She was brushing her hair when the serpent approached, though this did not seem to cause The Woman any particular alarm. Nor was that remarkable, for nothing dangerous existed within the Garden, save perhaps the object that she was gazing at with curious eyes while she brushed. Even that was not particularly exceptional - a short, flowering tree of perhaps medium height, with trifoliate leaves and large dusky fruits the shape of teardrops. It stood barely taller than she did, and if anything seemed to be drooping somewhat disconsolately in the heat.
"Oh, there you are," the Serpent said as it slithered up the rock next to her. "I thought I'd find you here."
"Oh hello, friend Serpent," the Woman replied, pausing her brushing to give him an affectionate pat on the head. "Were you looking for me?"
"Yes and no." The Serpent stopped and looked more closely at the Woman's brush. "What-what is that? Are those bones? Are you brushing your hair with fish bones?!"
The Woman looked down at her brush with some surprise. "Yes?"
"Stop that! That's disgusting. And unhygienic. Where did you even get fish bones, anyway?"
"Man gave it to me," the Woman replied. "He thought it was pretty, and that since I was pretty we might be pretty together. And then I got dirt and leaves in my hair and I thought-"
"You thought it'd be a good idea to let some rotten fish bones touch your head," the Serpent sighed. "Well, it probably doesn't matter anyway. It's not like you can get a staph infection while you're here."
"What's a staph infection?"
"Something horrible and unpleasant. Don't worry about it, it's not important." The Serpent gave the Woman a sidelong glance. "I saw you eyeballing that tree. You're thinking about it, aren't you?"
"Yes," the Woman replied, "though I know that I should not. I cannot help myself."
"Don't agonize too much about it - it's the way you were wired, unfortunately," the Serpent said. "Which makes this whole thing sort of rigged." He gave her a sour look. "They're going to blame me for this, you know."
"Blame you for what?"
"What you're about to do."
"What am I about to do?"
"Please, I can practically see the gears spinning around in your head. To be honest, I think I'm supposed to be pushing you along, give you the extra little nudge you need to turn that idea you've got baking in your noggin into a pretty little muffin of sin."
"What is sin? I've never had sin before. Is it lovely?"
"Lovely as a hernia. It's pretty much the source of all human agony and suffering for a million years to come. The Buddhists will blame it on desire, but that's really a potato potahto sort of deal."
"Oh dear," the Woman looked faintly alarmed. "Then it seems I should not bake this sin muffin."
"I'm pretty sure you'll bake whatever muffin you want, and I do mean that euphemistically," the Serpent sighed again. "I don't really think anything I say one way or the other is going to do much to sway your opinion. Isn't that funny? Five, ten, fifteen thousand years from now they'll still be talking about how I tempted you into eating that fig, when really He stuck the idea in there from the get-go."
"I was told that I should not touch the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," the Woman said. "I was told that I may partake of anything else in this Garden, but that the Fruit of Knowledge alone is forbidden to me. There is so much else here to see - I have wandered this place with Man for countless turnings of light and dark, and still I believe I have touched but a small piece of the Garden. Why do I yearn for this small, plain fruit when there is so much else I might experience?"
"I'd say it's a test, except what's the point of a test when you already know the outcome? That's really the problem here. I'm supposed to make some grand pronouncement about how if you eat that fig, you'll be as a god yourself, and that's why the Big Man doesn't want you to touch it, but I think on some level we both know we could run an industrial farm with that steaming pile of dog turds."
The Woman eyed the fig with some surprise.
"Would we be as God, if we taste of this fruit?"
The Serpent gave her a level stare, then grasped her firmly about the chin with his tail and turned her face so that they were staring eye to eye.
