How We Wished It Had Gone

{Beginning}

She quickened her pace. She was rounding the bend, heading to the central grove, ruminating on the exhilaration she felt. Recently she was feeling so…, well, so free. It seemed like for so long she had been subject to confining thoughts, a prison she kept herself in. Now, the possibility of casting off unnecessary conventions filled her with a sense of liberation. There was something else there, a dark mist, but it was overwhelmed by the thought of reaching maturity as a woman.

She loved looking at it. It shone. The play of light on its skin was captivating. And it talked. Its speech was just as captivating. New ideas. Questions about her potential. The breaking of boundaries to be who she was. To re-make themselves as they themselves decided. She found herself often pondering its ennobling words.

Today, as they sat together, it posed the question that was dangling just outside the border of her mind: What can be that bad about fruit that makes one wise? What was That One hiding in withholding….

BANG.

She looked down. It was dead. The shining one’s skull crushed at her feet. She looked up.

He stood over it, w/one of the stone tools he had fashioned, bloodied in his hand.

She stammered, “What horror?! What did you do that for?”

“That was bad,” he said.

“But the things it said were thought-provoking.”

“Maybe so, but deadly.”

“But some of the things were so beautiful. They called me to wonder, what could be ours?”

“Seriously, do you really think that He has not been good to us? That He should be questioned? Look around!”

She granted, “You have a point there.”

“And do you really think that we could determine good and evil ourselves, without Him? That we could decide on our own what is right for us and wrong for us? We are children in His world.”

“That’s actually another great point.”

“Those shining words were like the fruits of that tree there. They would taste sweet and yet be evil for us. They would be death to us.”

“All right,” she said. “I see it. You are right. Those ideas are seriously dark.” She took his hand and smiled up at him. “I did feel that there was a darkness to the freedom, but it was hard to see. I am glad you are here. And I am grateful that you are on our guard.”

He ran his hand over her growing belly, feeling at once great hope at what was to come. “I don’t know how it got in here, but it didn’t belong. Not in our garden. We cannot allow it.” He thought of another thing he wanted to bring up in the cool of the day.

Eve nodded. “Then let’s pick the berries and take a swim.”

{End of Bible}