#cha.adam

You groan as Abel digs his feet into your shoulders, the scratchy make of his tunic rubbing against the top of your head.

"I'll fall over!" You warn. Your brother isn't as tall as you, and you can't stand on his shoulders to climb into the fig tree. Cain could but, for some reason, preferred to stay around your father. (It's for the better. He's no fun to play with.)

You heave a loud sigh of relief as Abel makes his way into the tree, laughing as you run around and catch the fruits as they fall down. Almost none of them are free of insects. The little creatures bury themselves into the fruit's flesh, eating away at it, leaving holes or bodies behind inside. It's easy enough to eat around, but a little icky.

"Are there any birds up there?" You ask. Abel has disappeared far enough up the branches that you can't see him, beyond the rustling of leaves.

"'M not going to steal any eggs!" He yells in response and you shake your head.

Abel's still such a child. Ever since he'd started sniffling about the idea of bird parents coming home to an empty nest, he's refused to swipe any nests. That sensitivity is also a bit endearing to you, though. He's always smiling, the brightest out of all of you. You think he might be your mother's favourite, though she always says that she doesn't have one.

"You think too much," you lightly chastise Abel when he drops back down on the ground, then shove a few more figs in his hands. Yours are sticky with sap, tongue buzzing with the sweet flavour. Despite the hassle of the bugs, they're really tasty.

Rather than arguing back, he just smiles and plops down on the ground. "Are the figs tasty today?"

They are. Sitting in the shade of the tree, the two of you eat your fruits in companionable silence, only the grasses rustling around you and insects humming in the air. It's not enough to sate your hunger, but that's okay. Later, you walk home together without washing your hands clean in the river, your sap-coated palms sticking to each other as you hold hands.

II.

You learn the true worth of food in the next few years, when you've shot up in height and deemed old enough by your mother to start preparing for your responsibilities. There's no more playing outside for you.

It's there that you can see your future playing out before you, it's outline disconcerting. Sitting inside the home or right outside the door, back hunched over while grinding grains on stone, fingers permanently cramped into a clawing hand. The pain in your shoulders and the back of your neck. Endless preparations for new children, one after the other. (The sight of the swelling of your mother's stomach makes yours clench and churn). Preparing food, preparing clothes, feeding the children, keeping your father calm… Your mother is kind enough to say nothing when you slip out for a few hours, but there's none of those possibilities later.

You wonder if there's anything else and, at the same time, can't imagine what your life would look like others.

If there is one upside, it's the stories you hear from Eve. An image of Paradise forms in your mind thanks to her. Everything about it is fantastical. You cannot imagine a world with so much abundance. You've never known one. Where you would never be hungry, where none of the animals are your enemy, no changes to harsher seasons. If it's true, you could have lived there. And you don't.

"I don't get why you would leave," you tell her, brow furrowed and the tip of your nose twitching. "We could've lived there, and we're not? We wouldn't have had to work so hard— You wouldn't have had to. And now we don't have a choice." What you don't say: How could you be so stupid?

Your mother remains hunched over. Smiling almost dreamily, hands threading away tirelessly at another tunic. Cain's had torn while he was out hunting waterfowl.

"I made a mistake," she simply says. "I shouldn't have talked about this. I was feeling…" Eve trails off, her sentence never finished.

"But what did you do?!" You snap, dropping the stone you were holding next to you on the ground. Things didn't have to be like this, and nothing's ever explained, nothing— Your teeth click together as a shadow is cast over you.

Cain is out hunting. Abel is gathering fruits and cutting down grasses, checking for patches that can be planted here instead. Neither of them will be home for a while.

"What're you two whining about?" Your father's eyebrows are pinched together, the corner of his mouth pulled up to reveal a hint of teeth. Sweat glistens on his brow and on the exposed skin of his chest, fingers dirtied with clumps of dirt. Both of you remain quiet, but it doesn't take long for him to continue talking anyway.

