This fiction piece was written as part of the GDC Writer’s Cohort I am participating in this year.
I have not written fiction for twenty years, but it was so fun to sit down a workout a creative muscle that as been dormant for a long time.
*****

Enoch’s Daughter

Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 
Enoch walked with God...
Genesis 5:21-24

The morning sunlight was just rising over the eastern mountains, slowly turning the desert landscape a fleeting, momentary shade of soft morning gold. This had always been her favorite part of the day, the cadence of her morning routine matched by the waning sound of crickets and soft rustles of the camp’s other early risers.

She met her mother outside the tent, each of them offering a quiet greeting to each other. “Should we gather more wood for the fire?” Nine year old Emzara whispered to her mother, aware of everyone still sleeping. 

“It is waning a bit. We should head toward the foothills today, on the east side. The western edge has already been picked over for dry wood.” With that, the two of them set off toward the sunrise, the only sound between them the rocks underneath their sandals. 

“It’s nice today,” Emzara offered a few minutes later when they were safely outside the camp.

“Mmm hmm,” her mother mumbled in return, eyes still fixed ahead. 

“Maybe after we find firewood, we can play a game with the others?” Emzara asked timidly, her childish sincerity dampened only by what she was sure her mother would say.

“We have work to do, Emzara. The men will want breakfast before they set off today, and the young animals need tending. You know the sheep were just born.”

“Yes, I do mother.” Emzara looked up at her mother, whose eyes never did come down to meet hers. She was a diligent woman, Emzara’s mother. Her family never wanted for much under her care. There was food and clothing, and occasionally she allowed them to listen to their uncles play the lyre around the fire well into the night. But she was distant from Emzara, from all of her children. Not angry, just distant. She wore her tiredness on her skin; it was always there, visible on her hands and face even when the rest of her was covered in clothes. A life of hard work had left its mark on her, and she could not pretend to match the youthful energy of her youngest daughter. 

“I will walk down along the creek, Emzara. Why don’t you head to the ridgeline? Collect as much wood as you can carry. I’ll help you on the walk back.” 

Emzara dutifully followed the direction of her mother’s hand. “Yes, mother,” she said in return, and began up the foothill, following the early light. She picked up a few sticks as she walked, the biggest ones her little arms could manage, cradling them in the nook of her left elbow. 

As she reached the horizon line, her free right hand instinctively shading her eyes from the sun, she heard a warm, familiar voice. “Bat Ayin, my daughter.” Emzara turned to her right to find her father, Enoch, kneeling on a small woven mat. “Come, come, bat. Come sit with me.”

“Abba!” Emzara put down her small collection of wood and hurried to her father, who gathered her in his arms and put his strong hand on the back of her shawl covered head. “Abba, what are you doing up here?”

“Ah, you’ve found me where I begin every morning, Emzara,” Enoch responded in his calm, confident cadence. “This is where I come to see the sun rise. Isn’t it beautiful, Emzara? And so miraculous - we have to do nothing but wait, and it comes. Every morning, it comes again.” He paused for a moment, letting his young bat take in his words. Then he added, “This is where I come to hear from ‘elohim.”

‘Elohim. Emzara thought for a moment about what her father had said. Her  childish curiosity met with emerging young adult inquisitiveness, and her ability to make sense of this ‘elohim lay somewhere in between the two. “Abba, you talk with ‘elohim a lot,” she remarked, both as a statement and a question.

“I do, Emzara. I see him in the sunrise and the mist covering the ground as I walk up here. I see him in your mother, I see him in you, bat Ayin.” He put his hand tenderly under her chin, and smiled as he looked into her deep brown eyes. Enoch’s gentleness with his daughter had always made Emzara feel safe. 

“Abba, you talk to ‘elohim. What does he say?” 

“He does not always speak with words, bat Ayin. He speaks with creation. He speaks with his provision. He speaks, but you have to listen. His voice is sometimes still and small, but it is powerful, bat Ayin. His words are...” Enoch’s voice trailed off, overtaken by his own awe at what he was trying to say. “His words are life, bat Ayin. He speaks, and it is so.”

“Abba, you have told me stories about the world ‘elohim made since I was a baby. About the day and the night, about the stars, about the plants and animals, and about our ancestors. You know ‘elohim, abba; do you love him?” Emzara asked. 

“He knows me, bat Ayin. He knows me, and I respond. One cannot help but love him if he is known by him.”

“But abba, you know him more than the others do. You talk with him, you begin your day here, on your knees, with him. You speak of him with joy, but not with ease. You have peace, abba. Is it because you love him?”

“Emzara, ‘elohim is too big to speak of with ease. There is much I know of him, but much I do not, I can not know. There are others he knows, others he has chosen, because surely we would not choose him if he did not choose us. We would choose ourselves, bat Ayin, we would want to be as powerful as him, and we cannot be. We were made to enjoy him, yet we desire to be like him.”

“You enjoy him, abba?”

“Ah, I do, bat Ayin,” Enoch said with a smile. “I do.” 

Emzara smiled back up at her abba. 

“Our ‘elohim is so many things,” Enoch continued. “But Emzara, I want you to know this: he is good. Our desire to be like him,” he paused again, carefully weighing his words, “it has caused so many things to go wrong. Our desire for the power only ‘elohim has makes us do things to each other we should never do. You remember Cain, bat Ayin?”

“I do, abba. He took his brother’s life.”

“And we don’t just do things to each other. The whole world, all that God made good now has the stain of sin. There is sickness and death and…” he stopped. “There is pain, bat Ayin. We cannot look around without seeing the pain.” 

Emzara followed her father’s lead and stared out at the sunrise, now warm and bright over the land. She knew something of a world that was not perfect. She’d been sick and weak, nursed back to health by the care of her mother who spent nights awake while Emzara burned with fever. She also knew some of what her mother and father had seen. Emzara had brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and cousins to play with, but she knew there was loss, too. Not every sibling her mother and father had was still with them, not every cousin she threw rocks into the creek with had survived the terrible fevers Emzara had. But Emzara, I want you to know this: he is good. Her father’s words hung confidently in her heart. 

“Bat Ayin,” Enoch continued, as they both got to their feet, the increasing warmth of the day signaling it was time to return to camp. “‘Elohim told us there would be a lot of hard things because of our sin. We will fight, we will work endlessly for food and shelter, we will desire things that are not ours. But he also said there will be someone, a child of Eve, who will come to us. When he comes, he will help. He will make things right. We are never without hope, Emzara. Our ‘elohim is too good to leave us without hope.”

Enoch helped his daughter gather the wood she had found, and together they picked up a few more pieces as they walked back down the hill to find her mother. Enoch’s hand gently supported his daughter on the narrow trail down as she balanced the wood her mother had tasked her to find.

“Emzara!” her mother said sternly as she came into view with her father. “Is that all you gathered? Surely you had time to find more.” 

Enoch smiled at his wife and helped her with the wood she had picked up. “It’s ok ishshah, Emzara has been with me. We were with ‘elohim, together.” 

Enoch’s wife sighed, but underneath her aggravation was a gentle smile. She knew her husband would have been at the ridgeline, his mat was always gone from its place near the door of the tent before even she, the woman always up before the sun, woke up in the morning. “And what did you tell her about him?” she asked her husband, a knowing smile on her face, as if the answer was already between them, as if she knew her husband would have been speaking of the one thing he always spoke of: this good ‘elohim.

He returned her knowing smile and kissed his wife on the forehead, and they continued together back to camp.