Book 20 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 99, Verse 100:

And so the youth, conceived of an angel’s empathy, led us into heaven.  The gates were thrown wide, as the old gods withered away from the lack of our devotion, and we have erected no new divinities. Every man, woman, and child may walk in the radiance of heaven.  The gates are open to the living and the dead.  Paradise is no longer the gods’  unfulfilled promise.  But the angel who started our journey, whose sacrifice gave us the great halls and fields of the above, is nowhere to be found, not in heaven, nor in the lands below.

            Abael clutched the boy tight and beat wingward toward heaven.  The angel ignored the screams of the lad’s mother and the pleas of his father.  Abael had a task to complete, one set by the gods: to bring the child to them.  If Abael didn’t do it, another angel would.
      Abael flew through space until it reached heaven’s palace.  The structure towered against the skies, reflecting light from every minaret and obelisk.  The angel flew up the viridian slope to the opaline gates and waited for entrance. 
When Abael reached the interior hall of columns and altars, it set the boy down in front of the row of gods.  The boy’s golden curl fell against his lips. Abael brushed it away.  The angel returned to its place, ready to do the gods’ bidding, just one in a long line.  Cherubim and seraphim stood to the right, angels to the left.
      Lodin, the god of fire, stepped forward.  “He is mine to do with as I wish.”  The bass reverberations of his voice echoed throughout the hall and rippled over the pantheon of gods.  Rows of them, immense, stood side by side. 
Siri’s massive sculpted legs bore her to the center atrium as she challenged Lodin.  “I tell you, under the proclamations of Zenial, he is mine.  I will brook no contest in this matter.”  The force of her will shook the foundation.  The marble walls shivered.
      The mortal in question, a slight human youth, lay limp on the agate stones.  Abael could see the flicker of downy hairs on his cheek as he breathed.  Was he awake?  Abael doubted it.  No mortal could stand the scrutiny of the gods.  If he survived, he would be haunted by a memory of melodic voices, hounded by images of dreams never realized, tortured by the glimpse of something mortal intellect couldn’t conceive—the faces of the gods.
      Abael felt a deep swelling in its belly, an urge to return the child to his people in the down-below.  It had followed orders.  As it always had.  As it always would?  Abael did not know what to do with pity.  It was the angel’s first feeling.
      The boy lay limp, defenseless on the tiles.  The pure brilliance of heaven’s rays illuminated every pore of his skin.  The light of the all-knowing revealed the creature to be flawed, imperfect: a small sore in the corner of his mouth, grime embedded in his hands, a small speck on the corner of his wrist.  Human. 
      Abael wondered what it would be like to have a wound, to see imperfection in itself.  To know desire, to love or to hate.  Abael hadn’t been created to know those things.  But now it knew pity, spawned by the tiny mole on the out-flung hand.  The feeling sank deep in the angel’s stomach.
      Lodin, his face twisted, stomped closer to the boy.  “He will worship me.” 
      Siri held out a hand to forestall him.  “He never will.”  Her voice was as cold as winter, and icicles fell from her lips.
      Lodin reached for the boy.
      The god’s touch seared the boy’s flesh and filled the halls of heaven with the smell of roasting meat, yet the boy did not stir.  Abael wanted to shiver, but remained still.
      Siri grabbed his other arm.  Blue ripples of ice formed on the boy’s skin.
      Fire warred with ice.  Blood defiled the tiles.  As it oozed out of the boy, the blood burned with a brilliant white light.  The boy’s head lolled.  Caught between the gods, one side of his hair burst into flame, sending an acrid smell into the air.  The locks on the other side frosted into icicles. 
      Abael wanted to cry out, but it had no voice. 
      The battle ended when Lodin and Siri pulled the boy apart.  It had been just another round in the gods’ eternal contest. 
      Not a single sound had escaped the child’s lips, and Abael gave thanks for the tiny blessing.
      A small hand, fingernails broken and blue with frostbite, rolled across the floor.  It came to rest in front of Abael.  The feeling in its abdomen grew and planted a seed, cold and hard. 

Book 10 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 20, Verse 13:

The gods trembled in fear as Samual’s army grew.  Word spread across the nations.  Temples, altars, churches, all fell to Samual’s followers.  The great army assembled on Abael’s plain, and built the stairway through the abyss, one step at a time. 

