I am trying not to stare at the angels. I am failing. I cannot look away from the way they move: like spiders, too quick and with too many joints. Standing hunched, they are scarcely taller than Father, but their arms stretch near to the floor and bend back upon themselves like reeds grown twisted. I shudder occasionally, imagining what they looked like standing straight. Fists pound upon our door but none dare to break it down. Our neighbors shout, cry, and plead. The king is loudest, “Lot,” he begs, “cast them out! They will leave if you but say the word! Welcome them not into our city!”

Father pretends not to hear them. He licks his lips, not hiding his stare as the two angels scuttle about, twisting and turning while they block our door. Entrance and exit forbidden to those within and without. Neither of our guests can master stillness. “I am a righteous man,” Father insists. “A righteous man. Surely I will be unpunished?” He is trying to appear strong. As always, it only serves to reveal his weakness. His bluster is built on shifting sands.

One of the angels leans towards the door, sniffing, the slits bisecting its head widening and narrowing. Its voice is as horrible as its appearance. “Yes, yes Lot of Sodom, you are a righteous man. You are unlike those of this city, foul in Our eyes. For you have welcomed Us in, while they would keep Us away.” It sounds like rats shifting through rubbish. Like a wound festering. A corpse bloating in the hot noon sun. Its laugh is broken bones grinding against each other. “You shall be rewarded, Lot of Sodom. Your gift shall be as great as you desire. Tell Us, what do you desire most, Lot of Sodom?” It stops sniffing at the door and advances to Father. It smiles at him, and opens its eyes for the first time. Where there should be divinity, I see only hunger. Father visibly holds himself in place, resisting the urge to step back.

I do not possess his will. I cling to Ben. I am the older child, and even if he is the firstborn son it should be I that protects him. He stands firm, holding his place as if there was nothing to fear. He looks at the angels with interest. I do not recognize what lurks behind his eyes. It is new to me, as his gaze roams across their nude form. Their translucent skin does nothing to hide the pulse of crimson blood that swirls back and forth through them, originating and receding from no clear place. It is darker than blood should be. Ben’s eyes linger on the cleft at their crotch. A foul liquid occasionally drips from within. It smells of sea water gone bad. The stone floor beneath them sizzles with each drop.

Father whispers something to the angel. Its grin broadens, revealing teeth like needles. It leans closer, unfurling its wings of white and gold, enshrouding Father as he speaks to the angel further. I do not hear what is said. I do not wish to. I want no part of anything that would be asked of creatures like these. A minute passes, and the angel withdraws its wings. Its tongue is lolling from its mouth like a beast suffering from the heat. “It shall be as you wish, Lot of Sodom. Now, up, take your wife and daughters. Flee this place for now we feast.” At this, the other angel withdraws from the door it was sniffing at in the same manner as its partner.

I try to catch Ben’s eye, to see if any but me caught the misspeak of the angel. For it said daughters. Ben and I are the only children of Father and Mom. Ben never removes his gaze from the angels, until Father is taking us each by the hand, crying for mom, sending us to pack, to take what we needed. I want badly to speak, but I know it would be wrong. Dangerous. The angels looked at me once as Father took them in. In that moment I knew what the hare feels when the jackal gazes upon them.

***

It takes us no more than a quarter of an hour to gather that which Father instructs. The food and water Ben carries. I am given women's clothes, but neither my own or Mom’s. They are new, never worn. Father takes his sword and the best wines we possess. The other valuables he gives to the servants to carry. To Mom, only the heirlooms and keepsakes that she insisted we take. To my suitor, Father instructs him to take only his own goods. “Why are the servants carrying our gold?” asks Ben, speaking what I cannot understand either. Father says nothing, only hurrying us.

