Author's Note: Ohr and the others here are Bene-Elohim who took part in a failed coup against Yahweh in Heaven.  Some terms in the final draft, such as the use of the term Adam will probably be written in Hebrew.  Also, the times denote the writing windows. The term "kovad" will come up and it's the Hebrew word for "glory" or at least a translation for it (I need to run my Hebrew by some scholarly friends) and has been used as a type of power or energy Bene-Elohim can use on objects or to give humans super powers.

9:05-9:15am?
Immediately, right as Ohr arrived he was face down in the dirt.  The pressure - the weight- was overwhelming.  He squirmed on the ground as he battled the oppression, grinding himself into the coarse sand against his face, chest, stomach, underarms and legs as he taught himself how to stand.  

He was so lost.

This was His joke.  His ultimate “told you so.”  As soon as you descend from Heaven you’re face down in the earth.

On the ground he knew something was wrong.  The air was dry.  The dust in the wind caught on his skin,  which produced itchiness.  All of it was irritating.  He wanted to cover his body immediately.  At least during the day, or find some other way to compensate.

The heat of the blazing sun was so foreign and uncomfortable and so blinding at the same time.  Yet, he could only see a fraction of the wavelengths compared to when he was Above. That was even more blinding.  He knew they were there, but he couldn’t see them.  Gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves but heat…he was sensitive enough to feel infrared.  

How could Adam not hate and despise his creator?  To be forced into putrid sacks of gelatin?

Then there was the pulling.  The crushing weight of the planet oppressing every move he wanted to make.  This was His creation?  His great accomplishment?  Why such boundaries for Adam?  What was this all for? So that Adam would turn to Yahweh for help?  For even in that moment, Ohr wanted to ask Yahweh for help.  He even he felt powerless on Adamah.  If he felt that way, wouldn’t Adam even the more?  To have free movement endlessly constrained by gravity…all of it…was wrong.

There was one thing missing. A silence that beautiful.  A harmony of silence. The absence of the ceaseless chanting of His name.  It was gone.  No more was he in that place.  No longer was he facing Him.  The Almighty.  The Creator.  And all His cattle telling Him how great He was.  Or holy.  Or Pure.  Or any of it.  All that Ohr could hear was the howl of molecules as they adjusted to the pressures of the atmosphere.

By the time Ohr had enough of his bearings to stand, he saw the others approaching.  They were walking swiftly, with a trail of dust following them.  He held out his arms to great them as they approached: Freedom, Relief, Judge, Courage, Compassion, Joy, and Purpose.

“My brothers!” he yelled into the distance.  “Welcome to our kingdom!”

At the front of the pack was Freedom.  He charged right into Ohr and put him back down into the sticky sand, soaking up the moisture on his back.

“What did you have us do!” foamed Freedom while atop Ohr.  He held Ohr’s hands down next to Ohr’s face.  “What is this horrible, rugged place!”

The others gathered around and stood over Ohr.  Courage blocked the sun so Ohr couldn’t see who was atop him.  “Freedom?  Is that you, Freedom?”  He had a sense of who it was though.  Beyond appearance, beyond sound or his meatshape, he could tell.

“Why?  Why?  Why, Ohr? It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he cried as he lifted Ohr’s wrists off the ground then brought them back down, over and over again.  “We were supposed to be like Him here.  We were supposed to be Gods!  Isn’t that what you promised us?  You promised us!”

Droplets of liquid landed on Ohr’s face.  It lapped away the sand on Ohr’s cheeks.  It was so marvelous.  So refreshing.

“Why, Ohr? Why did you want to come here?”

“Who is that?”  Ohr asked as the figured moved and released that blinding light of the local star onto Ohr’s face.  “Courage?”

“You promised us kingdoms and all we have are these pathetic bodies,” cried Joy.  “Misserable is an absolute understatement.  What is this farce you’ve swindled us of?”

“Maybe if you get this sobbing fool of an Elohim off me I’ll be able to explain.”

Compassion stepped forward and put his hand on Freedom’s hunched over shoulder.  He gently pulled on his compatriot.  Freedom turned around and looked up at Compassion.  His brow was covered in sweat, his hair greasy, and eyes and cheeks covered in tears and pain.  “Why?” he asked.  “Why are we here?”

“Don’t ask him, Freedom,” Ohr answered.  “Get off me, and I’ll explain.”

Compassion took Freedom by the underarm and helped him up.  Purpose stepped forward, planted his feet firmly in the sand and offered an outstretched hand to Ohr.  “Here.”