      The image of the small, grimy hand stayed with Abael, and the angel began to rebel in trivial ways.
      Holy relics disappeared from temples: first a small, fat statue of Nurin, then a larger, emerald encrusted portrait of Siri.
      A white cow died before it could be put to sacrifice.  Abael watched Lodin dance in a fit of rage.
      One night, Malchus, goddess of shepherds, ordered the angel to fly down from heaven, to give a sign.  Abael flew through the ethereal abyss of in-between, and landed on a silver moor.  Rain sheeted off its shoulders and dripped unheeded through feathered wings.
      A woman wandered in the night.
      “Malchus, hear me, your faithful servant,” the shepherdess said as she knelt in the mud.  “I am lost.  I have lost all I had.  My family is gone, my flock diseased.  I need a sign of your love for me.  Show me the way through the dark, lead me home to your temple, where I can find warmth and food.”
     Abael’s wings trembled.  It hesitated.  Abael knew that it was supposed to light the sky in flame, to show the sign of the god Malchus.  After a moment, as Abael watched the woman weep, it leapt for the sky.  Wings beat hard and stretched against gray clouds.  The shepherd’s sign would never come.
     Later, Abael smiled, deep down in its stomach, as Malchus stormed about the alabaster halls.  The gods were not infallible, they could be thwarted.  Abael made sure to kneel in perfect submission.  The knot in its midsection grew. 

Book 7 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 17, Verse 3:

The drowning of the altar was Samual’s only miracle, but many joined because of that day.  Remember always the words of the prophet Samual:  “I did not come to be worshipped, but to avenge.  I do not wish you to replace gods with another.  The people must learn to stand alone.” 

       Pity became compassion, and compassion fomented even greater acts of rebellion. 
      One day Lodin sent Abael to the down-below to retrieve another child.  The infant lay in her crib and smacked at Abael with drooling gums.
      The house was silent.  Abael reached out a hand to touch the child.  It noted the warmth of baby flesh, the soft skin, the smell of talcum powder.
      Abael stood over the girl and began to hate.  It did not know the name for the feeling yet, just an urge, a burn.  Abael wanted to remove one soul from the power of heaven, to diminish the gods and free the child.
      Abael’s wings slumped.  There was no place to hide the baby girl.  If Abael did not bring her back, another angel would.  An eternity of angels waited to do the gods’ biddings.
      The girl suckled at Abael’s finger.  When no nourishment came, her blue eyes blinked open and tiny hands flailed.  A gurgled wail rose from her mouth.
      Abael sealed its hand over her mouth and pinched her nose shut.  The baby kicked her feet and pumped fat chubby knees against Abael’s arm.  Abael longed for a voice to soothe the child.
      In the end, Abael felt regret, though it knew that death was better than serving the gods.  They wanted obedience, held out the promise of heaven’s halls and fields.  Yet they broke their promise, allowed only their own immortal selves the purity of heaven.  The gods had eons ago banned humans from living in paradise, lest their imperfections mar the light.  They promised eternity, they gave only oblivion. 

Book 3 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 23, Verse 13:

In the small village of Metha, Samual grew disgusted when he saw the sacrificial altar, red with blood, steaming with charred flesh.  The smoke floated towards the sky, a black pillar.  Enraged, Samual filled a bucket with water from a spring and drowned the altar.  For this reason, we celebrate the first day of the month of Julst with water. 

       Abael fell from the heights into the abyss of nothingness that separated heaven and the down-below, propelled by the fire of the gods’ wrath. 
       Abael fell for days and weeks, spiraling through the ether, adrift without its wings.
       The wind of the stars surged against Abael’s face and it had time to reflect, eons of time in the fall.  Abael pondered feelings.  Pity: cold and distant.  Compassion: warm and soft.  Hate: fiery and deep.
       Abael landed hard on the ground and learned a new consciousness:  Pain.  Itching pain in its shoulders, bruises on its knees.  Abael looked at its skinned palms, at the yellow ichor leaking out, and remarked loss.  Loss at the removal of heaven, regret for its companion angels, and above all, the deep and bitter knot swelling in its midsection, the conviction that the gods were no longer worthy.
       Abael stared at the ground, silent until a shepherd came upon it.
       “An angel,” he said.  “Cast out from heaven.” 
       Before Abael could rise, the man had run away.  But soon he returned with others, and they carried Abael to the village. 
       The villagers bathed Abael’s wounds.  Each brush of the cloth on its shoulders brought fire to Abael’s vision.
Once Abael recovered from pain, it learned from the villagers.  Without the radiance of heaven, which made all tongues one, Abael had first to learn their language.
      Abael pointed at a stone.  “Rock,” a villager said.  Abael nodded and cherished the word silently, having no voice to repeat it with.
      “Rock,” a small voice echoed.  A child, one of the villager’s, grinned up at Abael from under long bangs of blue-black hair.
      “Cherry.”
      The child solemnly handed the angel a bright red orb and popped another one into his own mouth.  Abael followed suit.
      Cherries tasted like sunlight, tart and crisp in its mouth, with a hard core at the center that crashed against the angel’s teeth.  Abael swallowed the hardness with the soft.
      The child laughed and spit out the core.  With the next cherry, Abael did the same.
      The motion of teeth, the smooth swallow of throat muscles, all of these were new to Abael. 
      At the end of the day, Abael slept with the small body of the boy nestled by its side.
      Abael wandered the isolated village and learned that they had no altars among the hide houses, no golden icons or idols.  The village had arguments, love, and sorrow, but none of it came from the pantheon.  Abael feared for these people, worried the gods would punish their disbelief, but no angels came.  Abael began to relax.
It learned that lavender bloomed in the spring rains, and smelled of comfort.
      Summer came and with it the tart smells of grass on the wind.
      Abael judged and thought and ate and found these new pleasures good. 