The sounds outside the house are beyond understanding. I am grateful to have only heard the angels burst through the doors and take the crowd. Cries for mercy end quickly. Then there are only the wet, fetid sounds of the destruction of bodies. Limbs snapped, torsos emptied, flesh consumed like meat. I had been told that the cries of a pig being slaughtered are akin to a man’s. They lied. No swine can pitch the despair that the human throat sings. The smell of gore and death seeps through our walls, choking us as we work. Above it all, the angels laugh, cry praise to themselves, and thank Father. By name. Lot of Sodom. The words of their jubilation. I mumble a prayer of gratitude that Father did not consider us worth introducing. I pray not for my survival through this. I pray that I do not hear the name Bekirah in their voices.

The sounds of their feasting recede down the street. Father sends first the servants and my suitor, telling them to meet us in Zoar, the nearest city, much larger than ours. He holds us back without explanation. We dare not ask. When we do finally leave, violence still sounds from the square, echoing down alleys and roads. I have held my last meal within myself through this trial, but I fail at the threshold of our house. The stones run with the blood of my neighbors and friends. Where once I ran and played, there is now only an abattoir. I spew and my vomit mixes with what remains of those I knew. I mumble another prayer of gratitude that the angels are now out of sight. I cannot bear to imagine what changes they have undergone after consuming so much flesh.

Father leads us out of the city. We do our best to avoid the deeper pools and puddles of blood but still, by the end, my clothes are red and filthy. None of us speak. Father tries but fails to hide his smile. I look for something peaceful to fix my gaze upon and choose the sky.

***

We follow the road out of the gate that father had pried open in the night to let the angels into our city. Mom leads us, Ben and I walk alongside each other behind her, and Father brings up the read. When we arrive at the hill where the road curves off towards Zoar, Father pauses. He turns his neck slightly and says, “Look, behind us, do you see?” It is the first he has spoken since we left our house. I start to turn but he grabs Ben and I’s shoulders. Father’s grip is iron. Mom, unrestrained, not realizing what is happening, turns. She gasps and turns pale. It is the last sound she makes. I mistake it as blood draining from her face, but the paleness only grows in intensity until her beautiful burnished skin is the color of ivory. And then she crumbles, falling within herself, into her clothes, collapsing into nothing but a spilling pile of white upon the ground. The rotten stink of ocean and spoiled fish fill my nose and I try to run, I try to escape, I try to look anywhere else.

Father does not let me go. “Stop, Beki, stop. It was her sin, not yours. She is not like us.” Bile fills my throat but nothing comes out. No sound. I thought I had understood hate before but now I know differently. Ben is silent as well. He looks at the mess that was our Mom as if she had been a stranger this entire time. Father steers us around her, leaving her on the ground, unmourned and unburied. I want so badly to run back, to scoop some of the white powder up and keep it with me. I do not risk it. I do not want to discover what happens if I should look back. I hate myself for not being able to shed even a single tear for her, the one parent who truly loved us. Father begins humming a tune, and Ben joins him. I recognize it as a hymn of thanksgiving.

***

We do not go to Zoar. Father takes us into the hills, through the ways he learned hunting with his own Father. I try to track our way but I am quickly lost. We end our journey in a cavern, one hidden by shrubs and branches. Within are caches of supplies I recognize as those that had gone missing from our own house. Father had prepared this place. There are bedrolls, clothes, a table and chairs. The floor has been flattened and smoothed. There are three bedrolls. Three chairs. The cave air smells of brine and decay, layered, as though it were brought in again and again over days, weeks. The angels had not been strangers, then. Not to Father, at least.

I wait until he is busy unloading his cargo to pull Ben away. “We must leave,” I hissed. Ben looks at me with a blank expression. Then something moves behind his eyes. A door closes within him.

“And leave Father alone? Is that how we were raised, Beki?” I had been holding him as I spoke, his hand in mine, our usual closeness. I dropped it now.

“Who are you?” I whisper. This is not my brother. He looks the same. A young man, the same green eyes, faint whiskers he styles into a beard like Father but only half as full. His lips, full for a boy, quirked into the half smile he favors as a resting expression. My hand shakes but still I brush the curled black locks from his forehead, our inheritance from Mom. He does not react, nor does he answer me.