"No. You won't. You never will. Your children's children, a few hundred or a few thousand times removed, might approach the most infinitesimal piece of something like it, assuming that they don't blow themselves to smithereens, but that's a crapshoot I don't have the emotional fortitude to go into. And giving birth...man, giving birth will involve blood and tears and all sorts of other bodily fluids that make me a little queasy to think about." The Serpent stopped and eyed the Woman up and down rather critically. "Come to think of it, I'm not too sure what He was planning to do about that if you stay. All your nerve endings are intact and it's not like your cervix is a rubber o-ring. Maybe hit you in the spine with a magical epidural every time you get knocked up? Maybe actually have that talk with the storks we'd been keeping a pin on? Anyway, neither here nor there.
"The point is, sister...the point is that it's impossible to even understand what He is. I realize He looks like a nice old man, but saying that's the tip of the iceberg is like saying a black hole kinda sucks. He's all quantum entanglements and strange particles and cosmic loops, and you are flesh and blood and bone. Even your mind, this wonderful, abstracted ball of bottled lightning and mysterious dreams, will only be able to approach understanding Him in the most remote sense of the word. You'll only see the first letter of the first page of the first book in a library the size of a galaxy, and that alone will be a pretty fair accomplishment.
The Serpent looked to one side, breaking eye contact with the Woman. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Man stumbling through the brush and calling out for Woman to join him in the spring. "To be honest, even I don't really get Him, and I'm his firstborn. None of us do. Can an amoeba understand elementary particle physics and its application toward clean energy and ecological conservation? I'm created from frozen starlight and concentrated will, and He's as much a mystery to me as He is to you. I don't really get why He wants you to leave, and I certainly don't understand why He has to do it in this roundabout way. I don't know why I'm the one who has to be telling you all of this, but I know for a fact everything I'm saying is just pushing you farther and farther toward shoving that fruit in your mouth, and it's making me really morose."
"Are you saddened, friend Serpent?" the Woman asked, smiling at him.
"That's basically what morose means, which you'll find out soon enough. I actually like you and Man, so believe me when I say everything get flushed down the crapper from here. You'll have to wander out into the cold, stumble across plains of blasted rock and scouring winds looking for scraps of peace, and scrabble in the dirt for food and water. Everything is going to be hard surfaces and sharp edges and barbs that dig into your soul like rusty hooks. I don't see why he would give you the Garden only to take it away, and I think it sucks."
The Woman looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, "You said that we would approach Him, a hundred or a thousand years from now. Approach a piece of Him, if we partake of the fruit."
"I guess. I dunno. It's hard to see with all the fractal shifting, but there's a chance, maybe, that you'll reach some sort of transcendence, a few thousand generations down. Again, requires not blowing yourselves to smithereens, which seems way more likely than cosmic Nirvana."
"Then perhaps that is what He wants. For us to try. To see if He has created something that can one day speak to Him as an equal."
"I really don't think you've heard a single word I said, or else you interpreted it really, really selectively, but this whole conversation was basically a boulder rolling downhill the entire time anyway."
"And even if that is not the case, should we not try to be greater than ourselves? Though the way is long and the path is hard, is it not worth the effort to be better than what we are?"
"I can't even tell you what a gross oversimplification that is, but on some level you're right. You'll accomplish things you could never hope to dream of by staying here. Not that that will be much consolation to anyone in, say, Germany 1939, but maybe that's just me being picky."
"Will you still speak to me, Serpent, after we must leave this Garden? I should like a friend, if we must wander a world of hooks and barbs, who might offer me wise counsel."
"It's gonna be trouble. Witch hunts and inquisitions and source of all evil, yadda yadda yadda. Literally centuries of misogyny disguised as holiness."
The Woman simply gazed at him, smiling.
"Yeah, fine. Whatever. I'll do my best." The Serpent reached up with a segment of his tail. "Here, give me the fish bone. Least I can do is make sure it's clean, if you're gonna take it with you out of here."
"Thank you," the Woman said, handing him her comb, and in the same gesture bent down to kiss him on the forehead. She turned toward the tree and reached for the fruit.
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Are these getting longer? I feel like these are getting longer. I'll also be honest - I went back and edited a few lines afterward. Sue me.
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