Chapter Text
When Michael and Ella left Los Angeles, Sarah Navidi felt a hole in her being. She desperately wanted to follow them to Portland, but as the only child of a widow with dementia, she was sort of stuck in Los Angeles for the foreseeable future. After a few weeks, she forcefully filled that hole with another celestial sibling. Amenadiel was patient and fun to be around in a different way than Lucifer or Michael, and they ended up getting along really well. After several months, they picked up the visits to the greasy hookah diner Sarah had always gone to with the now absent Demiurgosi. They only went once a month — Amenadiel had a business to run and now a partner in Linda, and he traveled pretty regularly to see his family in Portland and the United Arab Emirates, not to mention he lived on the other side of Los Angeles, so he wasn’t as at leisure as the Demiurgosi had been prior to their sons’ birth.
‘It seems like there are a lot more pagans these days,’ Sarah said as she sat across from Amenadiel one Friday evening in February, her words slightly muddled as she chewed a bit on the plastic hookah tip clutched in her teeth. ‘I mean, learning what I have about your Dad, I’m not complaining if He’s lost a few followers.’
He exhaled the smoke from the hit he’d taken of the hookah then handed the mouthpiece to her. ‘What do you mean?’
She nodded a bit as she silently inhaled then slowly exhaled, making a couple of smoke rings for good measure. ‘My Maman was admitted to RRMC after having her gallbladder removed, and she had some liver issues after, so she was in for a few extra days. I just noticed while I was wandering around and visiting old coworkers that there were a lot more people saying “oh, my Goddess!” and “thank Goddess!” than I remember there being before. Pagans seem to worship a goddess, maybe your Mom? Unsure.’
Amenadiel raised an eyebrow at her. ‘When was this?’
‘Sunday and the beginning of the week. She was discharged on Wednesday when everything seemed to improve,’ she said, then looked pensive as she handed him the mouthpiece. ‘I don’t think I’d been there since the twins were born. Wild, considering how much I used to be there when Michael was still working as a surgeon.’
‘How’s your mom?’ Amenadiel asked a bit awkwardly, his mind already weaving elsewhere with the snippet of information Sarah had given him.
‘Oh, she’s fine,’ she replied, waving her hand toward him. ‘Sometimes livers just get angry, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ he said distantly before taking a draw from the hookah, wondering if he should contact his siblings or just ride it out.
—
It took Lucifer a little bit, admittedly. He mostly stayed at home, so he didn’t notice exactly when ‘Mashallah’ transitioned. He thought he heard something different when their cook was on the phone with someone, but he figured he was just getting cabin fever again and decided to go to Dubai for the day while Aurora and Chloe were out. He just wandered, shopping a bit and enjoying humanity, telling his driver to pick him up in a few hours.
Then he heard it again. And again.
Mashilāhat, and it was everyone saying it. He didn’t hear a single Mashallah.
On the way home, Trixie messaged him from New York City, where she was spending her last Field Work Term from Bennington, to ask why posts from Jewish people on the neighborhood Facebook group she was part of were now talking about ‘G-ddess’ instead of ‘G-d’, even ones she’d read before, as she figured he’d have an explanation. He told her that he had a thought, but he wasn’t entirely certain and would have to get back with her. She didn’t like this answer, and she said she had a pretty good idea what happened as well, so he better find out what happened quickly, or she’d go to Michael.
He sat in his discomfort until a couple of hours later at dinner when Aurora looked at him.
‘I thought I was fluent in Arabic, but everyone’s been saying something new, and I don’t know what it is,’ she said, a bit flustered. ‘What does Mashilāhat mean?’
‘I’ve heard that too,’ Chloe replied, leaning forward. ‘But have you heard anyone say Mashallah? They have the “mash” at the beginning, but now I’m just hearing the other one in the same place. I haven’t heard Mashallah in a few days.’
‘It means “Goddess has willed it”,’ Lucifer said distantly. ‘The other is God instead.’
It took a moment, but then they both gaped at him. Chloe was the first to recover the power of speech. ‘Wait, does that…?’
He stood up from his chair. ‘I need to talk to my brothers and sister.’
