" - is that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?"

"...yes. It's tasty, but I don't feel any more knowledgeable."

"Well naturally not, you already had the ability to sin. You do realize what happened to the humans who tasted that fruit?"

"They... became like as gods knowing good and evil?"

"They were condemned to death."

"Well, that's pretty mean. God has the immortality fruit tree right there."

"Well, if the humans eating from the tree were a part of the plan, then I suppose it would have happened."

"Well, I don't think it's a very good plan. Not if the humans have to die."

He takes another bite of apple.

"Well, I'm sure there must be a reason for it. Just because we can't see it from here doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"Well, I think if it were such a good plan, He'd be able to explain it to people."

He sits on the wall around the Garden of Eden.

"Weren't you supposed to have a flaming sword?"

"No."

"No, I remember, you were definitely supposed to have a flaming sword."

"Nope."

"You lost it!"

"I did not! I - may have given it away."

"To who? Does one of the other angels have two swords now?" He takes another bite of the apple. "Did they lose theirs?"

"The humans just looked so - there are animals out there, you know, with teeth, and claws, and I know they're supposed to die, but they have a baby already, and it's going to be so small, and I don't know anything about babies but it sounds like it'd be hard enough even without the animals, and no one specifically said I had to hang onto it forever - "

"...Why are the humans out there? Didn't God make this whole, like, human paradise right here?"

" - well, they ate from the tree."

"What? You eat one little apple and then suddenly you have to hang out on the part of Earth with lions and hookworms and parasitoids eating you from the inside out?"

"Apparently. It was against the rules."

"Why did He put it in the garden then? It seems to me if He didn't want them to eat the fruit He could have just put the tree somewhere else. The Mariana Trench is nice."

"Well I don't know. It's not really my department."

Crunch crunch.

"I guess I must have done something evil then."

"Well. That does seem likely."

"It wasn't intentional. They were all like 'Lev, you're a terrible demon, go to Earth and stop bothering us' and then I saw the Tree and one of the humans, the one with round things in front, said it would kill them immediately if they ate it and I was like 'no, that is super a lie' and then I thought about it and said 'honestly eating it would be good, then you would know lots of things.'" Crunch. "Maybe I'll get a commendation."

"Well. They've been cast out and are going to die now. Not - soon, hopefully, but at some point. So I suppose whatever you did must have been evil. Probably. Do they give you people commendations for being evil?"

"Yeah! They give you a special award."

"Wow. I haven't gotten any awards. 

"I really hope I didn't do anything wrong by giving them the sword..."

"Well, being nice to people is a good thing, right? And you were nice to them. So probably it's okay."

"I hope so. I don't know what I'd do if I did something wrong. It's not really the sort of thing one plans for. Of course it probably wouldn't affect the plan, right, that's the sort of thing you can't knock off course, so probably whatever does happen was whatever was supposed to happen, and it'll all turn out all right in the end, but - well it's it's awful to think about your part in it being something other than - well, than helping."

"Uh, well, my part in the plan is definitely not helping."

"Well, it sounds awful. But I suppose that's your job. Being awful."

"Yeah, I guess. --I didn't mean to, it's just that God doesn't like people who keep asking questions."

"Oh.

"I'm... sorry."

"And He made me, you know, if He didn't want me to ask questions He could have just made a different person."

He's done with the apple. He throws it over his shoulder into the garden.

"I suppose so." She glances at the discarded apple. "You know that can't have been good for you."

"I might learn something."

"Do you feel like you've learned anything? Anything you - didn't understand before that you understand now?"

"Not really. I thought it probably wouldn't work on demons."

"I suppose that makes sense."

"I guess I'll get to find out if I die now."

"I mean you were going to anyway, right? Die eternally in the fires of hell, and all that? I expect that counts."

"I feel like that doesn't count because I'm, like, sapient and in my original form the entire time."

"Well I don't know. Maybe it seems like a fairer description once you're there."

"I was there. I didn't feel very dead. If they were like 'Hell is a place where nobody likes you because you aren't a real demon' it would be more accurate."

