Gift for mrbluesky, Part 2!

[goe_mod]

Title: A Brief History of Dead Trees (#2)
Recipient: mrbluesky
Author: interrobam
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: I had to change around the canon timeline of earth's creation just a bit for this story. Happy Holidays, mrbluesky; I hope you enjoy this fic!
Summary: Even in Heaven, one cannot always get what one wants.


IN THE BEGINNING Earth was still very much in beta, and as such The Lord gathered His Host one morning and encouraged them to put their own spin on things. He invited His Children to propose new fruits, new insects, things to fill the extensions of the skies and the bottoms of the depthless oceans. His Creations were Beautiful and Splendid in their way, but One could always use fresh ideas and perhaps a bit of feedback. In the meanwhile, He was going to take a nap. He considered it a slumber well-deserved, and as there was no Judge higher than He everyone just nodded along and told Him He should really be sure to take care of Himself, what with those bags under his all-seeing eyes and him already going a little white around the temples. The consensus held that even Most High Creators need a little Me-time on occasion.

So The Lord laid down His head and told them to wake Him up if something like an asteroid came along to muck up His creations, their paint still wet upon them. The Host, standing awkwardly in the middle of the shining street, half of them with maps to their houses drawn on their hands so that they wouldn't get lost, started searching for things to busy themselves with.

They looked to the Dominions, the closest thing they could find to middle management, and the Dominions pretended to know anything about what they were doing by saying that they should form chapters. A chapter for discussing pebbles, a chapter for discussing snails, a chapter for discussing trees. Unwilling to tamper with the architecture they had only just known, they made meeting places in the middle of the streets out of little clusters of tables and chairs. Even in the very beginning, it was found to be true that a vacuum of authority in a large enough organization is first and foremost filled with trivial bureaucracy.

Aziraphale latched onto books. At the time there weren’t a terrible lot of books, but what books there were he wanted very much to be a part of. He had first encountered them on the day of his creation, and had fallen fast and hard for their charms. He adored the body of knowledge that could be held in such small objects, the smell of old hides and new paper, the twist of enochian upon them. They were delicate and thin beneath his fingers, vibrant and dancing beneath his eyes, and he could think of nothing better than to spend his hours in their kingdom.

Before The Lord's nap he had filled as many moments as he could buried in books, basking in the knowledge of his Siblings. There was a library already, composed of works of the higher angels in scrolls and thick tomes, and he knew the head librarian well. A mildly mannered Dominion by the name of Isnaet, he was pleased to invite Aziraphale to labor under him.

“I'm sure I can find something for you to take care of.” He smiled, eyes shining. “We've been so busy lately, the Archangels especially have been downright prolific with their works, and I'm trying to create a system to organize it all. You wouldn't mind starting now, would you? I'm sure you know our bookcases like the back of your hand. You can take care of directing patrons and re-shelving works, and it would give me some time to sort the new pieces.” Aziraphale shifted his wings in a preening gesture.

“Oh, I would be delighted.”

Karael wanted, more than any one task, to be on the ground floor of something. Luckily for him, there were a lot of things to be on the ground floor of in that time. This “birds” stuff for example, and “plants”. The Lord had laid the groundwork, and He had given the blueprints, bases to twist and modify to great purpose, to His Children. Karael was pleased by that. He had Ideas for plants, in particular trees. Trees were something quite grand: they could make food, or fall down and crush you to your death, or shelter you, or be broken into pieces to create complex devices that you ate breakfast on. Not too long ago they had begun pulping wood into leaves of papers, books even. It was Karael’s opinion that you could do anything with a tree and strong intent.

Karael was a curious, perhaps weasely sort of being, and it wasn't long before he sniffed out a flock of Host chattering about all the things they could power with photosynthesis. He searched the crowd for a Dominion, a head to this taskforce, someone who would assure him that things got done. If there wasn't one he would be moving on; Karael would not be wasting his time bouncing his Ideas around if they weren't going to be implemented. He noticed one standing a ways away and looking about the crowd as if it were a crying child that had been handed to her by a parent assuring that they would be back “in a minute.”

“Hello Jahoel,” he called to her, as if pleasantly surprised to see her. Jahoel glanced his way briefly.

“Karael. Are you looking for something to do?”

“Well.” He smiled long and sharp, shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose I am.”

Aziraphale would be only moderately ashamed to admit that, after joining Isnaet on his walk back to the library, he spent the first fifteen minutes of his new task running his fingers over the spines of the poetry section, choosing tomes at random to remove from the shelf and breathe deeply of. He had established a nice pile of Jophiel's work, one that he planned to take home that night, when he felt a tap on his shoulder

“Can you help me find something?” an angel with tawny hair asked him, sheepish.

“Of course my dear.” Aziraphale puffed out his chest ever so slightly. “What topic are you interested in?”

“I was looking for a thing about hymns? What do you call it again, a bock?”

“A book.”

“A buck.” Aziraphale gave pause for a moment, calculating how long he was willing to be away from his own reading in order to help a patron. It was not very long.

“Yes, that. So, hymns you say? Any in particular?” His eyes were already trained on the music section.

“Well, I'm working on making these things called “instruments,” you'll hit them and blow on them and they're going to be part of music. Some of them are going to be made out of skin, and...” The assistant librarian made reassuring noises as the other angel rambled on about her bizarre pet project, scanning spines for titles.

“So something basic, but comprehensive. Something to build on?”

“Yeah, like maybe-” Aziraphale was already pulling a thick book off of the top shelf, presenting it to the tawny haired angel with a grin.

“You'll like this one, its Gabriel’s. Lots of fundamentals.”

“Oh, thanks!” She grinned, taking the front cover on its side, by the fore-edge. She hoisted the rest of the book by the cover, so that the spine curled inward and the hinge strained under the weight of its pages. Puzzled, the angel shook it about. There was an audible ripping sound as a few pages shook loose from the binding and onto the floor.

“How does it work?” she asked. Horrified, Aziraphale snatched the book out of her hands.

“Don't you dare hold it like that!” He shouted, before he remembered where he was and restraining himself to a dull hissing whisper. “You destroyed it.”

“I- I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” The other angel cowered, reaching down to pick the stray pages from the floor. “I haven't gotten around to learning about bucks yet; I've only been here a day or two.”