—
As time passed, Azrael moved to a two months off, one month on Archangel of Death schedule, the timing based firmly on the months as followed in the United States. Michael jokingly referred to it as renewal of her psychopomp licensure just as he had to renew his medical licenses in the four states where he insisted on keeping active licensure. Their Mother eventually told her she didn’t have to hold residency in Heaven those months, and while it initially seemed like a recommendation, it quickly seemed like more of a command. This eventually made Azrael a bit uneasy, but she tried to avoid dwelling on it.
One really nice thing about living with Ella and Michael when she was in her off times was not really being required to do anything. Azrael always volunteered to watch her nephews, and after the Demiurgosi bought her a car and Ella taught her how to drive, she regularly took the kids to and from school in Clackamas so Michael and Ella had more flexibility with work. She started going to work with Michael regularly, finally becoming a very part-time but official teaching assistant in 2029, something she'd just volunteered to do for the couple of years prior to that. With Michael's encouragement, she decided to start a degree in sociology and anthropology, also extremely part-time.
Her sister-in-law strongly encouraged her to do fun Earth things though, especially traveling and picking up random hobbies. After a lot of trial and error, she found she liked raising her four chickens in the backyard (a dream of Ella’s as well), crocheting, and maintaining a sourdough starter. Nikola and Liam were definitely set when it came to crocheted hats and stuffies. When she gave Nikola a crocheted axolotl and Liam a crocheted opossum, they finally stopped bothering Michael about wanting the giant isopod stuffy Trixie gave him in 2019. He was delighted by this turn of events.
Lucifer called her an old woman. Azrael reminded him she was thirteen billion years old, therefore by definition…
Travel was less old lady — she wanted all the outdoors. It wasn’t something she experienced much until their Antarctica trip. Yes, she’d witnessed many a gory outdoorsy death, but she didn’t get to linger. Now, she found herself hiking, skiing, or rock climbing every couple of weeks. It was during one of her hikes that she first heard it.
‘Look at the wonder of Goddess’ creation,’ another hiker said as she looked at one of the ten waterfalls in Silver Falls State Park, utterly in awe.
It didn’t hit her until later that humans wouldn’t have known their Mother was responsible for anything involving water, but by that time, it was a few days later, and she was in Wyoming. She sat at the side of a trail watching, stunned, when a sibling didn’t show up nor did her powers activate when someone fell off of a lift and broke multiple bones in the process.
‘Thank Goddess he didn’t die,’ one woman said to another, holding her hand to her chest.
‘Her will be done, right?’ the other woman replied, nodding.
She almost called Amenadiel but figured it was a fluke, that she just happened to run into three really open pagans in a few days. She went back to ignoring everyone, but then they hit absurd turbulence on the early morning flight from Jackson Hole back to Portland, and the man next to her held his hands together, muttering.
‘Heavenly Mother, You are the ruler of the skies and the calm in every storm. Surround us with Your protection and guide us safely to our destination. In Your name I pray, amen.’
‘Hey,’ she said to the man after he lifted his head. ‘Who were you praying to?’
He looked completely and utterly confused. ‘Goddess.’
‘Oh, are you pagan?’
‘What? No,’ he replied, scoffing. ‘I’m Catholic.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘I thought Catholics worshipped God.’
‘She has a consort, but He’s not, you know, Goddess,’ he replied slowly. ‘You know, the Holy Duality. In the name of the Mother and Her Consort.’
‘What about the Son?’
‘Which son?’ he asked, growing more confused. ‘She has twelve sons and twelve daughters, the archangels. How do you not know this?’
‘I mean Jesus Christ.’
‘Who? That’s not one of Goddess’ children. Her sons are the Archangels Amenadiel, Zadkiel, Raphael, Baraqiel, Haniel, Cassiel, Mikael, Samael, Iehudiel, Ibriel, Jophiel, and Uriel,’ the man dictated very confidently, far more confidently than one should list off twelve names.
‘Samael?’ she asked, furrowing her brow. It was one thing to have the rest of her brothers listed, but Lucifer was an option when it came to humanity and Heaven.
He nodded sagely. ‘The Elector of Hell. Twin of the Archangel Mikael. He was the light in the darkness of Hell while his twin was the severity in Heaven.’
‘I mean, Mika can be pretty serious, but severe might be pushing it,’ Azrael said immediately without thinking.
‘They are the perfect representation of how light and dark work with each other to bring balance to the universe,’ he replied. ‘Both sides are needed and present in the Demiurge.’
