Chapter 70: Ch-70: Ruffled Feathers
Uriel remained where he had settled, seated in the grass near the fourth tree.
His palms rested against the earth, not braced, not strained, simply placed there with a kind of listlessness.
The grass yielded beneath his hands in that patient, living way it had, as though it recognised contact without needing to react to it.
It bent, then held, cool against his skin, breathing in a rhythm so steady it almost felt like something you could listen to if you stayed long enough.
He had already taken stock of himself.
There was no confusion in him about what had happened. No missing detail.
The moment had been clear from beginning to end -- the turn, the hand, the absence of effort in the motion that followed.
The sensation of movement without consent. Stone giving way, not resisting, not even slowing him, just parting as if it had been waiting for instruction it never questioned.
Then the surreal return. The garden receiving him with the same quiet it offered everything else.
It had not been pain that lingered.
It had been the awkwardness of it, So he stayed seated.
Because standing, too quickly, would have felt like pretending the moment had been smaller than it was. And Uriel had never had much patience for pretending.
He heard Lucifer before he saw him.
There was always a sound to him, even when he moved quietly.
Not a noise exactly -- more the sense of something entering a space and knowing, with absolute confidence, that the space would make room for it.
The kind of presence that did not ask to be accommodated. It simply was.
"Don’t," Uriel said.
He didn’t look up, Lucifer came sauntering anyway.
He lowered himself into the grass beside him with that same easy certainty, settling in as though the invitation had been implied all along. Close.
Not close enough to touch, but close enough that the boundary between their spaces became... negotiable.
"I am simply sitting," Lucifer said.
Uriel exhaled slowly through his nose.
"You are not simply sitting."
Lucifer leaned back on one hand, his other brushing absently through the grass, as though testing its texture.
"It’s good grass," he said after a moment, almost conversationally.
"Not just well-grown. There’s something else to it. A kind of... steadiness. You can feel it, if you stop trying to measure it."
Uriel closed his eyes for a brief second, then opened them again.
"Lucifer."
"I’m serious," Lucifer went on, glancing down at his hand as the blades slipped between his fingers.
"Most places, the ground is just... there. This isn’t. This is --"
"Lucifer."
He stopped, just for a moment, and turned his head slightly toward him.
Uriel was still looking ahead, gaze fixed somewhere past the trees, past the light, anywhere that was not directly beside him.
Lucifer followed his line of sight, letting his own gaze drift across the garden. The seventh tree loomed in the distance, its canopy spilling gold like sunlight made tangible.
The air moved faintly, carrying warmth that didn’t belong to any source you could name.
"He hit you rather hard," Lucifer said.
Uriel didn’t answer.
"Through the floor," Lucifer added.
"I am aware."
Lucifer shifted slightly, propping his elbow against his knee now, as though settling into the conversation.
"Forty-three metres," he said, thoughtfully. "That’s... impressive, even by generous standards."
"I am aware of the distance."
"And then," Lucifer continued, "you came through the ceiling."
Uriel’s jaw tightened, just enough to register.
"I was there," he said, flat.
Lucifer inclined his head, conceding the point.
"Yes," he said. "You were."
A brief silence followed. Not empty, but weighted, the kind that sits between two people who both understand more than they are saying.
"There’s a new hole," Lucifer added after a moment.
Uriel said nothing.
Lucifer tilted his head back slightly, looking up toward the fractured ceiling, sunlight pouring through the jagged openings in warm columns.
"Quite clean, really," he went on. "No unnecessary damage. Straight through. Efficient."
Uriel’s fingers pressed a fraction deeper into the grass.
The grass did not protest.
Lucifer studied the edges of the opening for another second, then glanced sideways.
"I’d say it’s rather small," he said, "considering --"
The spear was in Uriel’s hand.
It didn’t arrive with flourish. It didn’t announce itself.
It materialized, as though it had always been there and the moment had only just caught up to it.
Gold ran along its length, steady and unwavering, not bright enough to dazzle, but too present to ignore.
Uriel turned his head.
He looked at Lucifer fully now.
"I was being backhanded," he said, his voice even, measured, "by the entity you were foolish enough to provoke."
Lucifer’s gaze dropped briefly to the spear, then returned to Uriel.
"Mm," he said.
Something in Uriel shifted.
"Do not," he said, carefully, "mm at me."
"You have a spear pointed at me."
"Yes."
Lucifer held his gaze for a moment, then gave a small, almost thoughtful nod.
"And yet," he said, "here I am."
The spear moved.
Lucifer disappeared.
One moment he was there, seated in the grass, the next the space was empty, the blades of grass slowly lifting back into place where his weight had been.
Uriel remained still for a fraction of a second longer, then lowered the spear slightly.
Across the garden, Lucifer stood beside Gabriel, smoothing his coat with a casual flick of his hand as though he had only just arrived.
"He is bullying me," Lucifer said.
Gabriel turned her head toward him.
She took him in first -- the coat, the posture, the faint trace of something beneath the surface that might have been satisfaction.
Then her gaze moved past him, settling on Uriel, who still held the spear, though not quite as rigidly as before.
"Lucifer," she said.
"He pointed a spear at me."
"After you --"
"I made a hole," Uriel said, his voice carrying easily across the space.
"In the ceiling. The new one, He mentioned it."
Gabriel’s expression didn’t change much, but there was a shift there, subtle and unmistakable.
Lucifer raised a hand slightly, as if acknowledging the accuracy without conceding the importance.
"You were backhanded through --"
"I was trying to stop the fight," Uriel said, his tone steady, each word landing exactly where it needed to.
"I was doing what I was supposed to do. He was sitting in the grass making commentary."
Rania had paused again.
Her pen hovered over the page, her eyes moving between the two of them. After a moment, she wrote something down, paused, scratched a line through it, and tried again.
Shai stood a little further off, the analyser in his hands once more. He wasn’t looking at it.
He was watching them, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and the quiet fatigue of someone who had run out of ways to explain what he was seeing.
Khalil glanced once at the spear, assessed it in a heartbeat, and dismissed it just as quickly. His attention shifted back to the shaft. The shaft behaved. The shaft followed rules.
Yosef exhaled softly, his gaze drifting upward to the fractured ceiling before returning to the scene.
Gabriel stepped forward slightly.
"Uriel," she said, her voice calm, steady, the kind that didn’t push but didn’t yield either.
Uriel held her gaze for a moment.
Then the spear lowered.
Not all the way, But lowered enough.
Lucifer’s mouth curved, just faintly.
The tension eased, not vanishing, but loosening its grip on the moment.
And around them, the garden carried on, unchanged and entirely itself, as though none of this required its attention at all.
To be continued...
Author’s notes: A brief moment of levity for our dear Luci, with surreality of the interaction for our mortals.
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