“It's a book, and you leave those there.” She blinked, her arms already full of sheets.

“But-”

“Drop them and get out of here. Never come back.”

“Okay, yes sir. I'm sorry sir.” The angel muttered, placing the papers on the floor and scurrying away. Aziraphale watched her go with narrowed eyes before turning his attention to the tome in his arms.

“You poor baby,” he clucked to it, bending down to collect the loose sheets of music. “I can't believe what she put you through. Let’s get you to the back so you can be repaired.” Coming out of the stacks he noticed another angel sitting at a table, hunched over and writing. Perhaps this patron would be civilized. Coming closer, his greeting fell dead in his mouth and began to fester. This one was doodling!

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Huh?”

“You are drawing in that book.” The angel looked at Aziraphale, then at the book, then at his hand, then back at Aziraphale.

“Yes...? I am...?”

“What makes you think you can do that?” He seethed, clutching Gabriel’s book of hymns to his chest.

“Oh, I just love this book so much, but it was kind of boring looking, so I thought some flowers in the margins might make it-”

“That book.” The assistant librarian paused, so fraught with horror and emotional whiplash that he could not bring himself to speak. “That book, any book, is so superior to a flower that- that-” He sighed between tightly grit teeth before reaching down and taking the work from the other angel.

“Hey!”

“Leave this building,” Aziraphale ordered as he gathered the tomes into the crook of his arm, “you can come back in a thousand years, but only if you've learned to respect our collection by then.” The patron muttered several unseemly things as he collected his possessions, but Aziraphale didn't notice him over the tension headache lurking behind his temples.

How could this be happening in a just world? Was it that the newest angels had only just discovered reading? Aziraphale didn’t think so, when he had been newly created by The Lord he had managed to refrain from doing something so monumentally stupid as to shake a delicate object into scraps. The angel he had caught doodling he recognized as being at least five days old, so he really ought to have known better. Perhaps it was that he had never noticed the destruction around him before? He tended to spend his time in the library curled up in a chair in the far corner; he didn’t interact much with other patrons. Now that he knew they were doing this kind of thing he would not be able to stand by and let The Lord’s collection be tarnished.

Karael was not pleased with how his meeting was going. Once Jahoel's group had organized themselves, performing the miracles of a table and some chairs (an increasingly common one in those days), the brainstorming had begun in earnest. To his disappointment, everyone seemed to be obsessed with leaf shapes and sizes, of all things. With the whole of their imagination, infinite possibilities in infinite combinations at their wingtips, they were bickering over whether making a leaf pointed was “too radical” or not. After listening to the third passionate speech that hour about the importance of leaf diversity in animals' abilities to navigate their environment, Karael stopped trying to form clever segues to his interests and decided that he might as well make his intentions obvious.

“...and that is why pointed leaves are the only real choice.” Karael clapped along with the others, his hands growing numb by this point, before clearing his throat.

“Well-”

“But you don't need leaves to be different if you have bark that's different!” Someone from the other side of the table declared.

“Well,” Karael intoned with purpose before the mutterings in response to that point could turn into an actual argument, “it looks to me like this is a problem we'll have to figure out later. What I think is interesting is what trees actually do. Why don't we talk about that?”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Jahoel offered, looking tired.

“There we go then. Now, I have Ideas about trees.” Karael spread his arms and wings wide to illustrate the enormity of these Ideas. Jahoel’s eyes alit with suspicion.

“What did you just say?”

“I have Ideas about trees.”

“Did you capitalize the “i” in ideas?” Karael's arms remained defiantly widened, but his wings retreated closer to his body and his eyes shifted.

“No.”

“I heard a capital “i” in there. I heard “Ideas”, not “ideas,” Karael,” she pressed.

“You misheard.”

“You know only He is allowed to arbitrarily capitalize words like that, right?”

“I know that.” Karael snapped, before shifting in his seat. “Stop derailing the conversation.”

“Tell us your idea Karael.” A ruddy cheeked angel piped up.

“Thank you.” Karael paused for effect, a dramatic trick he had invented quite recently and was particularly proud of. “First of all, I think we should make a tree that eats things.”

“All trees derive nutrients from-”

“No no, I mean a tree that eats animals whole.” Karael basked in the silence that followed this statement until he started noticing it was not a silence based in awe as much as shock and confusion. Stubborn and self-conscious, he continued to feign basking until someone else chose to break the silence.

“The thing is, Karael, we're trying to create trees that will help animals,” Jahoel explained.

“This tree will help animals. It teaches them to trust no one.”

“But is that a good lesson?” Karael furrowed his brows, mystified by this question.

“Of course it's a good lesson. Half the things on Earth are obsessed with killing the other half, and they won't get anywhere by trying to be friendly. Besides, plants get eaten by everything else; they're stuck at the bottom of the food chain. If trees can eat animals, things will be a bit more balanced out.”

“When an animal decays in the ground, plants sort of eat it,” the ruddy cheeked angel offered.

“But that isn't satisfying the way eating something alive is.” Karael could tell he was losing his audience. “Don't give me that look. Animals do it to plants all the time. I mean, it sounds bad, sure. Sometimes you have to do a little low level evil for the greater good.” At this, there was a near audible bristling of feathers.

“Never,” an angel in favor of sharp leaves half declared, half breathed. Karael scowled.

“Alright, I guess we'll come back to trees that eat things later on, when everyone has had time to understand it. What about trees that have fruit that are poisonous unless you boil them, then skin them, then boil them again, then pit them, then roast them over the fire, then wash them in cold water, then boil them a third time?” It were even possible, the silence that followed this proposal was even more hostile than the first had been.

“...Why?” someone asked.

“I'm trying to teach the smarter animals how to cook. If they don't need to do it, they won't learn to do it.”

“Wouldn't they all die first?”

“They aren't that stupid.”

“If I saw a fruit,” an angel with terrible teeth decreed, “I would eat it. Now if it had a sharp leaf-”

“Like I said,” Karael muttered as the prior debate was resurrected around him “, they aren't that stupid.”

