"Yeah, I don't know what's up with that."

"Sure you don't want an apple? They're really tasty."

"No. Thank you. I'm good."

"Cool," Lev says. "I was going to say 'see you around' but I think that if you're going to be stuck guarding the east gate I'm not going to see you around at all actually."

"Oh. I guess not. You could stop by again if you wanted to, though, if you, uh, had time between all of the being evil. I wouldn't mind."

"I don't think getting the humans to be evil will take that long, there's only two of them and they can only have, like, four kids, so probably the population isn't going to grow that fast. --Is that right."

Lev sits down and starts scratching things on the dirt with a stick.

"Why only four? - I guess I'm not sure how long it takes for them to die - "

"Well, I mean, they're not like bugs, they can't have hundreds--" He finishes scratching in the dirt.

"It turns out," he announces, "if you keep doubling numbers, they will stay small for a long time and then they will suddenly become really really big."

"Huh."

"So I can stop by to visit until there are, like, ten thousand humans, when there are ten thousand humans I might be kind of busy."

"Well. I - hope it's much more work than you expect, but if it isn't I'll be here. Probably."

"I didn't know you when we were both angels, what did you work on?"

"Clouds. And the things that clouds do. Do you know that when it snows every single snowflake will be different from the others? - I suppose it might have been a bit much, but I like that they're that way. Octillions of little art pieces."

"That's so cool! I'm going to look at them when I see snow!"

"Thanks! What did you work on?"

"Uh, there's this kind of bug, and it's going to lay eggs inside the humans and then eat them from the inside out."

"Oh. OK. - do you think the sword will help with that, or - "

"I-- don't think so. Uh. I Fell pretty early, maybe they decided to scrap that in the final version?"

"Yeah! Yeah maybe. And I guess if they didn't it must be... part of the plan. Somehow."

"Lots of beings on the parasitoids team Fell."

"Yeah. Maybe those don't even exist anymore.

" - do you think it's - well do you feel like - do you think maybe there could have been something different about you even before you actually, technically, Fell, so that maybe the things you did before you Fell were kind of - well maybe some of the things you did were - suspect - even before you made decisions that were really obviously bad?"

"Well, I feel like the same me either way. --I think God must have created me as the sort of being who could Fall, right, or I wouldn't have Fallen."

"Right. Sure. I just wonder if it could have happened to anyone, or if we could have told before, or whether there was any way to tell whether it definitely wouldn't happen, or - "

She looks nervously out towards the horizon to see whether the humans are still around.

"I just hope I haven't done anything wrong. Falling now would just be so awkward. Also horrible, and evil, and bad, but - I mean I wouldn't even be any good a it. You know? I just - I just want people to get to look at the snowflakes. Before they get - horribly eaten by insect babies. And then for the plan to work out perfectly and everything to be exactly like it should be again."

"I was going to be like 'well, you just wanted to help people, that can't be wrong, wanting to help people' but I just wanted to help the humans when I told them God was lying to them about the fruit from the tree. So I don't know." He thinks about it. "The snowflakes are going to be pretty."

"I hope so.

"I'm Kairiel."