In the Beginning Twice Over

Her Beginning

In the beginning, everything was good.

There was rhythm. Not chaos, not exile, not shame—just rhythm. Breath and pulse, water and wind, the divine hum of harmony.

That’s how I remember it, anyway.

We were created together on the same day, in the same breath. Through a divine decree, “Let Us make them in Our image.” Them. The gods—or God, or whatever that great multiplicity was—spoke, and we simply were.

I remember looking at Adam and thinking, Well, this is interesting.

As we began our lives together, I noticed that he looked like me, but heavier in the shoulders and with less curiosity in the eyes. He named things, which was cute—animals, plants, the occasional rock. Meanwhile, I studied how light curved through the canopy and wondered what it all meant.

What was this place? Why were we here? Who was that voice in the sky—Elohim, they called themselves—and where did they live? I asked Adam once, and he said, “Does it matter?”

Yes. Obviously, it mattered. You can’t just wake up one day under a fig tree and not ask existential questions!

But that’s Adam for you. He liked order, rules, knowing where everything went. I liked meaning, movement, knowing why. So I stopped talking to Adam about it.

The world, for me, was perfect because it was alive. Even the air felt intentional, like a divine breath still pulsing through everything. We didn’t call it paradise—we called it good. And every day, when the sun bowed into the sea and the stars took their watch, I felt certain the universe was still expanding inside us.

We weren’t subjects. We were co-creators.

There was no forbidden fruit in my world. Just nourishment, beauty, balance. We ate freely, laughed easily, and slept without fear.

The only thing that ever unsettled me was the chill that crept in after sundown. Sometimes it was cold at night, and the only way to stay warm was to find shelter and huddle together in our nakedness. I didn’t mind, exactly—I just wondered why it mattered. How our skin, so perfectly made, could feel both exposed and holy.

Despite the cold, I looked forward to nightfall, when sometimes, I swear, I heard the voice of Elohim whisper in my dreams—not commands, but questions. What will you make of this? What will you become?

It never occurred to me there was a version of the world that divine curiosity could be mistaken for disobedience.

His Beginning

Eve says we were made together. Cute theory. But no. I was here first.

I remember the dirt. The smell of clay before rain. Yahweh kneeling in it, shaping me like a craftsman. I remember coughing as my lungs filled with breath. My first thought was, That was interesting. My second was, Now what?

Yahweh—He’s not like Elohim, those distant voices Eve hears in her sleep. He’s hands-on. He walks around, mutters to Himself, plants things, fixes things, sometimes storms off in thunder when He’s annoyed. I like Him. Feels relatable.

At first, it was just me and Him, hanging out. He made a garden, told me to “work it and keep it,” whatever that meant. He brought animals to me for naming—lion, camel, armadillo. (That one still makes me laugh.) But He must’ve noticed I was lonely, because one afternoon He knocked me out cold, and when I woke up, there was Eve…and a sharp pain in my side.

And look, I’ll be honest—she was dazzling. Confusing, but dazzling. Always asking questions, always wandering. The first week she tried to name the wind. I told her it already had a name: wind. She just smiled like she knew better.

There was only one rule here: don’t eat from that one tree. The Tree of Knowledge. Yahweh said it would kill us. Seemed simple enough. But Eve—she’s got that curiosity that makes snakes talk.

Next thing I know, she’s handing me fruit, eyes blazing like she’s seen eternity. I bite it, because what else do you do when someone looks at you like that? Then Yahweh shows up, and all hell breaks loose. Literally.

We hid, ashamed. He called my name like thunder, and when He found us, I panicked. I blamed her. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

And then came the words that have haunted me since:

Cursed is the ground because of you.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat.

You will return to the dust.

Dust. Back to square one.

Her Becoming

After the garden, the world felt raw, untamed. No golden light pouring through leaves, no divine hum lacing the air. But still—creation continued. The earth was rougher, yes, but it responded to touch, to effort. I planted seeds and whispered to them, remembering how Elohim had once whispered to me. I could create just like Them.

When I bore my son, the pain came in waves that felt older than language. But it wasn’t punishment. It was participation. The ache was a sign of life pushing forward, not of judgment pulling back. Creation hurts. Creation always hurts. And still, it is good.

I looked down at Cain’s tiny hands and thought: Elohim breathes here, too. The divine spark hadn’t left us—it had multiplied.

Maybe I’ll teach him to listen for that hum—the sound of unity, of balance. I’ll tell him that everything is connected, that divinity is plural, that creation didn’t end; it continues through us.

That’s the story I’ll pass down. The story of Elohim.

His Becoming

When Cain was born, I saw Yahweh’s words made flesh: life out of dust, meaning out of labour. The world may be harsh, but it answers when I work it. The sweat, the ache, the tending—it’s holy in its own way.

I’ll teach my son the story as Yahweh taught me: that the world is ordered by obedience, held together by reverence, defined by toil. That disobedience carries consequence, and every gift has a cost.

He’ll need that story. The world is too wild for anything else.

Yahweh made me from dust, and to dust I’ll return—but before I do, I’ll make sure my son knows who he is. We are men of soil, men of striving, men of strength.

That’s the story I’ll pass down. The story of Yahweh.

Together

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the baby’s small, steady breaths. The garden felt far away now, like a dream fading in daylight. But this moment—raw, real, pulsing—felt truer than anything we’d left behind.

Eve looked at me then—really looked—and I saw the quiet knowing in her eyes. The awareness that stories, like seeds, grow wild once they leave your hands. Some become forests. Some become chains.

Eve kissed the child’s forehead and whispered, “Let them remember that we were both there. Both human. Both divine.”

We looked at our beautiful boy and, at the same time, said,

“It is very good.”