"As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my loved one among the sons. I took my rest under his shade with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."
Song of Solomon 2:3
All it takes is one bite. One sink of the teeth into an apple and as Norea shuts her eyes, savouring through the taste of the mysterious fruit that leaves a red trace over her lips, her body disappears.
The bitten apple falls into the floor in a loud bang as the tree shrinks to nothing, with Lilith's dogs running out of their home. Everything is gone as the sun rises over the material world for a new day to start.
Nora and Lilith's bodies drop into an ocean as if they are the eaten fruit dissolving into their own stomachs. All contractions lead them further away from the material world with all the nutrition leaving their bodies, oxygen evaporating out of them and even tiredness looses its toll on their shoulders.
Lilith and Norea reach the shore of a desert island, their faces cover with a million little rocks. They are fragments of lives, mineral particles of earth with the soul of its ocean. As they get on their feet and brush their clothes clean from the sand, they notice a circular monument afar.
"Eden!" Lilith declares.
Norea presses her lips together, doubt rising in her—this place couldn't be the mythical one described in so many books.
From the distance, it looks like the Colosseum in its elliptical shape with no window but giant rectangular panels of tinted glass instead. Yet its most distinctive feature is a darkened spacecraft hovering over it. Norea can admire this place for hours, her heart breaking at the dream religion that had fed into her mind, but they aren't alone.
A gush of violent wind envelops them, showering them in sand and forcing them to either collapse onto the ground or swallow into thin air. When it stops, their ears ring, and their eyes slitter back into the enormous frame of Gadreel now standing in front of them.
Fear shot right into Norea's spine at the beast. She could only get back up on her feet to find Lilith.
As Norea is about to wrap her arms around her, Gadreel raises on his back legs and, with one of his powerful arm, picks Lilith up from the ground. He holds her tight on its clutch, squeezing her to suffocation.
Struggling, Lilith spits into the face of Gadreel. "Firm handshake for the lowest scum of all the demons." Another tornado breath of Gadreel blows into Lilith's face in answer, and after a shiver, she wrinkles her nose. "I see. Nobody has taught you how to brush your teeth yet."
Sweat streams down Norea's forehead, who now faces alone the capture of Lilith. Her knees buckle down, and slowly, with an increasing pang, fear took over her whole body. Her breaths speed up out of her mouth to the infernal rhythm of her dreaded heart, and she joins her hand in prayer, but nothing could save her.
"Lilith, help!" Is all Norea could mutter out.
From the height of her snare, Lilith rolls her eyes. "Can you see, I'm a bit in a pickle there, Norea dear?" Lilith then clenches her jaws—the only thing she could do. "I can't really summon my sword here, or else I'll mark your ugly face with a scar, Gadreel!" Sarcasm shot out through Lilith's gritted teeth as her restless feet try to hurt her assailant in vain. "Did you ever try to invoke your thoughts, Norea? You know, a little shout of Epinoa?"
"What are we going to do?"
Lilith grunts at Norea's question, her head thrown back in despair. "You'll be fine; you can still move on your two legs!" After a heavy sigh, Lilith couldn't ignore the fear growing in the intonation of Norea's voice. "Listen to me, Eleonora, and stop squeezing me so tight, Gadreel!" Another kick, another failure to reach the now-all-grinning Archon's pet. "They always killed you before your eighteenth birthday because this is when you'll know of your power!"
Brows drawing nearer with a sniff, Norea slumps her shoulders. "I don't have any power, Lilith. I'm just weak!" She cries. "They just want this silly premonition from the Luminary and nothing else!"
Gadreel licks his tongue at Lilith, who widens her eyes. She needs to act fast. Another argument slips out of her mouth. "And why do you think the Luminary entrusted you with it?"
"I don't know!"
Flaring her nostrils, Lilith pushes back the huge maw of Gadreel away with her joined feet pressed against his nose. "Gadreel, stop it, you and your static black and white noise that you left after each of your murders!"
"What?"
"Yeah, that scumbag always has this twisted pleasure of turning any TV screens into static wherever he commits a murder!"
The random pattern of grey specks strikes on Norea, it calls on her memory of the screens her parents stared at blankly on their death, those same lined up broken TV at the police station. They are the reason for a weak signal, a fault in the antenna, but to Norea, it joins all the dots.
