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rainbowfic2025-06-19 11:58 am
verylongfarewell) wrote in rainbowfic2025-06-19 11:58 am
techelet #7; zebradorite #2 | no room in the inn; the lover of lilith
Name: No Room In the Inn
Story: The Lover of Lilith
Summary: Mary never became the mother of Christ. She instead became pregnant by the female demon Lilith and now has to balance her love for the stars and her love for a man made of mud.
Colors: Techelet (7: mitzvah) and zebradorite (2: winter / spring / summer / autumn)
Supplies and Styles: Frame, graffiti (parents challenge until end june), life drawing, modeling clay
Word Count: ~1600
Rating: Mature (due to portrayal of childbirth, no explicit sexual content)
Warnings: Pregnancy, childbirth, estrangement from parents due to coming out...
Notes: A companion piece to a short story, The Lover of Lilith, I've written for a submission call (still pending).
____________________
NO ROOM IN THE INN
June is vibrant.
Morning feels dry against her skin, like a second layer of garb – and the air shimmers in the sun, the dust sticking to the borders of her tunic, though it leaves no trace, for the fabric has already been dirtied enough. Although she has brushed off the hay, soil marks her figure still, remaining like a trail of sin that underlines her curves and her depths. All those cavities of her body, now filled.
When she leaves the shed that is usually a home to sheep and asses, Mary knows, she is richer than she was stepping inside it the night before. Lilith has not taken from her, she giveth. And she continues to give.
For Mary returns to her father’s house, and she explains her circumstances to him – Father, I am with child, it is a divine blessing, do not cast it aside – but Joachim, the benevolent man of great wealth, the man who knows the nature of blessings and the Word of the Lord, does nonetheless cast his daughter aside. That is, once he has done what he must and called off her engagement to Joseph, her intended husband – and as the girl starts showing, when summer turns into fall, so that the whole town gossips among themselves with words sharp as swords and daggers, he finally goes out to acquire a small house on the outskirts of Nazareth and installs Mary there.
Here is room for your sins, my daughter. And here is room for the child, too.
Gone, be they, thus, from his sight.
With that, the fields are ripe to harvest and the sheep are ready for slaughter, and Mary is alone during the bright, blue-skied days in that lonely home, waiting only for night and the chilling of temperatures, so that she may open the door and find, naked feet treading upon feathers, Lilith standing outside, in her silk-hemmed tunic, her hair dark and her eyes starlit in a way that mirrors Mary’s own now.
The girl falls to her knees before her, arms folded across her breast.
“I thought you had left me to myself,” she whispers, eyes downcast and head bowed low. Her gaze averted, all the tears in the statement cling to her voice like a curtain about to be pulled aside. Revealing the truth behind it.
Hands reach for her, helping her to her feet. A finger catches her by her chin, making Mary look up slowly. Their eyes lock in the birth of a new night sky. Lilith smiles and multiple lives are ruined in that one facial expression.
None of them are Mary’s.
Mary has not been ruined, Mary has been granted wings.
She pushes both hands to her belly, softly curving at this point, betraying the parcel she carries, the egg of a wild bird. She is no ewe, she is a hen eagle. Her child will know the secret of flight.
“Even when you are alone, girl, it is not to yourself that I have left you,” Lilith replies and pushes her flattened palms first to the roundness of Mary’s chest, feeling for her heartbeat, then to her stomach, feeling for the heartbeat of another.
Even when she is alone, she is never by herself any longer. She carries a life inside of her. And moreover, she carries the marks of Lilith on her outsides, kissed by the sun, the greatest star of them all.
Mary reaches for her. “Teach me, and I shall listen,” she begs.
“While the men harvest,” Lilith instructs her, kissing her right temple, then the left side of her face, then she closes her lips over the place where Mary’s throat is exposed by her tunic’s neckline and her windpipe moves irregularly beneath its coat of thin skin, “glean what they leave behind. Do not fear going hungry, for every peck you gather, I shall come to you at night with two. Because you have two mouths to fill, and I will not leave you wanting.”
