This life, here and now, but a ripple in the sea of eternity; a waypoint on our journey to our true home—or so I was told.

In the beginning, there was One and only One: the Godhead. God was all and all was God. From the primordial stillness, God dreamed, and God’s dream was creation. God chose to create, so as to realize this dream. The Godhead’s will shattered Its perfect Unity. What was One became Two: Creator and Creation. And for the sake of the Two, the Godhead became Three: the Triun: the Hallowed Beast; the Moonlight Queen; the Holy Angel.

The Three-in-One readied the way for Creation. As above, so below: a plural God; a plural world; One, and yet Many; Many, and yet One.

And thus the Godhead did begin Their sacred labors.

The first form was the Hallowed Beast. Its breath was Time itself; Its body, the newborn world—form, without essence. The Beast’s roar thickened and foamed, forming the many waters—the waters above, the waters below. By Its might, the primordial chaos was shackled and bound, consigned to the depths. Earth sprouted from beneath the Beast’s paws as It prowled the four corners of the world. The waking stone rose and fell beneath the Beast’s heft, carving out the valleys, hoisting up the mountains. Its blood was the sea; Its ivory pinions, the sky; Its shaggy fur, the clouds.

Sweat dripped off Its muscled hide, bringing rain. The clacks of Its fangs were lightning and thunder, and the power that gleamed in Its eyes filled the world with endless Day.

The first thought was Order, dreamed by the Moonlight Queen. From the highest mountain, She chiseled out rock and carved upon it the Tablets of Destiny. Law filled the world. Order bound the Beast’s primal chaos. She bound the winds and instructed the tides. She gave Time its wending wheel. She dug the oceans and cast the rubble aloft, sculpting it into the Moon, and upon the Moon, She built there a palace, so that Order would abide and watch the turnings of the world. By Her Laws, inscribed upon the Tablets, the Moonlight Queen birthed the cardinal directions, the seasons, and the temperaments. She cleaved Good from Evil, and Truth from Falsehood, and through Her Order, the world gained meaning.

The first word was Love, spoken by the Holy Angel, through His fulsome lips. And Love begat Life. Through His Holy Word, the Angel seeded the denizens of earth, sea, and sky. At His call, the forests rose. The seas teemed. He sculpted the beasts of the world, and gave to them their allotted gifts: tooth and claw; fin and wing. And it was good.

But it was not enough. The Angel had filled the world with Life, that Love might live. But it lived without knowing. There were none to witness. None to sing holy praise. And so, the Angel began His greatest work. From the finest clay of the mother of all rivers, the Angel fashioned Man. He sculpted us after His own image, gifted with free will, so that Divine Love might be freely known.

In its dawn, the world was Paradise, free of the shadow of Death. In that golden time, the Holy Triun did walk among Their works. All creation lay prostrated in adoration.

But it was not to last. Though the world was Good, it was not perfect, for all things, none but God are perfect. And there is no God but God.

The world groaned. It could not bear the weight of its maker. The earth wept. The seas screamed. The sky bled. The great work nearly came asunder. And so it came to pass that the Godhead departed from the world, for the sake of the creation which It so Loved. A time was set for God’s departure.

When the appointed day came to pass, all creation was called to make its valedictions, and all complied, save for Man. We were selfish. Prideful. We would not forgo our Angel; we would not have Him taken from us. We rebelled, and through our rebellion, we brought Sin into the world, and with Sin, Death. We marred what was Good.

Our punishment was swift and righteous.

From the corpse of the primordial darkness, the Moonlit Queen wove a great veil. She named it Night, that it might blot out the holy Light whose Will we so rudely scorned. With the veil clutched tight in Its maw, the Hallowed Beast leapt across the arch of the firmament, drawing Night upon the world, and sealing Man and Sin beneath an endless darkness. The Night was to be our prison, a place of tears and gnashing teeth, where red-eyed ravages crept in the dark. The land turned to rot, the people wept, and the Triun departed, their judgment complete.

But the Angel looked on. He would not turn away. The sight of our pain brought an ache to His heart. We deserved the darkness, but to it, He would not consign us. So deep was His Love that He gave of Himself, to be a Light upon the world. He wrought a great Sword and with its keen edge did sever His Face, fix it fast on the bottom of the sky, and filled it with His golden blood. And though Man had brought Death into the world, Death could not conquer the Angel. In His Death, He birthed the Sun; in His Rebirth, He birthed the Sunrise. With His sacrifice, Light returned to the world, and with it, came Hope.

For His actions, the Angel stood among the Godhead until a decision was reached. The Angel’s sacrifice so moved the Godhead that, unto us, a Promise was made. The Angel Fell to the Earth to share with His creation the Truth of God’s infinite mercy. With His Touch, he did anoint a Chosen One: the First Lassedite: the Lass Enille. To Her was given the Law, the Sword, and the mantle to uphold them. She was to be Man’s guide; the Voice of the Godhead. And so long as we obey Her wisdom, Paradise would be ours in the World to Come, shared by all the righteous faithful, beyond the reach of Night. The Sun and its Light stood in remembrance of the Promise. But should mankind disobey once more, Queen and Beast would descend, and the world would be cast forever into darkness.

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Or so I was told.

I lay in Staff Lounge 3, ruminating behind closed curtains on the aftermath of a day like no other. The tale of Creation played through my mind, the record plucked from my schoolboy memories. I lay on the couch, watching the story play out in the middle of the room, looking upon the mythic past as if through a window. I practiced shifting my tail from side to side, having pulled it out of my pants, swishing it side to side against the back of my slacks, beneath my white coattails. It was almost lewd, except things weren’t facing the right direction, though I could hardly bring myself to care.

