ENTICEMENT

Eden: An Introduction

Authors Note: Allow me to set the stage... In this introduction, I wanted to give you a glimpse at what our darling Jinnie was like before his fall. Back when he was nothing more than a low ranking angel with a very important job. If certain details don't hit correctly now, I promise they will as the series goes on. 

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Seokjin, the second human to walk the earth, was born in a garden.

He had almost no memory of his life as an angel.

No memory of the archangel Gabriel touching his forehead, bestowing upon him all the knowledge of the plants and the animals and the climate that he would need to survive. The knowledge of what it would be like to lose his immortality and be free of the Heavenly vale. The ways he should care for his new body once he'd become a human.

No memory of the archangel Uriel binding his hands with the hands of the archangel Michael, pronouncing that Seokjin and Michael would henceforth be joined in matrimony until the Almighty's holy light was extinguished.

No memory of the archangel Raphael putting him into a trance, of falling asleep in Raphael's office, of Raphael transferring his consciousness from his angelic body into the body of a human; sculpted from wet earth in the likeness of the Almighty themself.

Seokjin's human eyes -large, colored a dark gold that almost looked like honey, all shiny and round- fluttered open for the very first time.

He was lying on his back in a flowerbed. Small white and yellow flowers that he instinctively knew were called daisies. The sky was a wide expanse of bright blue above him and he blinked up at it curiously. That sky was full of unseen friends, he thought vaguely, smiling his very first smile.

But a single task had already taken root in his consciousness, overwriting all else. Seokjin had been born, and now he needed to find his husband.

Husband...

It was a magical word, Seokjin mused, as he sat up and looked around at the clearing in which the flowerbed was situated. A word full of wonder and joy that he could not yet imagine.

Seokjin pushed himself to his feet and then promptly toppled over again. His legs were wobbly, like those of a fawn. Unaccustomed to walking without his wings and unused to the heavy pull of the earth beneath his feet.

But after a few minutes of stretching and flexing and clumsy maneuvering, Seokjin managed to stand upright. He stepped, careful and slow, to the nearest tree. Then the next. And the next. Using their strong trunks to keep his balance.

On and on and on he went, searching for the husband he knew must be somewhere nearby. He tumbled through the wide expanse of greenery until something sparkly caught in the corner of his eye.

It was a pond; an oblong pool of still, clear water that reflected the blue sky above like a mirror.

Pausing beside it, Seokjin knelt on the bank and peered curiously down at his reflection. It was strange, considering he had never seen himself before.

His hair was a dark shiny brown, fluffy and clean, cropped around his cheekbones. His skin was- Seokjin didn't know all the words to describe colors yet but it reminded him of the desert. Of the tan sand he couldn't remember seeing, but he still somehow knew covered the world outside the garden's walls. And his lips were a pink that would -millennia later- be referred to as coral.

This human body was strange as well, Seokjin thought, touching the water with the tip of one finger and watching his reflection ripple and distort. He could see that his wispy frame was swathed in a robe of rich blue silk, slipping off his narrow shoulders and tied loosely around his waist. His body reminded him of the willow trees swaying around the pond's edge. A willowy human in blue.