“There is no going back, Beki.” I spin on my heel to find Father standing mere inches away. He is quiet, when he wants to be. His face splits into a rictus grin that reaches not to his eyes. “The angels, they told me. They go to Gomorrah next. By then there will be more than two. They will be legion. Zoar is next. They will feast, be fruitful, and multiply.” He reaches for me and I swat his hand away. “We must do the same, Beki.” He is putting his false confidence on again, like an ill-fitting robe it hangs off of him. I can only see his weakness. “Your sister understands.” It comes out as both whisper and boast.

I step back again. “I have no sister, only Ben.” I look at Ben and he is watching me with the same closed expression, unreadable and alien to me now.

Father only smiles at me. “You have nowhere to go, Beki. Here we are safe. I am a righteous man. We will start a new family and I will be a father of nations.”

***

I tried to leave that night. I made it as far as the next hill before I began to hear the screams coming from the direction I had been walking towards. Zoar. Zoar, with its teeming crowds and dense streets. Flesh to feast upon. A far greater number of bodies than what Sodom had contained. The night sky was bright, lit by a moon swollen to her fullness. Dark shapes fly across her face. Spindly, with large wings. I cannot be sure but I thought I saw flashes of gold.

I returned to the cave that is now my home. Father and Ben pretend not to see me return to my bedroll but I can feel their half closed eyes track my body. I do not manage sleep. When I close my eyes, I see only the face of my suitor. He asks me questions through the night. All are some variant of ‘why did you not come with me.’

Father scolds me when my weeping wakes him.

***

In the morning, I rise to find Ben replaced. My brother, impish but sweet, lean but strong, manly but kind; he is gone. A stranger emerges from the bedroll and introduces herself as Benita. Lady of God. I see her bones as Ben’s. The same strong jaw and green eyes, but her cheekbones are too round, her eyes too full of hidden promises. The hair is the same, but far longer, falling to her waist as mine does. Her skin, sandy like mine, glows with a warmth and joy that mine could never match. She stretches, raising her arms above her head. Her robe, the one that Ben had gone to sleep in, falls off a shoulder, revealing her breasts. They sit high on her chest, at least twice as large as mine, and press together pleasantly as she continues to raise her palms to the ceiling. I look away, face flushing, to see Father standing at the entrance of the cave. His eyes flicker to me briefly, and then back to her. He is grinning so widely I hope something in his face will break.

I look back at Benita and she is changing now, robe discarded without care back onto the bedroll. Her skin is unblemished, perfect. She wriggles her wide hips for us as she slips on trousers, turning as they slip over her buttocks to show that she has not the sex of a woman I expected, but a penis. It is semi-erect, bobbing in the air as she forces it into her trousers. She has not a strand of hair other than those on her head. I feel plain before her. I recognize the clothes she is wearing. They are the clothes Father had given me to take with us. They are dyed a light blue, woven with a quality and material far beyond our means and finer than what any of us would wear.

She finishes dressing, wearing only outer clothes, no undergarments. Benita strides past me, bouncing with each step, to greet Father with a hug and a kiss on his cheek. I can only stare dumbly. Father brought food. Bread, a jug of water, a slaughtered fowl. He smells faintly of the sea. I do not ask where the food came from or what brought it. Instead, I ask Benita, “Who are you?” I am standing still in the night clothes I had traded for the fouled traveling clothes that we threw outside the cave while unpacking. I am shaking, worse even then when we walked through the corpses of our neighbors.

She giggles. Her voice is musical, lilting upwards with each word. “Why, I am your sister. Silly Beki! Do you not know me, daughter of my Father?” She raises her hands again and spins. Her tunic is cut low and tailored close beneath her chest. She jiggles as she moves.

I look at Father. “What has happened to them?” I try to make my voice stern, but it cracks at the last word.

Father clasps his hands as if in prayer. “We were granted a blessing, for not sinning as the rest of Sodom had.”