"Then maybe it's symbolically like death, somehow. Or maybe it'll be different at the end of time."

"Or maybe God is lying. Again. Like He always does."

"God doesn't lie. He sometimes describes truths that are beyond our comprehension."

"He put dinosaur bones in the ground to make it look like the Earth is billions of years old, I'd call that lying."

"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."

"Lev! --It's going to mean 'heart' in human."

"Aww. That's cute."

"Hastur was like 'that's a terrible demon name, Lev.'"

"I like it. I'm not a demon, but."

"I wanted to name myself after a human word because humans are going to be the best thing."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. --I used to hang out in the place where they were designing humans, just looking at things. Did you know they have dreams? Dreams are cool."

"I did hear about dreams! Those do sound cool. The whole idea of telling stories to themselves while they sleep. I think I mostly want to see what they do with the world, you know? We can look up anything about what we did, but I have no idea what they're going to do with what we did."

"They're going to do such awesome stuff, I bet. Clothes! I would never in a million years have thought of clothes."

"Well, we'll have to wait and see what else they come up with."

"It's really exciting! --I will make sure to stop by and tell you since you're going to be, uh. Guarding the gate."

"Oh. Yeah. That sounds nice."

Six thousand years later--

Everyone was confused about how Hearts & Halos Bookshop stayed in business.

It had been on its particular London street corner as far back as anyone could remember. (The sign said Est. 1032, but presumably that was someone's idea of a joke.) So presumably it was making a profit.

But it was very unclear how.

Hearts & Halos Bookshop had, in a certain sense, plenty of customers. There were comfy armchairs to curl up in, and long tables for debating philosophy, and lots of little nooks for studying. The tea was always hot and the homemade cookies were heavenly. The female owner always knew how to recommend a book that uplifted you or said something about whatever you were struggling with or gave the perfect piece of advice. The male owner could explain whatever homework problem you were stuck on so that you understood it, could suggest the perfect source for your essay, and gossiped about historical economists as if he had personally known them. While the opening hours were erratic, it was always open when you really needed it.

But the tea was free and the cookies were free. While the books technically had prices, you could get them for free for reasons such as "you don't have any money", "you really need it", "books are supposed to be read", "it belongs in a good home", "you would really enjoy it", and "I forgot where the cash register was."

The students of London often speculated about the true nature of the owners. Perhaps they were mobsters laundering money, but it was hard to imagine the female owner doing any crime worse than jaywalking, and while the male owner did technically wear sunglasses inside he also bounced excitedly about NBER papers. Perhaps they were eccentric billionaires, although none of the wealthier students had any idea who their families were. Perhaps they were spies and it was their cover story.

Kairiel was of the opinion that spending time in the bookshop was an entirely valid and responsible use of her time, since technically her job was to keep an eye on Lev, and Lev could hardly be doing very much evil while primarily concerned with the bookshop, now could he. She also did other things, like appearing to people who were about to commit suicide, or visiting people in nursing homes who were in danger of losing hope, or occasionally curing children of incurable diseases even though she kind of probably wasn't supposed to do that as much as she did because probably 'they were just so small' was not, like, a very good reason in the grand scheme of things.

But she does spend a lot of time at the bookshop. At the moment she is very carefully shelving new science fiction novels.

Lev bursts in through the front door.

Normally, this is when he starts arguing with her about whether they can just do a miracle to put the new science fiction books on the shelves, and the fact that he does not immediately do this is the surest sign that something is really really wrong.

"What's up?"

"...The world is ending."

" - like the world is really ending, or like someone said the world is ending, because the humans say that practically once a decade now - "

"Got a call from downstairs. They want me to give the Antichrist to the American Cultural Attache."

"Oh. Well. Oh."

"We have eleven years."

"That's not very many years. I guess there are smaller numbers of years. But not many. At least if you limit yourself to integers. - Do you know exactly what happens when the eleven years are up - "

"The Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse ride, the seas turn to blood, the Antichrist destroys the entire Earth, there's the final battle between Heaven and Hell, my side wins or your side wins and either way Earth is a cinder. --There might be nukes. I hear nukes are very popular these days."