AND LO, ON THE NEXT DAY The Lord slept still, and Aziraphale came into the library humming a hymnal, early enough that the lamps were yet burning in the dim morning light. His first day might not have been ideal, but he would much rather be there to save books from terrible fates than let them suffer helplessly. As he opened the doors, inhaling the scent of cold stone and warm pages, Isnaet waved him over to the front desk. Aziraphale returned the salute, pleased to see a teapot and two cups in front of the head librarian.

“Why don't you sit down Aziraphale, have a cup?” The assistant librarian grinned, settling into a chair that hadn't been there a moment before.

“That would be lovely, thanks.” Isnaet nodded, fiddling with the handle of his own cup, looking into it as if trying to perform an act of divination. After a long period in which Isnaet made no effort to pour him some tea, the angel was feeling awkward.

“So...” Aziraphale prompted, hoping to provoke his way into some sort of conversation.

“You should know that, in many respects, you were really quite good at being a librarian.” The other angel blurted, before clearing his throat and putting his cup down. Aziraphale blinked owlishly.

“Pardon?”

“I just wanted to let you know, it isn't like I'm letting you go because I don't-”

“You're what?” Aziraphale's feathers bristled, his shoulders rose. “What do you have against my presence here? I shelved the books, I gave extensive directions to relevant sections, and I took care of the duties you assigned to me.”

“Well, that is all true. I was trying to acknowledge that before. It's just... I felt you were a bit, ah...” Isnaet let out a protracted noise of postponement, moving his cupped hands from one side of his body to the other as if trying to bail out a boat. The other angel suspected he was hoping that he could keep it up until Aziraphale became impatient or irritated enough to just leave, but this was a hope made in vain. “A bit covetous.” Aziraphale snapped his head back, eyes wide.

“Covetous? ” he gaped.

“Of the books.”

“This is about those patrons from yesterday, isn't it?”

“It's a library, Aziraphale. People are going want to handle the books.”

“Not if they're going to do it wrong,” Aziraphale insisted, feeling just a bit ill at the thought. Isnaet nodded melodramatically, deliberately, doing his best to lead Aziraphale to a point where he could see the inevitable conflict between his protective instincts towards the collection and his obligations to the other members of the Host on his own. The now ex-assistant librarian sighed.

“Alright then, fine. Is there anything else open?” Isnaet brightened at this change in subject.

“Well, I hear there are a few groups brainstorming about plants...”

Karael would not make the same mistake twice. He had a folder this time, with notes and flowcharts, causes and effects, all that junk. He knew his Ideas were worthy of consideration, they were just too high level for the rest of the Host to understand. He would have to spell it out for them. He made sure he was one of the first to arrive at their spot, the table and chairs still haphazard from yesterday, and he greeted Jahoel by slamming his substantial notes down on its surface.

“You can go home Karael,” she muttered. Karael blinked, mouth still agape with the promise of a lecture.

“What?”

“No one in the group wants to listen to your ideas and, let’s face it, they're pretty ridiculous.”

“Well, that's why I did some work on the subject. I'll explain it in small words, and you'll see that they aren't ridiculous.”

“Yes, they really are.”

“No, they really- Listen. You mean to say you wouldn't prefer them to the boring leaf argument?” he wheedled. “Imagine how inane it will be to spend another day on that when you know you could be making trees that would teach valuable life skills and shake up the food chain.”

“I like the boring leaf argument.” Jahoel shrugged “Last meeting I took a three hour long nap with my eyes open, didn't miss anything.” Karael scowled, his route of temptation rudely severed, and the Dominion sighed. “Listen, there is some merit to what you brought up last meeting, but this isn't the time or place for it. Take it up with Him. In the meantime...” She glanced at his notes, flipping through them. “...you did a lot of writing for this, didn't you?”

“I foolishly assumed someone would be reading it.”

“Well, if you like to write you might want to see if the library has anything open.”

Though admittedly flustered by his sudden unemployment, Aziraphale stopped himself short of obsessively picking at the wounds to his ego and left the library in quick order. He paced through the shining streets, looking to and fro until he saw a table of Host waving leaves around. He approached it cautiously, inquiring about vacancies in the “plants” program. Apparently a position in this group, the tree chapter, had recently been vacated, and he was invited to come over the next day. Although he preferred his trees pulped, Aziraphale knew there were no jobs too humble if they were of The Lord, and thanked the Dominion for her understanding.

“Tell me.” Jahoel asked as a group at the far end forgot about the newcomer in their midst and began lunging over the table in an effort to tear their opponents' leaves into green confetti. “How do you feel vis-a-vis leaf shapes?”

“Ah, well, I suppose I haven't ever given it consideration before,” Aziraphale answered honestly.

“Well think about it.”

Promising the other angel this, he returned home to make himself a nice cup of tea with perhaps just a small smidgen of brandy in it, if you really keen to know about that. Settling in with Jophiel's most recent collection of poems, he reassured himself that everything happened for a reason. Even if it seemed like a bloody stupid reason.

On the next day he came, with metaphysical bells on, to discuss trees with his new companions. It was just as slow going as he had suspected, although it would appear that some sort of treaty had been signed in his absence, because the next meeting was limited to detailed examination of bark textures. But for a few stray barbs of passive aggression, you would not even realize trees had leaves. Tapping his fingers to the table, he let his mind drift just a bit to books. One of the tomes he had taken out, upon examination, had a rolling texture that screamed of water damage, and a few stanzas were rather difficult to read.

“Tell me, could we make a tree with fibers that are waterproof?” He asked of Jahoel, who was staring glassy eyed across the table. After a minute or two without response, he nudged her arm slightly, and she started.

“What?” Aziraphale repeated his question. “Oh.” The Dominion blinked hazily. “If you want to make a tree that will die of thirst, I guess that would be the best way to do it.”

“Ah, that's a pity then,” he muttered, settling back into his seat.

It was not hard for Aziraphale to convince himself, after a certain period, that there was certainly no harm in giving out friendly advice. A little education on the evils of turning over page corners, some gentle urgings about respecting the text by not doodling things all over the margins, little things that would make the library that much better. After what could be conservatively estimated as five hours of sorting out twig samples and picking at bark, he had come into the conviction that that was the reason for his sacking. That was His plan, for Aziraphale to act as a benevolent protector to those poor unevenly rolled scrolls, those pitiful manuscripts smudged by greasy fingers. As an assistant librarian he would spend most of his time re-shelving and fetching information, but as a patron he could move freely through the aisles, eyes trained for miscreants. Yes, by morning he would have neutered conversations about trees, and in the afternoon...in the afternoon he would avenge his mistreated charges, those that would not protect themselves.

