rafael nicholás

Angels Before Man: Revised and Extended

A Queer Retelling of Satan's Fall

In an eternal paradise, the most beautiful angel, Lucifer, struggles with shame, identity, and timidity, with little more than the desire to worship his creator.

It isn't until the strongest angel, Michael, comes into his life that Lucifer learns to love himself. Along the way, their friendship begins to bloom into something else. Maybe the first romance in the history of everything.

But this God is a jealous one, and maybe paradise is not paradise. 

Angels Before Man

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"I see Father really took His time with you."

"How is it that l am so beautiful? It's too much."

"To be incarnate, they say, is to bleed and to hurt."

"But don't worry, Lucifer. I can tell the Lord has great plans for you. Looking at you — I can feel His mercy."

Michael was unraveling him beneath his palm, 'and he doesn't even know it, does he?'

"Be proud, Lucifer. Take pride in what you do and your body."

What was living? It was this — the breeze, the tap of your hand against the chest of a friend leaning on you, the slice of a citrus to share, the sun streaming down from between the leaves, the shade freckling onto your body, the little kiss of a prince on your jaw.

It became that Lucifer felt strange without the other; he recognized it as a kind of dull pain within himself instantly, and it made him restless for the prince, for his voice, laugh, those dark, curly wood shavings of hair that Lucifer could run his fingers through eternally.

This, this here, could be worship. 'This—' Lucifer pressed an innocent kiss to the prince's sweet, divine mouth. This could be religion.

Angels Before Man quotes

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