Eden In Atlantis

Who knows when, perhaps 20,000 years ago, the earth's axis was much closer to the perpendicular. There two moons. There were no seasons. It was paradise. The earth basked in eternal summer, many life forms flourished, including humans. What is now Antarctica was not then ice-bound and frozen at the Pole. It was then called Celestium, it was populated and harboured an advanced patriarchal civilization that eventually became the model for Atlantis. But that was much, much later; after the greater earth changes that shifted the South Pole to where it is today. No one knows exactly where Eden was located. The Eden of this story is an isolated settlement in a mid-Atlantic island (much later to become Atlantis) organised on matriarchal principles, ruled by a Queen, where inheritance is matrilineal. In this society males have no rights of paternity, and (to prevent any claim of such rights) long term heterosexual relationships are discouraged, and paternity is hard to establish. Consequently gay and lesbian relationships have equal social status with heterosexual ones. As everywhere on the globe, the island is lush, fertile and an abundant variety of life forms flourish, including large and dangerous predators among which are found small colonies of dragons (dinosaurs) that are slowly being hunted to extinction. The warrior/hunter class, comprising both males and females, has high status. The community and its sacred places are walled for protection. Into this isolated community a stranger is thrust, banished from his homeland, Celestium, for the crime of revealing dangerous secrets to the common people. The stranger's name is Lucifer, which means 'light bringer'. He is a scientist with special knowledge of crystals. Eva is a young woman who falls in love with a young man, Daemon. In so doing Eva frustrates the ambitions of the Queen's son, Adam, whose ambition is to usurp his mother, and rule Eden with Eva as his consort. Lucifer also loves Eva, but discreetly, from a distance. Fate intervenes in the form of a Comet (actually a large meteor) that is approaching earth. Among Lucifer's inventions is his 'narthex', an early form of telescope made using fennel cane as a tube, with lenses at either end for magnification. Using this device to scan the heavens Lucifer is able to predict the cataclysm that is about to bring devastation to Eden and to the entire world. The political intrigues in Eden are subsumed by celestial events, but not before Lucifer is able to pluck Eva from captivity and bring her to his high mountain cave where they are safe, and from which they observe the comet collide with the smaller moon and, amid tumultuous storms and vast tidal waves, rain fire and debris on Eden. Humans are thus barred from Paradise because Paradise has been destroyed. But two humans survive.