the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

circling about Eden, its brilliance radiantly glowing in the nighttime sky and its illumination glittering as the dawn swept over paradise. The star had been created by God out of darkness and was unlike anything ever created.
There were two glowing lights in this star and it seemed to God that these comets were brothers. This pleased God, so he decided to bring them down one by one.
The Ocean of the Never-ending Sunrise was lucid and transparent the day he arrived, the first morning star. The spark that emerged turned into a ball of flame and into a babe crouched over like a foetus and into a young man erect with open eyes, seeing the grand sights of Eden.
“Who am I?” the creature spoke, blinking into the light.
“You are the inner light of creation,” God spoke pointing toward a falling star.
“I am the inner light.” the boy repeated. “My inner light shall spark within all of the brethren of my race?” The Lord nodded and the cherub sighed and wondered. “I am a pioneer to tread my father’s sandy beach. Is this the truth?”
The Lord smiled and nodded. “That is what I mean. Come and I shall give you a name.”
The Lord baptized him Lucifer in the water of eternal life and he became the illuminate child.
“My child thou art and the child of light you will never cease to be” the Lord answered. “Come with me, Son, leave the doorway to Eden and enter the Land of Conception.” God opened his kingdom and gave the starry light the proverbial key formed from a green light within his heart.
“What might this be?” Lucifer inquired, amazed at the sights he saw before him.
Fascinated, the being wandered the Beach of the Never-ending Dawn Ocean, watched the waves gently crash against the shore and sang Godly songs yet unwritten. He flew the heavens, created a rainbow and then upon his return discovered an oak, its whispering knowledge under a shadowy cloak. The leaves were its thoughts, its branches were eyes, disguising its magic within its green sighs. The oak called itself Plato, referred to its father Socrates paces away, crowning Eden as a poppy field before incarnation, explaining to the new creature how knowledge of future carnations was imbedded in its memory.
He was the first child among children, a seraph of God who, before everyone else, wandered the Fields of Nostalgia like a pre evolutionary Huckleberry Finn. Straw in mouth and confidence in spirit, he conversed with souls yet to incarnate as geniuses on Earth or on other planets of the new cosmos. Under the Lord's guidance he spoke with muses. He spoke about fauna and flora with the unborn spirit of Carl von Linné, discussed philosophy with the yet unborn Hegel, played chess with Hamlet, danced a Mozart minuet with Marie Antoinette millennia upon millennia before her birth, practiced the juggling-techniques taught by P.T. Barnum's unborn soul to the sound of Sousa's yet not composed marches, heard the jokes from Shakespeare's spirit, then made his own poetry ready for tellar carnation. All the theories that were to be formulated in yet uncreated heads were gusts of wind flying around God's mind. All the Greek tragedies as well as the comedies were yet unborn centaurs playing in the sunlight. The Gregorian chants soared around him like kites in the night. Demosthenes works were leaves on the oak-trees growing in the Fields. Moliere's plays were ash-tree roots waiting to grow into glorious, meticulous ingenuity of comic bliss. King Arthur's round table was only a pasture of lilies swaying in the wind. A wind named Hitchcock fragranced the trees with the smell of a spectacularly richly dark red rose. A rosebush named Cole Porter hummed tunes that spoke of true love in the highest of societies. A lovely deer named Scott Joplin danced in the heather in an unusual beat that had the swaying field of lilies named Harpo Marx giggle. Metaphors enriched the symbolic flora of thought and future education. And when Lucifer danced Marie Antoinette’s minuet, roses grew. There were muses with golden voices and parrots with rainbow wings painting the blue skies with colour upon colour on a canvas of cumulus clouds and blue cream. The grass so green it dazzled the eye. The mountain touching skies so blue they seemed like oceans.
“The beauty of the world within the eyes of a loved one” God said “is what my creation is about. Any living being shall fall in love and see paradise with the eyes of the one they love. That way love shall always connect them to me.”
Lucifer smiled.
“Then my task shall be to preserve love as you have created it.”
Heaven, a dimension of its own, had a centre. This centre had a name: the Fields of Nostalgia. Upon the centre field there were two trees. Although their significance not yet revealed, Lucifer was fascinated by the good Fruits of Hweoim, not so much as he was profusely awed by the one God urged to avoid: Hwee-Aell-Sihl, the tree of the forbidden fruit.
Soon enough, long-haired, dark-blond Lucifer turned into a brash, dashing, muscular, suntanned youngster who, dazzle grinned, windblown, Eden cruising, wore a smile on his lips as God's first and foremost angel. He was a stunning buck.
In the beginning this became him, as it would all future archangels. The birds in paradise were chirping a song. Birch trees and cherry-blossoms, apples and pears, banana and orange trees all seemed to grow in Lucifer's honour. When God showed him his kingdom, the archangelic son made a promise to eternally enjoy and defend his treasures.
