Cain let his smile linger, his hand still slightly raised as if trying to touch the impossible planet hanging in the sky. He still could not believe this day. The sheer volume of surreal events crammed into a few hours was staggering. A simple grocery run had spiraled into being teleported, petrified, and defended by celestial beings, all while the Archangel Michael apparently had a personal interest in him for reasons unknown. Amid the terror, he felt a strange, vibrant aliveness he hadn't known in years. A part of him, the pragmatic, wounded part, still insisted this had to be a dream. A spectacular, grief-induced hallucination.
"Can you slap me?" he asked suddenly, turning to Lucifer. He pointed at his own cheek.
Lucifer raised a single, elegant eyebrow. She studied him, taking in his genuine, hopeful smile. The request was absurd. "I am afraid I cannot comply with that request," she said slowly. "It would terminate your existence."
Cain pressed. "Not even your weakest slap? The most gentle one you can possibly do? I just need to feel something to confirm this isn't all in my head."
Lucifer frowned, her fingers twisting a strand of her golden hair. She looked genuinely troubled. "I truly cannot. The base physical strength of my form is calibrated for a different scale of reality. However," she offered, an awkward smile touching her lips, "I could temporarily alter your physical state. Grant you a temporary, localized field of indestructibility. Then I could apply a minuscule percentage of my strength. Would that be an acceptable alternative?"
Cain looked around at the stark lunar landscape. The gut feeling was back, a cold whisper in his spine. She was very clearly telling him that her normal, casual touch could pulp him. The sheer scale of the power difference was humbling, and terrifying.
I mean, he reasoned, I'd be indestructible. Temporarily. So... a win is a win?
"You're going to try your best not to kill me, right?" he asked, a nervous, slightly hysterical laugh escaping him.
"Yes," Lucifer said, her tone utterly serious.
He gulped.
They stood up, facing each other on the silent moon. Lucifer looked worried, her eyes beginning to glow with a soft, golden light as she presumably worked on the 'indestructibility' modification. Cain kept smiling, a mask over his growing anxiety. Did he need this? Maybe not. But if this was a dream, he would wake up to his mediocre, lonely life. If it was real... then the impossible joy of today was real too. He wanted to know.
Lucifer raised her hand, then hesitated. She gently placed her palm against the side of his cheek, not to slap, but as if measuring, preparing. "Are you certain you wish to proceed with this?" she double-checked, her voice full of doubt.
"Yeah," Cain said, forcing confidence into his voice. He shrugged, trying to shake off the nerves. "I'm ready."
"No second thoughts?"
"No second—"
He didn't finish.
There was no sound, only a violent, incomprehensible force.
One moment he was standing before her. The next, he was a human projectile, hurtling sideways across the lunar plain at a speed that blurred the stars. He couldn't even scream. The world became a streaking gray smear. Then, impact.
He crashed into the base of a small lunar mountain with a force that would have vaporized any normal human and shattered the rock. Instead, he buried himself several feet into the solid stone, creating a Cain-shaped crater in the mountainside. Dust and debris bloomed outwards in a slow, silent explosion.
Lucifer, who had momentarily zoned out from sheer nervousness, blinked. Her hand was still outstretched in the empty space where Cain had been. She looked at her palm, then at the vacant spot in front of her.
No way! Panic, cold and immediate, seized her. Did I unconsciously exert too much force? Did he disintegrate upon contact?
She began snapping her fingers frantically, a gesture of frantic, temporal rewinding. Thwip. Thwip. Thwip. Nothing changed. Cain did not reappear.
No... her mental voice was a whisper of despair. It is not working!
But then, a sound reached her. Not through the vacuum, but through the strange, mental connection she maintained to sustain him. It was a laugh. Loud, full of pure, unadulterated joy, and completely recognizable.
Her head whipped around. Across the plain, a large cloud of gray dust was still settling around the base of a distant mountain peak.
She tilted her head, enhancing her perception. She heard him, clear as a bell in her mind, laughing and whooping. "Lucifer! Hey! I'm over here! I'm stuck! This is insane!" His voice was filled with awe, not pain.
Lucifer exhaled a breath she didn't need to hold, a wave of profound relief washing over her. "Cain! Can you perceive my communication? I am above you!" she called out as she flew, a golden streak across the black sky, towards the mountain.
From within the rubble, Cain shouted back, still chuckling. "Yeah! I hear you! A little help?"
Lucifer pinpointed his exact location, buried within several tons of lunar rock. Hovering above, she extended her palm towards the mountain. Her eyes glowed with intense, focused power.
She chanted, her voice resonating with command. "'Divine Divide.'"
Segment the mountain. Leave the human within utterly unscathed.
Thwip.
There was no explosion, no rumble. The entire mountain, from its peak down to its base, was simply and cleanly divided along a perfectly vertical plane, as if sliced by a blade the size of a continent. One half of the mountain slid aside with a ponderous, silent grace, revealing the small, Cain-shaped hollow in the remaining half. He was sitting there in the newly created cliff face, perfectly fine, covered in gray dust and looking around in utter bewilderment.
He looked up. Lucifer was descending towards him, her form silhouetted against the Earth, her eyes still glowing like miniature suns. As her feet touched the ground, she extended her hand to him.
"Are you now convinced of today's reality?" she asked, her voice gentle.
Cain took her hand, letting her pull him to his feet. "Yeah," he said, dusting himself off. "I'm convinced."
Lucifer began meticulously brushing the lunar dust from his shirt and hair, her movements oddly domestic amidst the cosmic scenery. Cain looked past her at the cleaved mountain, the clean, impossible cut, the sheer scale of the power casually displayed. He opened his mouth to ask how she did it, to ask what 'Divine Divide' meant, but he stopped himself.
He remembered her horrified reaction earlier, her immediate apology when she thought she'd scared him. He realized the more he questioned the mechanics of her divinity, the more he highlighted the unbridgeable gap between them. He didn't want her to feel like a weapon or a phenomenon he was studying. He didn't want her to feel she had to be more cautious, more 'other,' around him.
"Thank you for today," he said instead, his voice sincere. "I really enjoyed it. I wish we could stay longer, but I think we should head back. I have that meeting with my boss tomorrow. Probably should try to be somewhat rested for it."
Lucifer shook her head, a soft smile on her face. "It is perfectly acceptable. I also enjoyed today. I likely enjoyed it one hundred times more than you did. This has been the most agreeable day I have experienced in countless eons." She met his eyes. "Thank you for not compelling me to leave when you discovered my identity."
Cain grinned. "To be honest, at first I just thought you were a very confused, possibly mentally disabled person wandering the road."
The two of them laughed together, the sound shared between their minds in the eternal quiet. Still smiling, Lucifer reached out and took his hand. She began to levitate, pulling him gently upwards.
In the next second, the desolate, majestic silence of the moon was replaced by the faint hum of a refrigerator. They were standing in the middle of his living room, directly in front of the worn couch, as if they had never left.