"Wow."

She pats the bookshelf like it's a small fuzzy animal.

"I guess we're not gonna be able to commemorate a thousand years of running this place. Not quite."

"I was going to throw such a giant party. Confuse all the grad students."

"It would have been so much fun."

"I really was twenty years away from completely automating my job this time. It was-- admittedly a little bit of a setback when the humans figured out about lead poisoning but the climate change was going to pay off and I really think I've solved macroeconomics this time and then all the humans will just hurt each other without me having to do anything and I will get to help grad students with their homework all day."

(It was the first time Kairiel had heard anything about macroeconomics.)

"You know that seems very dismal, I think they're going to get large-scale space flight worked out eventually. Or - I guess they won't, but I think they would've. Eventually."

"Oh, man, spaceflight would have been so cool. --A Song of Ice and Fire's not going to get finished."

"I suppose not.

"What're you - planning to do, exactly, for the next eleven years?"

"Take credit for shit I didn't do, run the bookshop, eat too much, finish my to-be-read pile, run unethical psychological experiments on humans, listen to a bunch of music, anticipate being tortured for eternity."

Nod.

"What about you?"

"Run the bookshop. See if I can get any evildoers to return to the side of the righteous so they can be spared eternal torment. Counsel the uncertain and provide strength for the weary. Try every kind of cereal. Bunch of kinds of cereal I keep meaning to try. Read things. Especially the - things that probably end up getting burnt to cinders when everything else does. At least the ones with good parts."

"You should make sure to read all the evil books. Bunch of authors aren't going to wind up being in Heaven, you know."

"Yeah. I mean. Not the evil-evil books. But the ones with, you know, artistic merit. And we have Tolkien? That's... not nothing."

"Tolkien and Lewis and Pratchett and Le Guin, yeah. But we have Asimov and Heinlein and Zelazny and Harlan Ellison and Marion Zimmer Bradley--"

"I didn't like Heinlein anyway. - I mean I wish he didn't have to be tortured forever, but I won't mourn his books. Douglas Adams, though. I liked Douglas Adams."

"Well. You have eleven years to memorize his books."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"They're going to want me to kill the extra baby."

" - oh, well you don't have to do that, do you, you could just - healthy babies always get adopted these days, you could just leave it with someone who doesn't know - you could leave it here, I'd think of something, you wouldn't even have to figure anything out yourself - "

"--I mean, it's not like I've never killed a baby before. It's just that normally I kill them more, you know. Actuarially. Less with the actual stabbing." 

"Yeah, but you could just - not. You know? It's a baby."

"It's a bit inconsistent, isn't it, to be fine with killing a hundred million babies through global warming and object to killing one single solitary baby with your own hands."

"Well you've never been consistent before, I don't see why you should start now."

"I am perfectly consistent. I am consistently true neutral."

"Well I don't think true neutral characters stab babies for no reason."

"That's a good point. I'd probably lose my alignment. --Man, now we have a deadline on D&D."

"I guess so. We can wrap up the current campaign, anyway."

"Maybe I'll adopt the spare baby."

" - will you really?"

"Yeah! Having a kid is the one big human thing I never got to do. We can watch Star Wars and go out for ice cream and I can teach her Latin and Greek and Hebrew and astrophysics--"

"We could read books to her, and sing songs, and hang her little crayon drawings in the shop, and take her to the beach and the zoo - "

"And replicate all of Piaget's experiments--"

"The developmental psychology guy? Fine. - at least the ones you can do before eleven. Which is, you know, probably most of them."

"Yeah. It's too bad we can't delay the apocalypse until she's eighteen."

"Yeah."

"...I just had an idea."

"What?"

"What if we raised the Antichrist?"