In the afternoon he would deliver justice.

Karael did not take his sacking with as much grace as Aziraphale had.

That night he drank very hard on the topic of his failed bid at invention and came to the conclusion that everyone who was involved in plants could bite his thumb, except perhaps the fellow who first thought up fermenting grapes because that idea was actually rather good. He did not have a particularly large or close group of friends, but you needn’t be blood brothers with someone to race them to the bottom of a wine bottle. Karael's was a misery that demanded company, or in the very least someone willing to be yelled at.

“They din' even listen to me,” he stared morosely at an area somewhere between Hahiel and Latiel, “I just wanted for, you know, for the trees to be more imporer- impot- big deal.” His significantly more sober drinking partners shuffled their feet against each other’s, each one trying to be the one to push the other into saying something. They reached a point of impasse, which Hahiel solved by stomping on the other angel's toes.

“Well, that sound's reasonable.” Latiel spit out between grit teeth.

“And then did you know what?” Karael slurred defiantly, his ideas moving through his mind in perfect clarity even as his enunciation fell into shambles. “The more I'm think 'bout it, the more I think He don't wan' me to be making plants because I have Ideas.” Hahiel and Latiel shared a look that worried that Karael was about to say something dangerous, but which was at the same time too curious and bored to do anything to stop him. “Is because I want to teach the animals to be smarter. He's insecured. He don’t wan' us making our own stuff; He wan’ us making His stuff. With His plans.”

“Well, He is…” Hahiel gestured vaguely, “Himself.” Karael stared sullenly at the table. That wasn’t the point. “Listen, Karael, it's been fun. The thing is we've got to go.” The angel grunted in response, clumsily petting the woodgrain.

“Go ‘head.”

Karael was well aware that there is only so much self-pity a being can wallow in before they reach a point of saturation and get bored of it, but in his inebriated state he was determined to venture beyond the pale in sulking. He would be as a mountain climber, staring hard into that cold and virgin frontier, those snowy peaks. Deep into the dead zone, racing with the pace of his body's decay to the top and back, Karael was determined to pity himself to great heights, to a magnitude that none had reached before. He would wallow in the injustices committed against him until The Lord Himself was woken by it and told him he could make all the trees he wanted.

This dream, as so many others in life, was deferred by a skull cracking hangover.

This hangover was particularly adverse to noise, and unfortunately for Karael there was a group of angels near his residence that were making progress on some sort of new devices for music they called “instruments.” It was leaps and bounds beyond a choir, some truly next level stuff, but Karael was not at all prepared for it, especially after his only available defensive move (curling up in a ball and issuing a low whining noise for about a half hour) failed him, and he was not able to fully appreciate their significance. It was a while before he remembered he could simply want away the hangover, and an additional few minutes before he summoned the requisite concentration for the task. Once his headache had dulled he sat up and found something heavy to hurl out of his window. He let a satisfied smile tug at his cheeks when he heard the resulting yelp of pain and cessation of playing. He had forgotten all about his erstwhile promise to spend the day marinating in his sadness.

Invigorated and already awake anyway, he decided to at least walk to the library, give it some due consideration and all that. He found it surprisingly pleasant, cool and a little bit on the shady side. He wouldn't want to live there, but he didn't hate it. He spent a few minutes browsing through the “Wonders of The Land” aisle, trying to understand why anyone would write a book about types of pebbles, none the less three books about types of pebbles (which, judging from hostility present in the authors' notes, disagreed quite stringently on some key points) before it started reminding him too much of leaves. He had just stumbled upon an illustrated guide to robe drapery that was actually quite a bit interesting when he noticed a tired looking Dominion re-shelving books nearby.

“Hello, Isnaet isn't it?” he called as pleasantly as he could. He made it his business to know the names of higher ranking angels.

“Yes, anything you're interested in?”

“I was looking for something to do, and I thought you might need an assistant?” Isnaet paused mid-shelving, narrowing his eyes.

“How do you feel about folding over pages?” Karael didn't have many thoughts on folding over pages, so he tried to form the least offensive opinion he could given the time he had.

“I suppose it’s a good way to keep your place?” Isnaet seemed reassured, perhaps even pleased by this.

“Alright then, you wouldn't mind starting now, would you?” Karael's smile was so self-satisfied that it was perhaps a smidge reptilian.

“Of course not.” He held his hands out generously, taking the burden of heavy literature from Isnaet’s arms, turning them to examine their spines for titles. Apparently, the robe draping book had a second edition, and it incorporated sashes. The angel was more pleased by this than he might care to admit in mixed company. There was another book beneath it about engineering different types of plants. Well well. He took care to put that one aside.

It wasn't hard to figure out how the library was organized. Each bookcase had a sign denoting its subject, and within the shelves the books were in order by title. Isnaet was making noises about some numerical system that he was developing in order, he said, to compensate for all the new works that were coming in. Karael thought that this system was likely to cause more confusion rather than less, but Isnaet seemed pretty excited about it, and deep in the core of his soul Karael did not really care about how books were shelved. So he busied himself with checking and rechecking alphabetization, teaching the newer angels how books worked (he wondered briefly and perhaps blasphemously why The Lord would create angels who were literate, but thought you learned from books by rubbing your faces on the covers), and finding references for patrons. Bored, he rolled some of the older scrolls so that they opened to the best parts. He re-draped his ropes. He wondered if he couldn't just make the kind of tree he wanted, maybe sneak it into the Garden and show everyone that it was not in the least bit ridiculous. He settled into a chair and started reading the plant book he had put aside earlier.

It was getting late. He got up to see if anyone new had come in that needed help. He found two patrons playing tug of war with a hymnal.

“Hey, if you both want to read it take turns.” One of the angels, Aziraphale, perked up at this.

“Oh good, are you a librarian? This miscreant was dog-earing the pages,” he said with exasperation, giving his opponent a look as thick and toxic as tar.

“Only one or two!” the other angel grunted, tugging at the hymnal.