The Chuong comes to her mind at this moment. They weren't the perfect parents, but they loved her. They loved her like all those who cared for her before them and who had suffered of her loss.
Her tears freeze on her face at this thought.
None of them deserved this.
All those people should have lived with the family they created. They should have the right to see their loved one's growing up and old.
This cycle of death has to end.
Injustice boils within her. Gadreel had gotten away with it for too long. The intensity of her anger evaporated into clouds of smoke, with tiny flames bursting out from the centre of her palms.
The very flames of the Luminary, the one item they stole and gave to her, the one power she used to destroy the entire Ark of Noah with a single handstroke. It was her response then against injustice when Noah refused her to board, and this same fury now surges through her at the sight of her new enemy.
Gadreel grunts at Lilith as he fails again to devour her.
"I bet it's because the Archons never let you watch TV, you freak of hell! Trust me, you'll be in a better mood after watching one or two episodes of 'Sex and the city!'"
The heated provocation of Lilith escalates, diverting Gadreel from the acrid smell slowly consuming the air, a nasty sting that sticks into the nose like it rages with bright fiery flames flickering over mottled skin. They burn whatever remains is left of Norea, purifying her into a living human torch of wrath.
"Epinoa!" A long whip ignites in her hand at her command, and Norea transforms its body into a long, indented glass sword after sweeping its body across the ground. The deadly weapon that she now hurls right into Gadreel's back with a high jump.
He shrieks of agony, thrusting out his chest while releasing Lilith from his deadly grip.
Revenge flares into Norea's voice when she pushes her now molten hand down into the tail of Gadreel.
"Take this, motherfucker!"
A blaze flashes out of her fingers to spread into his fresh injury, with his veins protruding out of his body to burst into a million crimson fireworks.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned when Norea continues to put pressure on Gadreel with a loud yell. Her touch creating fever, the silent burning merciless as the sunlight and it consumes Gadreel's flesh faster than a wildfire.
To evade his imminent death, Gadreel raises his hands to the sky, becoming nothing more than a veil of smoke and a pile of ashes—the nest to the rebirth of a phoenix. The gigantic bird suddenly springs into the horizon—an eagle of lava, a peacock of cosmic fire. It illuminates the sky, sending a tremor of threat up to the spacecraft above Eden, and yet it just falls on a dune as an extinguished, fully dressed Norea.
She is breathless. The kill of a monster in the caliber of Gadreel nearly drained all her resources. Her sight blurs until she mouths out the name of Lilith.
Where is Lilith?
Mustering whatever is left, Norea staggers through the landscape of sandy waves with her feet stabbing into each of them. She screams out the name of Lilith, with sadness looming in her heart.
Lilith can't be dead.
Norea collapses on her knees, tears running down her cheeks, until she hears, "Over here, you wrecking ball of fire!"
Smiling, Norea hastens on her feet to dash over to the source of Lilith's voice. When they both find each other, they run into one another's arms, with Lilith falling on her back and Norea on top of her.
Lilith tucks a strand of Norea's black hair behind her ears, sensing the confidence of the latter growing. "Never think you're weak, Norea. You're the fire that the gods didn't want humans to have, the forbidden power of destruction and resurrection, and not mentioning that you killed bloody Gadreel, big bad Gadreel in one hell of a touch!"
"Lilith, it's you." Norea pauses. "It's you that I saw in the Luminary's vision; you are the one who will kill Yaldaboath!"
They both laugh over the revelation, with their faces now perfectly aligned. To the tips of their foreheads, noses, and lips, everything falls in line as if they were stars waiting for a miracle to happen.
Norea leans down, attracted to Lilith's red lips. The red that never leaves this Archon from her hair to her eyes as it now defines the passion between them. Lilith also submits to its call as she inclines her body closer to Norea for their mouths to brush on each other and for those small sparkles to burst between their first touch.
Their kiss feels warm. The tenderness they have both lacked for a while loosens their muscles, allowing their hands to move over the other body for caresses, discoveries, and a groan to escape.
"Lilith!" a disembodied voice resounds, first softly and then louder.
This timbre isn't the one of Norea who escalates her taste to the neck of Lilith. Abruptly, Lilith withdraws from their intimate moment and stands up, darting her eyes quickly from left to right, not knowing who was calling her until the shadow of a hanged woman appears at Eden's gates.
"Eve?"