"One of my tools broke. You," he points at you. "Take a look at my shoulder." Without hesitation, you get up and look. There's a cut, shallow but long, oozing a steady trickle of blood.

"It's bleeding. I'll, I'll go get the water." When you get up and go inside to the darkest corner of the house, furthest away from the door, your father follows right behind you.

Wordlessly, he lets you pour lukewarm water over the wound. He should give his arm some rest though you know there's absolutely no way that he would. You know better than to suggest it, even. When it comes to his work, he both hates it and is more defensive of it than anyone else.

You're about to move away to find a strip of leftover material used for clothing, a long line cut away that you could wrap around his shoulder and smother the wound with, he speaks.

"That woman," he spits out the word with vitriol, like an insult. "Ruined everything for us. If you ever want someone to blame, blame that damned demon."

You're rooted to the floor. "It was… All true?"

He ignores your question, instead turning to face you. Perhaps that says enough. You hold your breath as you stare into his eyes.

"I still can't believe that something so useless was made out of me." A finger mindlessly traces the uneven dip in his chest, one side higher than the other. Your father reaches out a hand to touch you. You flinch away and he clicks his tongue, grabbing your chin and stroking a finger over your cheek.

"Cain showed me that my sons are fine. Some of them, at least." You let out a slow, shuddering breath as the crease in between his eyebrows disappears. "I wasn't sure any women would be any good. But you're a good girl. You know your place."

You swallow thickly, unsure of what to do yourself. What any of this means. "…Thank you, father." You shift your weight from one foot to the other. He still hasn't let go of your face. "Do you need, I mean, could I offer any help outside today? With your arm…"

Adam grunts and drops his hand. "That's not your job. I'll find Abel, maybe he'll actually put on some muscle."

"Oh, wait!" You call out when he turns to leave, and you're more surprised that he actually does what you asked. Your hands shake a little when you wrap the strap of cloth around his arm. "…For the bleeding," you explain.

"Thanks, kid."

III.

You're grown enough to start thinking about which of your siblings to leave with. Cain has already left with one of your sisters, built a shack of their own somewhere out of sight. Past the rock determining the border of your childhood. They're still in walking distance.

From one day to the next, your father's started slipping you more food. Extra pieces he's won from the curse God placed upon him: fruits like figs and dates, a waterskin full of goat's milk instead of water, a slab of barley paste as large as your hand, or a fish skewered fresh. You can feel your younger siblings' gazes weigh heavily on you as, bit by bit, your share is increased. More than your mother, even.

Even though you're hungry, you draw a line at being given a third more meat than the rest.

"I, I can't accept this," you sputter. "I'd rather— Can we not divide this among the rest, father?" Though your mother is the one who prepares the food, Adam is the one who decides who gets what. Being given less is a common punishment. Your mother keeps her head down, merely eating her own meagre share.

"No. Be happy that I gave you that much." His mouth is full of food as he eats. A piece of meat leaves his mouth and lands on his leg. "You're going to need it soon."

You don't know what he means. You don't really want to ask, because there's a suspicion of the edge of your mind that you would rather not have confirmed.

Regardless of that, a different type of damage has been done. Your younger siblings side-eye you, now. Abel's the only one willing to talk to you and reserves a smile for you, but he's old enough that he's working alongside with your father most of the time. The rest of them whisper amongst themselves. As if working over the grindstone would make your hearing stop working.

There aren't very many people in the world. To have a group of them dislike you stings, especially because it's not like you can do anything about it. They'll leave the river when you come to wash with them in the evening, leave you to sleep in the corners of the communal room or gather somewhere else, without touching you. You'd raised half of them, but the younger ones spend enough time playing with the others for their minds to be poisoned against you.

Soon, all that you have to talk to are really your mother, father, and Able. For anything more than surface-level pleasantries, at least.

You hold out hope that it isn't forever.

IIII.

Adam laughs and laughs and laughs, then stops all at once. He wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.

