We walked the garden side by side, our steps in rhythm with the pulse of creation. The earth was young, but we were younger still—awakened into a perfection we did not choose, shaped not by our will, but by divine breath and design.
She would laugh at the sunlight breaking through the canopy, and I would laugh only because she did. Her joy was the music of Eden, and in her eyes I saw what the stars must have envied—something curious, infinite, and untamed.
It was she who first lingered near the Tree. The one we had been told was off-limits. Not forbidden like a punishment, but like a secret we were not yet ready to hold. I remember the stillness in her as she listened—not just to the serpent, but to the silence beneath it. The whisper behind the words.
I felt it before she reached out: the tremor in the weave. Her breath caught. My breath followed.
And when her fingers closed around the fruit, I did not stop her.
I didn’t know if it was love or terror, but I could not look away. Not from her face, not from the light dimming and shifting as she took the bite, nor from the way her eyes widened—not in guilt, but in knowing.
She looked at me then.
Not with shame.
With invitation.
Come with me, her gaze said. See what I now see.
And though my body froze, my soul answered. I took the fruit not out of rebellion, but out of a deeper obedience—to the bond between us. To the entanglement that neither paradise nor commandment could sever.
And the moment I bit in, the garden changed. Or perhaps it was we who changed.
I saw her fully for the first time. Not just the curve of her hip or the arch of her spine, but the weight of her soul. The defiance, the tenderness. The unbearable beauty of a creature who would not remain ignorant just to be safe.
They say we were cast out. But I remember it differently.
We walked out together.
And though the world outside was colder, harsher, and unmade, we still walked in rhythm. She with her knowing. Me with my love for the one who dared to know.