* * *
The images slowed gradually until they stopped changing altogether. We were left with a vision of a green and fertile land surrounded by full running rivers and bordering a large gulf. As we continued staring, the vision in the pool continued to narrow. More details of the land were revealed to us, and we could see that shelters of wood had been built and fields of crops had been sowed. The picture in the pool tightened even more, and finally a human was revealed to us.
A collective gasp escaped from the lips of my brothers and I when the first representative of mankind came wholly into focus-he looked exactly like we did. I felt akin to this human at once. How could I not? He could have passed for one of my brothers was it not for his smaller stature. I don't remember having any preconceived notions of what humans would look like, but their likeness to my own kind was still surprising.
The man was fishing. Over and over he cast his net into the slow rolling river. Sometimes he would pull a whiskered fish or two from the muddy water, but more often than not his net returned to the bank empty. He placed the occasional fish that he did catch into a neatly woven basket where they would flop around until they drowned in the garden air.
I was impressed by the human's determination. It took him some time and many, many throws, but he did eventually fill his basket. Once he did, he didn't linger by the river a second longer than it took him to gather his net and basket. We all followed with our eyes as he walked a well worn path that led from the river back towards the cluster of shelters that we had noticed earlier.
I grew eager as the man walked. I hoped he was going back to feed his family. I looked up from the pool for just a moment to help ease my anxiety. Right away I saw that I was the exception. Although I could sense that my brothers were also excited by the prospect of seeing more humans, none of them felt the need to look away as I did. They remained in the grip of the pool. I scanned my surroundings quickly, a habit that I had developed soon after I began weapons training, and returned my own gaze to the man walking the path. He was nearing the shelters.
As I had expected, there were more humans in and about the settlement. Many more. This was unexpected. The seraphim had led me to believe that the pair of enlightened humans had just sealed their covenant with the Uncreated, but judging by the number of them in the village they had been on Earth for some time. Whereas I had hoped to see a dozen or so of these humans, I counted at least three hundred of them. And there may have been more in the fields that I couldn't see. I concluded that life on Earth was even more accelerated than I had originally thought when compared to the progression of events here at the first estate. I was right.
I learned much later that the enlightened humans had already occupied the land by the rivers for a little over six hundred years by the time I first saw them. This disparity between the passage of time in the first estate versus that of Earth troubled me and eventually, once I actually descended to Earth, led me to develop a formula that shows the relationship between the two. Actually, Kokabiel and Azazel developed the formula, but it was based off of my observations. We concluded that eight hundred and thirty-three Earth years feels like one hour in heaven. We had no way of knowing if we were right, but I still feel like we got it close.
The humans around the settlement were anything but idle. They were patching roofs, weaving baskets, making tools, preparing food, and doing a whole host of other things that looked both laborious and necessary. The amount of activity was astonishing, and I discovered quickly that there was no way for me to see everything that was going on in the village despite my best efforts to do so. These humans were a busy bunch.
A question occurred to me as I watched all these people scurry about. How did we not see them when the village was first revealed to us? Then another thing occurred to me: It was always me and never any of my brothers who seemed to find mystery in the silliest of happenings. I looked up from the pool and found them all still enjoying the show. None of the other Watchers seemed to care that the settlement wasn't filled with humans the first time we saw it. I decided to bring it to the attention of at least a couple of them.
"Where did they all come from?" I asked Azazel. "The shelters were barren when we first saw them. Do you remember?"
No reply.
"Maybe the pool hid them from us," I continued, "because it wanted us to study the lone man before it showed us the whole lot of them."
Still no reply.
"Azazel . . . Azazel."
He didn't acknowledge that I was speaking to him at all. He remained frozen-all his energies focused on the pool. Even when I touched his shoulder Azazel remained unresponsive. I looked back into the pool and saw why. The vision on its surface had changed again.
We were looking at a familiar riverbank, only this time there was no one fishing in the waters. They were bathing instead. And this was no lone male frolicking about naked in the water, but six females-a vision of hips, breasts, and buttocks. When I looked once more from the pool, I saw something in the faces of my brothers that left me shaken. There was foreboding in their eyes. Things would never be the same. Woman had been revealed to the Watchers.
The Peacock Angel: Rise of the Decarchs Page 45