InsaneJournal

TITLE: Hinech Yafa 1/1 (the long version of a Porn Battle prompt)
Fandom: Bible
Pairing: Jesus/Mary Magdalene
Prompts: gown, green, sleet, steep
Notes: Title comes from the Idan Raichel Project song (okay, yes, and the Bible but I was listening to the song), based on poetry by Solomon.
Also, there is a severe lack of anything resembling porn in this (and possibly a lot of historical license). Thank you threeorangesfor the emergency beta.


“We are not a seafaring folk,” Joseph admitted, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the mast of their battered boat. Days and days aboard this creaky vessel, the best that Joseph’s money could buy at a time when everyone was thinking about fleeing, crossing not a lake or a little sea but a real, deep, cold and violent ocean two sailors, a merchant, a woman and her three-month-old child. Joseph had been keeping track of the days by marking them on a scrap of papyrus, he reckoned they must be getting close to winter. They needed to find land soon, because they hadn’t brought winter clothing. They had both been seasick, but at least Miriam had the advantage of knowing something about boats, her father had owned a small fishing fleet. But she wasn’t used to that awful, sticky rain, like snow but not really, like the water froze halfway to the ground but came at them sideways in gusts of wind. She was relieved when it ended and she could come up out of the hold.

Miriam sat huddled in a sheltered corner of the boat, holding her sleeping daughter and listening to the wooden hull slapping through the white capped waves. They were pushing their way through a dense fog with two single lanterns to guide them at night. Even in daylight hours the fog was heavy enough to drop a veil over the world around them.

“They tell stories about the things that lurk in this fog,” one of the sailors said casually. “Creatures that look like beautiful horses and lure men to drowning. Giants, and strange little bald gray men with slimy skin and whiskers who can shed their skin and walk among us. They say this chain of islands is protected by dragons. The people have strange magics, some say they aren’t fully human.”

“Are they hostile?” Joseph asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” the sailor admitted. “I don’t speak much of their language. Any at all, really. I’ve never met them. I came ashore once or twice to rest and thought I saw figures in the trees but that’s all. The Romans call them hostile, they’ve been making serious inroads toward conquering the place but it-“

“Everyone is hostile towards Rome,” Miriam said wearily. “We’ll have something in common. We are the definition of hostile towards Rome. I think that’s what it says on the warrant for my arrest.” She trailed a hand through the cold black water before snatching it out hastily after she considered what sorts of things might be lurking down there.

“Land!” the sailor cried. “I think that’s land ahead.” Miriam heard waves crashing on a shore not too far away. The men rushed to drop anchor in the shallow part of the water. Miriam and Joseph strapped what they could onto their backs, with the sailors promising to carry the rest (although much of what they’d left Egypt with had been blown overboard during a gale).

“I’ll walk ahead of you,” Miriam said. She waded towards the shore with Sarah in her arms, hoping that an unarmed woman and a baby would demonstrate that they were no threat. Her wet black dress clung to her and made walking slow. Waves swelled and buffeted her but she kept putting one trembling bare foot in front of the other. Her feet touched the mud that lined the threshold where rough ocean sand met smooth beach sand. Her skirt was covered in sea foam and bits of kelp, she gathered part of it in one fist to make moving easier.

The beach on which they found themselves was empty. A few rotting stumps lay on gray sand and through the fog Miriam saw clumps of thin but soft-looking purple and gold grass. There were dunes of gold and green and rocky cliffs.

“We’re being watched,” she murmured to Joseph, who had finally caught up with her. They stood quietly for a few minutes, giving their watcher time to assess the threat. Miriam told herself that it wasn’t the dragon, it wasn’t the dragon… She was from a civilized nation, she knew better than to panic in the face of non-existent creatures.

A man appeared over the dunes, growing larger as he approached them. He was definitely a most unusual-looking man. His blond hair was down to his shoulders at least, loose but with two thin braids hanging on either side of his face. And he was big, bigger than the sort of men Miriam was used to, bigger than a Roman as well. Not as big as some Africans but at least as big as those men from Germania that you sometimes saw in the Roman ranks. He was wearing a knee-length tunic of thick wool and he was armed with a bow and arrow.

He cried out in a harsh foreign language and hurried toward them. But he didn’t aim his weapon, his tone and facial expressions were more worried and shocked than anything else, even if he moved with the stealth of someone who knew he could easily take them if he wanted to.

Sarah coughed into her shoulder, Miriam patted her back and tucked the child’s blanket around her face to shield her from the wind. The man spoke to her in a concerned voice, but Joseph moved to step in front of her, offended at the man’s rudeness. The man stepped back and held his hands up, palms out in a placating gesture. He turned and started walking, motioning for them to follow. There was a large compound of some sort on the far side of the dunes, made of gray stone and black wood. There were farm animals in crude pens, chickens, and a cow. In the distance, rich farmland mixed with deep forest.

