Incremental

There float two angels in the center of the endless stairs, carved in the stone of the mountain, which leads down to the garden. The garden is well lit.

One stands on one of the wings of the other; the first has folded its wings, the second has spread them. The second floats in the light coming from below, the first stands in the darkness inside the mountain.

You can equally rise up the stairs or descend, but the light is only at the bottom. Therefore, predictably, a stream of men is going down. There is nobody ascending, though nothing prevents them from doing so and the two angels are both looking up and interrogating only those going down.

The stairs are not a helix but many spirals large and small of steps large and small altogether connected. One might say haphazardly, but men have long discovered the simple rule behind the form.

The rule is even simpler than the equation for a helix; angels are known to like that which is most plain. That which is most plain, however, is not always obvious at first glance.

Each of the beings descending the stairs has their own, equally simple, but at first glance complex skeletal form. Some have more than one body; the bodies usually have the same face. That's how they can be so identified.

         

Those walk down so close together they might as well hold hands.

None are huddled; all walk straight. They are not hurried; they walk slowly. They descend gently.

All the forms shuffle along the steps very slowly. No rails exist to prevent a fall.

A fall would get them to the garden immediately, but in the wrong way. Clearly they're not sure that they'll survive the fall. Else long ago some of them would've jumped.

That reveals that to get somewhere there usually exists a right way and a wrong way.

Every one in a while a stone is set loose and falls straight down along the middle, and the crowd wishfully watches it. Except for the angels, who continue looking above themselves, and when the stone comes don't even flinch. Not that one ever hit.

[I might continue this story . . . in a later edit or post.]

©2017 tibra.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This is a work of fiction. Events, names, places, characters are either imagined or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real events or persons or places is coincidental . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Text, Illustrations: tibra.