It all comes together. It had been hovering around the periphery of my mind but now I look at it fully. Father had planned each part of it. He had approached or been approached by the angels. Bargained the lives of the world for this. A home in isolation, far from any interference or help. A wife struck down, turned to salt. Money to buy clothes. Supplies, delivered by the butchers themselves. And his daughters. Alone. Without the prying eyes of any others to judge him. And…and…Ben…made into…She was hugging Father again. Whispers something into his ear. His arm falls down to her waist. She presses her new body against him. How much of Ben was left? How much had been erased to make room for this creature? She raises a slender hand to Father’s cheek, rubbing softly with her thumb.

“Stop!” I cry, “H-she is your daughter!” A new idea falls into my mind. “Do you both wish to call the angels upon us?”

Father laughs, sharply, harshly, though he does also step away from Benita, gently disentangling himself. “They commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.” His bluster fades and he looks away from both of us. “It is no sin so long as you are both daughters. They assured me.”

Revulsion fills my heart. The slaughter of our city did not sicken me so. “You are disgusting. Have you both no shame?”

It is not Father who answers me, but Benita. “You will learn in time, sister of mine. It has been ordained.” She winks at me and I turn from them in disgust.

“What child shall come from your union?” I ask, but neither respond.

I look for something to throw or to hit them with. A child’s tantrum, violence without end. Father deserves punishment, to be made to feel every ounce of grief and rage and despair that he has visited upon me and the world. How many dead? How many slaughtered for - for this perversion? A jug of wine sits upon our table. It is full, tan like the sand, and as I rest my hand upon it I wonder how it would feel to bring it down upon him. To beat and beat until no part of him is left. And then what? Me and this creature that wears the bones of my brother? What life is left to me?

I leave the jug where it is. They are not worth spilling blood for. I will not take on the sin of murdering my kin even if it would soothe my soul.

***

There is another delivery, late at night. Wine. Benita and Father drink until they are falling over each other as they stagger to their bedrolls, pushed together. The sounds of their intimacy sicken me so I leave the cave. I sit a score of cubits away, just far enough for their cries and bodies to be silenced. I look out across the hills in the light of the moon one day past full. There are flocks of shapes, moving across clouds and horizons. I can no longer hear screaming from the cities. Instead I hear a song, drifting faintly over the slight breeze.

I still, and cup my ear, straining to hear it more clearly. It rises in pitch and falls again, gentle as a mother cradling a child. I cannot make out the words, but it is beautiful, far lovelier than anything I had ever heard before. I sit and listen for the better part of an hour. Then it ends. There’s a beat of silence, and then the song is replaced by screams, inhumanly high and piercing. I clap my hands to my ears to block it out but it makes no difference.

I cannot say how long it goes on for, only that I unravel as I writhe there on the hill. Something breaks, to never be repaired, but I do not know what it is. Some resistance of mine is gone forever. It is like a theft that happens in the dark of night. You are told that something from your home is missing, but you cannot find it no matter how hard you search. There is something gone from me, some barrier or moral and I cannot find even the hollow it once filled as something has been put in its place. That is the worst part. There is nothing more precious that can be taken from me than my own knowledge of self. No piece more important than knowing them all.

The screaming ends as suddenly as it begins, after an eternity of pain and aural violation. I rise shakily to my feet and collapse again after the first step. The crawl back to the cave is humiliating, debasing, even if none are present to see it. Aside from the angels, possibly. I try not to think about whether they are watching us. At our new home, I find Father and Benita sleeping peacefully, together atop their beds, entangled and nude. Bile fills my throat…but other things else as well. New feelings that are far less welcome, strange to me as if planted by another’s hand.

Envy.

Jealousy.

Longing.

