OCT, NOV, DEC 2024 VOLUME 17 Issue 4
Day 1 - Dog’s Perspective
“Leave the garden?” Woman asked. “Is there anything outside the garden?”
I sniffed the new suit that God had made for Man to cover his nakedness. It definitely covered him better than the fig leaf apron Man had made for himself.
“Yes,” Man responded dejectedly. “I was out there at first before God moved me here. Do you think leather would be a good word for our new clothes?”
Woman placed her hands on her new dress. She grazed the texture of the animal skins against her fingertips. “I suppose so,” she said. “Do you know which animal this came from?”
“Cows,” he responded. “Apparently, God made an abundance of them. He said we’ll find many good uses for them over time.”
Multiple beings had appeared around us in the garden. They had arms and legs like my human pets, but their head was like an animal. Each of them had 6 wings and eyes everywhere. “The cherubim will guide you out of the Garden,” God said.
“Wait,” Woman cried out. “This isn’t fair. It was one mistake!” She fell to her knees and folded both hands in front of her, staring at the sky.
“Yes,” Man agreed, copying her movements. “We won’t do it again.”
“I’m sorry,” God told them. “It’s too late. I will be with you out there as well, but you must accept the consequences of your actions.”
“You wouldn’t do this if You really loved us!” Woman exclaimed and stood to her feet again, pointing wildly in the air.
“I’m not going,” Man yelled at God. “You can’t make me!”
The cherubim began to move in closer, forcing us all in an easterly direction.
“Fine,” Man said. “We’re leaving. We can make our own garden out there, a better garden.”
“We can?” Woman hissed.
“Of course,” Man whispered back. “How hard can it be?”
I noticed the other animals seemed to be moving in the same direction as we were. A herd was gathering around us as we made our trek toward the wilderness. The path between the trees and brush narrowed which forced us to walk in single file. Gradually, the plants took on a duller green and, in some cases, yellow or brown. Once through the opening, I saw the animals take off in every direction in a large, open field. I took the opportunity to chase after a cat and bark as it climbed a nearby tree and hissed at me from a low branch. The sun beat down on us, feeling warmer than it ever had before.
After the last of the animals had made its way out into the larger world, I watched the cherubim take up positions on either side of the entrance to the garden while others flew in the sky above or rested on nearby tree branches. Then, as if to add punctuation to His decrees against anyone returning to the garden, God sent out a long, floating, metal object. It lit up in bright orange flames like it had spawned from the sun and began to move back and forth in front of the entrance. I was fascinated by the moving light and the swooshing sound it made as it cut through the air. Man named it a sword and declared that he would someday have one of his own.
“What do we do now?” Woman asked.
“I’ve been thinking that we need new names,” Man told her.
“That’s where your thoughts are right now?” She huffed.
“God said we would be multiplying through this whole birth thing,” he explained. “So, there will be more people like us. We all can’t be called Man and Woman. I mean, if it looks like me, he’ll be a man, and if it looks like you, she’ll be a woman. But we need to be able to be more specific so we don’t get confused.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Woman said and covered her face with her right hand.
“No, really,” Man tried to debate his position further. “And I think I should call you Eve since you’ll be the mother of all our children.”
“So, you want to give me a name that will remind me of all the pain God said I would have to go through?”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”
“You weren’t thinking at all, Adamah!” She began to stalk away. “That’s my new name for you, since God said you have to work the ground and you’re going to return to it one day.”
I followed behind her. “It seems a little long,” he said. “How about just Adam?”
“Aargh,” Eve pronounced.
Day 3
“Ta da!” Adam made this sound as he gestured widely with his arms. “You can open your eyes now.”
Eve took her hands away from her face. “What is that?”
“Shelter,” he said proudly. “God told us that we would need it.”
Eve glanced at the creation then back at him. “It looks like a bigger version of the clothes you tried to make for us back in the garden.”
“You’re just saying that because I used leaves and vines.” He indicated again toward their new home. “I also used big sticks and branches this time.”
Eve approached the conical structure warily. I followed her as she walked slowly around it, both of us inspecting every inch. She tapped lightly on one of the large branches bracing the outside. The leaves shuddered, but the shelter held up. “What do you call this invention?”
