Eve
The Garden was always quiet in the mornings.
Not silent—alive. The birds called to one another in songs she didn't yet understand. The river sang as it wound between the trees. And Adam snored softly beside her, curled in the grass like a child tucked beneath the sky.
Eve walked barefoot among the roots of the great tree.
The one they had been warned not to touch.
The one that called to her.
She did not know what death was.
But she knew the shape of temptation.
It was curiosity.
It was the way the air shimmered beneath the leaves.
It was the feeling that something real was just out of reach.
Gabriel
He sat at the edge of the Veil, just beyond the border of Eden.
He could see everything.
The trees. The river. The man. The woman.
The serpent.
It slithered near the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—coiled like thought wrapped in shadow, smooth as a lie, quiet as an ancient truth.
Lucifer wasn't there physically.
But Gabriel felt his brother in every branch that swayed.
In every pause.
In every word the serpent would speak.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to intervene.
But it was already happening.
And Yahweh had made it clear:
They must choose.
Eve
She knelt beside the roots.
The serpent's voice slipped into her ear like a breeze. Not hissing. Not threatening. Almost kind.
"Why not taste it?"
She looked up at the fruit.
"It's forbidden," she said.
"By whom?"
"…Our maker."
"And what is He so afraid you'll discover?" the voice said. "That you are not weak? That you are not owned? That you, too, can know?"
The fruit swayed.
She touched it.
Nothing happened.
The sky didn't split. The earth didn't shake.
It was only a fruit.
Only a question.
And for the first time… she wanted an answer.
Gabriel
He rose to his feet as she reached for it.
"No," he whispered.
He took a step forward.
Wings stretched.
Fingers clenched.
He could stop her.
He could stop this.
He should.
But his feet didn't move.
Because he remembered.
Lucifer.
Standing in a court of judgment.
Alone.
Unheard.
Unforgiven.
Gabriel had tried to protect the plan.
And he had lost his brother.
If he protected it again…
he might lose everything else.
So he watched.
As Eve bit.
Eve
It was sweet.
Sweeter than any fruit she had ever known.
Sweeter than anything she had imagined.
But as soon as the juice touched her tongue, something else ignited.
Heat.
Awareness.
A light behind the eyes that burned too bright to look away from.
She looked at her hands.
At the world.
At Adam, still sleeping nearby.
And she felt… different.
More real.
More naked.
More alone.
And yet, more herself than ever.
She woke him.
Offered him the fruit.
He took it without a word.
And when their eyes met, they both knew.
Gabriel
The sky changed.
Not with thunder.
With absence.
The garden held its breath—and then began to unravel.
The light dimmed.
The birds fell silent.
And somewhere far above, Yahweh rose from stillness.
It had happened.
The first choice.
The first fracture.
Gabriel turned his gaze to the ground below, to the two figures now cloaked in shame and knowledge.
And he whispered:
"I'm sorry."