I strike myself across the cheek. What thoughts are these? Benita’s chest is bare, and watching her breast rise and fall, I grant myself grace for at least some of the envy. It was unfair, for her, a creature made by a perverse blessing to have such a voluptuous body. Her tits should be mine, her hips better suited on me, and her lips, so full, and soft, and I imagine what it would feel like to kiss them, to run my fingers across her chest, to reach between those plush thighs and-

I turn my mind blank, exerting all my will to do so. I know now what has broken and what those screams took from me. My stomach turns, the meager amount of food I’d allowed myself to take earlier is souring in my guts. I drag my bedroll away from theirs, carefully lay down, and turn away from them, facing the wall. I toss and turn for hours, with no respite, no rest. My mind strays from me, constantly, by bits and turns, until I see only Benita in poses imagined: leaning over me, her breasts hanging just above my mouth. Bent over our table, legs spread white and ass swaying. On her back, curled like a butterfly, her hard, thick cock dripping and twitching.

Dampness spreads from my crotch as heat wakens in my loins. I slip my hand to my sex, and whimper as I graze my engorging clit. I clamp my hand over my mouth, turn to see if my family has stirred. They have not, but Benita has turned towards me, snoring gently, displaying her front to my leering eyes. I can’t look away, and before I realize what I’m doing my hand is back at my pussy, piercing myself with two fingers as I watch her in the faint candlelight. I imagine what it would feel like to lower myself onto her cock, to take my sister into myself. The image becomes so strong I can see myself walking over to her, gently shaking her awake. I press her back against the bedroll, straddle her with my thighs, and slowly come down onto her…

My orgasm is so sudden that I cry out. It cannot have been more than mere seconds but I am already clenching around my fingers, filling with warmth and pleasure as I never have before. What work of evil is this? I let the fantasy take over. They are not my fingers but Benita’s cock, piercing me again and again, it is my sister filling me, thrusting into me again and again as I bounce and grind against her, holding myself up by her breasts, so soft under my hands, spilling out between my fingers, her beautiful lips pursed with pleasure, that little half smile caught-

I cum again, before the first had truly even ended. I bite my tongue, tasting blood, trying to remain quiet. But when I open my eyes, I see Benita watching me. She winks at me again, just like before.

I fling myself onto my side, away from them, and screw my eyes shut.

Within a half hour I am touching myself again, thinking of my sister.

***

Days pass, blending together. Benita and I wash ourselves in the morning by the river, and I find it hard to keep my hands away from her when we do so. She has a magnetism to her, and I am becoming ragged trying to keep away. It is made all the harder as she finds excuses to touch me. Passing the soap between us, her hand will linger in mine. Scrubbing my back, she always goes lower than necessary, resting on my hips. I try to ignore her erection in these moments.

Father does not join us for washing. He has stopped shaving as well. He is being eaten from within, a hollow shell of the already pathetic man he once was.

So why do I find excuses to stay in the cave when Benita goes to him? Why do I keep thinking that it should be me with him, the eldest daughter, not the youngest?

He still disgusts me. I can barely stand to look at him, filthy and unkempt. It is grotesque for Benita to touch him. Not as his daughter, but for any as beautiful as she to be with someone as unworthy as him. I cannot free my mind from the wrongness anymore than I can keep my fingers from myself at night when I watch her.

***

The food comes regularly, but it has been weeks since Father retrieved it. In his stead, I do. I am becoming accustomed to the angels, their smell, their unnatural movements. I wonder if I will ever find their presence welcome. I have, after all, much time to grow familiar.

The third time we meet, I ask a question to the angel who has delivered our supplies to us. “Can Benita still…” I cannot speak the rest.

The angel is preening, pinching a few pin feathers between fingers in anticipation of its flight. “No. She cannot. She is barren, in both senses. Lot is still virile. You are still fruitful.”

It leaves me with those words and the bitterness in my heart.

***

We have been here for a year now. I know each inch of this cave that is my home. Despite my greater sense, a part of me did wonder if Benita would ever become with child. She does not. Of course she does not. The way they lay with each other will never bear such fruits.

