Lucifer

"Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven." A thousand, million years had fled then thousand million more, yet it was still the morning. And there stood one, Transcendent, whom we call God and the Divine, whose reasoned might stretched to clutch infinity— and embraced eternity’s nether bounds to fashion perfect round— beginning's instant fused with very end of things that time endured no more. Thus evening interlaced with morning, from whose conjugative spawn emerged a cosmic realm, its structure fine, yet restive, taut and yearning. Here coherence mingled self with destiny, and thus arose intelligence. Among its legion offspring, daughters of the light and one the son of morning, a paragon of intellect— in depth and reason boundless, beautiful and firm, named Lucifer. Beloved of Transcendence and from whom the mighty angels fled, nobility confounded. Across mighty heaven’s parapets he reasoned and opined. And many thought him noble. Yet temerity cannot assail wisdom nor petulance conjure faith. He, his mighty acolytes then stood and cried aloud, trumpeting insistence, and became among the first whose grasp did not exceed their reach. And war ensued— A war of vaunted intellect, but also narcissistic, and rooted in deceit. For he would exercise free will to battle, then in victory rob all of its gift. Therefore a quandary stood that would not reconcile with reason. Defeated, Satan stood no more in heaven. Godly was their sorrow when he fell. Now in our eyes and hearts and minds do not echoes of the war resound? First Place: Julia Ward's Contest: Expand Arthur Miller's Thought from The Crucible (quote above).