I almost wanted to get caught. I felt hopeless. With a tale of Creation like ours, what was the point of even trying to fight—to struggle against fate?

The tale undergirded everything. Without the Creation story, the whole edifice of our beliefs collapsed into dust. The Godhead knew mankind would rebel, for the Godhead knew all things. Yet the choice to disobey lay solely within the human race and our misuse—and subsequent corruption—of the divinely gift that was our free will. That was the lynchpin. That was why we were tainted; why we couldn’t save ourselves, nor earn it through our deeds and words. We deserved damnation. And yet, it was for that very reason that the Angel had been fated to birth the Sun. It showed the fullness of the Holy Triun—Its Power; Its Majesty; Its Justice; Its Mercy; Its Love.

No matter how many times I pondered it, I always returned to the same, uneasy crossroad: why?

Why would the world be like this?

When Pel asked me where my faith had gone, I told her it had trickled out through that why. That why—that was the mother of all wounds. Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God let evil run amok among us? How could the Angel sanction it, and yet still claim righteousness and proclaim, to us, His Love?

How could He have let my sister be taken from me? My son? The mother I never knew? And those were just my grievances. The world was a grievance. If we could fathom the totality of the suffering that played out each and every moment, we would go insane. The horrors playing out in West Elpeck Medical Center were a microcosm of that suffering.

Ileene, brainwashed by terrorists. Her parents, forced to deal with her empty shell, fate-mocked by the sight of the daughter they’d never see again. Then, there was Lopé, robbed of his identity, remade in the image of those who looked down upon him. There was Kurt, the reluctant hero, forced into the body of a monster. Letty, her soul left out to rot in the sun. Bethany, trapped in a den of monsters. Merritt, called to devour another human being by an impulse she could not control.

How could He allow these horrors? How could He allow the Green Death? What love was there in a plague that sent its victims on a one-way trip to Hell’s eternal, frost-bitten torments?

The colors of Night’s rising dark glowed softly beneath the curtains on Lounge 3’s windows. Soon, the twilight would end, and only the darkness would remain.

After Merritt had eaten Dr. Mistwalker, I’d retreated, both mentally and physically. I’d been numb all the way through till sunset. I didn’t even think of eating.

I wept.

And still, no sign of Andalon.

Rolling off the couch, I rose to my numb, sweat-stick legs and walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain.

The gloaming sky was the color of death—bruises and blood. Aerostats buzzed dully in the distance, patrolling the windy corridors between Elpeck’s sleek chrome skyscrapers. The city streets were parking lots. Wailing emergency sirens—ambulances, police, fire trucks—were a constant in our new normal, a mechanical scream to give voice to the nameless victims; to belt out their pain.

History was a canvas aching and bloody, and, here and there, it was graced by moments of improbable beauty—as improbable as they were short-lived. Who could look at that and call it good? Call it just? Where was the justice in it? How can the arc of history bend toward justice if its Author never deigned to prune its baleful excesses?

Why?

It was my least-favorite question. I suppose that’s why I asked it so frequently: I wanted it answered, so that it would leave me in peace. I’d asked it since my earliest days. I’d accumulated many answers over the years.

An answer: it was our fault; a curse, justly deserved, for our primordial disobedience of the Godhead, a curse that tarnished the entire world with sin and death.

An answer: the Angel could have prevented evil by denying His creation the power of free will, but without free will, Mankind could not know Divine Love, nor could we return that Love with Love of our own, and so the glory of freedom outweighed the iniquity of sin.

An answer: this world was the best of all possible worlds. The world would somehow be measurably worse if even a single dead child had lived even the slightest bit longer.

An answer: the Godhead permitted the existence of suffering, so that some greater good might one day spring forth.

An answer: Suffering was a crucible. It forged us. For the sake of cultivation, it pruned away error and weakness. In enduring it, man was strengthened, and purified.

An answer: the answer was never ours to know.

I’ll never forget that fateful, sunshiny day, after class at school, with the honeysuckle trees all blooming and golden, as if to herald the march of summer. I’d pestered Mrs. Buxtehude with too many questions.

“I’m asking because I want to believe,” I’d said.

And then, in a moment of frustration, she said, “If you truly wish to believe, then you shall. And if you do not, then you are tarnished. Pray, child; pray that the Angel will shatter you, and break your pride, so that you might be rebuilt pure and good. Else, the Night will swallow you, and you shall be lost to the ice, the agony, and the dark, never to return.”

Even now, her words still chilled me. I still couldn’t understand what was going through her head that made her think it was appropriate to say such a thing to a child, especially to one who just wanted to understand and feel like he belonged. In the decades since, I’d thought I finally found a place where I belonged: a family, a job, a life. But, after the past few days… maybe she’d been right. Maybe I had been swallowed by the Night.

For once, I suppose it really was fair to say that only the Angel knew the answer.

I stepped away from the window and closed the curtain.

I figured I’d get something from a vending machine to tide me over for a couple more hours and then get back to work, though that depended on whether or not the vending machines still had anything left to offer. I’d been noticing more and more of them nearing empty, and I doubted restocking the vending machines was high on anyone’s priorities right now.

Then, from within my coat pocket, my console rumbled.

There was a message from Director Hobwell:

Dr. Mutant Expert: get your ass over to Room 268 NOW!

Oh no…