"What would - I mean, the antichrist would still end up destroying the world at the age of eleven, right, that doesn't buy us any more time - "

"No, the Antichrist is a person, right? Like, Christ was a person. He had free will, that's why He could be tempted and stuff."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"So, in theory, Christ could have given into temptation, right? Boom. No Cross, no salvation, derailment of the Divine Plan. That's why we bothered with tempting him at all."

"- yeah. But - He wasn't going to, He would never have actually made that decision, just because of who He was as a person - "

"Right. Exactly! But He wouldn't have been the person that He was if He were raised by totally random parents, right? His mother and father were saintly and they provided a good environment for him. Warmth, firmness, responsiveness, an excellent religious education--"

"God did specifically seek out pretty much the holiest parents in existence. So we could, what, try to influence the antichrist to be - not evil? And, and therefore not want to declare war against heaven and destroy the world in the process?"

"Well, if we get her to be too not evil, she'll just defect to Heaven and destroy the world the other way. But if you have an angel and a demon working together to raise a person-- maybe she won't come out good or evil after all. Maybe she'll come out true neutral."

She paces.

"I suppose that's - an improvement, strictly speaking. And - well if we were wrong and the plan happened the way it was expected to no matter what, it's not like we'd actually be any worse off for having tried, right, everything would just default to happening however it would have happened if we hadn't interfered - "

"Right. You're trying to avert the Apocalypse and save the soul of the Antichrist herself. That's a very good thing to do. I mean, that's what Christ would do, wouldn't it? He was always going around trying to save sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors."

"Trying to influence the evil to do good is in fact a core part of my job description. You could get in trouble. But I suppose if it doesn't work you're probably in trouble anyway - "

"Nope, I'm thwarting you! I found out about your plot to raise the Antichrist as your own and cunningly impersonated a human and caused you to trust me. Imagine if the Antichrist had defected to Heaven! It might have happened without my efforts. Amazing undercover work. Probably I'll get a commendation."

"I do suppose you couldn't have just left me to my - whatever the opposite of nefarious schemes are. 

"Do you think it'll work? Trying to make her come out average?"

"Uh, well, my other options involve being tortured for eternity, so."

She hugs him.  "This is what I mean about you being in trouble."

"If you're really concerned about me being in trouble you shouldn't be rooting for Heaven to win."

"Well I can't root for everyone to go to hell."

"Is Heaven really all that much better, though?"

"Yes? Nobody gets tortured at all."

"Okay, that's fair. But you know what Heaven doesn't have in it? Bookshops. Heaven is absolutely and completely free of bookshops."

"Does hell have bookshops?"

"Hell doesn't have bookshops because it is trying to be pointlessly sadistic to humans for no reason. Heaven was designed by a person trying to make a nice place for human beings to live and it doesn't have bookshops. None of those little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crossword, no D&D, no weddings, no videos of a baby eating ice cream for the first time-- no ice cream--" 

"No war, no famine, no child abuse, no disease, no death, absolutely no lead poisoning anywhere -

" - I like the world. I don't know that the world is even the sort of thing that can stick around indefinitely, maybe it has to fall apart, and if it does then I'd much rather as many people as possible go to someplace that's - fine, not maximally exciting but fine, and not a place that's trying to destroy them as thoroughly as possible. But I do like the world. I like - humans, and the things that humans do, and spaceships, and books, and cookies that melt a little in your mouth, and babies, and you. I don't want it to disappear just yet, I'm just - pessimistic about our chances and pretty sure everyone going to hell is not my second choice."

"I'm just saying, at least I picked the way where no one is going to bullshit me about whether I'm being tortured."

"No one is going to torture me. Probably. Unless your side somehow wins, I have no idea what they're planning to do to angels but I suspect it isn't anything good."

"I think they're planning a rehabilitation program. Well. The opposite of a rehabilitation program."

"I cannot really imagine that being successful."

"I'll help you as much as I can. If we win."

Hug.

"I'm gonna help you help nobody win. Not yet. OK?"

"It's a deal. --Where am I going to find a baby to pass off as the Antichrist."