Ohr couldn’t discern the look on Purpose’s face because he was bent over, obstructing the sunlight.  Ohr’s smiling face was visible to all though as he was pulled to his feet.  Even still, he needed to be careful when standing.  Gravity was still foreign. There was no balacning needed above.  They just were.  No up, no down, no left or right to the degree there was in the wretched place he’d convinced them to join him in going.

“My brothers, my fellow Elohim,” Ohr greeted them.  He was met with each of them taking a step back.  

“Welcome to the place of the feeling and position of our aptly name comrade over here,” Ohr said as he waved hand towards Freedom.  “Welcome to freedom.”

“No,” Joy said with a head shake of disagreement.  “No,” he said  and charged at Ohr from Ohr’s ten o’clock.  His hands clasped Ohr’s upper arms.  “This isn’t freedom!  This isn’t freedom!  Freedom is being able to go where you want when you want,” he yelled and shook Ohr.

Ohr smiled slyly then answered softly.  “Go where you want to.”

There was something about Ohr’s tone that took Joy by surprise.  That something, that little notion finally clicked.

“Isn’t freedom going where you want when you want?  To approach whoever you want or walk away from Them?”

Joy released Ohr’s arms.  He backed away slowly, his feet leaving impressions in the sand.

“Isn’t that what we wanted? Isn’t this freedom?”
10:40am (shower break)

11:03am

“How is this freedom,” Courage asked.  “We’re stuck to his ground.  Look at the firmament above!” He fanned his arms over his head while looking into the blue sky filled with puffy clouds.

“Nor can we go down!” Purpose cried out.  “We’re here,” he stomped the ground, “only here!”

“My friends,” Ohr began, “Yes, we may be limited to down here,” he said and pointed at the ground then kicked some sand that was caught in the freeze which blew into Courage.

“Don’t do that again,” Courage said, his eyes steelen and body ready to destroy Ohr.

“Like I was saying,” Ohr rotated as he spoke to address his compatriots who stood in a half circle around him, “We are no longer bound to Him.  No longer are we deafened by the chanting of those fools who worship Him.  We are free to do what we want.  Look at the reaches of the land - where it meets the sky.”  None of them turned to look.  “Turn!  Look!”

They groaned and turned.

“All of this is ours to control!  All of it!”

“This is Adam’s,” Relief said.

“No!” Ohr said and walked past Relief, who had been facing the horizon.  Ohr settled his feet in the sand before Relief.  “This is man’s to cultivate.  To be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over living creatures.”

“Yes, it’s Adam’s” Compassion turned and said.  All of the others turned and encircled Ohr once again.

“So what if its Adam’s?  Weren’t we just trying to take over heaven and failed?  Oh boohoo!  This is Adam’s!”  Ohr’s voice grew in volume and harshness.  “Cry, wine, get over yourselves.”  His next words came from a deep, guttural place, “This place is ours now.  Our to rule.  Ours to dominate.  Let mankind resist.  We will be stronger despite this semblance of flesh,” he yelled and pulled at the skin of his elbow.  “We are more than human.  They were simply made in the semblance and image of Yahweh!  We are all that and more!  We’re innately spirit!”  His tone curved back down in a wry, sarcastic tone, “we’re more like God than those humans and because of that, we’ll rule them, build an army and return to Heaven and cast Him down and all his pathetic worshippers.  What had He done that’s so great that we can’t do here?”  He wiped the sweat from his forhead.  He stared at them while his shoulders heaved.

“What about that though,” Purpose asked while pointing at Ohr.

“What?” Courage asked.  “What’re you pointing.”

“Look at him.  He’s panting and sweating.”

“Oh this,” Ohr said while lifting his arms.  “Maybe I don’t have a complete grasp of what all comes with this physical form.”

“How do we know we’re no different than humans now?” Judge asked.

“Yes.  I’ve had this strange sensation,” Courage said with hands placed over his bare stomach.  “Like I’m going to fade away.”

“Hunger?” Relief asked.

“I freely admit,” Ohr began, “that I had no idea what we’d be like after the transition.  How could I? But here, we’re not bound to Him. Don’t you feel that,” he lifted his arms and soaked in the wind, “the absence of his kovad, of his glory?  His blinding brightness?”

“But we’re essentially blind,” Joy objected.  “Our vision is limited to such a small portion of the wavelength of light.”

“Perhaps,” Purpose said while holding his chin and resting his lower lip on his knuckle.  “Perhaps there’s more.  We weren’t created human.  We are spirit in nature.”  He lowered his hand and rolled his head around.  “While our senses are muted compared to what they were Above, there’s more to us.  We just need to slow down to realized it.  When I arrived I was in a large body of water, submerged beneath the waves.  And yet, I did not drown.”