Book 3 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 6, Verse 7:

And so Samual walked among us, spreading the gospel of disregard, but few listened.  Those who followed were scorned, but the apostles persisted, though men hated them and quailed for fear of the pantheon’s wrath. 

      Abael grew frustrated.  With no voice, it could not speak in the down-below.  Without a voice, it could not spread the war it wanted.  It left the village and roamed down the mountain, into the towns and cities of the valley, and listened.
      Abael heard the wailing cry of a mother bereft of her child; it heard the stifled sobs and screams for the mercy of the gods. 
      It heard the clash of arms as two people fought for the honor of their respective gods, but Abael saw no glory in it.  It watched Lodin’s champion lurch forward, blood dripping from a cut on the man’s forehead.  Then Siri’s priest lifted her arm and lunged.  Slimy worms coiled out from the man’s gut, along with a gush of red.  The man screamed, clutched his stomach, and fell to the dirt.  Abael heard the thump as the man hit.
      Rage mixed with pity and compassion.  The love Abael had learned to feel for the doomed mortals grew in its belly. 
      Along with its breasts. 

Book 1 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 13, Verse 6:

Samual grew as a human, but with the alabaster skin of an angel, and few hints of what he was to become.  Like all of us, he struggled to find his path, to find answers.  He worked as a shepherd, he apprenticed to a smith, but his true calling was revealed the day he saw the angels come for a human sacrifice. 