"Is the American Cultural Attache not having his own baby? I've never had a baby but I feel like there's generally some advance warning. - unless he's just openly and deliberately working with hell, I guess people do ever do that, but - "

"There's this whole Order of Chattering Nuns that was created for the sole purpose of safely delivering the Antichrist into the arms of the American Cultural Attache and then disposing of the spare baby. I think they're going to notice if they fail to fulfill their literal entire purpose."

"Oh. You could - swap the babies like you're supposed to and then swap them back later on, after the order's not looking? I don't know how hard stealing babies from the American Cultural Attache is."

"I mean, humans have to sleep."

"That's true! We could switch the babies back when they're sleeping."

"What kind of things do you need for a baby? I bet there are books."

"There are probably books! We probably have books about it. Somewhere." She wanders off between the shelves. "We'll need diapers and a crib and baby clothes and one of those little mobile things and a little baby sling and a little baby carrier and a room for when she grows up a little - and formula, I don't think angels do much on the producing baby food front - "

"I think breastmilk is better for babies, maybe we could miracle some up and put it in bottles. --And dolls and trucks and stuffed animals and lots and lots of adorable little onesies and books! So many books!"

"So many! Little board books so she won't break them when she's little. Little chess sets and chemistry kits and art supplies when she's older - I think really little babies don't get anything out of stuffed animals, but maybe in a few years - " She peeks out from behind one of the shelves. "Should we be pretending to be married? I don't think it's setting a very good example if she doesn't think her perfectly ordinary human parents are committed to each other."

"I thought we were married."

"Awwwww! We need to get rings then."

"We have been married for-- I don't remember when common-law marriage was invented-- several centuries anyway without rings. Do we really need them?"

"Yes. It's very important. Several centuries ago we didn't have a baby. And I like rings, they're pretty."

He hugs her. "Clearly we should have sorted that out earlier so you could have had pretty rings."

Hug! "We should have! But I forgive you."

"How Christlike."

"I do try."

"Anyway. Books!" Lev says. "I will find all the books I can find about how to raise your child to be an ethical person, and then I will do the opposite."

"And I shall do my best to thwart you at every turn. I suppose there are lots of things we're going to have to compromise on, though - whether and where she goes to church, what she's allowed to read, how much TV she watches, what exactly the house rules are - "

"She can go to Black Masses and regular Masses, I assume she can read anything she wants to, TV rots your brain but Star Trek is really good so I am conflicted there myself--"

"We can't deny her Star Trek. - when is the swap supposed to happen - "

"Three months. We have some time."

"OK. Good. Good. Then we can read lots of books. And then we will know what to do. Probably."

"How hard can parenting be, really? Humans do it all the time."

"Yeah! Yeah, we'll figure it out in no time.

" - what are we going to name her?"

"Ada. Rosalind. Lise. Mae. Grace. Emmy. Rachel--"

" - are you just listing off female scientists at random - "

"I think she should have a strong female role model!"

"We could call her Marie. For the scientist and the saint."

"I can go with that. Both Marie Curie and Mary the Mother of God were great people."

"I love you. - do we have a last name? We must have put something on our taxes. I definitely paid my taxes last year. I think. You know I would know more of these things if you'd told me before today that we were married."

"I'm a demon. I don't pay taxes."

"I'll look it up. I'm sure it's around here somewhere."

It takes her an hour to find evidence of their technical legal identities. Organization is not one of her primary virtues. 

"All right, your legal name is Lev Hart and my legal name is Kairiel Angel. I can't have been feeling very creative whenever I came up with these. We should probably get at least one of those changed, it'll be confusing if we're not all named the same thing, especially if she has friends and they want to call us Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so - "

"I'll take 'Angel' because I am one technically and because I don't want to be named Heart Heart. Also, I'm a feminist."

"We can get it changed. You know at a certain point we might as well just have a wedding. I've never had a wedding before and I don't think we can have one anymore if the world ends. And you complained about people not having them in heaven."

"We could invite all the grad students! It would confuse them so much! --And you like weddings. You always cry."

