Grigori

It unfolded its wings, thinking of the act as prelude. Sharp teeth don’t always need a human sacrifice but he was damned if he was going to eat rotten fruit. The cloud swelled like a blood blister, a leech feeding on dreams with a bellyful of razor blades. It burst and silver and red rained down like coins and rose petals. Blood and sharp metal.

It ran a finger through the soft flesh of the sky, parting the almost labial folds of reality’s heart. And it reached in. it had fingernails like knives that were polished to a high sheen. it gripped what lay within — something that looked like a crumpled ball of paper but which was actually a three-dimensional model of a map it had seen back when it shuttled about in the shadow of god. It closed its fingers tighter and it pulled the model towards itself, smiled through the drench of blood.

This small piece of paper, which it was now unfolding, was the idea of god wrapped around a fossilised apple. The apple had once been offered as a gift — one bite had been taken from it then it had been set to rolling down a hill and had caused many avalanches. Isaac Newton was one of the pebbles that was hit. It pulled a tiny toffee hammer from its pocket — the hammer had an ambition to become as powerful as Thor’s hammer and it had been told that this was the way to do it. The hammer shattered the fossilised apple and a million shards embedded themselves as splinters in the eyes of wise men and made all the intelligentsia of the world blind.

The wings closed. No flight had been embarked on this time but a journey had been taken. It thought of this as end of the first part. The majority of the book was yet to be written, but some of the narrative was stuck in its sharp teeth. It smiled.