      When she returned to the village, Abael found that the boy had grown.  He came now to her waist.  He followed her around during the fall, babbling stories.
      “I saw a bird fly into the sky and the bird ate the apple and it fell,” the child said.
      Abael said nothing, just went about her business of tending to the sheep.
      The little boy followed her out onto the moors.
      “Do you know why the sky is blue?”
      Abael did know, but had no way to say.  She found the child annoying, and he wouldn’t leave her alone.  If she took him to the village, to the family in which he belonged, he snuck out at night.  And Abael couldn’t stay in the village; she had found her work.  Shepherd, they called her, and it suited her as well as anything had since she’d left heaven.
      For she was changing.  She’d become used to the breasts and the strange lips below, and holes where none had been, but now something else was happening.  Her nipples were sore and tight, and a strange swelling filled her insides.  She could sometimes feel little ripples, like something swam inside, composed of all her emotions.
      “Why is your skin so smooth?”  The boy skipped alongside her.  His brown hair gleamed in the sun.  Smudges of dirt marred his left cheek.
      Abael stopped and beckoned him to her.  She licked the edge of her smock and cleaned his face.  His deep eyes studied her.  Abael didn’t know why she felt compelled to try to keep him clean; he thrived on mud puddles.
      “Why does your skin glow?  Why do people say you fell here?  Where did you fall from?”
      She continued to walk.  His short legs pumped to keep up.
      His “Why” followed her all spring long and into the early days of summer.  “Why” followed her up hills and down hills, to the campfire at night with the sheep huffing in their sleep all around.  “Why” woke her up in the morning.
      And her stomach grew as her love for the boy grew.
      It grew tight and high and the swimming motion inside increased, and love kicked at her innards and caused her to waddle away from the camp at night to pee.
      After long months of isolation on the summer’s slope of the mountain, Abael traveled back to the village at the end of the season.  “Why” trailed behind her.
      They found desolation.
      Dark plumes rose to the sky and the smell of burnt flesh, sick and sweet, charred the air.  With her crystal eyes, Abael saw the bright wings of angels in the morning light.  They drifted above, a flock of vultures.  As she once had.
      “Why?” the boy asked her.  He tugged on her skirt, his eyes big and round.  He pulled away from her and headed toward the pyres.
      Abael ran after him.  She cradled her stomach with one hand and managed to grab Why before he crested the hill.  Abael pulled him with her into a thicket of brambles.  Thorns tore at her.  She clamped a hand over his mouth.
Abael knew they were all dead.  Why’s family, the other shepherds, the old men and women who’d been so kind to her.  She could smell them burn.
      When Why relaxed under her grip, she let go of his mouth.  She put a finger over his lips.  He nodded, his eyes still wide.  A sharp acrid scent rolled off his skin.
      Abael and Why huddled in the bracken until dark.  Why pressed tight against her side.  She stroked his thick, sweaty hair.  Through the dim canopy, she could see the angels circle.  One after another they swooped to the ground, like hawks stooping to prey.
      Abael and Why emerged in the full dark.  A road of stars pointed Abael’s way back into the mountains.  She knew there was no place safe from the wrath of ignored gods, but for Why’s sake she would try.
      She had to carry him when he couldn’t walk any further.  The weight of him in her arms added to the weight of her stomach and pulled her down.  Each step stabbed at her with exhaustion, fury, and bleak despair.
      Still, Abael struggled on.  Fear pounded in her throat and tears streaked down her cheeks.  She kept to the shadows and hoped the glow of her skin wouldn’t be seen.
      When the first brush of air from angels’ wings ruffled her robe, she whirled and clutched Why tight to her swollen breasts.
      Abael could see two of them, glowing with angel fire.  They soared up away from her, dove down again.  She ducked.  The wind of their passing ruffled her silver hair.  Why whimpered.  Abael tightened her hold and tottered forward.
      Abael looked around for shelter.  The mountain slope was bare of trees, filled with heather.  Up the slope she could see the outline of a rock crag against the sky.  She would try for that.
      The angels darted at her.
      She shielded Why behind her.  An angel’s hand tore her shirt.  Another pulled her hair.  Her scalp ripped as the angel tugged the lock away.  Blood dripped down her back.
      Like a flock of crows, they pecked at her.  Abael stumbled forward.  The angels followed.
      They took Why from her bleeding arms.  The two angels tossed him back and forth in the sky between them as they soared back down the slope towards the village.
      Abael spun around.  Her large belly prevented her from moving faster than a shuffle, but she tried.  Breath caught in her lungs.  Blood clouded her vision.  One hand supported the weight of her stomach.
      Why floated ahead of her, a shadow outlined in the sky, lit by the angels’ glow.
She knew she was too late when the flock at the village converged.  They stooped to the prey, to the child, as one, a tornado of swirling angel white.
      She forced herself to move faster.  Her thighs burned.
      Why’s torso landed in front of her with a thump.  His eyes were wide open with the last sight of terror.  Blood oozed around him in a dark pool.  Water streamed down her legs.
      She knelt and stroked the fine hair.  Tears clouded her eyes, until a shadow forced her head up.
      An angel hovered there.  The rays of the heavens fired a nimbus around its form.  It stared at her, just another dispassionate angel.  The flock rose and left then.
      Abael clutched Why to her.  She kissed his forehead.
      She knew the gods had slaughtered the village for their refusal to worship.  And she knew they had left her there as witness.
      Abael thought the first pain in her belly was grief streaking through her, and the second, fury.  Her belly rippled.  A kink in the center of her tightened, then expanded.  Why’s death released the knot she had carried since the gods had murdered the boy in heaven.
      The rage intensified and streaked through her skin.  The pain cramped, relaxed.  She took a deep breath and sucked air deep into her lungs.  She would have her revenge on the gods, she swore it to herself, for Why, for the village.  For the sacrifices she’d made to those unworthy beings, the gods.
      Abael let go her emotions, the things she’d become, in a river of blood.  The last thing she heard was the sound of a cry as the child conceived of an angel’s moment of empathy left her womb.

Book 1 of the Tetriad Autarchy, Chapter 2, Verse 6

The baby cried throughout the night, nestled against the body of the dead angel.  Wolves approached with glowing red eyes, but left the infant alone.  When the people from the neighboring village came the following day to bury the dead, they found the infant Samual and adopted him as their own.  Thus the baby who would lead us to heaven was born as every child is: in loss and love, grief and gratification, and the promise of change.