And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the Garden of Eden. And all which were created  must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever and had no end.

My head hurt. I cracked my eyes open. The world was out of focus and too bright. I was being jostled about. Where was I?

“We must see the first father immediately,” Seth said. I was being carried.

“He is in the garden,” a voice answered. The garden. The garden! No, not there! I struggled and fell to the ground. The world materialized around me. I was in an ancient house that I had been in before.

“Be still,” Seth growled, then lifted me once more. Eve was beside me stroking my hair as I was carried through the house. It took me a few more seconds to realize that we were going to a garden, not the garden. Seth set me on my feet in a sunlit glade and I got my bearings. I was in the same enclosed garden in Edom where I had met Adam months prior. I followed Seth and Eve to where the ancient of days lay dying on a padded stretcher. Eve ran to him and bowed herself over his feeble form.

“My love, you have returned,” the old man said in soft strained tones. “Did you get it?”

Eve could not answer for the tears that choked her.

Seth stepped up beside her. “No, father. The cherubim would not allow it.” Seth glanced at me as he spoke and though I did detect an accusation in his voice, there was no malice. I knew that he was disappointed in the results of our expedition even if he didn’t blame me for them. For my part I had brought the fruit, even to those who had betrayed me. It wasn’t my fault I had been poisoned by the mother of all dragons.

“It is alright, son,” Adam said. “I have lived long enough.”

“The world will survive,” Eve choked out. “Whether through fire or water we will make sure of it.”

I merely stood as an outsider watching as the father of all died and wondered what would become of me. I was watching Eve’s husband pass away in her arms, but what did that matter in the face of my own petty problems. I was starting to wonder if my adopted mother and father were the only good people in all of Eden.

“I wish to speak to the boy,” Adam said and reluctantly Eve and Seth left beyond hearing. What did he want to speak to me for? “Come, Namir,” the ancient man said.

I obeyed and stepped up beside him. He looked so frail and worn, as if he was already gone.

“You do remind me of your mother,” he said.

“What?” I said in shock. “You know my mother, my birth mother?”

“Not your birth mother,” he said, then coughed. “But your mother’s mother’s mother maybe. I knew you were hers when I first saw you. She is probably old and dying, like me, if she hasn’t already. I don’t know how old she would even be. Time had little meaning to me before I was subject to it.”

“Before time?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Before I was mortal,” he said then coughed in a long fit that brought Eve and Seth running back to his side. He spoke no more to me.

Within that hour, Adam the first man, made from the red earth, father to all of Eden, passed from this world. I was there and saw but was so wrapped up in my own problems that the only reason I noticed was that in that dark hour the cloudless sky turned completely black. Not one star gave its light.

Lamps and torches still gave off light but the darkness seemed to encroach more than usual. The moon was in its last quarter that night so in the hours before it rose it was utterly dark. I hardly noticed. The darkness held no terror for me that night but the light of day was terrible in its own way. I spent the next few days alone. Seth and Eve were too wrapped up in Adam’s death and funeral and other arrangements to look after me. I didn’t know anyone else and plotted so many schemes of where I would go or what I would do that the next few days flew by in a mixed up jumble. All of Edom made a pilgrimage to the site to pay their respects to the first father and mourn his passing. Everyone was frightened. The failing of the stars was an ill omen. Many worried that the world would end then and there. I knew better. After all, what was the end of the world next to my own problems.

Adam had known my mother, or at least my grandmother of however many generations. I needed more information. At least a place to start looking. I needed someone else who might know something and it just so happened that they were right in front of me.

Eve stayed by the body of her husband. She never ate and she never slept. She seemed only vaguely aware of all her children’s condolences. On the third day Adam’s body was placed in a tomb. Eve entered that tomb with him and never left it. I waited outside as group after group filed in and out of the tomb, waiting for my chance to speak to Eve. I need not have worried.

On the sixth day she summoned me and I was left alone with her in that unusual place of death. She lay in a bed beside the stone box that contained her husband. It had been Seth who had guided me to her and he left me at the door. The room didn’t smell right as if death had already claimed everything in it.

“Namir,” Eve said and I approached her withered form. The last six days had not been kind. “I owe you an apology.”

“And an explanation,” I said.

“I always knew about you,” she rasped. “About her.”

“Who?”

“Red’s first wife. The mother of your people. I knew you were not mine like I feared he wasn’t.” She placed her hand on the sarcophagus beside her. “I let my fear turn to hatred. I hated you because he loved her first. I’m sorry.”

“Who was she?” I asked. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Eve admitted. “I only heard her name once when Red thought I couldn’t hear, but I always knew she existed. From the first time I came to him with knowledge I saw the look on his face and I knew I wasn’t the first.

“Her name was Lilith and she made the same choice I did. He chose not to follow her. It could have been me.” Eve burst into tears and my cold eyes looked on in impatience. She had tried to kill me. She owed me.

“What happened to her?” I pressed.

“She must have been cast out alone. Yet, you are here so she must have had someone. She must have left something behind.” Her pleading eyes caught me then and in this stretched pale version of the woman I had journeyed across Eden with I saw understanding. Tears once more filled her eyes. “If you are her only legacy she should be proud.

“I only hope that my legacy is as strong and good as you.”

It wasn’t until that moment, at the end, that I finally had some understanding of her. I finally loved her and I never got the chance to tell her. As I grasped her hand the light in her eyes went out and another light blazed to life. The stars burned brilliantly in the sky once more on a night with no moon even as Eve, the mother of all living, was gone.

The world had not ended after all. A week later I was ready to go out on my own and find my people. My Lilithans, Lilithians, Lilliputians. I would have to work on the name. I would have to travel on foot since my horse was somewhere a thousand leagues away. I was sure that Seth would recover her sometime but it would take months, at least, and I was anxious to be going. I slung my pack over my shoulder and left Edom behind. I was a little older, a little wiser (I hoped), and a lot better prepared than the last time I had tried to strike out on my own. I was no longer the lost boy that had run from Lamech and his wolves. Now I had a purpose. I had a mission and that is really what keeps us going even when all the world stands in our way.

Eve had said I should go to Zion, that Enoch could help me learn what had happened with Tiamat. For better or worse I couldn’t trust myself to someone else again. I turned away from the west road to Zion and instead went north. I was going to find Lilith and my people myself, but first it was time I found some people I could trust. It was time I went home.