"I do like weddings. Obviously we can't have one in a church. We could do a beach or a park or a garden. Possibly a castle."

"We could have it here."

" - we could! We could decorate everything and give everybody cake."

"And promise to be together until the end of the world."

Hug. "And if we're very lucky it'll be more than eleven years."

"It all depends on how good we are at being parents. --You're going to make us have a wedding before Marie arrives, aren't you?"

"Yes. Babies should have unambiguously married parents. With rings. And vows."

"But she'd be so cute as a flower girl."

"But then we'd have to wait years."

"Fine. --It's hard to plan a wedding in three months but I guess we can just miracle the decorations."

"I bet it's not that hard. It doesn't have to be a big wedding, and we don't have any family to invite. But we can miracle things if it is. It's not like it's something we're going to be doing regularly."

Lev, who miracles things he does regularly all the time, does not comment about this.

Instead he says, "I love you and I am so happy to have a wedding and a baby even if they are in the godly order."

"I love you too! Thank you for marrying me officially even though we've apparently been married for centuries anyway. We are going to be - extremely loving if not strictly speaking extremely good parents."

"I for one will support her in following all but two of her possible dreams."

"I'm sure she could theoretically come up with some kind of terrible idea that falls short of actually destroying the world. But I will love her no matter what."

"Well, if she does good things I'll be proud of her in the normal parent way, and if she does bad things I'll be proud of her in the demon way."

Her husband is excellent and he is getting hugged again.

"I really really hope you don't get tortured forever."

"Same to you."

"Mhmm."

Everyone agrees that it was the strangest wedding they had ever seen.

Everyone still alive who had ever been a regular at Hearts & Halos Bookshop received an invitation, even though it was far from obvious how the proprietors of Hearts & Halos knew where any of their old regulars lived. The proprietors looked identical to the proprietors of seventy years ago, even though they must be... grandchildren or something. 

Neither the bride nor the groom appeared to have any family, possibly because they were spies, or maybe eccentric vampires. Several of the grad students were growing more enamored of the "eccentric vampire" hypothesis.

The bookshelves were covered with handmade decorations. The tables were spread with an excessive number of cakes: half homemade and as delicious as if the baker had spent six thousand years perfecting her recipe, half purchased from a baker and far less delicious but making up for it in being shaped like Daleks, Wall-E, Legos, or something called a "Lensman." The bride and groom exchanged their aggressively secular vows in front of a justice of the peace; instead of "till death do us part," they said "until the end of the world" which (it was generally felt) did not make it less likely that they were some sort of particularly eccentric and book-obsessed vampires. They hugged instead of kissing.

After the vows, there was dancing: a medley of the greatest hits of the past five centuries. Fortunately, some of the grad students did social dancing and happily waltzed and did the gavotte.

It's perfect. Or - not perfect, not the clean bright white unchanging walls of heaven, not the exacting dance of the stars as they circle one another through the celestial spheres, but she thinks she likes her wedding more than she likes perfect things.

Her ring is very pretty and her cakes are very good and she loves her husband very very much.

It is totally perfect! He bounces on his heels every time he looks at his wife (his wife!!!! who is his!!!! she's so excellent!!!!).

He is going to end up tortured for eternity but also for eternity he is going to get to remember what Kairiel looked like smiling in a white dress and he thinks that this is worth it.

Her husband is adorable and wonderful and hers. (She tells him this many times, after everyone leaves and she has to put the cakes away. It takes a while because it's very easy to get distracted by the fact that her husband exists and is married to her and is wonderful and adorable.)

"Thank you for doing this. Officially."

"Thank you!"

He has miraculously disintegrated all the decorations and is now sitting upside down in a chair reading What To Expect The First Year.

"Learn anything interesting?"

"Human babies are so fragile."

"Well yeah. They're small and new and they don't know how to lift their little heads. - anything specific we need to look out for?"

"This book has a whole section about diseases but I'm concerned if I let you read it you will decide our baby has literally every one of them every time she vomits."

