Adam firstborn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Adam woke from the deepest sleep he had ever known. His side ached where something had been taken. He pressed his hand to the place and felt the tender gap between his ribs. A woman stood before him, new as morning, and he understood at once what God had done. He sat up from the smooth marble bed where he had been laid. Vines wrapped around its pillars and ferns grew at its base. The clearing around him was quiet except for the rustling leaves. The woman watched him with eyes that had never blinked before this moment. "You are bone of my bones," Adam said. He stood and looked at her in wonder. "You are made from what was inside me." He thought of the cities he wanted to build, the gathering places he had imagined alone. Now there was someone else. Now there would be more than one person to fill the streets he had not yet started. He found a piece of carved wood near the bed, shaped like the ribs that formed his chest. One rib was missing from the pattern. He picked it up and held it. "I will call you Eve," he said. "Because you will be the mother of all the living." The city he dreamed of would not be empty now. It would have people who came from her, who came from him, who came from this clearing where everything changed.