“You have seen my kingdom, my son” God said. “Now, go create your own.”
Yambalah was the first land on this Earth intended as a testing ground for wisdom acquired. This wisdom was useless unless proven.
If he managed to manifest the teachings in nature he would soon become an Archangel of Light.
The young angelic son worked up a storm and a rainbow to make the land as beautiful as he could just to please the Maker. He created resting spots for the animals and he made an oasis or two for the birds. There were sunny avenues and great wide-open spaces, forests so green it made the flocks of parrots sing. All the time, the young buck smiled for he knew he was God’s son and that the Lord would love his contributions to this lovely Land.
The finished product lay in the midst of a large continent next to
a vast ocean on a blue planet. Lucifer had worked passionately on his new empire. The daytime sky seemed to have a deeper, richer, more intense blue here than anywhere else. The trees gave a home to a green whose colour transcended depth and went into the luscious. The nature hummed here. The elements met. Fire, water, earth and wind had a melody to sing. Nature thrived. In the midst of all the bustle and beauty Lucifer created an underground cave with a tunnel leading to a beam of light. It was created basically as a retreat for himself and its exit was next to a tree on the Fields of Nostalgia from which Lucifer could enter down to his creation of rest. He smiled when he thought of it and named it the Callenian Cave, the Cave of Depth in the original language of angels. The January Tunnel was an oasis of comfort within this cave, where the elves of Heaven danced in God's aura.
God said, “Your light hath served you well, your inspiration is a dedication to adoration,” and Lucifer beamed. Father and son walked down the beach hand-in-hand and remembered a friend whom the son had shared the heavens with before becoming an angel. He pointed out the friend to the Lord, who remarked that it soon was time for that friend to come down. He had smiled at him from the sky above as he walked alone after an occasional day's work on the beach. He longed to share his secrets, live passionately. The star remembered the brethren’s mutual fate. The first son could only recall that they had shared heaven and not that they had been one once, two souls present in one comet.
The second angel came to the Beach of the Never-ending Dawn in a whirl, danced, flew about, created a rainbow and sang a divine melody. Love in his noble heart, fire in his noble love, he connected his purple heart to blissful eternity. The Lord baptized the descendant Michael.
Michael, Lucifer’s first friend, became a bundle of love. He willingly obliged in letting Lucifer talk and tell him of creation and what was to be found here. The two young angels walked the beach for days on end, talking and laughing. When this had become a habit, one evening on the beach Michael suggested they become blood brethren. Both agreed and thought it a wondrous yet, ponderously justifiable accordance.
As endless blood trickled down celestial arms, the embrace strengthened the stars and lasted an eternity in bright neon. A falling star had risen. A pure empire had been born.

BRETHREN IN AWE OF ONE ANOTHER
The testing ground for the second son was Clurafar, Michael’s land.
As the new angel worked on his land, he seemed to blow light into all that existed and God watched this strength with such anticipation it made him love this new soul that had been created all the deeper and finer. Everything seemed to work like clockwork. The sun always set on time, the tide came when it always could be expected to come and when the bees came to collect their pollen for their honey you could count on some fruit the next day. If anything could live in symbiosis with Yambalah, it was Clurafar. And Michael entered his land through Plato’s oak.
One bundle of purity was free. One bundle of love was wondering how the other could be so pure. That day was a good day for the kingdom. That day was a strong day for the brethren.
God showed Lucifer ten lights in the sky.
“These stars are your brethren. Together you will rule the heavens like kings!”
“I will share Eden with others of my race?”
God nodded. “Rejoice,” the Lord whispered. “Sharing is a gift.”
Lucifer could not rejoice. “Will I still remain a pioneer?”
The Lord said, “The joy always remains yours that you after me first tread these grounds.”
There was a third one plucked from the shining star in the east corner. It bounced and fluttered upon its destiny and bowed in front of God’s altar when arriving. Raphael’s inborn devoted love gave Michael a new life, yea, alas, one after one they arrived, the brethren.
The three angels walked the beaches, laughing and joking as young men are known to do and swore never to part and remain faithful to each other.
Wind was his element. Three coastal lands lay next to each other: the one fiery red, the other one water blue, the third forest green. There was a refreshing wind that steadily kept sweeping across the land.
Morawar provided flexibility. His floral heart was the sunflower.
When Gabriel arrived as angel number four, Lucifer admitted nothing, not even to himself.
It was actually Gabriel’s arrival that turned the group of three into a crowd of four for the first son.
The four sang the same songs after work at the beach, liked the same things, worked for the same cause, taught what to do in critical situations, were foretold the future and given assignments.
“I love my Lord, I love him,” Lucifer told himself.
He was not the first and best anymore.
“Then why cannot I live next to these brethren like the ships upon the sea?”