Chapter Two: The Blaming
There are moments when the world seems to hold its breath. After we ate, Eden did. Adam and I staggered back from the Tree as though pushed by an unseen hand. The fruit's fire still trembled inside us, reshaping thought, bone, desire. The garden looked the same and yet utterly changed—every color too sharp, every shadow too deep. I touched my own face and felt like I was touching a stranger. Adam stared at his hands as though they had betrayed him.
"Eve—" he murmured, voice raw. "What are we?"
Before I could answer, the Serpent slid from the branches, his coils moving with unnatural grace. His eyes—no longer cunning alone, but ancient—gleamed like twin wounds.
"You are awake," he said. "The veil has torn. Do you feel how the world trembles beneath your noticing?"
I felt it. The pulse of the earth under my feet. The cold knowledge that beauty could be broken. The sudden awareness of Adam's body beside mine—its strength, its difference, its mystery. He saw it too. His gaze swept over me, no longer the innocent wonder of Eden, but something heavier. Hunger mixed with fear.
"We were naked before," I whispered. "Why does it burn now?"
The Serpent coiled close, his voice sliding into the cracks of our new awareness.
"Because before, you were children. Now you are like gods, seeing with eyes open. Creation has edges now—and you stand on them."
Adam stepped away from him, breath ragged. "Your words twist the air."
"Truth often does," the Serpent replied. "Do not fear your bodies. They are power. They are paths. Nothing will be impossible for you now—not thought, not desire, not creation."
But the Serpent's praise felt like hands pressing us toward a precipice. Something cold unfurled in my chest. Not fear—something deeper. Self. Myself. A weight I had never carried. Then the shame came. It rose like a tide, first as a whisper, then as a roar—our nakedness suddenly unbearable, our skin screaming under invisible eyes.
"Turn away," Adam muttered, covering himself. "Eve—don't look at me."
I folded my arms across myself, heart pounding. "Don't look at me either."
The Serpent chuckled low, like distant thunder. "Oh, children. You taste the first fruit of knowledge: the wound of self-awareness."
Adam lunged for fig leaves, hands shaking so violently he tore them more than he wove them. He muttered under his breath—words that felt like prayer but sounded like panic.
"Cover yourself," he urged. "Cover—cover everything."
So, we sewed together the first garments in history—stitched not with thread but with trembling, with guilt, with the knowledge that something inside us had shifted beyond repair. The Serpent watched, eyes narrowing.
"You hide from me?" he asked, almost offended. "If you fear your own bodies, how will you bear the sight of His?"
A chill crawled up my spine. The wind rose. Not the playful breeze of Eden, but something older—cold as the underside of eternity. It sliced across our skin, and I felt the fruit's knowledge twist into dread. Adam froze.
"He is coming."
The Voice moved among the garden paths—once gentle as rainfall, now heavy as mountains shifting. The sound made the leaves tremble. The animals went still. We fled into the trees, the shadows swallowing us like a grave.
"Adam," the Voice called. "Where are you?"
The sound slipped into my bones. It was not loud, yet it felt vast—like standing beneath the sky at the moment before creation. Adam pressed me behind him and stepped out, though every part of him shook.
"I heard You," he said, voice breaking, "and I was afraid because I was naked."
A silence followed—so deep the birds refused to breathe.
Then: "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?"
Adam turned to me. I expected him to take my hand. Instead, he let it fall.
"The woman," he said softly, "the woman You gave me—she gave me the fruit. And I ate." His words struck like a stone to the chest—first pain, then understanding, then something darker than both. I felt the new knowledge—the curse of insight—cut through me. He was afraid. And fear always seeks a target. So, I spoke, though my throat felt full of ash.
"The Serpent deceived me—and I ate."
Now the Serpent hissed, coiling tight, as if ready to strike or flee. We were three voices, three betrayals, three fractures in the unity we once were.
The Voice answered. To the Serpent, He spoke of dust and humiliation, of a war that would outlive the stars, of a child of mine who would crush his head even as her heel bled. The Serpent recoiled, his coils trembling. For the first time, I saw fear in him.
To me, He spoke of pain that would carve itself into the world—of blood and birth, of longing tangled with sorrow, of a love that would bend under the weight of authority. My womb felt heavy with futures—some living, some dying.
To Adam, He spoke of earth turning against him, of sweat becoming his prayer, of death reclaiming its clay. Adam bowed his head as if the ground itself had spoken.
But the final wound was different. God approached us with garments of skin—warm still, shaped by the life that had been taken to cover us. A sacrifice we had not expected. A tenderness that hurts more than the curses. He placed the coverings upon us with His own hands. His touch was gentle. His sorrow greater than ours. Then He turned toward the East Gate.
And the garden dimmed. We walked behind Him, not daring to speak. Eden's light faded, replaced by the thin, uncertain glow of a world that had teeth. At the threshold, I reached for Adam's hand. He did not take it. The silence between us grew vast—wider than the gulf between eternity and exile.
When the gate closed, the sound echoed like the first funeral bell. And in the dim light of the world outside, I felt the terrible, holy truth: We had not only left Eden. Eden had left us.