ficrepost: "Pillar of Cloud" Ruth/Naomi

[wisdomeagle]

Fandom: Bible
Title: Pillar of Cloud
Author: Ari/wisdomeagle
Written for: babydraco in purimgifts 2008. Originally posted here.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: This is a work of creative fiction based on a sacred text. The author claims no credit for the characters or their stories, only for these imagined interactions. No disrespect is intended to those of any faith. The photography is the author's own.
Pairing: Ruth/Naomi
Notes: Thanks to sangerin and yhlee for last minute betaing.



Pillar of Cloud

When night falls, Ruth slips across the tent into Naomi's arms as easily as a miracle childbirth, as a baby slipping from its mother bloody, visceral, wet and still, no dreams of bawling, a heaven-sent child. She is warm in Naomi's arms, safe. Enwombed at last as she was meant to be, uncovered hair at last unwound into a mother's lap, tears and laughter each easier in the dark stillness of the desert, the endless absence that is travel.

Warm promises curl between them, childlike, enticing; every word that Ruth learned from Mahlon, seductive and sweet, is like honey pressed against Naomi's mouth.

Grief and vows vanish now. This can be excused as a vision, misremembered as a dream. It happens never and leaves no mark, no pain, no scar, no bloody wedding sheet displayed with pride and pain. Naomi tastes like distant lands, ripe with new fruit and old wine. Her moans tell stories of wandering and homecoming, escape and hope, fire and water and clouds and a god unnamable and unknowable who exacts constant obedience. Everything Ruth knows of Naomi's god she learns from the silences between moans, the softness that lies beneath hardened, aging flesh, the sweet taste of bitterness melting in her mouth, the whisper:

"To everyone else I am bitter, darling, but with you I am sweetness." Naomi is mother-in-law, mother, more than mother. Lifegiver, lover, Life.

Ruth tucks a secret smile into Naomi's breast. This sweetness will fade like the forgotten sunrise of her wedding day, like every scheme of Naomi's, every lively fancy that becomes, in the harshness of dawn, nothing but deceit. These kisses belong to the night, secret and stolen, unforgiven and unforgivable, but yes, Naomi is right -- so singularly sweet. Worth the rebirth, the renunciation of her past, the uncertainty of her future, the pangs of the journey. She would pay any sacrifice, for the joy that night brings.



clouds.


++

cloud+fire+water