“How is that even possible?”, Azrael was still in shock. “I mean, I was there when she died. Her soul cracked and shattered into pieces. How did the Primordials manage to save her? And her husband, Carol of Timisoara. His soul would have been irrecoverably damaged by the time she died. She would refuse to recover if he, too, wasn’t saved. I simply don’t understand how this was all possible to salvage”, he gestured in dismay.

“Apparently for the Primordials, or the Alpha pair, as Hypatia would call them, the originators of Creation, the only limit to what they can do is the Will of God. If God wills something to be, they can do it. This means that their powers are such, that their limits are philosophical, rather than technical. From what I gather, if someone took this coffee cup, and dispersed its particles across all of space and time, Shiva could wave a hand and put them all together instantly, and it wouldn’t even be hard for him. Or he could return in time to the point where it was broken, and un-break it so that the problem never would have occurred. Tracking all the particles of one’s soul across all of Time and Space, multiple Universes, multiple Universe-types, it’s so easy for both of them, it’s on the unconscious level, like drinking coffee for us. Remember what Shiva and Shakti discussed when she died?”, Kay pointed out.

“They talked about free will limiting what they can do”, Azrael remembered.

“Exactly. Contracts based on free will are respected, because that is the Will of God. They allowed Satan to have the Jewel, because it was the Will of God. They weren’t even discussing the technicalities. Of course they could modify things in Time so that Carol didn’t yet sell his soul to Satan and they would just intervene to prevent it, or grab him from that time and transport him to the future a few weeks, so that the situation Satan purported to ‘solve’ was already gone. As I understand it, the Turks captured his village and were about to impale all men. Satan made him a deal – if he sold him his soul, only he would die, and the rest would be saved. Interfere with this event, and the dilemma never occurs, Satan doesn’t have the opportunity to trick him, problem solved. But it is not the Will of God for people to be saved from their legitimate choices. God warned Carol that it was a wrong choice, and he did it anyway, because he believed God doesn’t care about him, that his existence is worthless and there’s nothing of value for him in the future anyway. He chose to believe that, and he acted upon his belief. He did change his mind later, but it was too late by then. However, God is not stupid. He arranged a complex situation that will serve multiple purposes. It will teach Carol, as well as others, an important lesson about having faith, and trusting what you feel, rather than what you see. What you see is garbage, especially in that world. Satan determines what you see and what it looks like. What you feel is of a higher order. It is also a test for Grace. I think God has something of immense value planned for her, and the test was whether she will just accept her loss and continue being an angel forever, or will she jump into the fire after her husband because she feels it’s her fate. She passed the test of fate, where Carol failed”, she explained.

“But couldn’t Shiva and Shakti figure all of this out on their own, without you?”, Hypatia was confused.

“Of course they could have. But it was the Will of God for them to do nothing, and wait, because it was a wider, more complicated test. How much will others care? Will we just accept her loss, shrug and move on, or will we deny reality and try to figure out a way for her to be saved? Will Gods shrug, or cry in shock over her? Only when we came to the Primordials with our hypothesis, and when everybody cared, were they allowed to interfere. And she wouldn’t have been saved without all the interventions. It was God’s providence that Lord Buddha brought his wife to Lord Shiva because she was distraught from all the evil she recently had to witness; he then reacted by reinforcing souls of the Judges from empathy damage. Grace was a Judge, your husband’s lieutenant. This means that her soul had higher healing magic placed upon her, which would hold her together in case of catastrophic damage, of exactly the kind that occurred”.

“So, God prepared all things in advance, but all of us had to play a role in order for her to be saved?”, Azrael tried to wrap his mind around this.

“We had to reject reality, rather than accept it. Grace had to reject reality – her last thought was ‘no’, she refused to accept it, and her soul surged toward her husband protectively before her pain broke her. Kay and I refused to accept that she’s gone and went through all kinds of convoluted ideas to figure out what happened and if she can be saved. All of you wept for her, including the Primordials, because she was not just anyone. She was family. Our tears meant empathy, protection, refusal to accept that she is gone. Also, both of you owed her favours, because she kept helping without ever asking for anything in return. God owed her a favour, because he set her up with a husband whose foolish choice doomed them both. Those were all the essential parts Father and Mother used to save them. It’s all an important lesson: we bring things into reality with our choices. Reality isn’t just an external thing which we acknowledge. You are Judges. You volunteered to help souls that would otherwise be in a much, much worse position. Without you acting as merciful hands of God, reality would be a much colder, crueler thing. You didn’t just accept the reality of things, you jumped in to make it better. Grace didn’t just accept her husband’s loss; she jumped into death after him. We didn’t just accept her loss, we worked to save her. By refusing to accept reality, by saying ‘not on my watch’, we allowed the Will of God to manifest in a higher way”, Azazel explained.