“As if that makes it just?” Aziraphale asked in what seemed to be a rhetorical tone. Karael felt old. “Aren't you going to throw them out?” Aziraphale asked, jerking his head towards the other angel.

“I wasn't planning to.”

Aziraphale looked shocked and profoundly betrayed, like a puppy that had been dropped on the side of the road.

“But-”

“Listen, if you want the book you'll have to wait for it. It doesn't seem like this is a big deal.” At that moment there couldn’t have been a single feather on Aziraphale's wings that was not rendered askew by the indignation pouring out of him like foam from an overboiling pot.

“But- but you're a librarian. Do you even care what happens to this book?”

“I'll care if you rip in apart because you're too emotionally stunted to handle a piece of paper being creased.” Aziraphale mouthed something that was probably supposed to be a comeback to this statement, but it seemed that he was too furious to remember how speech worked and the only thing that came out of his mouth was a strained sort of gargling. He let go of the book, turned about face, and marched out of the building. Karael took great care to watch him go. He hoped he wouldn't have to deal with that particular angel again anytime soon.

After a few more hours of reading and sorting things out for patrons, Isnaet told him he might as well go home and get some sleep. Karael thanked him. His new job was boring, sure, but it left him with plenty of time to read all about current vegetation trends and (perhaps more saliently) about making changes to standard base trees. Looking over the scribbled notes and sketches he had collected on scraps of spare parchment, he suspected that he would not be getting that much sleep after all.

The system had failed Aziraphale.

He had not understood why he had been sacked, or perhaps more accurately he had not understood why the reason for his termination was a reason for termination, but he had trusted that there was some greater force at work. Ineffability and that. He trusted that Isnaet would hire someone who knew how books should be cared for. He was not finding this to be true.

He tossed and turned that night, vivid dreams about torn pages and cracked spines floating through his head. In the morning he felt groggy, but he nonetheless put on a brave face and combed his hair in preparation of that morning's meeting.

AND LO, ON THE FOURTH DAY of The Lord's nap Aziraphale came to his meeting and discovered a tree growing out of the center of the table. He noted that it had vaguely rectangular leaves. Well, that seemed like a form of compromise. He waited as the other members of the Host flocked, muttering about the possibility that this was some type of test. If it was, they came to agree, they had no idea how to pass it. When Jahoel finally came to the table the group looked at her expectantly. The Dominion didn't notice this stare, gaping instead at the tree that had taken over her makeshift office.

“What's this?” she asked. There was an uncomfortable silence in which no one was keen to give the wrong answer.

“A tree?” a ruddy cheeked angel offered, bracing for what must be the true intent of this test.

“Of course it's a tree. Who put it here?” A murmur rose among the group.

“You didn't?” Aziraphale asked.

“No.” Jahoel reached out to touch the base of the tree, at first gently and then firmly. The rest of the Host followed her example, patting the plant like toddlers encountering a large dog for the first time. One angel, rather boldly, chose to poke the tree. It was then that something went wrong. A hole opened up in the bark, like the socket of a wooden eye, and then promptly clamped down on his hand.

“Ow!” the angel howled, trying to pull his finger out of the tree. He was not succeeding by any means; in fact a few more of his fingers had gotten caught in his panic. The tree was pulling him in slowly. “Help!” Jahoel touched her hand to the tree, phasing through it to its metaphysical presence. She fished around for the core of its structure and twisted a few key lines. The tree found itself in the sudden and unexpected situation of no longer existing. It was not destroyed, dismantled, or teleported: it simply was and then was not. This did not give much comfort to the weeping angel, who was cradling his hand wretchedly.

“It bit me!” he cried.

“Who would make a tree that... bit...?” Jahoel trailed off. “Oh, right.” The Dominion gestured vaguely, more to the chairs around her than to the group itself. “Everyone just sit down and talk about bark. If we ignore him he'll get the hint.”

“Ignore who?” Aziraphale asked, intrigued.

“It isn't important.”

“How are we supposed to pretend that didn't happen?” the injured angel asked, quietly feeling that he was not getting the attention he deserved for his ordeal.

“We are the Children and the Soldier of The Lord. I should think we can handle not talking about a plant.” The assembled Host were looking at the Dominion quite distinctly as if they could not, in fact, handle that. She sighed. “So, what do you all think about leaves with more than one point?”

The argument that erupted in the face of this question was a bitter victory.

Karael stared hard against the front door of the library. If his prototype had made an impression on Jahoel, that was where she would be coming from to offer him his old job back. With a promotion of course. He would keep staring for a long time that day, tapping his quill against his desk, feeling his spine straighten when someone entered and then curl again when it was just another patron. The budding “musicians” working near his home had been hard at work and unable to take the hints about their talents he had delivered in the form of tchotchkes and smaller pieces of furniture aimed at their heads, so he had gotten to the library early. This meant, at least, that he had a good deal of time to re-shelve books, help patrons, and do some of his own research before Aziraphale showed up again.

It was food this time. There was a group of angels sitting around a book on natural wonders, reading them aloud and indulging in wine and honeyed cakes. Aziraphale had nothing against a little festivity, as long as no one got hurt, but the tome the group was bent over, freckled with red and beginning to warp, was anything but unharmed. Aziraphale wanted little more out of his existence than to take the wine bottle they were passing around and tip it over their heads, but he was making an effort to be a bit more sociable. He was confident that, being steeled for this confrontation in a way he had not been on his past two trips to the library, he would be able to hold his temper. Use the carrot not the stick and all that. When he approached the flock it was with a smile that was only strained to a trained eye.

“Well, this looks like a lot of fun.” One of the angels looked up, hoisting the bottle so that a mist of wine splattered the whole of the table. Something inside of Aziraphale's eyes twitched like a dying bird.

“You've got to read some of this Brother. They've got this thing, called fish. They move around in a great lot of water.” The angel watched the crumbs from his mouth as they fell on the pages. It was hard for him to believe they didn't know what they were doing, that they weren't purposely bent on destroying precious knowledge with their slobbery.