"Well if you hadn't said anything then I think I'd figure almost all babies survive these days, but now I think if I don't get a list of symptoms to look for then I might have to ask you whether she looks like she's about to die every time she breathes funny."

"All right, you can read it. --Apparently seizures from fever are very normal and don't mean that anything's wrong."

"Wow. That's - really concerning, absent that information, but I'll try to keep it in mind."

"Also there are a ton of safety rules. But I'm not sure if we can just ignore them because she's the Antichrist."

"Is the antichrist immune to dying as a baby? Or - dying generally?"

"Well, she's a reality warper like us. We can die-- well, inconveniently discorporate-- but we're not going to die of falling down the stairs or getting hit by a car."

"True. But we're also not babies."

"We should probably be at all careful, but I think her powers will keep her safe, even as a baby."

"OK. Sounds good. We can be a normal reasonable we-have-a-baby amount of careful and not a better-lock-this-child-in-an-impenetrable-extremely-safe-playpen-until-she-turns-five-because-the-fate-of-the-world-depends-on-her amount of careful."

"I think being locked in an extremely safe playpen is bad for child development anyway."

"I didn't say it was a good idea. Maybe if it was a really big playpen."

"With lots of age-appropriate toys."

"Yeah. But probably she'll still want to leave it before she turns five.

"How much more time do we have?"

"Not sure. I'm going to get summoned at some point in the next couple weeks but Hell is not super respectful of other people's ability to plan."

"Oh. I suppose not. - Babies aren't either, I don't think. Like, they might not actually be precisely sure when the birth happens."

"If we were humans we would be having a 'nesting instinct' now. Like you'd have a sudden urge to clean the entire house and freeze large amounts of food."

"Honestly might be a good idea to freeze some of these leftovers? But I think the house is probably as clean as it gets."

"We don't eat. Except recreationally."

"Which leads to a level of consumption that might not get everything eaten unless some of these cakes get frozen. Maybe I should put them out instead of cookies for a while."

"I mean, we're also not limited to human caloric requirements," Lev says, eyeing one of Kairiel's cakes.

"Well, if you feel the need to help, be my guest, I'd hate to see them go to waste. - you know, we are going to have to eat human-normal amounts of food if we want the baby to think she's being raised by human parents. I guess we're going to have to do a lot of things on that front. Take showers, appear to ever sleep..."

"I take showers. Showers are great."

"Huh. Maybe I'll get used to them. I don't think I've bothered since the last time I got covered in mud. Sleeping, though, you'd lose all that time. I'll have to cut so many things out of my schedule. I probably won't even be able to get that old nursing home to rehire me for a few weeks every year. But I suppose averting the end of the world is probably worth a few sacrifices. We should buy a bed, I think not owning a bed is even more suspicious than not sleeping in it. We wouldn't have to really sleep in it, we could just, you know, rewatch all of Star Trek."

"I mean, I don't think you sleep much with a newborn anyway, and when she's a toddler she'll go to sleep before we do. But yeah we should get a bed. Beds are good for cuddles."

"I don't want to have to explain the sudden appearance of one when she's four. And yes. Cuddles are good."

A few days later, at midnight, the voice of Freddie Mercury tells Lev that THE ANTICHRIST IS READY, and he leaves.

Kairiel paces, and eats some cake, and triple-checks that all of the baby things are set up, and paces some more.

A few hours later, Lev returns home, carrying a sleeping swaddled baby in his arms. He's staring at her with utter adoration. 

Eeee!

"Is she - is this, uh, the one that we stole that we're keeping or the one that we stole that you're giving back - "

"This is Marie," Lev says. "There was a second woman giving birth at the nunnery. Nice family, they were called the Youngs. I found a very confused nun named Sister Mary Loquacious and confused her a bit more, and now the nuns think the baby transfer happened and every baby is going home with its biological parents, except Marie, who went home with us."

She makes a very delighted sound in the process of preventing herself from saying 'you are so good.'

"I love you. I love you I love you I love you. I love her. She's so small."

"She has," Lev announces in the tone of a person revealing a great and important truth, "ten toes."

