iv

Old words crawl on the cement here, sheltered from the rain in their ripe stagnant nest. Eve is careful not to step in the green-black pools. She smiles as she passes the words – KILL THE SNAKES AND THEIR WHORE, they say – she steps gingerly where the pavement has ruptured, avoiding the sharp edges. Maybe she should feel remorse. She doesn’t, because the stars have whirled on their stage seventeen times now. It will not take them much longer.

iii

There were others here, once. Eve remembers the way they looked at her (she who walked amongst mortal men, to their great trouble). She had found their images so strange, and their fixation stranger still. She taught them to move, to tilt their heads, to close one eye, to climb. She taught them as the serpent taught her, as the shepherd taught the serpent, as she had taught the shepherd, as the serpent had taught her.

ii

Adam writes his god’s name on a dusty mirror. He’s lost count of how many days it’s been since he last left this room, this warm cradle that will be his deathbed. Here it is safe, it is calm, it is still. He reads from the tomes he’s gathered, gingerly, with respect. He is not happy, but he is content.

i

Eve climbs the tallest of the steel carcasses. Its bones glint under the ruddy sky, where they’re visible neath the vines. When she’s high enough to see the dead streets laid out below her, she stops. She stands, bare toes curled over the edge, and surveys her kingdom.

It’s no less beautiful, she thinks, for being empty. Nor for crumbling as it is. She feels wistful, yes, but wistfulness is only a remembrance of beauty that once was. She’s at peace with her fate. She knows all flowers wither with time; the real tragedy is when they’re burnt before they blossom.

Eve sleeps, and wakes before the sun rises, when the clouds are still wan and tinged only faintly with carmine.