“Oh, well, that sounds quite delightful then,” Aziraphale clutched his hands in a wringing, pleading way. “But I can't help but think it would be more delightful if you could keep your food and drink away from the pages.” The eyes that met his were as empty as a drum. “You aren't being very respectful of-”

“Oh, not you again.” Karael's voice was displeased enough to have become ragged, and his empathetic wings sagged along with his tone. Aziraphale bristled, turning around.

“I'm sorry, were you busy just now not doing your job?”

“I thought you would like that, seeing as you seem to be bent on doing my job instead of finding somewhere else to serve your duty.”

“I do have another task, you know, I'm helping to develop new trees.” Karael's feathers curled under the pressure of his quiet fury. The angels who had been enjoying poems on the miracle of fish suddenly felt obliged to be very quiet and stare at other things in the room. Some of them chose the book, some the bottle of wine, and one unfortunate angel did not really understand the rules of pretending you don't notice something and was stuck staring at his own nose. Every few minutes he nodded, as if to say “Ah yes, that is in fact my nose, isn't it.” The fighting angels paid them little very mind, if any.

“Well then, I'll just tell your boss you keep popping over here and bothering me. She'll have something to say about that, won't she?”

“I was just about to say the same for you. Isnaet wouldn't like to hear his charge is letting innocent books go molested, would he?” They shared a long, hating look. The kind of look Liverpool and Manchester, Florence and Siena, Sydney and Melbourne would come to share in distant, future cultures.

“Why don't you go do that?” Karael half hissed. Aziraphale looked uncomfortable, right at the border of sheepish.

“I have no idea what your name is.”

“Me neither.”

“I need it to file a formal report.”

“Me too.” They shared a second look, the kind of look a rock and a hard place share. Aziraphale, who was the kind of being who did not seek revenge because the feeling of superiority they reaped from being kind was so much sweeter, broke the impasse first.

“Aziraphale.”

“Karael.” Aziraphale weighed the costs and benefits, eventually deciding that the sooner the assistant librarian was fired, the sooner the books would be safe again. In any case, his efforts to be sociable were not getting him any more tolerance than his prior attempts. He wished Karael a good day in his least sincere voice and went off to write a strongly worded letter. Karael muttered after him that he could shove his good day up somewhere unpleasant, provided that a stick wasn't already in the way.

Jahoel didn't show up that day, and Karael decided that this was a message to try again. After all, if she hadn't liked the tree, wouldn't she have told him?

The next day the tree chapter’s table was equipped with a tree covered in purple fruits. Jahoel was late again, and there was some debate over whether this was the real test, just one part of some larger test, something they were supposed to ignore, something they were supposed to ignore as part of a test, or some other fifth thing no one had considered yet. After some debate an angel with particularly bad teeth decided to pluck one of the fruit from the branches and try it. Angels, while not mortal, do not take well to injury, poison, or other molestations, and this brave and perhaps stupid innovator started throwing up manna everywhere. When the Dominion arrived she drew her eyes over this sufferer, then the tree, then put her head into her hand.

“For the sake of...” she muttered into her fingers.

“Are we going to ignore this one too?” Aziraphale asked as gently as he thought would be helpful.

“I'll fix it.” Jahoel looked glumly at the tree, reaching into it and twisting her wrist in that just-so way that got rid of all the mess, at least for today. She had been perhaps a bit optimistic in thinking that she could get away with ignoring Karael. “I'm canceling this meeting. Don't bother coming in tomorrow either.”

“Pardon?” Aziraphale, who may not have enjoyed micromanaging plants but nonetheless, felt a certain obligation to The Lord and his Works, hesitated under the belief that he had misheard.

“In case I can't talk him out of this, you should wait for me to call the next meeting.” There was a certain level of noise that rose in response to this, but it faded away soon, and the flock began to split up. “Aziraphale?” Jahoel called as the other angel was about to leave.

“Yes?”

“Take care of this one, will you?” She gestured at the angel with poor teeth and even worse judgment of appropriate things to stick into their mouth. After a pause in his vomiting he had somehow rallied and managed to find some recess of manna inside of him, which he was currently depositing on the ground.

“As you wish,” Aziraphale smiled, his sense of obligation sitting around his shoulders like a dead thing, and pulled the other angel up by the back of his robes. “Let's go then dear- oh no let’s not do that on my feet. Well no, I suppose you can't help it then, can you? I'm sorry about that then.” The trip to Raphael's domain was one long and filled with Aziraphale's fretting. When he arrived he felt that he really had to stay and be sure his new charge was alright, and the process ended up taking several hours. Angels did not often become poisoned, at least not in those days, and there was some confusion among the lower level angels about what exactly their protocol for it was. By the time he was told to go home, the light was already fading.

Aziraphale walked to his residence, checking futility for a reply to his letter about the assistant librarian. He read a book or two of poetry, checked again. Still nothing. He considered going back to the library, but the righteous fury that had sustained him over the past few days was being diminished by that slothful angel. He wouldn't be able get through to the patrons if he was being undermined all the time. He might as well go back to reading in his own corner and paying no heed to the other members of the Host that came to desecrate the collection. He checked again, no reply. At the very least, he hadn't gotten something disciplining him because of a letter Karael had sent. Probably, he considered, because he was actually in the right. He read another book of poems, hummed his way through a thick hymnal.

All in all he pulled off a spectacular amount of moping, the kind Karael would have admired if he had been aware of it. He lay on his bed, staring at the stack of books he had already read and reread several times. His eyes skipped over the titles like a stone on a pond, and he recalled with bittersweetness the wonderful things he had learned of by them, the knowing they bore. His face narrowed with the determination of a crusader. No.

He wasn't going to give up, not that easily.

“Karael.” The new assistant librarian looked up from his vaguely botanical scribbles to find Jahoel looming in front of him. His face twisted into an expression that could not be described without the word “smug”.

“Did you find it?”

“What makes you think that was an appropriate thing to do?” Karael frowned. This wasn't the reaction he was hoping for, but he could work with it.

“I thought it might benefit the others to get a glimpse at something that was actually innovative. If you want to keep it a secret I could-”

“Promise me you won't do this again.” Jahoel was not one for small talk or particularities.

“Do what, exactly?”

“Stick one of those trees you've blathered on about in the middle of the meeting table.” Karael shrugged.

“I promise.”

