The Descent of the Gods

Eden

Enoch had found Seth and his father Jared living with the remaining members of the Sethite tribe. The reunion had been sweet and tender. Then Enoch had insisted they come with him to follow Jehuda and the Edenites back to their homeland. Almost all the Sethites were glad to do so.

They returned to Seth's altar to make a sacrifice and thank God for his provision, and to beg His courage for the uncertain days to come. Afterwards, nearby to the altar, Enoch searched in the tall grasses until he found what he sought - his father's old shepherd's staff that Enoch had lost the day he first fought Tubal-Cain here. He was determined that he wouldn't lose the useful heirloom ever again.

All together, their company expanded to almost one hundred travelers - a few Cainites, a few of the freed slaves looking for a new life, Sethites. The band of Edenites led the diverse group upriver. At first the different people groups traveled in their own groups. Enoch and Jehuda noticed this and began assigning tasks and traveling partners to them from other people groups. After only a week, the stigma of being a 'Cainite' or the memory of having been a 'slave' was purged. They all were escaping an old life, in pursuit of a better, new life, and they were doing it together.

A few wagons had been procured for the elderly. Enoch never left the side of the wagon that carried his father and Seth. Always he was with them, speaking of the coming of the angels, and the wonders he had seen and heard at heaven's own throne. They were astonished at the tales.

"Quickly now! We are close!" Jehuda encouraged the weary travelers. For close to a month, they had followed the Euphrates river, every day closer to its source. Jehuda and his companions said little of their homeland, even when asked. They always replied with a smile and the words - "When you see it, you'll understand."

This reply left the others increasingly eager to understand the truth behind the legends of the land of Eden. And what of the garden itself? According to the story, it was forbidden for mankind to enter again.

"Then the LORD said," Seth repeated from old memory. "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" the LORD sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life."  

But it had been almost six hundred years since that day. People wondered what they would truly find. Enoch was the only one never to ask the Edenites of their homeland. 

"You're not the same as before," Naamah said to him one day. Enoch understood what she meant. He had been infused with an sublime confidence, a knowing smile, a lack of anxiety for the cares of life since his vision in Nod. 

"My body was broken - and I was made whole again. And I saw a land no man can describe. And I heard a voice that I will never forget. After these things, I shall never be the same again."

He didn't notice how she looked at him now. She envied him - his grandfather and father had been returned to him, his world had been restored, and hope was on the horizon. She had abandoned her family - her people - to an unknown fate. She could not shake free from the sense of a coming doom. And with every step closer to Eden, she was more and more helpless to protect her loved ones from it.

So she stayed close by his side as much as she could during the journey. His confidence and words of hope soothed her worry.

Naamah watched a flock of winged reptiles soaring in the sky above them. It was the same kind of animal she had freed in Nod's marketplace. She hoped that one had returned to its homeland.