"No." Your father says it without any hesitation in his voice. "I'm surprised you even ask, are you stupid? No." He stares you down with the narrow-eyed snarl he usually reserves for your mother, or when one of the babes refuses to sleep through the entire night.

Should you argue? Probably not. Still, this is a discussion about the entire course of your future and you can't just pull back. Especially because you don't understand the reason why he would refuse. It'd be one less mouth to feed. It'll make it so you don't have to face the truth of why he's been fattening you up. You moved fast after that.

Abel hadn't wanted to come. His gentleness had morphed into cowardice over the years, especially when faced with your father. It's fine. You won't say that you're not a little soft for him yourself, the only sort-of ally you have left.

"Cain got to leave," you remind him. "With a girl of his choosing."

"That's different," your mother mumbles at the same time that Adam cuts in.

"I am going to be very. Clear. With. You." Your father's eyes are a little wide. Each word so clearly enunciated as if he were talking to a child still learning to use its tongue. "You're not leaving. You really think I'd let my worst son breed with my best daughter? And I thought you were pretty clear-headed, for a woman."

"I, I can pick someone else, anyone else." You feel a pang of guilt at the betrayal of Abel, but then again, he should've been here to argue alongside you. The walls of your home feel suffocating. Your skin prickles with the sensation of being just barely touched, the awareness of a trap waiting to snap shut around you.

"It doesn't matter who," you continue.

"None of them are good enough for you!" Adam's mouth is turned up in a snarl. "I have tried to tell you so many times, but you need to have it screamed in your face, huh?!" A droplet of saliva lands on your cheek. You don't wipe it away.

"Your place is with me."

Your breathing picks up in pace. It's like you put your food down, where there had always been earth to support you, and now you find nothing there. You're stunned. You see a future fading away. Where you'd share a house with Abel, calm and nothing special, tending to animals which he'd all give fitting little names and feed too much. Children, maybe. Maybe not.

"But that… We can't…" It had never even occurred to you as an option. To stay with your father. Forever. To…

"I am the first person of this planet. All of you came from me," your father hisses. "I make the rules."

You turn your mother. Her eyes are pinned on something far away. Not on you, that's for sure. You can't expect any support from her but, desperate as you are, you try.

"Let me leave on my own," you mutter. You have no idea what you would even do. Staying here isn't an option either.

"You would be a woman, out on your own. You were never taught how to tend to the fields, or how to catch animals. You'd starve."

Adam gestures in her direction. "I never say this, but your mother's right." He sighs.

"Clearly, I've been too nice to you. You're staying here. And if you think that's so awful, I'll show you how awful your life can really get."

He stands up, tugging on his clothing. "I've wasted enough time here. There's work to do."

"I don't want to," you mumble to yourself, tears burning at the corners of your eyes.

"And I wish I were still in Paradise right now," your father spits out. "But we can't all have we want."

In the silence that follows, you sit with your mother. You stare hard at the ground and will your tears to stop. To no avail. You refuse to wipe at your face and wait for her to speak, to move, to do anything. To provide any comfort. She does nothing. Abel didn't get his cowardice from a stranger, it seems.

"Did you know?" Your voice is shaky, more breath than anything else. "That this… Couldn't you have warned me?! You didn't even say anything." Your voice cracks.

"And what could I do?" She responds. A flash of emotion breaks through her own voice, but she swallows and it's gone. "I'll tell you the last things you need to know about the way children are born."

It's the noises that you hear in the other part of the house, the room your parents share. Growling and panting and hitting. The insects stuck together in warmer days. Fowls coupling and calling, wings rapidly hitting the water. It's the fig. Eggs buried deep inside and eating away at you, splitting open your flesh to emerge when you are hollowed out on the inside.

"Does it… Hurt?" You ask your mother slowly.

"Oh, yes," she says. You knew the answer. The screaming always cut through your bones. "Yes, it does."

V.

The only option you can think of is to run. To move towards uncertainty rather than certainly suffer here.