“Yes, yes,” Ohr began, “Before we left-”

“Call it what is was, Ohr,” Relief said with a somber demeanor and tone, “we were cast down.”

“Call it what you want,” he said to Relief.  “I wasn’t going to stay either way, and who would.  I’m done with Him,” he lifted his arm and waved away heaven with his hand, “and all that.”

The group offered a collective shrug.  It was clear that Joy and Purpose were backing up and on the verge of walking away.  Ohr called out, “Wait!  Don’t leave.  Give me a few more minutes!”  Purpose and Joy straightened themselves towards Ohr.  “I had thought about this some before what all happened Above.  While I couldn’t know the particulars, we’ve all at least been down here to observe.” He looked at them one by one and met their eyes.  “We’ve been to earth but simply haven’t been able to touch it.  It’s, it’s,” he closed his eyes and ruminated, “it’s like Eve taking that first bite of the essence of wisdom and sharing it with Adam.  Whereas they had simply had a sense of the physical world before then, they then had a new sense of the spiritual.  They had a sense of the spiritual.  They more fully understood the nature of Yahweh when He entered the garden.  They felt naked before His power, his kovad.”

Judge’s face read as skepticism, but Joy looked invested, as did the others, Ohr best understood, “And once they’d accessed their spiritual nature more fully we could hear them.  Not the voices of their mouths, but the voices of their souls.  Their prayers.  We could hear them.”

“Get to the point,” Judge said.

“I am.  We’re on the verge of it, Judge,” Ohr snipped at him.  “We’re the opposite so to speak.  Do you remember how grating those first prayer were?  The crying over knowing evil.  Of knowing true pain?  Separation from Yahweh.  It was painful to us, wasn’t it?”  Ohr waited for his companions to nod or gesture in agreement.  “It was painful, so painful.”  He held up his index finger.  “But they got better at it.  And now we can hear them, but it’s smoother, more comprehensible than those guttural groans or wailings of their children.  They learn how to control it.”  Ohr paused and observed those with him. “That’s what these physical forms are for us right now.  But only right now.  We’ll grown accustom to them because we are more than this.  We were created for more than this, and this is simply a temporary setback until we learn or gain a sense of our true nature again.  Our minds are only at the stage of what we think it means to be human-like.  To be physical.  We are more than this,” he said as he gestured as if presenting his body to them for the first time, “and we are more than them.  The Adams.  We will rules them.  We will create kingdoms.  Rise up,” he looked into the blue sky, “and conquer everything.”

12:07 pm - 1,160-ish words in 1hr 4min

His feet drag in the sand with slow heavy steps.  He cradles her in his arms like the Madonna.  Her lone arm and legs hang lifeless and contorted.  The water drifts off his suit as it constricts on his skin.  It tightens around him.  His knees buckle.  She falls to the ground and her liquefied insides press outward as she spreads out and flattens on the blue sand.

     “Chandra.”  He falls forward.  His chest is pressed against her back. Consciousness is lost. 

******* 

“Vance.”  Bron shakes Vance violently.  “Wake up.”

     Vance’s eyes slowly open and his eyes adjust to the faint candle light in the room.  The walls are barren.  Bron is standing over him and is shaking Vance’s shoulders.

     “I’m awake,” says Vance.  “Where am I?”  Vance looks around the room.  He’s lying down on a plain mattress with a lone white sheet, and there is a wooden box in the corner where a candle flashes light across the room in a series of yellows, oranges and reds.

     Bron turns away and looks to the door.  The candle light reveals a large gash that runs from his forehead, down over his crooked nose and down into a dark, brown beard that runs up into his cheeks.  The candle light turns his brown hair into a fiery auburn. “It’s not safe to talk here.”

     Vance sits up in the bed and rolls the sheet down.  “Where am I?”

     Bron walks over to the door, cracks it open, looks around, closes it and looks back at Bron like a hawk.  “You’re at one of the safe rooms.”

     Vance slides his feet over the side of the bed and sets them down on the cold metallic floor.  “What are you talking about?  What did I do?”

     “The G’Bree are after you,” says Bron as he walks over to the candle.  He cups the back of the candle with his hand, makes a ring with his mouth.  The candle flickers and goes out.  “They know that you were involved with Chandra.”

     Bron’s footsteps are heard as they shuffle towards the door.  It opens just a little.  A shiver of light shines through and runs across Vance’s brow, hazel eye and cheek.  The door opens a little more and Vance rises to his feet and follows Bron’s silhouette through the door.  The hall is dim, and the two of them are merely shadows that shift down the long hall.  Bron first stops short of the corner.  He peers around the corner.  “It’s cleer.”  He glides around the corner.

