So I've started a new oneshot series. Of varying lengths and themes, I am writing a short story for one word for every letter. I'm not posting each one in a seperate chapter as some are very short, so it will be about three to a chapter. I'll put any individual notes next to each story.

Acorn

They say that from tiny acorns, mighty oaks do grow. Well, humans say that. Angels don't bother. They've never quite mastered the very human art of stating the absolutely obvious in a manner that somehow makes it meaningful.

Nonetheless, it is true. Very often the very smallest of things can become something very, very important. Save-the-world kind of important.

The acorn in this analogy was actually an acorn. The chance of that being the case is about a googol to one, but because googol- to-one chances appear nearly as often as million-to-one chances, which crop up nine times out of ten.

Anyway. Back to this acorn. It was hanging innocently from a tree branch, where it had been hanging for its entire life. Its entire life hadn't been all that long. It had only just ripened and was ready to fall.

The oak tree that it hung on was fairly large, fairly sturdy. It was also right by a road. Down this road many travellers had walked. The acorn didn't know this, because it was an acorn. They don't pay much attention.

Yet another traveller was coming down the road now. He was alone, which was unusual in this era. He was blonde, which was a great deal more common, and he looked battered and exhausted. He was stained with blood although there were no obvious wounds. The local tribes were barely more than savages, known to the Romans as the Suione. They worshipped a dozen different deities, although about 250 of the 500 villages had mysteriously converted over to the new religion taking hold in Rome. This road led to the 251st.

In fact, the traveller was about halfway along the road to the next village. The country had been neatly divided in two, with one half being neat and law abiding and the other half being even more barbaric and self-indulgent than they were to start with.

He was tired and injured. He'd been hurt in a fight less than a week previously and yet had decided to keep going anyway. He hadn't slept for a week, although he didn't technically need to. This was why he wasn't paying as much attention to the road ahead of him as he should have been.

Just as the blonde man passed below the branch on which the acorn hung, a sudden weight made the branch waver. The acorn's stalk snapped and the acorn fell down.

It landed on the blonde man's head. He immediately jumped backwards and stumbled slightly as he landed. With a slight frown of effort, white wings erupted from the back of his tunic, shedding a few feathers.

The snake who had dislodged the acorn gave a hissing sigh and eyed his adversary disdainfully. He was a sorry sight- more than usual.

The snake unwound himself, dropping fluidly to the ground and transforming as he went. He straightened up, becoming a human-shaped creature in a dark tunic and cloak.

Aziraphale drew the sword hanging in the sheath at his side. It trembled slightly in his hand as he held it up.

Crowley shook his head.

'Do you ever think how stupid this is?'

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. 'Don't you try and trick me-'

'This fighting. We keep meeting halfway and killing each other, then coming back and doing it again.' He stretched. 'Look at you. You're half dead.'

'I'm fine,' the angel snapped.

'Look, we know how this ends. Neither of us win, neither of us lose, we all go home and carry on. Why don't we just give it a miss this week?'

Aziraphale lowered the sword. 'I'm not listening to you.'

Crowley rolled his eyes. 'How about this? You take your half of the country, I'll take my half, and we'll stop fighting over it.'

Aziraphale looked uncertain. 'My superiors-'

'-don't care about Earth,' Crowley interrupted. 'Anyway, I'm not fighting you like this. It's not dignified for me to beat someone who's already injured.' Crowley transformed back into his favourite form, slithering back up the tree. 'There's no point fighting now anyway. That stupid acorn ruined everything.'

Two thousand years later, the oak tree that the acorn became had long since crumbled to dust and been forgotten. The literal oak tree. The metaphorical oak tree was alive and well, metaphors being much more durable.

Baboon

It was Africa, in the early second century. The Romans had invaded and settled and were setting up civilization there.

It was dusk, and it was raining. Rain in Africa is serious business. In Europe, it rains occasionally but regularly. In Britain, it rains often but lightly. In Wales is rains all the time, and yet doesn't flood. Much. But Africa gets all its rain at once and it does so very, very quickly.

Currently, the rain was approaching as far as possible the sensation of a very fast moving sea.

In a small, leaky tent, a man with dark hair was huddled in a cocoon of blankets, glaring at the world through one golden, slitted eye. The other was covered by an eyepatch. There wasn't anything wrong with it; he just felt that it looked daringly rakish and dangerous.

Next to him, outside the heap of blankets that constituted his companion, sat a blonde man with a put-upon expression.

'Crowley, do you really need all the blankets?'

His friend hissed. 'Cold blooded, remember?'

'It isn't that cold,' Aziraphale said, but a moment later he unclasped his cloak and added it to the pile.

The rain poured down, and Aziraphale wondered if the entire ocean had been relocated to over their tent.

Suddenly, the rain was no longer outside their tent. The fabric gave way and collapsed, torn apart from outside, and there was a noise of eager chattering from the exterior.

Aziraphale leapt to his feet and drew his sword. Crowley, muffled in blankets, found himself unable to move and was swamped by tent fabric.

Crowley, struggling under his restraints, was bewildered to hear Aziraphale laughing.

'What's so funny, angel?' he hissed angrily.

His question was answered when the tent fabric was pulled aside, uncovering his face, and once he'd blinked away the immediate onslaught of rain he saw staring down at him a grinning face.

'Monkeys?' the demon growled.

'Baboons,' the angel corrected.

Cant

Angels can speak any language. So, of course, can demons. It was coded into their genes.

But amongst themselves, in Heaven, they speak their own language. It sounds a little like Hebrew, a little like Yiddish, a little like Latin, and for some reason, rather a lot like Elvish.

It is best not to speculate as to the reasons for this.

Aziraphale speaks in it sometimes. When he forgets where he is, when he is shocked or startled (and that is rare), when he finds a new book, when he is so angry with an unrepentant Crowley that he is reduced to simply yelling, when he contacts Heaven. He does, however, swear in English when he feels the need. This is partly because in his soul, he feels English is his mother tongue, and partly because Angel does not have any swearwords. By nature, really, it wouldn't.

Demons have their own language too. It sounds a little like Latin, something like German, a bit like Hebrew, and, for some reason, quite a bit like Klingon.

It's really better not to speculate about that.

Crowley tries not to speak in it, but he does sometimes anyway. When he's really angry, when he forgets himself, when Hell sends him inconvenient orders, when Aziraphale gets himself hurt, and when he talks to Hell. He does swear in English, but he prefers to swear in Demon. It has a lot of swearwords. By nature, really, it would.

They try, however, not to speak it around each other. Angel is a language steeped in holiness and the mere sound of it can make a demon flinch. Not only does it burn their infernal essence with its holiness, it holds painful memories of the time before they Fell. Demon is a language as close to sonic evil as actually possible, and the sound of it reviles and repulses angels. It reminds them of what awaits them should they Fall, of what their former comrades have become, and the evil burns their souls.

But mostly, whenever Crowley forgets himself and swears, and Aziraphale forgets himself and curses, they both grow quiet and shrink away, because both languages sound so similar that it is impossible to not hear the closely woven linguistic roots and remember that the words not so different don't just apply to their mother tongues.

A cant is another word for dialect, or local variation, or sublanguage. I just... ran with it.