I form a plan, eventually. It is simple, truly. Benita is too beautiful for either of us. Me, in my plainness, and Father in his ugliness. If we are to be fruitful, it must be me that takes this on. I am, after all, the eldest daughter. She is too good for him. She should not debase herself so.

***

It is far worse than I could prepare for.

***

Afterwards I go to the river, freezing, but so dirty that I can do nothing but scrub myself clean. I claw at my skin with my nails, willing his filth to come off. I cannot see it but I can feel the sticking, crawling filth of his touch like tar upon my skin. My blood is staining the water pink but it is not enough, the filth is under my skin, it is in my muscles, my bones, it is in the shape of my face, so like his. I can feel his filth inside of me, crawling towards my womb. I try to still my hands, to resist clawing out the one thing I needed him for. I am failing to restrain myself, I need to be free, I need to be clean, I need him out, I need to be clean, I need-

Slender hands on mine stop me. It is my sister. My beautiful, precious sister.

Benita. I kissed her. Her lips taste of fruit and are softer than I could ever imagine. She takes me into her arms and that night we truly make love. It is sweet and gentle and as she enters me by the river we wash in. I feel clean again, complete for the first time. Afterwards I see something in her eyes I have not seen since our last day in Sodom. I see my sibling. The one I protected as we grew up under Father’s hand. We weep together and I stroke her hair, tell her it will be ok, that her big sister will protect her.

***

Father did not like it, but he accepted my bargain. He kept from Benita. I come to him when he desires. Benita cares for me after. Sister of mine. She keeps me alive and sane as best she can while I keep her safe. We will both last until Father has given me that which Bernita cannot.

A child. Two. A boy and girl. To keep the angels satisfied.

***

The moon swells and shrinks twice before I miss my first period. A few cycles later my stomach became visibly swollen. I weep with relief.

Away from Father, our time is almost pleasant. Together, Benita and I recall as much advice Mom had given us for raising children. Occasionally the angels leave scrolls with our food, usually for entertainment but now mixed in are books for midwives, herbalists, and other healing and parenthood advice. We are dutiful in our studies.

Alone, with just us, I find more of my sibling in Benita than I had initially feared. Old jokes bring a giggle to her lips. Memories are still shared, and she reminds me of many small moments I had forgotten of our lives before. For a time, this stays my hands from her body, but only for a time. I cannot survive without her bodily comfort and neither can she. I wonder if she still sees the sister she knew in me. So much has been lost. I do not dare to ask.

***

Our studies pay off. My son is born easily, as such things go. At three weeks old, I named him Mo. He is healthy, and has Mom’s green eyes and hair. I am glad to see so little of Father in him. I take after him, unlike my sister. I am glad his looks have not followed me to our children. Benita keeps Father away, denying every request he has to hold his grandson.

***

Five months pass before I am again with child. I rush into the peace it brings with eagerness. He does not know it yet, but Father will never touch any of us again, should the sex of the child be what I pray for. Benita and I laugh together over this. Father does not understand that his grunting over me each night brings his death closer each day. How could he? He is an idiot, little better than a beast. I joke the next day to the angel that brings our food. “Soon you will have less to carry. Won’t that be nice?”

It looks at me with far too much knowledge. I regret my joke. It says “A child eats more than a man diminished.” Then it takes off, leaving me with a small pile of supplies and Benita with Mo. He coos and fights Benita, trying to get out of her arms. He is precocious, like her; eager to walk, to run, to see the world. Soon, I will give it to him. His inheritance, this world that his idiot Grandfather had emptied to satisfy his lust.

***

The second birth is harder, more draining. She is a girl, and I name her Ami. She is her Grandfather’s doom, and I smile and laugh as I hold her to my chest. Her wails are music to my ears. Strong lungs. A fighter. She will live.

That night, as he sleeps, I cave Father’s skull in with the wine jug he emptied at dinner. I drag the corpse into the dirt for the angels to take. It nearly kills me, the exertion after labor, but I must do it. I cannot bear to let him live a second more than needed.