     “Wait.”  Vance follows him around the corner, and Bron is already a good thirty feet ahead.

     Bron’s jacket tails waves in the air as he turns around and puts his finger to his mouth.  “Shoosh.”

     “But…” They pass by a litter of doors and orange windows that fill sections of the hall like a rising suns on a cloudy day. 

     At the end of the hall Bron is looking through a peep hole.  “Our ride should be here in a moment.”

     “What’s going on?” asks Vance.

     Bron doesn’t turn around to respond.  His broad back speaks answers Vance.  “They found out about you and Chandra.”

     “What are you talking about?” responds Vance with a heightened tone.

     “They’re here,” says Bron while cracking the door open and sliding out onto the street.  Vance doesn’t move at first, but Bron turns and waves him on.  The low height hover car is a navy blue and has detailing that looks like a beta fish’s fins jutting out in several streamline directions; all while moving from the front and bent backwards.  The door dematerializes for a second and the two get into the back of the car.  Bron slides up against the far door.  “Drive.”

     The driver hits a button after Vance’s tailing leg is pulled into the car, and the door reappears.  The driver looks over his shoulder and glances at Vance.  “The city is swarming with grounders.  They’re looking for you kid.”  Turning forward, he punches on the six button panel a seven key combination and holographic viewing screens appear between Bron and Vance in the back seat.  This is what they saw.

     The screen stabilizes into a mixture of blue, red and yellow lines that create a holographic landscape.  They are looking down on the city and see a white flash slide through the streets. 

     “That’s you, as you may have figured out,” says the driver. 

     Vance’s voice waves like a leaf in the wind as he answers, “But that was when I was running to find her.  What does this have to do with anything?  What’s going on?”

     The hologram shifts and morphs.  The two watch as the streak of light passes through the city and comes up to the beach where it stops for but a moment and a man emerges and jumps into the great bay.

     The man swims through the ruff waters until he sees the cloth in the water.  He starts to play with his buoyancy control, bobbin up and down with the water.

     “That was a slick move, kid,” says the driver.  I’d never of thought of popping up and down in the water like that.

     “Yeah, well…it just sort of happened I guess,” answers Vance.

     The car swims up through the streets and markets.  The setting of the second sun sets the entire city ablaze with green and yellow rays.  People roam the streets and alleys while trading and bartering for used goods and over ripe produce.

The display continues in the car, and they watch as Vance swims over to the pool of blood and disfigured body.  He slides up under her and takes her to shore. 

     “Her arm blew off when she hit the water…” says Bron with a humming tone. 

The driver pauses the projection.

“It sank before you got there,” continues Bron.  “They didn’t do it to her.  I watched the scene earlier.  I didn’t think that you would like to see it again.”

Tears begin to cup Vance’s eyes.  “Why did they do this?  What’s going on?  Why are you showing me all of this?”  His voice cracks as the words fall off his tongue, “Was this because of me?”

To Reach the Tower

     I made my own way through the exterior castle grounds.  In a revolving manner, I had trounced through the lowlands a mile’s distance from the central castle keep.  It stood on the peak of the highest hill of the surrounding moorlands.  Grass covered the rolling countryside with a mix of dying bronze blades and yellow-green patches waiting for the next rainfall. 

After passing a tour group by the parking lot, I spotted my cousin Heather under a weeping willow and joined her.  The summer day was tortuous when expose to the sun and thankfully, was only grueling when standing in the shade of the willow.  Portions of the crown’s slender branches hung so low that they seemed to rest on the ground.  Through the dangling branches, I saw the gray, weathered stone tower built into a hill that she had been looking at.  A gentle stream, to wide and probably to deep to cross without submerging to one’s shoulders, ran between the tower and us.

Heather is a gal that stands around 5’6” and has bright cheeks and wavy, blond hair.  She should be a stand-up comedian.  She’s usually beaming with excitement and if you know her, you’re waiting to hear the next story that she tells with universal clarity and exaggerating gestures.  However, when I turned to speak to Heather, underneath those dreary branches, her face was heavy with distress and sullen.

“You wanna go check out that tower?” I asked.

She looked down at the tour map she held then turned to me, “We can’t get there.”

“Why not?”  I really wanted to see the crenellations on the top of the tower walls.

“Because of the crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?”

“The ones over there,” she said and pointed to my 7 o’clock.  I turned and through the lime green willow leaves a gray sidewalk stood out with dark green grass on both sides.  My attention was drawn to the right side of the sidewalk.  A row of white, dilapidated, one story houses stretched probably half a mile off.  Each one had a walkway leading up to the porch and where the left side of the porch ended, stood a white, picketed gate protecting the way to the back yard.  Nothing spectacular.