No one wants to come with you. The alliances between you and most of your siblings have already been long since severed. If you told them, they would simply pass it on to your parents. You can't go to Cain. He's one of your father's favourites too and you know for a fact that he wouldn't want you in his house. You would only be a nuisance to him.

If you think about it too much, you'll start to doubt yourself and stop moving at all. You wander out of the house in the early morning. Anyone who saw you would only assume that you were moving to the pit to relieve yourself. Your father's sleeping breaths rumble in the other room like an incoming storm. The night is dark, but you picked a day where the moon would be full and the sky is clear tonight. All you have on you is a waterskin and a loaf of bread. Stealing much more would hurt all of your siblings.

Your mind is practically blank. Putting one foot in front of the other, that's all you do. You know the location of every single uneven patch and rock on this land. For a moment, you stop to look at the border. You've never actually ventured past far enough for it be out of sight. (Though past it, yes. As children, to test if you would truly be struck down if you stepped out of bounds.)

It's only when you move past it and keep going, that you start muttering your prayers. For safety and for food, for other people that might be out there, that your father is a liar and he is not the only one, that if not happiness, you will at least find safety and calm. That you may avoid the beasts that lurk in the night.

You've only seen glimpses of them before. That, and the aftermath of their slaughter. Sheep torn open from belly to throat and with their guts pulled out. Abel sobbing over the mangled remains of one of his favourites. Darkened smears on the earth. Or, just once, a little brother that had gone out and returned screeching like an animal with tooth marks that had never entirely faded.

You're starting to regret your decision as soon as the sun peeks out and the morning dawns. Maybe you should've been dragged off by beasts after all. What you're walking towards really is uncertainty, though an uncertainty that starts to seem much more like a slow, slow passing.

You haven't been running. You'd wanted to preserve your energy. Because of that, it perhaps shouldn't be as much of a surprise as it is when, echoing across the fields, you start to hear your name being called. You pick up the pace. It doesn't seem to matter, the noises only further closing in on you.

"I know you're out there!" The voice bellows. It's now close enough for you to pinpoint its identity. Your father's, because of course it is. "If you turn around and come back now, I might not drag you back by your hair!"

You hadn't expected him to come. One of your brothers. Abel or one of your other brothers old enough to be trusted on their own, but not him. The man himself. The pure rage in his voice is enough encouragement for you to go faster and faster until your feet are pounding on the earth, arms swinging back and forth besides your body.

You only slow down at the sight of what looms over you. A sudden increase in height, a rocky wall. Wide enough to not see an immediate way around, not steep enough to be impossible to climb. You darted up so, so many trees in your younger days— How much more difficult could this be? You can't face him right now.

You curse God underneath your breath as your fingers grasp at the first outcropping you see and the sharp rocks cut into the palm of your hand. A sign. Even if it hadn't been one, you should've taken it as such. Each move upwards hurts you more and more, lacerations covering the bottoms of your feet and your palms. Each grip grows slick with blood until you're too scared to make any movement at all. Up or down.

Of course, that is the exact moment your father appears.

"Get down from there!" He calls out, voice trembling with what you're sure must be rage. You're sure he doesn't know that there's also not much you would rather do.

Any movements might as well bring you closer to falling however. You're breathing so hard that your chest is burning from the exertion. The strain on your body is intense enough that you don't even have the opportunity to start crying.

"I, I—" You gasp out pathetically, facing the stone wall in front of you with wide eyes.

"Stop wailing like a child," your father snaps from below. "You're the one who decided to run off, don't think you'll get away with it so easily now."

"I, I can't come down," you cry out pathetically. "I'll slip." You're breathing heavily, arms shaking harder and harder by the second.

For a couple of heartbeats, your father is silent. "You're not up that high. Let go, and I'll catch you." At that, you start breathing even louder. You can feel his gaze burning holes into you from below, his voice is steady when he opens his mouth again.

"You trust me. Let go." And only because you can see no other option, you do exactly as you're told.

