The angels lifted Enoch onto their wings and carried him upward.
The earth fell away beneath him. The air thinned. And then — the first heaven.
They set him down on the clouds, and he looked around. Above him stretched an endless expanse of ether, shimmering and boundless. Below, an ocean — a great celestial sea, vaster than any body of water on earth. This was not the sea that sailors crossed. This was the sea above the firmament, the primordial water that God had separated from the sky at the beginning of creation.
The angels brought him before the elders and rulers of the stellar orders. Two hundred angels stood in formation — the ones who govern the stars, who maintain the machinery of the heavens. They flew on gleaming wings, circling endlessly around all who sail the celestial expanse.
Then Enoch looked downward and saw the treasure-houses of the snow. Vast storerooms, guarded by terrible angels, holding winter itself in reserve. The clouds that bring storms — he watched them enter and leave these warehouses like servants on errands.
They showed him another treasury: the storehouse of the dew. It gleamed like olive oil, and its fragrance was like every flower the earth has ever produced, all at once. Angels stood guard at its doors, opening and closing them according to the seasons.
This was only the beginning. The first heaven — the lowest rung of the cosmic ladder. The place where weather is manufactured and stars are tended like flocks. Enoch had not yet glimpsed the horrors that waited in the second heaven, nor the paradise that bloomed in the third. He had not yet heard the music of the sun, or felt the heat of God's face.
But the angels were already lifting him higher.