“So what is their condition now?”, Hypatia wondered. “Suspended in a broken limbo until Sanat Kumar’s hold on Carol ceases to apply, and then as he is saved, Grace’s agony ends and she reassembles herself by the grace of the Primordial Gods?”

“And more importantly, is Carol recoverable? Wasn’t her reaction too late to help him?”, Azrael added.

“The second part is easy. Yes, she would have been too late. However, the Primordials intervened and time-shifted her cry for him just enough. That’s also why there’s no debris cloud left after her death; when the Primordials intervened, they moved her back in time and her protection wrapped around Carol’s soul, just early enough to save him, and late enough for him to see what his fate would have been without it. Sanat Kumar formally owns him, but since Grace’s claim on him has seniority, he can’t do anything without her permission. So, she can save him from being consumed, but can’t negate consequences of his free will either. Both are suspended there until something changes in Time and Carol is released. Or forever, if that doesn’t happen”, Kay shrugged.

“As for their condition, that’s a pickle”, Azazel admitted. “We don’t actually know”.

…

Something changed. A bright white light wrapped around him protectively, and healed his injuries. It formed a shield between him and all harm. Intuitively, he understood that it was a tear of the Mother of Christ. It was of a much higher specific energy than his soul, much higher than anything Satan could overcome, higher than almost anything on Earth, save perhaps the Light of Christ. How did he know that, Carol wondered.

“Because I’m giving you that knowledge”, words came from the tear. “Lady Lakshmi wept over your fate, and I brought that tear to you, for protection and knowledge.”

“Who are you?”, he asked.

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that female Presence you felt earlier. It’s your wife. When she found out what a terrible mistake you made, her heart broke and she died. However, since she wasn’t just anyone, great powers worked to save her, and in order to save her, we had to save you as well, so you obviously have more luck than brains. I adjusted things so that she arrives just in time to save you, but she’ll need time to stitch herself together. I just wanted to give you a heads up. When she comes around, tell her that her family was there for her”.

The energy stopped talking and merely provided protection, forming something akin to a placenta around him, shielding him from the consequences of his evil choices. The female Presence that was wrapped around him started increasing in coherence as her pain subsided, and he waited. She felt like someone who is trying to wake from a terrible nightmare, and he felt great love for her. That helped, as she regained consciousness.

“Where? What? How?”, she mumbled incoherently.

“Your friends saved us both. I’m Carol Soare of Timisoara”, he smiled, as they both floated in a silvery protective amniotic bubble that was the tear of the Goddess of Fortune.

“Carol”, she sighed in deep contentment, like someone who had a terrible nightmare, and woke to see it was just a dream. “I’m Grace”, she smiled blissfully. “I was not too late”.

“You’re not too late”, he smiled back. “Although, I must inform you that you are in company of an idiot”, he snickered.

“It doesn’t matter”, she laughed. “I’m apparently not that much of a genius either. Just look at what I got myself into”.

“Your friends let me know that you died of a broken heart when you heard about what I did, and that I have more luck than brains, because apparently you are such an important person that the entirety of Heaven worked to save you, and to do that they also had to save me. They told me you are my wife?”

“Only if you’ll have me”, she smiled.

“I am yours forever, Lady”, he bowed, overflowing with emotion, and she embraced him with the whole of her soul.

…

“It appears that I have to share you with Satan for a while”, she whispered into his ear.

“That’s an occupational hazard of having an idiot for a husband”, he whispered back. “I wouldn’t have signed my soul away had I known you existed, and had a claim”.

“How does that even work?”, she wondered. “I thought I was too late. I heard your soul was broken apart to feed the evil attractors of the Earth”.

“They said they adjusted things so that you arrived just in time to save me”.

“And we are here because my claim on you was enough to save your life, but not enough to actually free you?”, she wondered.

“So it appears”.

“Let me try to figure out how that even works. I remember hearing Lady Lakshmi say that God put our paths together, prior to you being deceived by Satan to sell him your soul. That would mean that I have a prior claim, but not of the kind that would invalidate your stupid idiotic decision, and by the way how in the name of the most holy God did you think it was a good idea to sell your soul to Satan?”, she raised her voice in righteous indignation.