There's a moment of weightlessness, of your stomach seeming the float higher than your body, and then you crash into his arms. Adam groans loud and hard, his knees buckling, but he doesn't drop you. As soon as you realise that you landed, you've actually landed, you break into harsh, violent sobs. You can't see anything through the haze of your tears. Your father lets out a noise of discomfort again as he kneels on the floor, still cradling you in his arms.

You expect him to curse you then and there, to yank on your hair and to bid you to be quiet. Instead, he doesn't say anything at all. The only touch that reaches you is his finger moving over your cheeks. Adam swipes away a few of your tears. You feel like a little kid again. Though you can't remember much of him holding you like this back then either.

"My hands 'nd feet hurt," you complain weakly.

"Yes, I can see why. And we're going to have to walk all the way back. I'm not carrying you." You cry harder at that, chest heaving. He lifts up your hands and bends over to take a look at your feet.

"Stupid girl," he says, though there is little bite behind his tone. "Were would you even go?"

You just sob in response until he speaks up again. "There's nothing out there. You know that now, huh? You'll stay with your father." You swallow through your tears and nod.

"Yes, that's right. Good girl." Only your breathing is loud and uneven anymore now. "Let's go home. Walking back all that way is punishment enough for you."

As soon as he plops you down on your feet, you know what he means. Each step is like having more shards forced into your foot. You hiss in pain and your father laughs a low, rumbling laugh. His callused, warm hand latches onto your wrist. He refuses to let go.

"It's fine. It's not like you're going to be needing to do much walking soon enough."

VI.

Awful as it is, Adam is the only one who pays attention to you. Anything beyond superficial attention, that is.

The act of creating a child is not pleasant, exactly, but at least it's short. At least it seems to temporarily lift some burden off of your father. His muscles relaxed and his touch more tender. But the pregnancy afterwards seems to last forever. There is an endless list of little discomforts and general exhaustion. Your extra portions hardly seem to make up for the hunger. It doesn't help that, sometimes, the hard-won food comes back out again, leaving you even weaker. Your hands and feet are swollen, that is nothing to say for the way your stomach expands and expands.

Despite your exhaustion, it's not as if you get a break from most of your usual tasks either.

"I worked while I was child too," your mother tells you. And you know she had, so what would be your excuse? It's not as if Adam has entirely shifted his focus to you either, but most of it has fallen on you. Maybe, one day, there will be someone to take over to you as well. A buried, thorny part of you wishes that your mother was more grateful.

Your evenings are spent together with your father, in the room that him and your mother once shared. Sometimes, he takes you. He's more careful as to not to hurt the child. His hands rub circles on your sore breasts, his fingers never clawing, and he does not fully force himself inside of you. It's slower. He presses his lips to your skin more, murmuring about how he'll stuff you full again and again, populating the earth with only his children, and it makes you yearn for the times where it was hard and fast but over within minutes.

Sometimes, he only speaks. When your stomach becomes more and more noticeable, he becomes touchier and more talkative in turn. You always hold still when his rough hands rub your stomach. His smile is brighter than you've ever seen it when he feels the child move inside of you.

"A strong kick," he says. "Must be a boy, bet he'll grow up real strong, like his dad."

You take in a long, slow breath. "And… What if she's a girl?"

Adam hums. "I'll send her off with one of my better sons. Our kids won't be failures."

You know what's in your future. When the child is actually in your arms, he'll pull away entirely. Rearing a newborn is a woman's job, you're told, same as the painful births you're cursed with. It's nothing you're not used to. As the eldest girl, it wouldn't be the first child you raised. At least there's that.

As you lay there, reduced to your child, you can't help but wonder why he seems to like his children so much more when they're not yet born.

VII.

You're a field sown many times over.

It's familiar to your now. The lines of your expanding stomach have been forever etched into your skin, your chest sagging down to the earth from all the children that have taken milk from you. You have a whole gaggle of children of your own. Of you and your father. Your body is hardly granted a reprieve before he's all over you again with his roughened touch, ready to put another child in you. (Not that he stops while your belly's swollen, either.)