Mary follows her to the thin mattress near the window, she lies down with her, and she doesn’t sleep that night, she shuts her eyes, but for different reasons. It is only to contain the night in them. The night. And also the light.
Already the next day, she goes out into the fields and gleans what the workers leave behind. Because she is Joachim’s daughter, because she is beautiful, and because she is expecting, yet she demands nothing of them, they leave a little extra. Mary gathers almost a bushel grain and corn.
In the evening, Lilith comes to her, bringing two bushels of food. Winter will come, lover, she mutters against the girl’s coarse palms, kissing them, cooling them, soothing them, but it will pass over you, and you will pay heed to nothing that is not worth paying heed to.
Like so, autumn grows a day shorter and another day and another and by the end of it, Mary’s storages are full and her stomach swells, and her father looks her pantry over with a frown, knowing well from where her provisions came, seeing as they did not come from him. She bakes him raisin cakes and they eat together, as if the child, moving now within her like a being in its own right, does not stand between them. Mary worries not; she is aware, one day her child will take flight, and nothing will stand between her father and her anymore.
Until then, she is learning how to be patient.
So, Mary eats well that winter, she eats for two, as Lilith reminds her, touching her hand to her forehead as she grows heavy and bothered by the weight, then to her breast, feeling for the space between mind’s eye and heart. It seems, as she does, that the other woman both sees and feels her, with equal clarity. Mary is safe with her, she knows. She will be provided for. She will be tended to. Her pleasure will be ensured and her pain treated with an ancient wisdom and a care that goes beyond any human ways.
Stars only shine, because they grow on a backdrop of darkness, and so is the light in Lilith’s eyes, because she knows of black holes that Mary cannot even fathom; she has not existed since the dawn of everything. Yet, knowing them, the woman of stars and feathers can save Mary from their pitfalls as well, can’t she? Won’t she?
In that, Mary puts her trust.
In her, Mary puts her trust.
When the time comes for her delivery, labour feels like death, but Lilith is with her, wipes her face, guides her body in much the same manner as she would do when they make love. I am with you, lover, she whispers, sever the tie now and I will heal all your wounds after. Therefore, Mary doesn’t die. Mary screams. Mary pushes. Mary parts from the life in her womb in a mass of blood, but it is a clean cut and her child weighs nothing as Lilith places the little girl in her arms, she weighs what air and feathers weigh. The screaming becomes laughing and Mary praises her name, Lilith’s. Lilith’s name, and the name of her newborn baby girl, Esther, she tells Lilith, I have born you a daughter, her name shall be Esther.
For the first time, Lilith stays until morning, and she stays beyond morning, too, wearing humanity like a cloak all day, moving between shadows.
March, bordering on April, in comparison, is pale.
Morning is blissfully cool and clear, it feels like a new day. Not an old day, washed and hung out to dry, but the beginning of an unknown time. What does it mean, when the demon becomes a woman, even for a little while? What does it mean when the demon’s lover carries her child into this world which should have been the home that God promised to mankind?
What does it mean?
Mary holds her child, cradles her to her breast and looks down into her face where little eyes shine from a great cluster of starlight gathered in full, dark pupils, just like they gleam in her mother’s. The both of them.
It means that they have brought the heavens down upon the earth. She sees it in Esther’s features, the night sky that has come within reach.
A divine blessing, she will tell her father later, when her month of impurity is over and she is allowed to see, be seen. When she is allowed to touch, be touched. Do not cast it aside.
What it will mean is this, do not cast me aside again.
In her arms, Esther weighs less than a baby sparrow, and she is already equipped to fly. She should not stand in their way, when she does not even know how to properly stand up yet, isn’t that so? Likewise, Lilith will cease to be their holy curtain, ripped, releasing the truth into the streets. Because, later, when Mary can reclaim her purity, to whatever degree this is still feasible and to whatever degree she truly wishes for it to be done, the other woman will return to only paying her visits at night.
Beneath the glare of the daylight star, the sun, the brightest of them all, Mary will once more be alone, but never without, never wanting – since the path between the house of Joachim, a man of nothing but riches and righteousness, and her own will be cleared. It must surely count as an invitation.