‘Oh,’ she said softly. ‘You know the name Mikael and the word “demiurge” now. I’m sure this will make life on Earth really easy for him.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you mean Saint Mikael the Archangel?’ she responded perhaps too loudly.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Only humans can be sainted. The Archangels are far above saints.’
Azrael gaped before whispering harshly. ‘It happened.’
She was glad she’d taken an Uber to the airport, because nothing was going to stop her from flying instead of enduring forty minutes of commute from the airport to home. She had to talk to Michael.
—
Michael probably passed the Catholic Church named after him a half dozen times during his commute from OHSU to home before he noticed the crosses were missing. Well, not missing, replaced. He stopped at the intersection on his bicycle on his commute home on Wednesday, behind several cars, and happened to look up and focus for the first time in a while. The cross on the peak of the roof over the front door was gone, replaced with a figure he didn’t recognize, and it was the same for the cross at the very top of the building. The sign still said it was a Catholic Church, however, but maybe it folded and sold to a different congregation. The ‘Saint’ part had disappeared from the sign, so it must have fallen off. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to consider this until he was honked at and had to move.
He started noticing more, however. A couple of days passed, and he realized that most of the churches had the new symbol, but it wasn’t until the church nearest their house put up a proper, comprehensive statue that he recognized what was happening. He was walking along the Willamette River with Ella and their seven-year-old sons one Sunday morning when he saw an elongated arch with the symbol he didn’t recognize in the center. The arch was decorated with stylized date palm fronds sticking out at even intervals on its edges, and the inside of the arch had snakes reaching out to the figure, one he now noticed had roots at the feet with the face a peaceful yet neutral one with slopes around the area of shoulders ending in cradling arms. He stopped, staring, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.
‘Oh shit,’ he finally muttered, and Ella looked over at him, following his stare.
‘What is that?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head. ‘A really interesting interpretation of Mary? Wait, I’m pretty sure this church isn’t Catholic. Is this one Catholic?’
He shook his head vigorously, unaware that on the other side of the world, his twin was saying the same thing at the same time: ‘I need to talk to my brothers and sister.’
—
‘Michael?’ Azrael screamed as she slammed through the back door after landing gracelessly in the backyard, leaving her backpack tossed in the grass near the chicken coop. ‘Michael?!’
As she reached the living room, he burst through the front door with equal panic, seeing her and immediately running to his sister.
‘I think it happened!’ they said in unison.
Ella barely had time to walk in the door with the kids before an entirely unexpected Lucifer and Amenadiel made their way in through the back door, obviously having landed in the backyard, moving immediately to their brother and sister.
‘Celestial sibling meeting, now,’ Amenadiel said darkly, gesturing toward the back door and Azrael’s backyard apartment.
Ella didn’t even ask, instead focusing on their kids who were now way too excited that their uncles had appeared. Meanwhile, the siblings all moved to the apartment without another word and settled in Azrael's living room, all staring at each other in silence for a while.
‘How the fuck did you get here so quickly?’ Michael suddenly asked Lucifer, knowing that Amenadiel did the transfer through Hell to get there — Heaven had been questionable for years while they knew their Mum was doing something, so they figured they’d use a place where they had more control over the domain.
‘Went through Hell,’ he replied with some annoyance. ‘You should be happy: I listened to you for once.’
‘That’s decidedly the longest distance one of us has gone with that method,’ Amenadiel offered. ‘But I’m sure you all realize something has to have gone down on the Heaven side of things.’
‘Everyone is saying Goddess,’ Azrael said in a hushed tone. ‘And the man next to me on the flight home from Wyoming didn’t know who our half-brother is but did know all twelve of my brothers, and it’s apparently a Duality now, not a Trinity.’
‘The citizens of the UAE aren’t sprinkling “Mashallah” into conversation anymore — God has willed it,’ Lucifer continued. ‘They’re saying “Mashilāhat,” — Goddess has willed it.’
‘There is a straight up altar to Mum like a half mile from here,’ Michael said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the church. ‘I’d seen a symbol I didn’t recognize in the place of all of the crosses I’d seen before, but it wasn’t until today when I saw a Tree of Life with a statue in the center with roots for feet and cradling arms surrounded by serpents and crowned with a dove that I realized all of these places have Asherah Poles now.’
His phone buzzed, and he pulled out his phone to read a text.