Adam puffed out his chest and displayed a Cheshire grin. “It’s a tent. Check out the inside.”
Eve disappeared through the opening. Moments later, the tent crumbled on top of her. We could hear a muffled shriek from under the vegetation. I made myself useful by jumping around the fallen object and barking to indicate danger, while Adam quickly cleared away the rubble until he found her in a sitting position holding her arm. “Your stupid tent hurt me,” she said as she pointed to a spot on her arm where red liquid was seeping out.
“Are you broken?” He reached for her arm, but she quickly pulled it back. Dejected, he pulled away the rest of the branches so she could stand up.
“How would I know if I’m broken?” She announced. “What is this red water coming out of me? Make it stop!”
“How?”
“What?” Eve’s irritated face spat the word. “Never mind.” She snatched up a leaf and held it against the blood. “Maybe I can block it from getting out with this.”
Adam guided his wife to a boulder that they had designated ‘the sitting rock’. “Stay here and keep blocking it with the leaf,” he said. “I’ll go get you something to eat.” Ice shot from Eve’s eyes as she plopped down on the rock, cradling her arm.
Day 7
“Is this cave really the best we can do?” Eve asked.
“Building a shelter was harder than I thought,” Adam told her. “And I need to start on that farming thing God was talking about.”
“What’s farming?”
“Remember that part where He said I’ll eat the plants of the field?” He gestured out at the open field from his position at the mouth of the cave. “Apparently, all these fruits we’ve been eating have seeds inside them that I can plant in the ground and more fruit will grow.”
“Fruits and vegetables,” Eve corrected.
“What?”
“Fruits, vegetables, and nuts,” she added.
“What are you talking about?” Adam asked. “Are you making up more words again? We talked about this.”
“I just think that there’s too many types of plants to call them all fruits,” the woman explained, “so, I decided that we can call some of them vegetables or nuts.”
“You decided?”
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “I think it will make it easier if food has different categories.”
Adam took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly. “Fine,” he said. “How do we determine the difference between fruits and vejeladels?”
“Vegetables.” A smile grew on her face at the opportunity to teach him something. “I was actually thinking that the better tasting plants we could call fruits and the ones we don’t like so much we’ll call vegetables.”
“Give me some examples.”
“Well, things like apples, bananas, pears, and pomegranates would be fruits; while cucumbers, pea pods, peppers, and tomatoes would be vegetables.”
“Tomatoes are definitely a fruit,” Adam said.
“Tastes like a vegetable to me,” she responded.
“Anyway.” Adam looked around for something to change the subject. “Watch this.” He grabbed two rocks and swiped them against each other roughly.
I barked in response. He had been doing this a lot lately and it was getting on my nerves.
“Did you see that?” He asked.
“See what?”
“When I do this,” he explained as he swiped the rocks against each other again, “It makes little lights.” He began to swipe the rocks faster and harder.
“I’m sure that you’re very entertained by that,” Eve said, “but it’s really loud.”
“What?” Adam yelled. “It’s hard to hear you over the rocks.” He started to dance along with the beat he was creating. Adam marched and hopped and skipped out of the cave to the sound of his rocks.
I jumped up from where I had been resting on the grass and barked my irritation at his behavior. Adam wasn’t going to stop though. He hadn’t had this much fun since God kicked them out of the garden. He paraded around the field with his new instruments, tiny lights bouncing out from between them as they clapped against each other. Then, I noticed little curls of gray air were rising up from the grass where some of the lights had landed. Before, the lights had been disappearing. Now, they were attaching themselves to the grass and giving off a smell that I didn’t like. I barked and growled more viciously to draw Adam’s attention to what I had decided was a potential danger.
He eventually stopped his rock music and took notice of my change in attitude. He bent down to look more closely at the grass. Each light glowed like small pieces of the sun had fallen. The light seemed to eat away at the pieces of grass that it had landed on until it faded away, leaving holes with black frayed edges.
“Fire,” he whispered in awe. “I just created something very powerful, Dog,” he said to me. “I need to take time to think about how to use such a mighty tool.” Then, he raised his arms and danced around the field even more.
