“Jacob, my mother’s husband, you said he was a priest among his people. He will preside at our wedding.”
“That could happen,” she allowed. “When time has passed and you are stronger still.”
“After the ceremony, on our wedding night, and on the nights to follow…” he said, and thought of the two bodies.
“That, too, might happen, in time,” she said.
“What is time in this place?” said Maternus. “I’ll take a nap and wake up your husband. A hundred thousand years could have passed in the meantime. You did the same while you awaited me.”
“Actually, I did more than wait,” she said and opened her eyes. “I heard you in your despair and begged Mr. Worthy to bring you to me. He cheated for you on my behalf, including that time when I seemed to come to you in a dream. I did not, truth be told, nap during the entire eighteen hundred years.”
“You can lie and cheat?” he teased her. “You’re not misleading me now are you?”
“Of course not,” she said and kissed him. “As Mr. Worthy told you, we may exaggerate, engage in hyperbole, accentuate the positive more than we should, but we angels can never lie.”
The story leaves them here, seated side by side in a rose garden in Heaven, at a moment when they have nothing but joy and better times ahead of them. Far from their blissful home, in singular places such as Aurora, Colorado, and in the billions of other unique places humans inhabit, similar futures await any who will partake of them, although considerable time will pass and many people will become stronger before most of humanity know such possibilities exist.
Hell Can Wait Page 27