“Good.” Karael watched here leave with thin lips. Aright then. He'd just give her a tree he hadn't discussed before, somewhere other than the table. That couldn't be too hard to figure out. He wasn't going to give up, not that easily.

AND LO, ON THE SIXTH DAY The Lord was still taking a nap, and there had been some muttering about stopping at calling it a “nap” and starting at calling it a “slumber”, because really. It was on that day that Jahoel opened her door and found a small, ropey tree growing out of her stoop with thin and drooping branches, and it was on that day that Jahoel expressed several thoughts about Karael out loud and was promptly slapped in the face by a plant. Sitting winded and mystified on the ground, leaves in her mouth, the Dominion took notice of a handwritten note at the tree's trunk. It explained that the plant had been created so that its branches would reach out to whip you bodily if you took The Lord's name in vain. According to Karael's cheerful though somewhat slanted hand, it was designed to reduce incidences of blasphemy and therefore make everyone living nearby one that much more likely to find themselves in the better graces of The Lord. She promptly took the note, tore it to pieces, gathered those pieces, and ripped them into smaller pieces in a fit of uncharacteristically industrious fury. She then resolved to take a trip to the library.

It was on that day that Aziraphale had made that same resolution, secure in his plan to protect the library's collection. He doubted that Karael would be able to understand his reasoning. Like every martyr, Aziraphale carried the sorrowful but perhaps more than a bit smug notion that he would be neither understood nor appreciated by his peers, that he was attuned to a higher purpose they could not comprehend.

In the meanwhile Karael was at his desk, planning yet another tree. This was in case Jahoel came to him today and told him that his most recent creation had finally convinced her that his Ide- idea- oh what does it matter if he's just thinking it to himself, Ideas were really quite good. He could have more to show her, and they could get on the task of putting his creations into the Garden immediately. It was also, he had to admit, in case the Dominion did not like his current offering and needed more persuading. Karael knew what he had half promised on a technicality, but rules that stood in front of progress deserved to be bent just a bit. A little bad to do a lot of good, how awful could that be? In the Grand Scheme at least. He was also preparing (in the back of his mind at least) to deal with that loudmouth Aziraphale, who kept bullying the patrons all the time. Isnaet had asked him to do his best to keep the other angel from harming other patrons, and Karael was prepared to interpret that order with a lot of liberality.

Isnaet, oblivious to all of this, was locked in the back room of the library with a few dozen new books, trying to figure out what to call this new thing Chammuel had created in which a story was told about things that had not happened to beings that did not exist. It wasn't a parable, it wasn't a poem, and it certainly wasn't a catalog of pebble taxonomy. He needed a shorter version of “book that lies to you but in a good natured way.”

It was the perfect storm. Well, perhaps not the perfect storm as much as the perfect dust devil or the perfect ill-timed drizzle. It wasn't going to rock the Heavens, but it was going to make the Heavens roll over on its arm and then wake up because it had gone all tingly and numb. It came to a head when Aziraphale slammed his hands down on the desk at which Karael was currently scribbling. The assistant librarian did not look up from the piece of already crowded parchment on which he was making notations on the anatomy of different types of plants.

“I would like to take out the books.” Karael continued to write, even though he was quite finished describing different root systems. He wrote: “ ...and the ones that lay on top of the water are usually called aerating and now this loopy bastard is standing over me but I am not going to give him the time of day because all he has been to me is trouble and if I keep writing he'll realize that I have more important things to deal with than books and his problems and he'll piss off soon yes very soon he will piss off soon soon soon he is still not pissing off come on I have been ignoring you five minutes now take a hint you ponce” Aziraphale cleared his throat loudly, and Karael paused with his quill still to his paper.

“What books again?”

“All of them.” Karael stared unabashedly. He was long past using tact with this angel, though the argument could have been made that he hadn't been using much tact initially either.

“You can't do that.”

“They aren't been cared for here. I can watch over them at my home until The Lord is done sleeping and I am able to explain to him how grossly negligent you have been.”

“Oh shove off with telling me how to do my job. It isn't my fault you’re so covetous over silly books.” Aziraphale was left temporally unarmed, unsure if he was angrier about being called covetous or at the belittling of books, and Karael took the opportunity to strike. “You know, Isnaet could ban you from the library. Just like that, banned for the whole of eternity. Nothing on...” Karael waved his hand vaguely, trying to think of a subject boring enough that he could imagine the other angel being interested in it “...nothing on watching mountains erode or ranking different kinds of freshwater on taste.” Aziraphale, now refocused on how lunatic the idea of having the only person concerned about the library banned from the library was, opened his mouth to give a retort when there was the bang of a wooden door against a marble wall.

“Karael!” Jahoel's voice rang from the front door. She turned the corner, eyes puffy and cheeks covered in red scrapes. Karael paled, while Aziraphale was temporarily distracted with concern.

“Whatever happened Ja-” The Dominion walked past her charge without acknowledgment, the fullness of her fury pointed at Karael.

“What did I ask you? What did I ask you politely?” Her voice was quiet, which did not bode well.

“Alright now, before you get mad at me, that,” he pointed here to her face “, wouldn't have happened if you hadn't blasphemed. It's not my fault that I didn't realize how hard it would be for you not to curse at a tree.” Aziraphale, feeling that he was being a bit righteous-fury-blocked by his boss, cut in.

“What's going on now?”

“This one,” Jahoel jerked her head towards Karael “, has been sticking his trees all over the place, getting everyone hurt and then blaming me.” Aziraphale's eyes widened.

“That's you?” Karael ignored him.

“I'm not blaming you; I'm just saying it’s your fault.”

“You've been the one disrupting all of our meetings!” Aziraphale asserted, only to be swept aside yet again.

“Did you even notice the craftmanship in those branches? Did you even think of how hard it is to create a tree that can hear? You're just too lazy to put some actual work into anything. You'd rather ignore my Ideas because they require you to think!”

“I told you about that capitalization, Karael,” the Dominion seethed. “This is why you're in so much trouble, you think anything that goes against the grain is better, but there’s a reason we have those standards in the first place.”

“He's awful to the books too, you should know,” Aziraphale muttered in support of this. “He's awful at everything I suppose.” This, at last, got Karael to turn his attention from Jahoel to Aziraphale.

