The creator of all's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

The ark stood finished now, its hull sweeping high against a sky the color of ash. The creator watched from the still air as Noah led the animals up the ramp. A grey mist crept low across the dry ground, drifting between the beasts' legs. Noah counted each pair aloud. He set his cup on a stone by the door and did not pick it up again. They came two by two. A white horse walked in beside its mate, hooves loud on the wood. A lion followed, heavy and slow, its jaws stretched in a yawn as if the coming flood were nothing. A cow and a bull came next, roped together, their broad heads low. High above, an owl slept on a beam, feathers folded tight. Noah stopped at the door and looked at the sky one last time. Then he pulled the ramp up behind him. The creator waited until the last man on the ground had stopped laughing. He wanted them to see. He wanted them to choose, even now, to climb the hill and board the boat. None did. Instead they pointed at the boat and Noah and joked about the rain that never fell. So the creator cracked open the sky. The waters above poured down through the gap. Not rain. A wall. The heavens emptied themselves onto the earth at once. The dry ground turned to mud in a breath. Rivers rose out of nothing. The mist scattered under the weight of the flood and was gone. Men who had laughed now ran for the hill, but the water climbed faster than their legs. The creator watched them go under. He did not look away. And he covered the giants created from the angels' wrongdoings in water. The ark groaned and lifted. It rocked, then floated free of the mud. Inside, the animals cried out and pressed together. Noah braced himself against a beam and held on. A lone dove beat its wings against the shut window, then settled. The creator felt the old wearing-down in himself, the way water wears a stone until nothing is left. He had spared one honest man with his family along with a pair of each animal, and drowned the rest. This was mercy and it was ruin, both in the same hand. He did not regret it. He only understood, more than before, that his test had cost him something he could not name. The last hilltop vanished under the water. The whole earth was sea now, and one wooden box drifting on it. The creator turned his attention to the boat and the small lives inside. The old world was dead. Whatever grew next would grow from these.