Kairiel gasps appropriately and makes another delighted sound.

"They are SO SMALL. I got to nom them."

How are the most delightful people in existence a demon and the antichrist. It's not fair. How are they hers, also not fair but she's not going to internally complain about that one.

"Everything's set up. I checked. Again."

"Okay. Maybe if I put her down in her crib very very gently she won't wake up."

"Maybe!"

She holds her breath in anticipation of seeing whether this works. This is easy because she doesn't actually need to breathe.

Baby Marie is NOT A FAN OF THIS PLAN.

She wakes up immediately to express her SERIOUS DISPLEASURE at not being snuggled by the BIG WARM SOFT THING.

It's okay! The Big Warm Thing can pick her up!

The Big Warm Thing has read MANY books about babies and he is going to rock her back and forth in his arms while going "shhhhhhhh" and giving her a finger to suck on.

This is acceptable. Good big warm thing. In a few minutes she's feeling sleepy again.

The big warm thing sits in a rocking chair and summons a book to his hand. 

This is also acceptable. The big warm thing may continue this course of activity.

Kairiel is just going to sit nearby and beam at them and bask in the fact that she has a family and her family is incredibly indescribably wonderful and she is a part of it and they are hers. 

Lev is having a hard time reading, a thing which otherwise never happens, because he keeps beaming in delight at his Marie and his Kairiel (<33333). 

His life is so wonderful.

Wow she hopes she has more than eleven years of this. Of course the baby is going to be a baby for less than that. But still.

Two months later--

Lev is pacing back and forth, holding a screaming Marie. 

"This baby is a demon. This baby is literally the spawn of Satan."

"Do you want me to hold her again?"

He passes her over. "Not like it matters, I won't be able to hear myself think anyway because the baby won't stop screaming."

"You could go out," she suggests, petting the still-screaming baby. "Shhh. Marie, if you don't want your bottle or a change or a burp or a song, there's really only so much we can do for you."

The child is NOT PLACATED.

"I got out this afternoon, got some tempting done. --Are you sure you don't need some time off, I can take her?"

"I think I'm fine? I keep worrying that there's something horribly wrong that she can't tell us about, but I don't know what can be done about that -"

"No, I think it's normal-- she could have stomach problems, we could try a special diet, but the books all disagree about whether that's the cause of colic--"

"Yeah, I know, I just - I feel like we should be able to outperform humans here? Babies sleeping peacefully to angelic lullabies. But no. She's just miserable. All the time."

"Oh honey," he says to Marie. "It's so hard being a baby."

Marie agrees that is is VERY VERY VERY HARD. 

"It won't last forever," he says, partly to Marie and partly to Kairiel and partly to himself. "At some point you are going to stop crying."

"It's supposed to stop before six months, right?"

"Half the time by three months, 90% of the time by nine months."

(Excellent husband who knows excellent things.)

"Good. OK. We can - probably avoid going completely insane for that long?"

"I have such a new understanding of why the baby books kept telling me not to shake the baby. --At least I don't need sleep."

"Yeah. Very very grateful for the lack of sleep deprivation right now."

One year later--

Lev feels that three times a day is entirely too many times to eat. Lev considers himself a person who likes food, and regularly has it as many as four or five times a week. But three times a day is just EXCESSIVE. You wrap up one meal and you immediately have to start planning for the next one.

He considers whether it would be suspicious to miracle up some mac-and-cheese instead of cooking it. 

Marie is HUNGRY and would like her food NOW.

"...seven minutes, Marie," Lev says, surreptitiously causing the water to boil slightly faster than physics would generally predict. "Seven minutes and you can have some mac and cheese with veggies and hot dogs. Won't that be good?" 

Marie is not yet capable of speech, and so she bangs her spoon on the table and babbles.

"...Unfortunately, Marie, we cannot violate the laws of physics. The food will be ready when it's ready"

(They totally can violate the laws of physics but the devil is the Prince of Lies.)

Marie is going to cry about their inability to violate the laws of physics, then.