landlost | ONC 2024

three.

DAWN STREAKED THE sky pink as I stepped out of Noah and Emzara's tent. Adataneses's pale blue kēthoneth uncomfortably bunched at my shoulders, too large for me, but the material felt soft on my skin, so different from the ratty itch of my old long tunics.

Emzara stood with her sons -- Noah nowhere in sight -- and I kept my head low as I approached. I reckoned I could hear Japheth snicker. "They'll show you around," Emzara said to me. "Noah's already waiting," she directed this to the three men. "Go now."

Sedeqetlebab, hovering over her mother-in-law's shoulder, offered me a reassuring smile. Then Japheth fixed his arm around my shoulders and tugged me along, away from the clearing.

"Every morning we leave to work the timber," Japheth said, flexing his hand resting on my shoulder and motioning to the trees. "Gopherwood." I tried not to stiffen my arms at his touch, but his proximity -- and me never having been alone among men younger than my father -- made my skin prickle.

"Japheth," Ham said, his voice low. He was walking behind us, sloping around in my peripheral like a jackal.

His hold on me released. I tried to hide my relief by re-tying my right plait.

"Wait at least a fortnight before you begin teasing her, Japheth," even Shem chimed in from ahead of us. He hadn't even turned to look at his brothers, but the dirty looks between Ham and Japheth ceased at his tone.

The trees were now beginning to thin, and raw stumps and broken bracken around us showed evidence of the men's activities. "Over there's the river." Japheth pointed to shorter foliage on the left.

"I'll go sneak up on Adataneses," he said mischievously. Before his brothers could argue -- I could see Shem twisting to fix Japheth with his gaze -- he slipped off of the well-trodden path, his brown hair whipping across his shoulders with every step.

We all paused to watch him go. Then a delighted shriek bade us to move on.

Ham walked beside me, keeping his gaze ahead. I remembered how he had taken my pack the night before. It wasn't the clothes I cared much for, but Naamah's gift. I hadn't had time to even properly examine it, besides from getting the inkling that it was a clay figurine of some kind.

With Shem so close to us though, I dared not ask him what he had done with it.

Then Ham raised a hand to his eyes. "Look."

I followed his gaze, and stopped dead in my tracks. Beyond the last few standing trees, I could see the top of a massive wooden structure, long, and dwarfing the landscape.

Ham and Shem had continued walking, but Ham looked over his shoulder at me. For the first time, I could see a small smile playing on his lips. "Come on," he beckoned with a hand criss-crossed with small white scars, "Father's waiting."

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"What is it?" I asked Noah, as we stood in the shadow of the massive wooden structure. It had seemed like a mess of tree trunks and haphazard levels before, but upon closer inspection, the wood was arranged in a methodical vertical pattern, broken up by horizontal jutting slats that may have indicated decks. I counted three of them.

"It's a tabeh," Noah explained, his arms crossed over his chest. His sons, even Japheth, who'd arrived breathless and with mussed-up hair, were now supervising a pair of mules lugging a piece of waste lumber away, shouting instructions at one another every few seconds.

The word was unfamiliar to me; only something about safe passage.

"An Ark," Noah said, softly. When I turned my head to look at him, his face was pinched pensively, and his fingers were whitened, clutching onto his own bicep.