“You're one to talk you self-righteous, hypercritical prat! Do you really believe you're the only one who can decide who gets to touch books and who doesn’t?”

“Oh really, I demand respect for His Creations and I'm the one in the wrong? Between your idiotic trees and the way you allow books to be treated, it’s as if you don't even respect The Lord's Works!” Aziraphale slammed his palms to the other angel's desk with a sharp noise, like the clash of sword to shield. “I half expect you to intentionally destroy the sanctity of this Great Collection.”

“Oh, you do?” Karael asked quietly, feeling a strange sort of calm wash over him as he looked darkly into Aziraphale's being, into the white hot core of it, and opened his book of plants flat over his hands. A creaky popping sound filled the air as he deliberately and with great malice cracked the spine.

Aziraphale lunged over the desk at the other angel, fire in his eyes, and he would not let the fact that fist-fighting hadn't been invented yet deter him from wiping that serene look off of Karael's face. Caught by surprise, the assistant library found himself on the floor being smacked around the head by the flat of his opponent's hand. Aziraphale appeared to be trying to pet him as painfully as possible, the most injurious action he knew of and something which Karael did not plan to lay there and take. The assistant librarian responded by poking him, hard, in the ribs. Aziraphale made a sort of squawking noise of outrage, jabbing his fingers against his opponent's neck. Their arms race continued until Aziraphale puzzled out how to make a fist, and derived from that the steps to throwing a punch, and demonstrated his Great Works unto Karael's face. Karael sputtered in response, clumsily imitating the action against his opponent's stomach. At this point they were causing quite a racket, bumping against tables and yelling the most profane things they could think of, and a group of spectators had gathered. Isnaet, having heard the commotion from the back room, fought his way to the front of the crowd, face pale.

“Brothers,” he called waveringly, “let’s not fight.”

Unheeding the two angels continued their battle, Karael having discovered a fresh new twist on the three minute old tradition of punching that composed of pushing Aziraphale's hand into his own face and screaming “Stop hitting yourself!” Isnaet rung his fingers.

“I'll just get Michael then,” he offered, voice cracking.

“I'll get him,” Jahoel, who had long since wisely drawn back into the crowd, called from behind him. This day was looking up.

Michael, with some effort, was able to pull the two off of each other, although they continued yelling about spines and root systems until Aziraphale had been escorted off of the premises and Karael had been dragged into the break room.

“Why don't you sit down?” Isnaet offered when he had finally gotten his charge to stop peeking through the crack under the door to see if Aziraphale was getting smote, gesturing at one of the nearby chairs. The other angel took a seat reluctantly, sucking blood out of the part of his tongue he had accidentally bitten. After a few hours in which Isnaet prepared tea and intermittently left the room and Karael fumed silently, Jahoel and Aziraphale came into the room.

“Oh good,” the head librarian muttered, shaking hands with Jahoel. “It's nice to see you again.”

“Let’s get this over with shall we?” They glanced at their charges, who glared at each other through swollen eyes and split lips for a second before looking away with pointed huffs. Aziraphale's was louder, but Karael's was snider. Isnaet cleared his throat pointedly, putting his hand on Karael's shoulder.

“You should know that, in many respects, you were really quite good at being a librarian.” Sensing a long and overly emotional process ahead of her, Jahoel decided to cut him off

“You're fired.” Aziraphale jumped, facing forward.

“Excuse me? I'm fired? He was the one-”

“Both of you are fired.”

“We're terribly sorry about this.” Isnaet forced a grin while Jahoel muttered something decidedly not sorry about this. “We talked to the higher ups about this, Archangels and such. They felt that the two of you might do better in other positions.” At this, the freshly unemployed angels perked up.

“Perhaps in the library?” Aziraphale hoped in brash defiance of reason. Isnaet sighed.

“Well-”

“Can't I tell them?” Jahoel's eyes were alight with pleasure. “You know I ask so little.” Isnaet struggled briefly yet nobly, like a mortal man with a great beast of legend, before giving up and turning to his tea.

“Go on.”

“Jophiel is writing a new poem on the Glory of our new Earth.” Jahoel's smile was so wide that her cheeks looked hard and flushed as ripe plums, and the other angels felt a shadow of dread slide down their throats and make a nest in their guts. “There's a bit he's stuck on, and to get past it he wants to know the number of grains of sand that make up the deserts.”

“I don't suppose our new duty is to talk him out of this fancy?” Karael asked, his words stuffed so tightly with loathing that it was hard to force them past his teeth.

“Let it not be spoken of! We are not in a rank to question Archangels of their whims. Sadly, The Lord is slumbering, and cannot tell him the answer. So you two will find out for him.” She rubbed her fingers together, savoring the paleness of their faces. “Grain by grain, for as much time as it takes. He's told us he is willing to be patient.”

In the desert we call the Sahara there was once a lonely, three meter tall tree.

It held the record as the remotest in the word, 400 kilometers from companionship. It had survived over thousands of years as the valley changed from sand to lush forest to barren ground again. It was Crowley's last effort at a good, solid tree. It was made in a fit of companionship to shade him and his longtime rival as they took a break from picking through the dunes and waiting for The Lord to wake up again. Back then, when Crowley was Karael and Aziraphale was a few pounds lighter, they had commiserated about bureaucracy. Aziraphale had apologized for punching him in the face, and Karael had laughed, telling him he was more impressed with the other angel's ingenuity than upset about a bloody nose. He had then admitted, sheepishly, that it was sort of ridiculous how roughly the newer angels treated books. Aziraphale had, in exchange, told him that that blasphemy tree actually sounded like it took a lot of work.

Years later, empires having risen and fallen, tongues and medicines born and faded, they still got around to picnicking there every few decades and laughing about ill-gotten careers. In 1973, when a drunken driver managed to swerve into and kill the tree, somehow hitting the only obstacle on the surface of the landscape as far as the eye could scrutinize, Crowley was quite bitter. Every few years afterward, when the wind turned colder than usual and Aziraphale would almost pack them a basket before remembering, the demon would mutter to himself about it.

“If I had had my way, the tree would have eaten the driver,” he would say, and Aziraphale would joke back that if the angel had gotten his way, they would have turned the rest of the tree into a nice bible instead of moving it to a museum.

Crowley did not find that funny.