Do not cast us aside.
Father.
Story: The Lover of Lilith
Summary: Mary never became the mother of Christ. She instead became pregnant by the female demon Lilith and now has to balance her love for the stars and her love for a man made of mud.
Colors: Techelet (7: mitzvah) and zebradorite (2: winter / spring / summer / autumn)
Supplies and Styles: Frame, graffiti (parents challenge until end june), life drawing, modeling clay
Word Count: ~1600
Rating: Mature (due to portrayal of childbirth, no explicit sexual content)
Warnings: Pregnancy, childbirth, estrangement from parents due to coming out...
Notes: A companion piece to a short story, The Lover of Lilith, I've written for a submission call (still pending).
____________________
June is vibrant.
Morning feels dry against her skin, like a second layer of garb – and the air shimmers in the sun, the dust sticking to the borders of her tunic, though it leaves no trace, for the fabric has already been dirtied enough. Although she has brushed off the hay, soil marks her figure still, remaining like a trail of sin that underlines her curves and her depths. All those cavities of her body, now filled.
When she leaves the shed that is usually a home to sheep and asses, Mary knows, she is richer than she was stepping inside it the night before. Lilith has not taken from her, she giveth. And she continues to give.
For Mary returns to her father’s house, and she explains her circumstances to him – Father, I am with child, it is a divine blessing, do not cast it aside – but Joachim, the benevolent man of great wealth, the man who knows the nature of blessings and the Word of the Lord, does nonetheless cast his daughter aside. That is, once he has done what he must and called off her engagement to Joseph, her intended husband – and as the girl starts showing, when summer turns into fall, so that the whole town gossips among themselves with words sharp as swords and daggers, he finally goes out to acquire a small house on the outskirts of Nazareth and installs Mary there.
Here is room for your sins, my daughter. And here is room for the child, too.
Gone, be they, thus, from his sight.
With that, the fields are ripe to harvest and the sheep are ready for slaughter, and Mary is alone during the bright, blue-skied days in that lonely home, waiting only for night and the chilling of temperatures, so that she may open the door and find, naked feet treading upon feathers, Lilith standing outside, in her silk-hemmed tunic, her hair dark and her eyes starlit in a way that mirrors Mary’s own now.
The girl falls to her knees before her, arms folded across her breast.
“I thought you had left me to myself,” she whispers, eyes downcast and head bowed low. Her gaze averted, all the tears in the statement cling to her voice like a curtain about to be pulled aside. Revealing the truth behind it.
Hands reach for her, helping her to her feet. A finger catches her by her chin, making Mary look up slowly. Their eyes lock in the birth of a new night sky. Lilith smiles and multiple lives are ruined in that one facial expression.
None of them are Mary’s.
Mary has not been ruined, Mary has been granted wings.
She pushes both hands to her belly, softly curving at this point, betraying the parcel she carries, the egg of a wild bird. She is no ewe, she is a hen eagle. Her child will know the secret of flight.
“Even when you are alone, girl, it is not to yourself that I have left you,” Lilith replies and pushes her flattened palms first to the roundness of Mary’s chest, feeling for her heartbeat, then to her stomach, feeling for the heartbeat of another.
Even when she is alone, she is never by herself any longer. She carries a life inside of her. And moreover, she carries the marks of Lilith on her outsides, kissed by the sun, the greatest star of them all.
Mary reaches for her. “Teach me, and I shall listen,” she begs.
“While the men harvest,” Lilith instructs her, kissing her right temple, then the left side of her face, then she closes her lips over the place where Mary’s throat is exposed by her tunic’s neckline and her windpipe moves irregularly beneath its coat of thin skin, “glean what they leave behind. Do not fear going hungry, for every peck you gather, I shall come to you at night with two. Because you have two mouths to fill, and I will not leave you wanting.”
Mary follows her to the thin mattress near the window, she lies down with her, and she doesn’t sleep that night, she shuts her eyes, but for different reasons. It is only to contain the night in them. The night. And also the light.
