There were so very many times that the universe was created, so many ways it was scooped up out of the void and shaped - molded and manipulated until it gleamed and shone and teamed with life. Or, more properly, there were so many different eyes that watched as it happened, and lips that spoke of it again and again that it seems there are no two stories the same - each story changing as years passed to decades and decades to centuries and centuries to eons, but that need not concern us. Not now, nor here.
There is only one Silver City, though, and only one story that wraps itself around and around and around the cold, quiet, sterile columns of that perfect citadel. Only one story that inscribes itself into the very foundation of the home of the heavenly hosts as the story of creation.
The story is theirs, Michael's and Lucifer's.
The Morningstar and his brother, his twin, his faultless mate: they came first. In the dawn of the first biblical day, before there were suns to light the dark and spit fire out across the sky, there were those two; that matched pair. Made by the same hand, and carved from the same material, they were first among the first - and it was they who Created for the Creator.
It was their wings that first stirred the winds that turn our worlds so very slowly, that breeze over our small bodies as we live our small lives. Their wings, white and shining through the black as they swooped and dove, their feathers brushing as they played - archangels and children, wise and innocent and completely themselves.
Michael: stern, noble and kind. Hands gentle and eyes sweet as he looked upon his companion, as he touched the leaner lines of Lucifer's body, and learned the lay of it.
"This is flesh," he said aloud, his fingers curled around a pale, cool arm.
And Lucifer: clever, fierce and proud. Eyes lambent and gold as he looked up - wild already, in a face sharp and beautiful.
"Yes, it is," he answered, covering Michael's hand with his own. "It is my flesh."
And Michael smiled then, the first smile - kind, and real and shining like his wings, like the stars that he birthed into being for his Maker, who watched, disembodied and still, as Lucifer's hand rose to touch Michael's face, to twine in the long strands of his silken hair.
"And this is yours," Lucifer said, as his other hand moved up Michael's torso, as it molded itself there against the warmth. He rubbed his thumb over the skin, and Michael's mouth fell open, and he gasped for the air that was not yet there.
"It is good, is it not?" Michael asked as Lucifer repeated the motion. "To touch one another's flesh?"
And Lucifer said, "Yes," and touched his fingers to Michael's mouth, and his legs, and his back and every inch of his body and then Michael did the same, and it *was* good. Their wings folded round them, and there, in that first day, before they made the suns for their Maker, they touched one another again and again and they loved first. Michael, gravely and seriously, and Lucifer, bold and fearless and already with a thin edge of anger to the wants that were beginning to birth themselves inside his brand new chest.
Their Maker, who watched and saw and knew all that was in the long pages of the book chained to the arm of the eldest of the Endless, then said, "Now, you shall form for me the Universe," and Michael and Lucifer broke apart from one another.
They flew to the center of the void - that place where the nothingness was most concentrated and dark, and the Maker said, "Michael, you shall shape it," and Michael bowed his great head in obedience.
He turned to Lucifer, and held out his graceful hand, and Michael said, "And your will shall power it." His voice rang like bells, and Lucifer's eyes softened and shone, and he placed his palm in Michael's, and poured himself into his mate, his twin, his only peer.
Lucifer's will, his indomitable and powerful will, shot through Michael like water over falls - it roared and rushed, and trickled through Michael and then became light, and Michael softened it, gave it purpose, shaped it into spheres and worlds and twinklings of light and fire that glimmered. Michael birthed into being the universe, his fingers tightly woven with Lucifer's, his body filled with Lucifer, and when it was done, he felt emptied out and hollow.
He said, "We were one, then," and Lucifer turned his face away, half-shadowed now by the new suns and stars that he had helped make. He said nothing, and Michael said again, "We were one and now we are two."
Lucifer said, "It should not be this way," and Michael had no answer, but turned away, and left - his fingers sliding out of Lucifer's as he winged far out, to the shade of an infant moon, and he asked his Maker, "Why?"
And the Maker was silent, and Michael bowed his head, and he wept, but he did not question. He simply wept, and his tears were the first. Across the universe - the one that was not theirs to rule, his and Lucifer's, but that was made up of their unity - the first blasphemy was born in Lucifer's breast.