WANDERING ETERNAL
CHAPTER 2 - THE BEHEMOTH OF DUIDAIN
The Cherubim dropped Cain at the nearest edges of Duidain and flew back to Eden. What could have taken Cain months to cross the divine attendant covered in a matter of minutes. The entire flight to Duidain he was vocally anxious about leaving his post.
Before the Cherubim flew back he was sure to remind Cain to be wary of the Behemoth - but the years Cain spent in those wastes East of Eden without even seeing a track from the chaos beast of myth were innumerable. In that time he raised up a home, then a shed, then another home, and eventually he built so many dwellings he had constructed what would later come to be known as a ‘city’. He also, on many, many occasions tried his hand at tilling the land; pulling what few weeds there were in that void desert, stripping them of any pods or inner seedlings, or otherwise handling their root systems with a surgeon’s hand, and transported them back to his city, that city of haunted reverence, empty even in his occupation, a testament to his exile.
Nothing he planted would grow. And even though foraging was another impossibility in Duidain, Cain never hungered. Even if he couldn’t die of starvation anymore, it didn’t matter, he never tended the soil out of any kind of necessity. It was a quiet escape for him when he was a younger man of only eighty years; one that gave the impression of being overly difficult and too easy to fail at for how monotonous it looked. What others might have that tedious was satisfying to him, though. Even now, after countless seasons in which he was unable to grow a weed, he still planted the seeds for a garden every few months outside of the coldest few. Who knows? Maybe God will forget to check one day, and my plants will grow in spite of this curse.
“Who are you?” The Behemoth boomed down at Cain, confused and exalted at finding another creature that moved inside Duidain after millenia of isolation. “Is it the end of times?”
His voice alone had shocked Cain out of his hunched tilling, he jumped, and then he looked upon the Behemoth, and was so afraid that he couldn’t jump, or run, or cower, even.
With a pair of horns protruding from above and in front of his ears that he wore like an elephant, and two more pairs from the sides and the front of his mouth, and another line of tusk that ran down the length of his colossal body from his snout to its tail like a bone protruding from his skin, the Behemoth was no doubt a formidable creature to gaze upon. His snout led into a trunk that drug the ground of the wastes, and his body was like that of a hippo with grey, shaggy hair and overextended legs - that, by themselves had to measure at least a couple-hundred feet - and down its backside was a long rodent’s tail that moved stiffly and seemingly autonomously, and in the process of moving its tail without thinking - as one does with any latent motor functions - it slapped up against one of jagged protuberances that littered Duidain and shattered it back into sand as easily as if it were made of water.
The Behemoth turned to see just what all the racket was behind him. After a few moments without seeing it’s face, the beast’s domineering essence dimmed just enough for Cain to muster the determination to run. He hid inside of his most unassuming building. The Behemoth, however, saw what building Cain ran into from the corner of his eye. The Beast sauntered over to Cain’s guest house and lifted the woven-reed roof with its great trunk and looked sidelong around it down at Cain as he huddled frightenedly in its corner.
“Who are you? Did God send you here?”
“Y-y-yes?”
“Is it the end of time already?”
“N-n-no. I-I-I don’t th-th-think so..”
“Ah, so you are one of his chosen?”
“Wh-wh-what?”
The Behemoth for the first time noticed that Cain was vibrating out of fear. He said, “There is no need to be afraid. If you have been cast into Duidain, then you must be one of his holy, this is a joy.”
“Yo-you aren’t angry?”
“Me? Why should I ever be angry? I’m one of His first. His strongest creations. You and I are like brothers to one another. Come, show me what you’ve made of our wildlands.” The Behemoth set the thatched roof down gently over Cain’s guest home and retreated to a respectful distance and waited patiently for the little, distended human to reappear. Cain was still apprehensive, but his shaking quelled a little.
“Seriously, don’t be scared, I’m glad for the company, truth be told. So, what is all of this? What do you call this place?”
“I- haven’t decided yet.”
“That’s okay, we can decide on that later. What do you call yourself?”
“Uhm- Cain- I am Cain, Son of Adam.”
“Son of Adam? Adam Adam! First of the Humans? Expelled from Paradise?”
Cain nodded, his fear subsiding at an ever increasing rate.
“Okay, wow, small world. Seriously, I’m sorry about what happened to your parents, dude, that shit sucks. If I couldn’t go to Eden anymore, I’d be pretty pissed. That place rules.”
“Thanks, yeah.”
“Well, it’s not all bad. You seem to be doing alright? A little thin, maybe. Can you not find anything to eat?”
“Well, I can, but I can’t seem to get anything to grow, really, is the problem.”
“Oh, yeah, you mean, uh, what’s that called? Farting?”
“Farming.”
“I just don’t even bother with trying to do all of that. It’s much too much work. The Tigris basically grows anything I need.”
“The Tigris flows all the way out here?”
“Oh, yeah, man, it’s like, right over that mountain.” The Behemoth pointed with his trunk. “Literally right there.”
Cain craned his neck, feeling embarrassed for having spent nearly decades in this wildland without finding the river his parents had lived beside.
“So,” The Behemoth continued, “You are the first of God’s Chosen, huh? A thing like that. Wow.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What do you mean?”
“I mean, Dêndâin is where the chosen and holy will dwell, East of the Garden.”
“And who says that? God told you that?”
“Yeah, that’s what God told me,” The Behemoth answered, slightly taken aback by Cain’s apprehension, now not totally positive that it was.
“That those Chosen and Holy would spend eternity here? And not in Eden?”
“Well, we are East of Eden.”
“Yeah,” Cain nodded, having to afford him the truth in that, “I just- forget it. No, I wasn’t chosen. God cursed me and banished me here.”
“Oh, man, cursed you? What did you do? Praise another God?”
“No, I- uh, I murdered my brother..”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s you know, I hurt him until he wasn’t alive anymore.”
“Oh, that’s all?”
“I mean, yeah? Should I have done more?”
“Well, it’s just, it’s not that big of a deal, you know? Like, everything dies. I kill the grass every time I eat it. Hell, sometimes I kill grass just by laying on it. I am supposed to be able to live for millennia, but I too will die. I mean, take your parents, if he didn’t want them to die, then why would he banish them from Eden to keep them from eating from the Tree of Eternal Life? You know? That wouldn’t make any sense. What did God say?”
“He said I will be a fugitive and wanderer on the Earth.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, he said that anyone who tries to lie a hand on me should suffer the same punishment sevenfold.”
“See, man? He probably just called it a curse, but trust me, dude does not care. He probably just had to say something because you had his back against the wall. Like, if he just let you kill your brother, you know, your parents would’ve been pissed.”
“I guess so.”
“I’m serious. However much God loves the things he creates, that’s how much he loves their destruction. Life and non-life are two sides of the same coin. Come on, man, let’s go eat some grass, I’ll show you where I restrain the rivers of man from rushing.”