Short Stories From Out There

The Green Leaves of Love

And he did, but with a freshly made bow with an arrow aimed at the first cherub's head.

"Bapid! How dare you come here! This is not your tree! Nor is it your part of the Garden!"

"Bah! I go where I want, see what I wish, and I take what I want!"

With that, Bapid snarled and flew into the sky.

Cupid released his arrow, and it struck Bapid in the back, which caused him to spin end over end and land in a tree. The bow in Cupid's hand broke into a thousand splinters. Bapid hung from a branch for a second before sliding off and falling to the ground, twirling as he went due to a broken wing and the other wing catching the wind.

The grass turned brown where Bapid lay, then black, and smoke rose. Cupid tried to move Bapid, but touching him was like molten lava. Bapid burst into flames. The flames began to spread wildly. Cupid flew to the tree.

"Love! Can you move?!"

"I don't think ... so ... no, I can't. I've sat here too long. I can't get my roots out. Go. Save yourself. Wait. Take this."

A branch flew out of the tree and landed in Cupid's hand.

"I was saving that as a present for the Archangel Michael, but it looks like I made it for you after all. Now go!"

Cupid flew away from the flames, heading for the Gate. The fire would engulf the Garden unless Cupid could reach his Father in time. And Cupid did, barely. His Father stopped the fire, but not before Love was severely damaged. The Father walked up to the tree and looked it over. Love and Cupid waited anxiously.

Reaching out, the Father traced the damage done to Love, and as his touch passed near wounds, they healed. He then walked over to the spot where Bapid died. He leaned down, grabbed a blade of grass, and pulled Bapid out of the ground, much to everyone's surprise.

"Father! Please! Leave him there! He attacked me and ..."

"He stays."

The sound that contained those words was, at once, waterfalls, volcanos, birdsong, and rain. Only Bapid was unimpressed.

"Damn you, Father! Why'd you bring me back?! I was done. I was with Mother ..."

Lightning cracked the sky, and a bolt struck near Bapid, knocking him off his feet. He turned to see the Father towering over him and in the voice of a raging river, a herd of bison, typewriters, and a large clock chiming:

"I have forbidden anyone mentioning her again, punishable by eternal damnation. You know this.'

"I say, so what? I say, why'd you pull me back? I say you're lucky Mother isn't here, or she'd kick your sorry ..."

"ENOUGH!"

The sound echoed into the future, where a mountain split open, pouring lava onto the town below it. Also, a gigantic, peaceful species of a distant world suddenly screamed in anguish and vanished. And a boy in 2154 threw a baseball into the air and what returned was an ornate sphere, known by humans of the 36th century as a 'tib' as it allowed folks' consciousness to leave their bodies and go 'tibbing', and the boy did so and returned to his body after two days, and spent the next thirty years looking for a power supply and found it buried on a remote island near Antarctica, and he patented the device. His initials were T.I.B.

Bapid just glared at the Father, as Bapid was stubborn and had a coldness that Cupid did not due to his function, which was the very important task of ending animals' suffering. The Father patted Cupid on the head, opened a doorway to a new place he created called Hell, and shoved Bapid through. Though it was empty when Bapid got there, he soon bred with the souls that started to show up, and these souls then gave birth to Hell's worst inhabitants.

Cupid, his memories triggered by what Bapid had said, remembered their Mother and that she and the Father had been fighting over the laws of the new universe and how she stormed out of the Cosmos. She founded another universe where peace and harmony were as abundant as Helium is in ours. She closed the way into her universe, and that was that. No one could get in or out.

Bapid, finally away from the ears of his Father, began singing one of the First Songs specifically written to catch the Mother's attention. He began repeating it, making it louder and more moving with every pass, while Cupid did his duty and filled the world with longing and babies.

One day, seventeen thousand years before the Sun would go out, Bapid sang it perfectly. The Mother heard his song and wept. She opened a doorway from her universe to Hell and rushed in to hold her baby. She had been alone for so long, however, that she had grown extremely cold, and the instant she touched the fires of damnation, Hell froze over.

Many things that were not supposed to ever happen, happened, including the reconciliation of the Father and the Mother, bringing the universe back into much-needed harmony.

The tree named Love was happy and it let its leaves dangle loosely in the wind, mentioning how good things were to its older sibling Knowledge, who already knew but acted surprised for Love's sake.