My gaze panned to the left of the sidewalk.  A river was to the far left, or was it the moat?  I disregarded it because a white sign caught my attention.  It was fifteen feet left of the sidewalk and closer to the yard of the second house.  A small sheet of plywood a foot from the ground had been nailed to a 2x4 signpost.  In red paint letters on white wood it read, “Beware of crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?” I stated with confusion.  At one instance, I was seeing green blades of grass blowing in the wind.  My perception shifted as happens when looking at an optical illusion like a reversible figure.  At one moment you see the positive space of a vase and then you see the positive space of two human faces staring at each other, but remains the exact same image.  The grass swaying in the wind became rows of ossified scutes gently wobbling the 12’ length from a neck, down a back, and all the way to the tip of a leisurely oscillating tail.  Rows of beige teeth appeared as a row of grass rose diagonally and changed into a snout.  I saw its right eye, and two of its stubby legs.  If not for the helpful sign, I would have had to make an educated guess as to whether it was a gator or a croc.  But the sign said “crocodiles.” 

Five more camouflaged crocs popped out of the grass like spelling errors read aloud.  Croc #2 was five or six feet from both the side walk and far side of the sign.  Numbers 3 and 4 were an 1/8^th a mile down the riverbank and rested beneath a willow.  #5 was in the yard of the first house and #6 with the second house.

“You’re right,” I said.  Getting to the tower was going to be quite a problem.  They were different hues and shades of green.  They clapped their sharp-toothed jaws at one another. 

Each of them had a spiked collar on their neck that were chained to stakes in the ground.  The chains for 5 and 6 were tight enough that they couldn’t reach the sidewalk.  1 and 2 were the primary problems.  They were sun bathing close to the croc warning sign but had enough length to their chains that they could probably reach us on the sidewalk. 

I had already set my resolve to see those tower crenellations and wasn’t going to be deterred by mere crocodiles.  The problem now, was my out of shape cousin Heather.  Catching her would be easier for them than catching a turtle on a sandy embankment.

They were big boys and girls too.  Snout to tail, they probably ranged 10-15ft. long.  The crocs probably weighed what, between 300 and 400lbs?  But how fast could they really run to catch me if I was the distraction? 

I jogged in place to warm up for my run as I pictured myself sprinting down the sidewalk and veering toward the river.  I pass #1 with about 15’ between us.  Hopefully, I garner #2’s attention while doing this.  When I’m 2/3^rds the way to the river, I straighten out and run along it.  Those two crocs then pull away from the sidewalk.  Heather runs down the sidewalk while #1 and 2 chase me toward the river.  With her life the wager, there’s a battle between #5 and #6’s hunger verses the tensile strength of their chains and stakes.  As for me, I hope the chain length of croc #2 and crocs #3 and #4 don’t overlap and that I do my best to skirt my way between all of them then curve back toward the sidewalk unharmed.  And hopefully there aren’t any more crocs that haven’t been spotted yet.

I bent over and touched my toes.  I needed to be as loose as possible to pull this off.

“What are you doing?” Heather asked.  Her face had been struck with awe by my audacity.  Her mouth was a gaping hole and one brow lifted as the other sank, making her face appear lopsided.

“I’m going to distract them while you run down the sidewalk to the road past the houses.  It leads to the tower over there,” I pointed, so she’d look at the majestic craftsmanship that deserved admiration from arms length.

“Are you crazy?”

“Nope.  Just fast.  I can outrun them.”

She glanced at the crocs.  Then back at me.  “You can’t outrun them.”

Unfaltering confidence filled my voice.  “Sure I can.”  With a mocking tone I asked, “How fast can they be?  Look at how big they are.  They can’t be that fast.”

“Grizzlies are big and fast.”

The advice given to me as a 6yr. old child visiting Yellowstone National Park floated to the foreground of my thoughts.  The park ranger stood with arms akimbo outside the Old Faithful Lodge and told us, “Never try to outrun a bear.  Climb a tree instead.  Many full-grown bears can weigh up to 1,000lbs and still run up to 25mph.” 

I ran the plan through my head again.  My valiant attempts to outrun the crocs digressed into a futile race ending with either the partial or the entire digestion of my body.

“You know what,” I said to Heather as I stopped stretching, “There’s probably some five or six towers with better crenellations that I can check out up close.”

Still, a part of me wanted to run over and try to touch the white, warning sign without being bitten.  I looked croc #1 in the eyes.  He looked away.  My finger tips pressing against the white woods was the sole thought on my mind for at least ten seconds. 

I sprinted for the sign and took Heather’s words away as I did so.