“You never see unicorns anymore,” Crawly grumbles, watching another collection of dusty donkeys trudge into town.
“Well, obviously not,” Aziraphale replies, rolling his eyes.
Crawly directs a frown at him.
“Obviously?” he repeats, eyebrows raised in a question.
“You were there, Crawly, you know perfectly well why not.”
Crawly blinks, which doesn’t happen very often.
“You’ve lost me.”
“The Ark?” Aziraphale tries, hoping to jog Crawly’s memory. “You remember, one of Noah’s ran off, they didn’t have time to find another before the rain started…”
Crawly frowns.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Aziraphale peers at his face, looking for the trick, the joke, the setup. All he sees is honest confusion. It’s his turn to blink.
“Crawly,” he says, somewhere between disbelief and a rather unangelic delight, “you do know why he had two of everything, don’t you?”
Crawly shifts defensively in his seat.
“Assumed it was one of those daft instructions sent down from on high, you know, one Ark, two of each animal, three of each kind of fruit, whatever—”
Aziraphale starts to laugh. He can’t help himself. Crawly scowls at him and hunches his shoulders.
“What? What’s so funny, angel?”
Angel. Crawly called him that in Eden, before Aziraphale thought to give him his name. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it now. Perhaps it’s supposed to be an insult. It doesn’t really have a lot of bite to it, if so.
“You’ve really never— all right, all right, don’t look so cross, I’ll tell you, I’m just— surprised, that’s all.” Aziraphale takes a sip of the fermented beverage the humans in this village have invented. It’s got potential, he thinks. “It takes two of them to breed, Crawly. Male and female.”
Crawly stares at him so blankly that Aziraphale has to bite his lip against more laughter.
“Please tell me you’ve at least noticed the physiological differences between the sexes—”
“Yes, yes, I know about that,” Crawly interrupts. “And what they get up to with those bits. You mean they’re not just for leisure activities?”
“No, they’re rather fundamental to the whole reproduction thing, in fact. The, ah, recreational applications are just a side-effect.”
“What, really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But humans are always—”
“Well, that’s why there’s so many of them these days.”
Crawly looks absolutely dumbfounded by this revelation, and more than a little outraged.
“What about birds?” he demands. “They just lay eggs whenever they want to, don’t they?”
“I believe mating is still required beforehand.”
“What about fish?”
“I’m fairly certain that the same rule applies.”
Crawly stares into his clay cup, lips moving slightly as he tries to come to terms with this whole concept. His expression tilts suddenly into something that unexpectedly yanks on Aziraphale’s heartstrings.
“Oh,” he says quietly. “So no more unicorns, then.”
“No,” Aziraphale replies, no longer laughing.
“I’d have got it back for them, if I’d known,” Crawly mumbles.
Yes, Aziraphale thinks, surprised by his own certainty, you would have, wouldn’t you?