You walk bare-feet on the ground to a familiar place along the river, the night covering much of your movements. The boundaries of your home are still meant to contain you, but you've learnt how to push at the borders of your tiny world. Listening to the streaming river soothes you. The cold water is soothing to the swollen, scarred undersides of your feet.

You're expected to stay inside at all times while you're far along with child, as you are now. You know your body better than your father, though. You're sure of what you can handle. A short little walk isn't going to kill you, nor have you ever seen any wild animals out here. It's far away enough from the animals, close enough to your home.

Tonight, you think of your brother, Abel. It feels so long ago that a life with him seemed feasible. Now it's impossible, even if you were ever to get away. Cain hit him in the head with a rock and he stopped moving. You weren't supposed to know, but you heard the whispers through the wall regardless. None of you had known that a person could stop moving so easily— An animal, yes, but a person?

You wonder if he's at peace now, wherever he is. You can only hope for a world after this one for a chance at freedom. Maybe he's back in the Paradise his parents robbed him of.

When he approaches you, you don't hear him over the noises of the river.

"What are you doing out here?"

You know him well enough, from years and years, that even without an outburst you can hear the threat in his voice. A curse flashes through your mind. Now that he's caught you once, it'll be harder to do this again. He must've come out to check on the animals or something.

And because of that knowledge, you're also aware of how he sees you. Even if you're his favourite, you're still a woman. A bit stupid, impulsive, doesn't know how to take care of herself. It's not like you could ever convince him otherwise, but the least you can do is use it to your advantage.

You bend over, pressing a hand to your stomach. The hiss you let out is exaggerated enough to be audible over the water.

"I'm so, sorry, father— I got… So warm, suddenly, and my feet hurt so bad, and it's like I couldn't think." You wipe away invisible tears from the corners of your eyes. "I was scared something would happen to, to the child, so I just went outside."

He practically stomps to your side in quick steps. His hand lands on your stomach a little too roughly.

"And what if you slipped, huh? What if there was some kind of beast out there?" The only beast you've ever been face-to-face with is him.

Your mouth hangs a little open, your eyes a tad too wide. "Oh, oh, I just hadn't thought about it at all… I'm sorry, my state is… It's confusing me, I think."

It's laid on so thick that, if you performed it in front of your mother, she'd think you were making a total fool out of her. Your father's pride and sense of superiority makes him think someone like you isn't even capable of it. When the tension bleeds out of his muscles, your own shoulders slump.

"Next time you lose your mind, wake me up first," he grumbles. "Let's go home. Come on." He pulls you up. You throw one last glance to the river over your shoulder.

But your father never stops riling against the work that is required on the land, to feed himself and his family. Every single day he complains, even with your brothers now working along also. His resentment seems to encompass the idea of labour as a whole. (Perhaps that is the reason he was assigned this curse. You could hardly think of a worse way to punish such a self-conceited man.) Again and again, you've listened to him complain.

He hates the calluses on his hands, a result from holding his tools for hours at a time. The scars on his arms from yanking thistles out of the ground and their merciless yanking on his flesh. The dirt that gets stuck underneath his broken nails. The sweat and grime that cover his body in layers and layers and layers. The way his body has become thin and lean, a tightly bound knot of muscle and nothing else, clearly outlining his missing rib.

("When I get the fuck out of here," he'd say, hair sticking to his forehead and a mouthful of hard bread in between his jaws, "I am never going to stop eating. Not even for a fucking second. I looked so much better when I had shit to eat!")

You've asked to go outside. You're sure that you could help, like your brothers do. You'd kill to feel the dirt underneath your feet, the wind against your skin, the sun glaring in your eyes. Instead, he keeps you inside, always and forever. Not even your mother is chained up as tightly as you are. You simply aren't allowed to leave.

Instead, you have your own purposes at home. When your father returns from another long day of working the land, angry and miserable and exhausted, you're there to take the edge off. He'll slump back wherever he's seated, and let you do all the work for him.