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Food from the Human Realm is known for its variety, its emotional place in a fleeting mortal life… bonds and clutched-close memory, sugar and fish and rice and salt. Food from the Devildom is known for its extremes – impossible, sinful sweetness, burning that shivers all through you like it should leave your insides only scorched charcoal. How much of anything is ever enough?
And food from the Celestial Realm… (food like Simeon the Angel was invited to cook for the House of Lamentation tonight, humming a pensive hymn softly to himself, eyebrows furrowed only slightly)… is known for its otherworldly gentleness, ethereal and exclusive, coveted everywhere but practically never, ever tasted beyond the gleaming fancy cities of the gleaming fancy Celestial Realm itself.
To Simeon, food from the Celestial Realm means so many things. Community and divine expectations, long-stretched history full of loss and muffled doubt and spinning glorious halos, swinging righteous swords. It means his siblings who would be just as baffled by modern texting technology as he is, but also his siblings who still don’t understand why it could possibly matter whether Lucifer texts him back. Whether the fallen angels… the seven demon brothers, Lords of Hell… can still dare to look him in the clear blue wondering eyes.
“You should want the Fallen to be ashamed, in your presence.”
“So Mammon flinched away from your hand, thinking you might strike him? Good.”
“So Leviathan started telling you about a new series he’s been reading and then suddenly buried his face in his hands, apologizing because of course, of course you couldn’t actually be interested? Maybe he’s finally realizing the weight of his sin.”
Hundreds of years ago, Lucifer fell. Leviathan, Asmodeus, Mammon, Belphagor, Beelzebub. They were cursed and twisted beyond themselves, halos cracked, holy swords burning with rejection in their hands, never to be wielded again. The Celestial Realm is barred to them still: even if Simeon begged, even if he cashed in all the favors he’s gathered up over the centuries, he still wouldn’t be able to smuggle them back in. If not for the Devildom… if not for the mercy of Lord Diavolo… they probably wouldn’t be able to gather in the dining room just off from this cozy little kitchen, bickering together over homework and phone games and horror novels Simeon might be interested in borrowing sometime. They might not be alive at all. And… if they were still around, somehow… they would have been forced to become something far more desperate, more horrible than this.
What does it mean that the infamous Devildom was kinder to Simeon’s lost brothers than their own home, their family, their creator? What does it mean that Lord Diavolo could do more to protect Lucifer than Simeon, or even the Archangel Michael himself?
Somewhere in this house, the House of Lamentation, Lucifer has preserved their old discarded angelic uniforms and adornments and swords and all in some sort of perverse, defiant shrine. Simeon knows: he can sense its closeness. Lucifer cannot touch his own holy blade without so much pain – his creator refusing him, heaven rejecting him now and forever – and yet he arranged it prettily on a velvety pillow, red and luxurious, rich as Lord Diavolo the demon prince’s eyes, embroidered with golden peacocks and stars and monstrous bones. Lucifer must have gritted his teeth and summoned an imperious smirk and attended to this work as though he felt no pain at all. But…
But the pain is there. Simeon knew him. Knows him? It must be there, even now, as he orders his brothers to wait patiently for Simeon to finish dinner.
“Don’t bother Simeon. He’s doing us a favor.”
“Doing you a favor, more like it!”
“Yeah, how come you get to bring someone in to take over your shift cooking? Are you paying him, or something?”
No. No, Simeon would never need to be paid to do this. He looks down, suddenly shyer, at his deft, elegant brown hands, squeezing a little ambrosia from a heavenly fruit onto one of the dishes he’s preparing. None of these ingredients could have made it into the depths of the Devildom without him carrying them here personally. What he wants to say, cooking for Lucifer, trying to coax brotherly banter out of him, teasing him, sauntering in close to smile knowingly, as if they share secrets – because they do share secrets… hm. What Simeon wants to say is downright blasphemous.
Not everyone wanted you gone. Not everyone blames you.
I miss you. Even Michael misses you. You know that.
I’m sorry it took me so long to reach out again. I’m sorry, and you know that.
Simeon bakes heavenly bread and roasts fish caught from rivers of starlight. He makes a salad out of candied flowers that melt on the tongue; he pours a cosmic blue draught that tastes like forgiveness, like pure relief. He means to give his long-lost brothers a little bit of what they lost. He means to tell them that, in some small way, if they let him, he could become part of their new home, here. The old home and the new, blended into something only theirs.
Something blasphemous, maybe. Some angels would say so. Not Simeon. Simeon thinks it’s about time Satan, the one of the seven Lords of Hell born here… caught somewhere perpetually between Lucifer and the creatures inheriting the Devildom, inheriting brimstone and howling caverns and eerie, welcoming darkness… tries his brothers’ favorite foods from way back when. Simeon thinks it’s about time they tried to look at each other like family, again – because, beneath everything, what else can they be?
Maybe, if he bakes a glimpse of the Celestial Realm well enough, they’ll believe he means that.