The First Betrayal

The hilltop was rocky, the sere landscape stretching out to the horizon in all directions, unblocked by trees. Down in the valley at the hill’s feet, a small herd of goats grazed on the grass along the stream’s edge. The sky was brilliant blue with no trace of clouds.

One figure stood on the hilltop. He wore a loose garment and sandals made from goatskin. His beard was black, and his hair brushed his shoulders. His body was that of a man who tilled arid soil under a hot sun. Even so, he panted with excursion as he looked down at the fruits of his labors.

At his feet lay the body of another man, one much like himself. Near the corpse was another, that of a yearling sheep, its throat cut by a flint blade. The carcass lay atop a flat stone next to a woven basket filled with grain.

The man had been killed less cleanly. His skull and face were bloodied, fragments of broken bone visible under the battered flesh. One eye had been reduced to jelly by the bludgeoning.

His killer gazed down at his work, a bloodied stone in his hand. His brother’s blood mingled with that of the sheep’s. The arid ground drank both greedily.

Overhead, the sky turned black as night and a voice like that of thunder echoed across the land.

CAINE, WHAT HAS THY DONE?

The man looked to the sky, all anger leeching from his body. Letting the stone slip to the ground, he fell to his knees and waited for a far more fearsome blow to fall.