As it waved in the warm, damp wind, the tree passed stories it had found in the ground to its neighbors. There were tales of all that the universe wanted to be, tales of what it had been but wanted to forget, and tales that were simply too far out of its own ordinary to be able to exist for long, especially now that the fires of Creation had cooled and rules of this cosmos had asserted themselves. One of these stories, involving the color Red, the number Eighteen, and the things that are born when facets of perception make love, caught the tree's attention. The story wasn't cooperating, as leaving the primordial dirt would no doubt hasten its ending, but the tree was determined.
The tree felt the unmistakable vibrations of a cherub that had been bothering it lately.
This particular cherub bounced into view, briefly carried through the air by its wings before dropping to the ground, where it bounced up and along a few feet to drop again, all the while chirping and mumbling and singing short melodious bursts of beauty that ended as abruptly as they started. It made the tree dizzy, watching the little ball of happy chaos move toward it. As in the past, it wanted to give the cherub what it wanted so that it would leave the small grove in peace.
Tradition, however, dictated a different attitude. The tree was tasked with making the cherub's job difficult, for the tree did not have an endless supply of branches, and giving them up to the cherub to build its fragile bows was not considered something important enough to risk the tree's getting weak, especially with Snow and Bitter on the way.
The cherub landed just out of reach of the tree and looked up into its branches expectantly. Its chubby little body jiggled, doing a little dance, humming fragments of the First Songs while its bright blue eyes glittered above its wide, toothy smile. It stood there, or rather bounced there, waiting for a branch. The tree knew it but did not move.
The cherub whistled in a short burst, trying to get the tree's attention, to which the tree responded by rustling its leaves but not delivering anything to the ground. An expression of annoyance appeared on the cherub's face. It took a step forward, whistling louder and a little longer. The tree did nothing by way of response.
The tree sensed something else approaching from the same direction the cherub came from and subtly turned its leaves to identify it. It was the cherub that came for branches. But that cherub was already here, hiding behind a tree, highly agitated and watching the place where the new cherub would appear.
A tremble ran through the tree as it checked the state of time in its new home. It was as it should be, dependent on gravity and forward-flowing only. Then how could the cherub be in two places at once?
This second cherub arrived in the grove like the first and came to a stop. Unlike the first, it sat down on the grass and began running its plump little hands across the tops of the grass, giggling and muttering all the while. The tree felt the roots of the grass shiver excitedly and sensed their joy at the cherub's touch. The tree realized this was the right cherub to make those bows, and the other cherub was not.
The first cherub jumped out from its cover and hissed out something in its language (which the tree did not know, but if it repeated it, it knew that its smartest sibling could translate) as it threw a rock at the sitting cherub.
The second cherub did a backward somersault and rolled up into the air, pushing off with its strong little legs, and was its height off the ground before the rock hit the ground where it had sat. It shot up into the tree's branches, grabbed a young green branch, and ripped it from the trunk as it shot higher up and out into the open sky.
The tree let out a yelp (that to mortal ears would sound like a cracking of wood) and pulled its branches in.
"Cupid!" screamed the first cherub in a surprisingly deep voice, "Get down here this instant and face me!"
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.