What has your muse witnessed in their lives that has fundamentally changed them?
Your first prophet is just a girl. A girl with black curls and deep brown skin and gold jewelry that glints in the sunlight and it shines so bright it blinds even you. Maryam, Miriam, Theotokos -- Mary they will call her. Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. He was and he wasn't. You were there. You were there to tell her of the Son. You were there to watch her grieve and rejoice all at once. It's the first you see of humanity's resilience. The way her back curves over the bank of a stream as she screams and sobs and tears at the grass of the embankment. "Miriam..." And you find yourself with a few eyes full of mud for it. She will not be quelled, will not be cared for and you feel annoyed for the first time ever. You are there to help, after all. You who are a messenger of the Lord and have told her of what is to come -- all of the Lord's tidings are blessings.
Later, at the edge of the firelight she brings you a blanket you do not need but it is the thought that counts, and a few thousand years later you would laugh because it is true! In her anger, she thought of you, she thought of you even after all that and worried you would be cold. The manger is cold. The stars are silver bright and she screams more than at she did at the bank and you flutter after returning from the men -- and you complain you had to go at all -- who are afraid to see you when Miriam doesn't care any longer and you've grown used to that. Eventually, you'll create a face to fix it. And you worry (first time for that too) as she keeps crying when she holds him and names him and smells the soft curls on his hair for the first time. It is thirty three years later and you are at a tomb and she beside it weeping again and she won't look at you or speak. She knew it would happen, you told her even that. But, there's another bit of message burning in the column of you, something so hot the sand under your feet becomes glass. "Miriam, I am sorry."