‘It’s from Sarah,’ he said, glancing up at Amenadiel. ‘She wants to know why they’re talking about Bahá’u’lāhat instead of Bahá’u’lláh at her temple.’
‘Oh,’ Lucifer replied, grimacing a bit. ‘Wait, why does she know there’s a difference? It sounds like the man who was next to Azrael had no clue anything has changed, and everyone I saw in the UAE seemed unbothered as well.’
‘Ella noticed something was different too,’ Michael replied with a nod.
‘Chloe and Aurora also noticed, as did Beatrice,’ Lucifer responded. ’What about Linda?’
Amenadiel nodded too. ‘She brought it up to me because her patients flipped over to Goddess in conversation, and she noticed all of the missing crosses as well. As soon as she mentioned she’d noticed it, and Sarah had already mentioned everyone saying “Goddess” instead of “God” a couple of days ago… I figured I’d just come here so we could figured it out.’
‘So, the humans who know about the celestial world know something’s changed, but everyone else has just flipped from God to Goddess like a switch?’ Azrael asked, looking to Amenadiel.
‘Dan and Charlotte are the only others who are in the know, but it seems like everyone else in our circle has noticed,’ he replied then looked over to Lucifer, who was typing on his phone.
Azrael turned to Michael. ’What do we do? Should we go back to Heaven?’
‘Why are you asking me?’ he asked, holding his hand to his chest.
‘Do you like… feel any different because Dad’s likely been deposed?’ she asked, and his brothers looked at him.
‘I think Dad totally severed any connection between the two of us long ago, thankfully,’ Michael replied a bit flippantly, running his fingers on the arm of the couch. ‘You’ve been there most recently. Wasn’t it your month on not that long ago?’
‘December,’ she replied. ‘But I didn’t go back to Heaven. I decided to just stay on Earth and move around to check on the psychopomp angels instead of basing myself in Heaven. I haven’t been there since… man, uh… June?’
‘Eight months,’ Michael responded pensively. ‘What were things like then?’
‘They were seemingly on equal footing, I thought,’ Azrael said with some confusion. ‘It didn’t seem like Mum was about to overthrow him. Do you think there was a war?’
‘I feel like someone would have notified us about a war,’ Lucifer replied, narrowing his eyes a bit before his phone buzzed. He glanced down. ‘Charlotte says that she and Daniel have noticed as well. Oh, and a simple “the fuck???” from Maze, so I suppose Hell is also in the know.’
‘So, our half-siblings didn’t mention anything when you saw them in December though?’ Amenadiel asked, looking with great confusion at Azrael. ‘They’re so wrapped up with Dad that I figure they’d be the little canaries if something happened.’
‘My psychopomps are pretty Mum-centric, actually. They appreciate being given a purpose beyond what Father wrote for them and interacting with humanity,’ Azrael said with a shrug. ‘I’m not sure about the others. I’m not even sure about the other archangels.’
It fell silent again.
‘Should we go to Heaven though?’ Azrael asked with a small voice.
They all turned to Amenadiel. He sighed. ‘I’m already regretting the fact that I’m the eldest child.’
Lucifer hummed, looking down at this phone again. ‘I’m willing to follow what you say, largely because I don’t want to make this decision myself.’
He didn’t consider it for long. ‘I don’t think we should go.’
‘I agree, but what’s your reasoning?’ Michael asked.
‘We have no proof that Dad knows anything has changed on Earth. If we go up there to see Mum and ask what’s happened, we could mess up the entire process.’
‘Yeah, same,’ Michael replied, leaning back. ‘We waited however many years ago, and we can wait again.’
‘Maybe we should pray to Her, you know… while we’re here,’ Lucifer said, gesturing between Amenadiel and himself. ‘I wouldn’t want Her to appear to just the two of you. That’d hardly be fair.’
The two oldest siblings looked at each other, and Amenadiel spoke. ‘I don’t see how it could be a problem. If there’s nothing to say, or She needs to ignore us, She just won’t answer, right?’
Michael nodded then looked at Azrael. ‘You’re up.’
‘Why me?’ she argued.
‘None of us have seen Her since October 2025,’ Lucifer replied, raising his eyebrows. ‘You’re the tightest with Her at the moment.’
‘Fine,’ she muttered, rolling her eyes before closing them and pressing her hands together. ‘Mum, we’ve noticed some abnormalities on this plane and hoped to have a conversation, all four of us.’