Chapter 14 (When last we left Adam and Eve)
Chapter 16
“She named him ‘Appointed?’”
“I was there myself to hear the naming,” responded Tartanuan.
Lemothta continued to question the name, “Seems a bit blasé, doesn’t it? I mean, ‘Woe is me so this’ll have to do in the place of what I lost?’ When they finally connected again to create this life it was so spectacularly beautiful and all. I just expected their son’s name to reflect the beauty of his point of creation.”
Luciferous spoke up at this point “His name reflects her belief that still, even after driving them out of The Garden, even after both her children were so savagely taken from her, she still believes that that which created her, created us all, has done so specifically for the results of the experiencing of the good she felt throughout her that night that her son was created. Apparently she believes he is a creation Appointed to take the place of the sons that were taken from her. As though this ‘Appointed’ is a gift from Our Creator Itself. There’s nothing blasé about his name, his name speaks of he being her solitary hope from out of all the suffering her life has been this century she has existed. He is the one appointed to continue humanity now that Cain has been driven away where no daughter could exist to create offspring since Adam and Eve are the only people thus far existent.”
They all nodded in concurrence as Luciferous defended the name given by Living to her son.
. . .
As time went on Adam created with Eve more sons and daughters. And as time went on, these sons and daughters made amongst themselves many more human beings in kind. All, that is, except he who was called “Appointed.” One day, concerned that Seth had not yet known one of his sisters, Adam took him aside and voiced his concerns.
“Son, you are already more than a hundred years old. Your brothers took to the blessing of knowing their sisters generally around the age of thirteen, as young as eleven! For one of your sisters to be much older that eight years old before becoming a helper to one of your brothers has been virtually unknown. Son, you must swell with frustration to see your sisters blossom into the maturity of child-bearing age. Why have you not yet claimed one of your mother’s daughters to accompany you through your life?”
And so Seth responded to his father’s earnest concern, “Father, it simply has not seemed natural to me to take one of my sisters for a wife. Not that they are not even surpassing in beauty of my mother, but it always seems unnatural to me to consider any of them who have not yet reached a child bearing age as being able to be a companion to me. But rather, they seem so much as being like myself, I feel compelled to teach them about living; give them the tools to exist joyfully. And those of childbearing age, I have seen them grow from my mother’s womb and my brain. They are beautiful, and almost impossible to pass up in light of my physical frustrations, but most are by then my brother’s wives, and besides, by this time in my life I have learned well how to control the frustrations of my body, and they seem too close to me in terms of friendship and camaraderie that I would think of them as anything but the family with whom I have grown up. There simply seems something unnatural about the thought of taking my sister into my bed.”
“Besides,” continued Seth, “it seems too frequent for my tastes that my nieces and nephews are larger in size than seems proper, and always the large ones seem not as easy to teach, and ever more quarrelsome than the rest of those more in appearance like you and I and the children of my brothers and sisters who also are not so large in body combined with such a differing mode of mind.”
“Nonetheless,” responded Adam, “It is not good that a man should be alone. It seems like there is less of this, as you say, gargantuanism, from the offspring of my grandchildren who choose not to marry their siblings. Perhaps if you chose one of your nieces instead to wed . . .”
“Still such a thought makes me uneasy father. There simply seems something inherently wrong about claiming a young girl who is not old enough to make up her own mind or succeed at any trade on her own as a wife, especially when I continue to feel awkward at the idea of one of my own blood who I help in raising as any more than a friend and a member of my community whom I work beside in creating our life.”
Adam thought for a moment or two. Then, his countenance lifted, “Son, do you know very well my great, great, grandchildren who have settled to the far south west of where your mother and I have our dwelling?”
“I have been invited to dinner there with you and mom when their parents had invited us with my other brothers and sisters to their house, but I don’t think I’ve seen them in over ten years.”
“Yes. They tend to like to keep to themselves. They have taken to a rather odd thought that their children should be a certain age before they take spouses, and that their children should connect some way in mind before connecting in any way in body.”
Seth’s face brightened as though he had just been told he was not the only man on Earth.
“It has something to do with problems my great grandson had had when he was fifteen and took his wife, then six, to be his companion. But what they had decided was that any sooner than twelve was a bad idea for their daughters, and that at least twenty was appropriate for their sons. I’ve even heard it rumored that they’d prefer both sons and daughters to be thirty years old before choosing companions who are, specifically, not their own siblings. Anyway, they happen to have three daughters, each two years apart in age, who are not married, and, if memory serves, the youngest is fourteen; she’s just beginning to ripen! If you do not object, son, may I arrange for you to have dinner with my great grandchildren’s family?”
After considering, briefly, his loneliness and frustration of body at war always with his natural repugnance for taking to bed a young girl who he was just beginning to instruct in proper speech and creating tools of life out of other materials, he acquiesced to meeting his great nieces and seeing what feelings he had toward them upon meeting them.
. . .
And so at that dinner Seth met Lila. She was the oldest of the sisters, and he enjoyed speaking with her more than the other two. She had many fruitful thoughts about ways she thought it was proper to live life based on what her parents had taught her, and, much more importantly, what she had seen herself of the world over the eighteen years she had been alive. To converse with such a beautiful young lady who found a natural repulsion at the thought of knowing her brothers, and who couldn’t imagine merely indulging the animal urges of a boy less than fifteen years of age, he asked if he might return to meet with her again. She blushed as she told him that she’d like very much the opportunity to speak with him further.
While Lila’s parents were hesitant to let Lila out of their house with Seth, telling her always after he had gone that if there was any doubt in her mind whether she enjoyed Seth’s company enough to spend time with him raising children for the next several hundred years, she ought take a decade or two to give it proper thought, Lila was little more than twenty when she snuck off into the field with Seth, and they knew each other.
The angels were delighted when, 105 years after his own birth, Appointed and Lila named their son exactly what he was: Human Being.
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