A young woman was hacking away at a log with an axe. She said something bitter-sounding to their guide, who said something that he probably thought was witty. Then he turned to them and shrugged with a grin, as if to say, “Women! What can you do?”

A pig roasted on a spit outside; Miriam avoided looking at it as they were ushered urgently into the compound. Now people were staring at them. Two older women hurried out from a dark doorway and chattered at Miriam, drawing her along into the main stone building. She found herself in a large stone room, where a fire blazed in a huge hearth. One of the women reached her arms out to take Sarah, and Miriam jerked away.

“No!”

The woman held up a pile of dry clothing and Miriam reluctantly handed her daughter to the nearest pair of pale arms. The elderly woman soothed Sarah in their strange, guttural yet oddly-lilting language. Miriam was stripped and washed before she knew it (so they did know about soap, they even had scented water to wash her feet in), and redressed in a soft forest-green gown and a pair of brown leather shoes. They even combed her long red curls for her, it had been such a long time since she’d been allowed such a luxury.

She was shown to a bedchamber, but became instantly embarrassed when she and Joseph realized they had been given the same room. After all, they were dressed as if they came from the same basic social class; furthermore, they had been found together, coming off a boat with a child that couldn’t be more than three months old. It wasn’t surprising that the wrong assumption had been made. Frantic, uncomfortable gesturing did the trick though. The rooms were wonderful, Miriam got the impression that these were the best ones. Joseph had a scroll giving them safe conduct in the name of Herod, perhaps they were confused and thought he was Herod or at least part of the royal court rather than the truth, which was that their safe passage had been given grudgingly due to their group having contained a former Customs official and the wife of Herod’s steward. And also… that their king was mostly a powerless figurehead at this point and couldn’t legitimately offer anyone “safe passage” down the street.

The evening meal was served in a long, high-ceilinged wooden hall. Miriam went to find Sarah and feed her but discovered that it had already been taken care of. She sat with Joseph in the Hall instead, feeling superfluous. The same woman who had been chopping wood earlier entered with two huge flagons of beer.

“I need to speak to someone in charge,” Joseph said. “If there is someone in charge. I would feel better knowing who their leaders are and what sorts of allegiances they hold. I’m not even sure what country we’re actually in.”

“I don’t think they’re sure either,” said Miriam.

Getting tired of communicating by gestures, Joseph tried out a few languages, Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Greek, but although there was an occasional flicker, they kept shaking their heads. Joseph switched from Greek to Latin and understanding lit in the woman’s eyes. Her Latin was not good, but she knew enough to communicate.

“Drustan is chief,” the woman explained. “I am Maeve, Drustan wife.” She addressed Miriam, pointing at Joseph. “Is your husband?”

“No, Joseph is my kinsman, I am a widow.” Maeve placed a sympathetic hand on her arm. Not being sure where these people’s loyalties lay, Miriam did not want to explain how she had lost her husband. Maeve put wooden plates of unidentifiable meat, unidentifiable vegetables and chunks of bread in front of them and smiled hopefully. Miriam looked at it and felt ill.

“We can’t eat this food, it is forbidden by our god,” Miriam explained. “We would rather just have the vegetables and bread alone.”

“But you are hungry,” Maeve protested. “Is good for you. Eat.”

“No, thank you,” Miriam said stiffly, hating to sound so horribly ungrateful but her life was no longer in danger, so there was no excuse.

“I miss civilization,” Joseph admitted when they had finally communicated that they were fine with just the bread and vegetables. People in their own world were not always friendly to Jews but they understood what Jews were and knew about the rules. Still, there was always that moment when you were defined as different, the person obstinately refusing to do what everyone else was doing. Even though her stomach growled and she knew the bread and vegetables might not be enough, Miriam was not going to give in now. She’d come too far. If Joshua could die for God, she was not going to let him down.

“What kind of meat is that anyway?” Miriam whispered.

“Wild boar, I believe,” said Joseph. “Or possibly that pig we saw outside.”

“That was a close one.”

Drustan returned at the end of the meal, traded easy barbs with his wife and strode up to Miriam and Joseph.

“Potíminí hominus qui tua lingua loquitur, ” he said proudly (Maeve rolled her eyes behind his back), which came out something like “We possess a man your language speaks.” He used arm motions to direct them towards a curtained-off room. “He is priest.”

Miriam and Joseph glanced uncomfortably at each other. This could be wonderful news, or it could be the worst new development of this voyage. Even here on what must be the other side of the world, their country’s politics interfered. But, best make the most of it because they couldn’t go back, maybe there was nothing left by now to go back to. So they stepped through the white curtains into a large, sunlit room. This other Jew had been given good accommodations: the people here clearly valued education and literacy because they’d sought to provide him with scrolls and writing materials, which must have been hard because Miriam hadn’t seen any other evidence of the scribe trade so far. They had also given him good quality bed linens and a soft looking bed. But she also saw a thin wooden cane resting against a chair and felt pity for this man, whoever he was.

