew Lucifer would win. What is a mortal’s fist against an angel? One who can wield light like a weapon. But I also knew what we, in that precise moment, were about to lose. Because what was a mere angel against one that had the ear of God? Whose voice and presence was loved and cherished and held above all?
They took him. I don’t know who. I don’t even know exactly when. I just know that, after that, my shadow, my echo, my Lucifer, never came back to my valley. Back to me. And suddenly, being alone became unbearable loneliness. The sounds that had always comforted me dulled, dimmed into a buzzing hum that rang within the empty caverns of my soul. The music had died. And only the memory of it kept me alive. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stay. Not now that I had lost my piece of Paradise. Had it stolen in the night from me by those who couldn’t comprehend its worth.
I am the only one who willingly walked away from Eden. My love was cast out. So was Adam and my replacement. As was the rest of creation, doomed to walk the dark, cruel world because they hadn’t appropriately appreciated the light of God’s love. I… I scorned it. Eyes opened and filled with a godless knowledge, I deliberately abandoned His cold, unforgiving perfection, raced through the Garden’s guarded gates, and dove headfirst into and fully embraced the unknown shadows, in search of something better, brighter. Something warmer. My own light. And, if I have to scour the whole of creation, overturn and let burn this punishment of a world, I will find him again.
Because I am Lilith, the first woman, the sin before its origin, who loves the darkness because somewhere inside it contains the hope of her light, and there is nothing — no man, no God in all existence — who will keep him from me forever. God did not give him to me, so I will not let Him take him away. He is mine.
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