“My life was just shit. I was an orphan, my parents died of plague. People took me in out of pity, but nobody really cared about me; I was a low status person with little future prospects other than hard thankless labour. No woman wanted to even look at me. One night I was on watch duty, the Turks came, bound me so that I couldn’t raise an alarm, caught everybody else sleeping. They were to impale all the men tomorrow. Satan came to me as I fell asleep, offered me a deal. If I surrender my soul to him, he’ll arrange for help to come, free everybody else; only I would die. If I refuse, the Turks impale everybody. I felt there’s at least something useful I could serve for, since nobody would miss me anyway, as nobody ever cared for me and my life was worthless”, he sighed. “I was a fool. I had a feeling that God has something for me, something important and wonderful, if I only had faith, but I didn’t believe it. Why would God have anything for me? My life was evidence that God didn’t care about me one bit. Also, what could await me other than being impaled through my arse in the morning? I gave up on myself, on God, on faith”, a tear streaked his face. “I didn’t know God meant you”.

It took him a while to get a grip on himself. “And who are you, really? From what your friends implied, you are someone extremely important”.

“I’m Grace, a Judge of Karma, a lieutenant to Lord Azrael, the Angel of Death”, she introduced herself.

“You are a Judge that presides over the fate of the dead? You decide who goes to heaven and hell?”

“One of them. As you can expect, there are many of us, because lots of people die daily. It was particularly bad recently, during the plague, and we barely managed to process all the souls that came to us. Those were terrible times”, she reminisced.

“And then you got news of me and my foolishness, and it didn’t help”, he noted remorsefully.

“To put it mildly”, she smiled. “So, how do we get out of this pickle?”

“You tell me. You’re the brain in the family, being a Judge of the dead and apparently important enough for all of Heaven to join forces in saving your life”, he smiled. “I’m just a village idiot with the best wife in the world”.

“Never forget it”, she giggled and kissed him.

“How is it even possible? Women on Earth would expect their husbands to die for them, and if they died they would mourn them, but I don’t know a single one that would die for her husband. What even are you?”, he wondered.

“It’s different on Earth. Women are naturally designed to try to survive at all cost, while men are naturally designed to protect their families at all cost. It’s about raising children and so on. In Heaven, things don’t work like that. We don’t have children, not in that sense. Also, on Earth men are much stronger than women, and usually smarter. This determines much of the behaviour. In Heaven, masculinity and femininity are as strong if not stronger, but the difference in abilities is of a different kind. For instance, when a woman is overwhelmed by emotion, a man takes charge and solves the problem. I’ve seen my boss do that when his wife was distraught and in tears; he protected her by taking care of everything and getting help from the higher-ups. The male-female dynamics is very much like on Earth, where a woman is submissive and nurturing and a man is dominant and protective, but it’s also different, as both are usually smart, powerful and competent. Their loyalty to each other is absolute, and not diluted by another purpose, such as children. Both see each other as their most intimate friend and lover for all of eternity, and a way to love God in a most personal and intimate way, and nobody ever attains apotheosis without such an intimate partner. They would remain an angel forever, but God claims you as his own self only if you have another person of the opposite sex whom you love and who loves you as much as you both love God. It’s something about this marital intimacy between a man and a woman that is a manifestation of the Absolute like nothing else, and God simply doesn’t care to be manifested in the Relative if he or she is not a part of that”, she concluded.

“Wow. And I guess you can’t just get a different partner if one messes up and gets himself killed?”, he wondered.

“No. By getting yourself killed you killed my future as well. I would never be able to be with another man, because you are who God made me for”, she smiled. “By fucking up your destiny, you doomed both of us”, she mock-punched him in the ribs, smiling.

“Ow”, he smiled back. “So, now that we are stuck here between doom and salvation, is there a way to get ourselves out of this pickle that I got us into?”

“You made sure that Satan has an ownership claim on you until either his death, or yours. I made sure your death doesn’t happen, so we will have to wait for his. Also, he made a decision to bind you to Earth, which likely means that his decision will remain valid until Earth ceases to exist”, she scratched her chin in thought.

“Oh fuck. We’re stuck here forever?”

“I didn’t say that. Remember, Judge of Karma? Knows things?”, she smiled. “Well, one of the things I happen to know is that Satan’s claim to the Jewel he used in order to create Earth has a time limit. I don’t know the exact date, as that is a secret. But it’s centuries, not millennia; and certainly not forever”, she nodded wisely.

“So, basically, we are having several centuries of honeymoon?”, he raised an eyebrow.

“And I’m having several centuries worth of vacation from work”, she smiled. “I will miss my family and friends, but other than that, this is working very nicely for me”.

“So, what do angels do on a honeymoon?”

“Let me show you”, she smiled. “I actually hope they don’t get us out too soon, because I have some ideas”.