Hi! So, I was wondering if you're interested in writing something like a retelling of Adam and Eve and the Serpent and all, the part where the Serpent lures Eve to eat the apple and all. Love your writting!
"If you can answer me one question," said the serpent, "I will leave you in peace."
Eve considered. "What's the question?"
The serpent smiled. He stretched; out of the grass, winding up and up and up until he had taken a form not entirely dissimilar to that of a human, so he could reach up to pluck one of the many red apples from the forbidden tree. The knowledge tree. He brought it up to his inhumanly handsome face and inhaled its sweet scent.
"If you eat from the fruit, then your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as gods, knowing of both good and evil."
"That is not a question," said she, and the serpent's smile grew.
"Why might god ask your eyes to be eternally closed?"
Eve opened her mouth. She shut it again. "To protect us," she said, at last. "From death."
The serpent shrugged, and bit into the tender flesh of the apple, the same fine shade as his mouth. "The fruit itself will not kill you, and so you see, he has lied to you once already."
He licked the juice from his lips with one flick of a forked tongue. "I know this, you see. And with knowledge yourself," he said, "you could protect yourself."
"He protects us from the weight of knowledge itself."
"So there is something in this beautiful world that he does not want you to see. Curious."
Her gaze darted to the fruit, and back to the serpent's face. She squared her shoulders. "We are not meant to be as gods."
"Of course not. You would not need him then, either."
She fell silent, at that, though it could surely not be true. Love was a form of need, entirely separate to any power.
"What horror can there be," the serpent murmured, and held out the apple, "in asking for proof in exchange for your loyalty and obedience? Is that not indeed wise? Is that not fair? Is that not love, to know someone utterly and choose them with full knowledge?"
She took the fruit before she'd even realised what she was doing, but did not bite. It fit her palm perfectly, smooth and cool, except for the bite where the serpent's teeth had sunk in and broken the surface. She felt like the apple. Bitten, by those sly teeth, tasted in some terrible way by that subtle tongue, for she could feel the questions inside her now.
The apple was not death. And knowledge - what harm was there, honestly, in knowledge? Unless to know was to know something so terrible that she could not stand to love anything anymore, that the world was ruined by it.
And yet. Would not knowing the rotten depths change them? She looked at the apple, but could see no maggots, no decay. Only fruit. Only sustenance. Only something grown, as all things were grown, with the proper nourishment and care beneath the light.
She tossed the apple to the ground as if burnt. "I do not need proof," she hissed, as if she were the snake.
He shrugged again, inclined his head in acknowledgement of their bargain, and with gleaming eyes and a flash of scales was gone back into the emerald grass.
She did not need proof, and yet, the next day - she was back. She, who would echo across the centuries, in Bluebeard's wife holding a bloodied key, in Orpheus glancing back not out of wilful disobedience but only affection, in Psyche who deserved to know who had plucked her into their bed.
Why might any creature ask a woman not to look?
She plucked an apple and she bit. She tasted sweetness, and then she tasted bitterness as metallic as blood flooding her mouth.
And she did not know, then, of good and evil. She knew of secrets, and of privacy, because she learnt that they had been kept from her.
She knew of evil when, in fury, in cruelty, in disappointment, she was cast out of all that she had ever known.
When, in echoes, the other wives bled out in the cellar and opening the door was not what killed them. When Eurydice turned to stone. When Psyche was abandoned, by someone who claimed to love her, because she only wanted to see him truly.
She found the serpent, a long way away, with another apple in his hand. He lounged beneath the branches of a barren tree, white as bone, white as morning light, and he smiled again to see her.
"You said the fruit would not kill me."
"The fruit," said he, "is not what is killing you."
"You said that we could protect ourselves. You said that we would be as gods!"
"Yes." His smile was sad. "You are exactly like him now. You do not want me anymore. Is that not protection?"
Her eyes narrowed, again, even as her stupid heart panged.
"You promised," she said, and her voice cracked, "that there would be no horror."
"No." The smile grew sadder still. "I asked a question. I hoped for a different answer for you than the one that I once got. A better one. If that is sin, then so is love."
She sat down beside him, jaw clenched, alone - for her husband blamed her for all that she had lost them, as if he had not made choices too.
The serpent was warm against her skin. He raised his brows, and cut a slice of the apple, offering her a piece.
And they sat, together, in an orchard forgotten by time, talking of love and control until all of the apple slices were gone.