***

Raising children is easier with just Benita. We have the occasional spat, whose turn it is to feed Ami, the regular bickering of a couple. But our bond is strong, and devotion powerful. We fit well with each other. Better than we had before her change. I cannot imagine a better partner.

She laughs more than cries now, and its sound fills my soul. Bright and light and a little troublesome, like her. The shadow that once hung behind her eyes has vanished. Her hair fades faster than mine, grey appearing at her temples and curls a year before mine do. We tease each other, her the younger sister and I, the more burdened one. And yet wrinkles appear at her eyes before mine. As she curls within my arms at night, I wonder if this presages some other changes within our bodies. How long will we have together? What costs did her transformation have that I do not see?

We invent stories with our children. Tell them about people they will never meet who once lived with us in a city now ruined. I fear that they will never understand what it is like to live among people other than their own family. At the very least, Benita and I make a happy family for them.

***

I have grown used to the angels. They will never harm us, after all. We have fulfilled their desire. Our routine keeps Benita with Mo and Ami when an angel comes to us with the day’s food. Both of our children were born with no fear of them. They show the same interest and curiosity towards the angels that they do to stray cats and nesting birds. I do not worry the angels will hurt them. I worry they will hurt themselves in their eagerness to chase after the winged messengers.

The angel who has brought us our bread and meat today lingers, as if expecting something. I look at it with naked curiosity. What could it want from us? Ridiculous as it may be, I have even grown accustomed to their voices and smell and stand close, not more than a few paces away. I see its muscles tense and swirling blood clot before it speaks, as if these words are difficult for it to bring out.

“Are you happy here?” it asks.

I nod. “Yes, I believe I am. It is peaceful. Simple. Now. After all that has passed.” My answer surprises me, but on examination I can find no untruth within it. “Why do all this?” I ask, unable to think of another question to venture.

It laughs, saw on bone, but I have learned to love even that noise. “You will fill the Earth with your offspring. We will wait, filling the heavens with Our eyes. We will watch you spread and multiply. When the time is right, We will descend again and feast. You are Our cattle. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Feast without end. Each time Our choir grows.”

I had suspected as much, and truthfully this was not the question I had wanted answered, so I asked again. “Why turn Benita as you did? Why make us desire her? Why not simply give her a womb? Or enkindle the same desire in me for Father?”

Its grin is lovely in its own way as its long and sharp teeth crowd out past its thin lips. “Sweet Bekirah.” I shudder when it says my name. Not out of horror, but from simple stimulation. Hearing it say the word shakes some part of me at my core. “You hated your father. You would never lay with him, no matter how long we left you with each other. Benita? She is suited for neither bearing nor planting a child. Lust and jealousy, We can enkindle. Creation, We cannot. Envy and care are powerful emotions for you. They drove you to the arms of one you hate. Now they keep you in the arms of the one you love.”

I want to argue, to claim otherwise, that I would have cared for the human race enough to swallow my disgust. That I was of a cleaner heart than them. I know otherwise, now. I love my sister and now my children as well. I would never and will never choose any over them. “We are not people to you, are we?” I ask instead.

The angel shakes its head. “As I said. You are Our cattle. Do you ask your cow which bull they prefer? Rejoice, Bekirah. You will be a wonderful mother. Great shall be your whelp. Fruitful will be their loins. They must be so, for our hunger is deep and unending. Now go back to your sister and be dutiful to your children. Pray that both survive to breeding age or you too will know how our teeth feel.”

***

Benita is waiting for me within our home. She is bouncing Ami on her hip as Mo plays some game with wooden animals on the floor. They are so beautiful together. How can beauty come from such things? I do not know but I join them, kissing my sister gently on her lips as I take our daughter into my arms. We will give them the world. They will never know the pain we did. Perhaps someday I will find it in myself to praise Father for this one thing. Monster that he was, I have joy now. I kept the jug I killed him with but it carries water now. Benita pours a drink for us all. We keep the jug on the table, always. It is our favorite treasure in the entire world.