A Long Millennium

by fresne

Summary:

Spend a thousand years in your mother's womb with someone and you get all sorts of bad ideas.

Notes:

Podfic - Mp3, 2.01 Mb 4:18

Spend a thousand years in your mother's womb with someone and you get all sorts of bad ideas.

Osiris' elbow in Set's ear every time Osiris and Isis set to couchie cooing. Isis' breast on the back of Set's head, because in a thousand years, women grow breasts.

Well, some women grew breasts.

Nephthys was flat as a boy and folded into the curve of his knee. They chatted. Not about much. There wasn't much to chat about in the womb of your mother. Floating in the amniotic fluid of the sky because Ra was afraid his son/grandson/nephew/whatever would depose him.

The son who wasn't Set. The daughter who wasn't Nephthys. Who were whispering sweet love words into each other while Nephthys said things like, "Nice amniotic today. I think mother was eating onions yesterday. I didn't like it half so well. But today, this is good. Tastes like beef. Do you taste beef?"

Set would grunt. Or say, "No, he didn't taste beef." Or, "Yes, he tasted beef." Or, "Tastes like chicken." While Isis and Osiris sighed and elbowed and kicked them and they tried to float there pretending nothing was going on. Nothing to see here, not that they could see in the dark womb of the sky.

Yup, just one big long pregnancy. Wishing they were anywhere but there.

Couldn't be a picnic for mother either. Not that stopped her and father, cackling Geb, from cackling in the places where the sky and earth touched. When mother wasn't touching Ra, the sun, that was. Or clever Thoth, Isis' father.

Wasn't that a party.

He and Nephthys chatted, while mother and Isis and Osiris and Ra and Thoth and Geb sighed and groaned. Although technically, Geb only cackled like a goose.

Thank god, thank Thoth. Praise the year that had five extra days from the light that Thoth won from the Khonsu, the moon.

First the water broke and drained away. Then out went Osiris in a rush to see the world and left Isis behind. Soon she rushed after. Then a day passed between, holding space for Horus, who would come later, because even freedom was like that. Then Set was squeezed out like a pip from the sky. Then Nephthys in a wet lump next to him.

He looked at her for the first time. She looked at him for the first time. Not a lot of light in your mother's womb. They looked at Osiris, beautiful and blinking, tenderly holding his love's hands. They looked at Isis, majestic and glorious. Looked at them plighting their troth, their love. Husband and wife.

They looked at each other, red fur for Set and sallow dull for Nephthys, and they sighed. Set looked at green Osiris, who had everything, and asked Nephthys, "Want to get married?"

Nephthys stared at beautiful Osiris and sighed and said, "Sure. Why not." She looked around at what the day looked like from the outside. She said, "I'm hungry. Want to go get something to eat?"

Set glanced back at the lovers who didn't even notice that they weren't there to kick anymore. He said, "Sure, why not. I'm curious what chicken and beef actually taste like."

So they walked off, not hand in hand, because at this point it felt good not to touch a single blessed thing, but relatively close to each other. They went off to find dinner and left love behind.

Notes:

Comments from yuletide:
From: Franzi
Date: 12/26/2008 Ha ha ha ha! Brilliant! I love the their goofy, wry sense of humor. I could see this working so well transplanted into the modern day somehow.
From: circeniko
Date: 01/15/2008 This is great! Mythology can be such a dry read, delivered flatly, as it is, in some books, but it sometimes has hysterical implications, and I've glad that you've illustrated some of them :)
From: DemonicFury
Date: 01/02/2008 Kawaii! It was great! I really liked it! Thank you for writing it!
From: Jane Carnall
Date: 01/01/2008 This is very good. I love your thinking about how a thousand-year pregnancy would be for the infant gods!
From: kuwdora
Date: 12/30/2007 FANTASTIC. Awesomely fantastic!
From: elynross
Date: 12/28/2007 This is kind of cracky, and yet delightful, at the same time!
From: niroby
Date: 12/27/2007 This was brilliant, I loved how after they were out of the womb, they sayed close, but not touching.
From: Kantayra
Date: 12/27/2007 *snerk* This was very amusing!
From: taskir
Date: 12/27/2007 Very amusing. I'm still giggling. :)
From: kezya
Date: 12/27/2007 Hee hee. Loved it!
From: spoke
Date: 12/27/2007 Wow. I could not stop laughing. And grinning. And pointing at the bits I remembered from reading this stuff waaay too long ago.

Fun! I find myself hoping Set brings up the whole thing when it finally goes down between him and Osiris, really.

Who will probably need to be reminded Set and Nephthys were there. >:P
From: Gloria Mundi
Date: 12/26/2007 especially loved the terseness and the sly humour. And that last line!
From: tabulaxrasa
Date: 12/25/2007 This is so awesome I don't know where to begin. It was the details that really impressed me, like throwing in all the "cackling Geb" stuff (The Great Cackler!) which impressed me on the Egyptology level, and how good it felt to not touch anyone, which impressed me on a human level. *applauds*
From: Cori Lannam
Date: 12/25/2007 Hee! This was very entertaining. No wonder Set turned evil, I don't blame him a bit.
From: Assimbya
Date: 12/25/2007 I'm always fond of things that look at the reality of events in mythology, either humorously (as you have done here) or seriously, and you accomplished that very well.
From: qwerty
Date: 12/25/2007 Funny. =)