Already the next day, she goes out into the fields and gleans what the workers leave behind. Because she is Joachim’s daughter, because she is beautiful, and because she is expecting, yet she demands nothing of them, they leave a little extra. Mary gathers almost a bushel grain and corn.
In the evening, Lilith comes to her, bringing two bushels of food. Winter will come, lover, she mutters against the girl’s coarse palms, kissing them, cooling them, soothing them, but it will pass over you, and you will pay heed to nothing that is not worth paying heed to.
Like so, autumn grows a day shorter and another day and another and by the end of it, Mary’s storages are full and her stomach swells, and her father looks her pantry over with a frown, knowing well from where her provisions came, seeing as they did not come from him. She bakes him raisin cakes and they eat together, as if the child, moving now within her like a being in its own right, does not stand between them. Mary worries not; she is aware, one day her child will take flight, and nothing will stand between her father and her anymore.
Until then, she is learning how to be patient.
So, Mary eats well that winter, she eats for two, as Lilith reminds her, touching her hand to her forehead as she grows heavy and bothered by the weight, then to her breast, feeling for the space between mind’s eye and heart. It seems, as she does, that the other woman both sees and feels her, with equal clarity. Mary is safe with her, she knows. She will be provided for. She will be tended to. Her pleasure will be ensured and her pain treated with an ancient wisdom and a care that goes beyond any human ways.
Stars only shine, because they grow on a backdrop of darkness, and so is the light in Lilith’s eyes, because she knows of black holes that Mary cannot even fathom; she has not existed since the dawn of everything. Yet, knowing them, the woman of stars and feathers can save Mary from their pitfalls as well, can’t she? Won’t she?
In that, Mary puts her trust.
In her, Mary puts her trust.
When the time comes for her delivery, labour feels like death, but Lilith is with her, wipes her face, guides her body in much the same manner as she would do when they make love. I am with you, lover, she whispers, sever the tie now and I will heal all your wounds after. Therefore, Mary doesn’t die. Mary screams. Mary pushes. Mary parts from the life in her womb in a mass of blood, but it is a clean cut and her child weighs nothing as Lilith places the little girl in her arms, she weighs what air and feathers weigh. The screaming becomes laughing and Mary praises her name, Lilith’s. Lilith’s name, and the name of her newborn baby girl, Esther, she tells Lilith, I have born you a daughter, her name shall be Esther.
For the first time, Lilith stays until morning, and she stays beyond morning, too, wearing humanity like a cloak all day, moving between shadows.
March, bordering on April, in comparison, is pale.
Morning is blissfully cool and clear, it feels like a new day. Not an old day, washed and hung out to dry, but the beginning of an unknown time. What does it mean, when the demon becomes a woman, even for a little while? What does it mean when the demon’s lover carries her child into this world which should have been the home that God promised to mankind?
What does it mean?
Mary holds her child, cradles her to her breast and looks down into her face where little eyes shine from a great cluster of starlight gathered in full, dark pupils, just like they gleam in her mother’s. The both of them.
It means that they have brought the heavens down upon the earth. She sees it in Esther’s features, the night sky that has come within reach.
A divine blessing, she will tell her father later, when her month of impurity is over and she is allowed to see, be seen. When she is allowed to touch, be touched. Do not cast it aside.
What it will mean is this, do not cast me aside again.
In her arms, Esther weighs less than a baby sparrow, and she is already equipped to fly. She should not stand in their way, when she does not even know how to properly stand up yet, isn’t that so? Likewise, Lilith will cease to be their holy curtain, ripped, releasing the truth into the streets. Because, later, when Mary can reclaim her purity, to whatever degree this is still feasible and to whatever degree she truly wishes for it to be done, the other woman will return to only paying her visits at night.
Beneath the glare of the daylight star, the sun, the brightest of them all, Mary will once more be alone, but never without, never wanting – since the path between the house of Joachim, a man of nothing but riches and righteousness, and her own will be cleared. It must surely count as an invitation.
Do not cast us aside.
Father.
no subject
Ooh, that's an interesting premise, Lilith is a fun mythological figure to play with. I'm curious to see what you will do with the Techelet list here.
no subject
Thank you for your comment, it's much appreciated.
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