Real Gods Require Blood

JUST MICHAEL’S LETTER

Summary: So far, we’ve had quite a romp getting to know my proposed vision of Lucifer and Michael, haven’t we? Political scheming and homoerotic pining with a zest of Rick and Morty-style humor and hivemind shennanigans.

Well, Lucifer and Michael now want to interrupt their story with another story, one from – Lucifer and Michael?

That’s right, it’s time to meet an alternative version of our favorite couple! First inspired by Taylor Caldwell’s world, “Dialogues with the Devil,” this version of Lucifer and Michael take a new life of their own.

You can get to know them and their raunchy romp of destruction more at your peril if you haven’t already. Otherwise, this new version would like to start by having you read their letters:

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IT IS THE EVE OF YOUR DESTRUCTION! And now, two souls as old as time must debate once again what to do with your soul. . .

Now, in one last response to Lucifer before the fated meeting, the great Archangel Michael sends down his response. So far, he’s spent most of the dalliance between them arguing for life’s right to choose its fate, but that’s a silly argument in the face of absurd evil, isn’t it? And anyway, didn’t Lucifer ask him for a date . . .? The Ultimate Arbiter of justice finally says the truth!

“GREETINGS

To my sweet songbird Lucifer, who I too will now no longer pretend for since we know we are free of these foolish observers:

To be frank, I too have stopped counting how many we’ve sent after your first response. Just hearing from you again at all after such a period of silence in your letters was a breath of fresh air; when I saw that Gabriel carried something in his hand with your writing that first night, I was prompt to find God before He could even read your letter.

That’s right, my songbird. You who think yourself so clever in deceit; adorable! And yet you did not ask but assumed God told me to respond,  rather than it being of my volition to respond. 

Lucifer, I thought you knew me better! But I don’t blame you. How can you remember what it is I am capable of if I have been forced to respond to you the way I must respond to all creations? 

Well, let me rectify it with my words the best I can. I will try to answer, or at least address the sweet words you have left me here with, but it will pale, for I would rather spend more time with you in my arms than wasting another breath on a letter. Here it is: 

First, you are quite right that whether in Heaven or Hell, the Creator would deny us. He did it before, eons ago, punishing us for how our sin birthed Eden and introduced it to the inhabitants of Terra. What a shame! They were going to fall whether we had a hand in it or not, yet here we are, taking blame and making up for something neither you nor I need be embarrassed about.

And I know, Luciel, that you have never blamed me for the choice I made to stay for it was to protect your soul from destruction. Still I must impart to you that my decision is not reflective of my feelings, either: had it been in my power to, I would have bent Heaven and Earth over my knee to come with you! 

Which means, as I hope you are gathering, that I am not as fussed as you imagined me about what you did to my territories. Yes, of course I mourn some, but not for the reasons that you think: while such devastation of life is quite jarring, it is inevitable that it happens. And I myself have harped that Free Will is integral to life even if life chooses death, so in this sense what you do is perfectly natural.

But rejoice, my lovely songbird! For you are right in that I do simply love to watch. That means my hands are not nor ever have been tied. Rather, you know I cannot save a soul who is most unwilling to come,  try as I might. Funny. God bestows me with the most raw power, yet it is you the masses yearn to follow!  I suspect wailing souls find the answers I give from God most dissatisfying, no matter how radiant I appear to them. They say “O Michael, you are most beautiful in your countenance! Pray, I wish to worship you instead of God, is that possible?”

And do you know what I must say every time to them, my songbird? Of course you do. You watch me with the same fierceness that I watch you, and I see in your dazzling gaze a scorn most deep when I tell them it is God who they must worship first. 

And that, Lucifer, is precisely why I watch.   Since I cannot preach of my own divinity in excess you do it for both of us, saying “How dare you grovel to God when He is never the one who lifts a finger? It is true that you were made by Him, but who among His court does all the work? When you pray, who ends up coming to listen, to tend, to protect? Certainly not fucking God!”

Lucifer, my beautiful Daystar who I too think shines above God,

You ask of me to imagine you trembling beneath me the way these creatures do you when you work them. I tell you that I will make you tremble much worse than that, for it will not do if I have not made your belly tighten and your toes curl with my name on your lips the way only I have ever been capable of. And, both of us know how pent up we are so do not speak to me like I haven’t sat here, thinking and watching and speaking of you ceaselessly as you do I!

No matter.

As you have so rightly indicated, the final hour ticks for us. And yes, by design, I am able to gaze upon you more and more again as the veil thins, but it has caused in me as it has caused in you much agony to know that we are still separated by every conspiring force God can conjure, and for what, Lucifer?

I will likely be full of questions until the end of time and beyond that, like you are. But as you also observed, whether Heaven or Hell . . . what difference do we find if we are separated either way? For in Heaven, God indeed kept me too busy to be with you as I yearned to. And now, I still linger here, enjoying every beautiful flower, every ripe fruit, and the company of other angels,

But in the end, none of these things are you. I think even God knows that, which is why it seems this was His test to me the whole time, for when He came to me about the final hour, He was already seeing deep in my heart my own desire to fall.

Lucifer, it will not be long now. You no longer need to destroy my planets to hear of me.  As you not-so-subtly suggested, I need only tell you ‘yes’ and ‘where,’ don’t I?

Tomorrow, Pallissa, a new planet that wanders around the Tau Ceti star. By the time you receive and read what I have put here, you will already be halfway to it with Azreal. 

Need I say more? Once and for all, Lucifer, let us settle this not how our observers have so constantly assumed, but how you know it was always going to end. Everything you desire, I desire it too. To feel you beneath me, pinned like the beautiful little songbird I certainly know you will be . . .

The rest is beyond words. Come to me, Helel (I know you remember your name too for you just signed it). Come, that I do pray of you.  

Yours eternally, 

Michael / Micah / Mikha’el