Day 100
“What’s happening to your stomach?”
Even I knew that was obviously the wrong thing to say, but Adam never asked my opinion.
Eve spun around and glared at him. “What do you mean?” Her words left her mouth at supersonic speed. Her voice was somewhere between a chicken squawk and a thunderclap.
I laid my head on the ground and attempted to cover my ears with my paws.
“There’s nothing wrong with my stomach. It’s a perfectly normal stomach. Just because it doesn’t look like your stomach, doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with my stomach!”
Adam stepped back toward the mouth of our cave. He had never tried to outrun his wife, but I thought he had a good shot. And today seemed like it might be the day to find out if he could. “It’s just that it’s kind of round,” he explained. “It didn’t use to be that way. I was wondering if you found some food that I didn’t know about.”
Eve advanced in his direction a few steps with a menacing look on her face. Then, she stopped and plopped down on the ground. Tears began to flow from her eyes. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She squealed. “My food comes back out of my mouth all by itself most mornings. My feet hurt, and my stomach feels like the reason it’s round is that there’s a family of butterflies in there.”
Adam seemed to ponder this for a minute. Then he asked the question that I suppose he thought was obvious. “Why would you eat butterflies?”
That’s when we learned that Eve could cry and throw things at the same time.
Day ???
I don’t know how long it’s been since we left the garden. Adam was trying to perfect his fire lighting. After months of practice, he figured out that it liked dry plant bits. So, he had gathered lots of sticks and leaves into one large pile. He clapped his two rocks together in the sliding motion that he had been practicing. The tiny sparks sprang toward his target and settled amongst the debris. He quickly ducked down and gently blew on the aspiring heat. He had discovered that fire likes when you breathe on it.
“Adam!” Eve stumbled out of the cave behind me. Her stomach had groan enormous over the last few months. She still claimed that she hadn’t eaten anything different, but she had said she felt something moving in there.
Adam jumped up from his position on the ground with an ecstatic whoop. “I did it!” He announced. “It’s growing!”
I watched as the fire began to consume the large pile of sticks and leaves Adam had gathered. He picked up a burning stick and began to march around with it. I wasn’t a fan of the fire, so I let out a low growl to show my disapproval. Both humans ignored me.
“Adam,” Eve yelled again. “It hurts!”
The man paused his jaunting holding the flaming stick as if it was his greatest prize. “What hurts?”
“This thing that’s growing inside me,” she said between pants. “I think it’s coming out.”
“That’s good news then,” Adam told her. “You’ve been complaining about it for so many moons. Once it’s out of you, I bet you’ll feel much better.”
“But it hurts,” Eve responded. Sweat was pouring down her face as she sat down in the shade of a nearby tree. Her position under that tree brought back my own fond memories of the three of us under the tree of life. To show my appreciation, I trotted over to her and licked her cheek. She returned the gesture with a weak shove. “Get off me, Dog.”
“I’ve had times like that,” Adam said. “The pain will pass.”
“You have never had times like this,” Eve said pointing to her belly.
“I meant how you were saying that it hurts.”
The fire had now grown larger than we had ever seen it. Adam was entertaining himself by using a flaming stick to draw shapes with light in the air.
“You should really avoid the jalapeños.”
“Ooooooowwww!” Eve moaned.
Adam dropped his flaming torch and covered his ears. “Geez,” he exclaimed, “Maybe you should stay away from all the peppers if it’s this bad for you.”
“Aah! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Eve yelled. She had returned to a standing position and was hobbling around in circles like I do when I’m deciding on the best spot to do my business.
“What does that mean?” Adam was yelling back. “We’ve talked about this before. Coming up with words is my thing. I don’t even see how shut and up work together.”
My humans went back and forth like this for a while. Eve screaming in pain while Adam clearly had no idea what to do about it. Sometimes, she would ask for help, but when Adam came near, she would yell at him to go away. After multiple hours, Eve braced herself against a nearby boulder in a squatting position. With a push that took all her strength, the first baby was birthed into the world.
Adam’s mouth fell open in awe. “What just came out of you?!”