“He is no here,” Drustan said unnecessarily. “He is no here often.”

“Lovely,” Miriam said. She turned to Joseph. “Perhaps we could leave him a note.”

“No need!” Drustan’s face broke into a huge grin. “Tomorrow. You meet him tomorrow.”

The next night, Miriam found out why Drustan had been so insistent that the scribe would want to return. It was their last harvest festival, the last big hunt of the year, and marked a sacred period of time for these people. Maeve explained it all as the women chose elaborate animal masks and their best jewelry.

“Maybe Mary meet someone special,” Maeve said with a sly wink at the other women. They had taken to calling her “Mary” because it was easier in their own tongue."The Jew who writes will come. You will like him."

Miriam chose a mask shaped like the upper half of a gray wolf’s face. The two sailors who had come with them also chose masks, they were both wild boars. Joseph declined any costuming, claiming he didn’t feel well and would stay inside and watch “the pagan ritual” from his window. As the sky darkened, huge bonfires were lit, and costumed people came from the various little stone and wood homes within walking distance. There was food, piles and piles of food that made Miriam’s mouth water. It had been months since she’d been spoiled for choice regarding food. The big drums started up and with joyful whoops so did the dancing.

It was a leaping, skipping dance, like the kind Miriam had seen the Greeks do but lighter and wilder, as if they danced for the pure joy of it and not because they thought other people might want to watch. The women gathered their skirts to their knees and slid through the muddy leaves. Men and women danced separately, but also together, in circles and pairs to boisterous tunes played on pipes and big drums. Overheated couples would disappear into the night, off beyond the bonfires. They grabbed her and pulled her into the dance before she had a chance to protest. Hands grasped hers, indiscriminate of gender as she mimicked the dance steps. For the first time in months, she genuinely laughed. Miriam found herself thrust into the arms of a man in a carved wooden stag mask and antlers. Part of her knew that this must have been planned and she became a bit frightened. This man radiated power, like a king or a priest. Did they think they were helping by trying to pair her up with their…

His hands felt familiar, rough but gentle and as she gripped them her fingers brushed two scars the size of nail points on his wrists. Miriam gasped audibly and met his eyes. Plenty of men had those marks, few-none of them- were still alive. She laughed and cried as she lifted her face to kiss him. They melted together, his face was wet too. There was no need to talk, what could you say?

His hands were on her hips, raising her in the air, whirling around, gripping each other’s hands and spinning. They spun and spun and spun, faces around them blurring into each other, the music reaching a fever pitch. The drums were one with the blood pounding in Miriam’s veins, she was throbbing with want. The dancers crowded them, pushing them towards the trees, past the bonfires and then they were alone in the dark, kissing like their lives depended on it.

They fell to the ground, amidst Miriam’s muffled complaints that someday, she’d like to do this in a real bed. When he was inside her, she braced herself for visions but they were only warm and gentle images of wells and a flowering tree.

“Are you really here?” Miriam panted. She lay back in the grass and dark earth and contemplated the dying, brilliantly orange and red leaves drifting down.

“Of course I am,” Joshua said.

“Because-sometimes you’re not really here,” she replied. Her eyes filled up with tears again. “And I wasn’t expecting to ever see you again let alone in a-a-stag mask. Or walking with a cane. How do you dance if you need a cane?”

“I wish I could explain,” he said, kissing her tears away. “I don’t know how I got here or why either. But I think we’re meant to make a new start. My wounds only hurt when the weather is cold.”

“You have a daughter,” Miriam said, wrapping a leg around his legs and pulling him closer. “I named her Sarah. I went into labor in Egypt, without my mother or sister, in a house belonging to strangers. Martha and Lazarus, since you haven’t asked, have gone to Gaul. That's not far, I suppose it could be worse.”

“I was going to ask,” he protested. “I want to see her as soon as possible- I have a daughter! What of my brothers and sisters? My mother?”

“All healthy and whole the last time we spoke, organizing your followers, ” Miriam said. “But they refuse to leave. How could I tell Jacob that I know what will happen to him if he doesn’t?”

“My brother has never put much store in the mystical,” Joshua admitted. “I would have thought the events of the past two years would change him but-“

“Joshua, we have to move again,” Miriam said seriously. “I didn’t have any visions, the Romans are coming back. The whole world knows, they’re practically bragging about it. They’re going to keep coming back until they run into someone just as bad. We have to get away from the coast.”

“I know,” he murmured. “We need to brush up on the language first. They’re not keen on writing things down but I’ve been making notes on useful words you would need to know when you arrived.”