![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minoanmissAnd I'm going to tell it to you all BECAUSE
I read a legend that has Jewish and Muslim variants. This is the Jewish one as retold by tragically gentile me.
David, before he was king, was dealing with one of those periods when Saul was trying to kill him. Now David was gorgeous. We all know he was fucking gorgeous. Not supermodel gorgeous but a good sturdy gorgeous for the working day, strong arms sleek with muscle, shoulders broad enough to sink your teeth into, pearly white teeth and gleaming tumbled curls and huge dark eyes to drown in, below thick expressive eyebrows, above a proud nose.
Jonathan was taller, with straighter hair that puffed around his higher cheekbones, and leaner to David's broadness, and everyone thought they looked [suspiciously] perfect together.
So David was exhausted. The angry yandere King was close behind, with dogs and guards and Jonathan dragged along all unwilling. David had sent his companions away to keep Saul from catching them with him, and was wondering to the Lord in the depths of his heart if this were it, his time, after all he'd done for Israel, all the embraces he and Jonathan had exchanged, all the times he had sung for Saul until the storm clouds cleared from the King's brow and he was favored with a rare smile like the sun through clouds. He stumbled into a cave, rough rocks beneath his feet and scratching and scraping at his limbs, until he slumped against a rounded rock and panted like a pursued animal and could go no further.
Something tickled along his arm and he looked down in the dim light and saw a spider, its gleaming carapace and tiny waist and eight legs. He raised his hand to knock it away.
The spider turned its head up, and said, in a tiny smooth glimmering voice just like its spider-silk, "Please don't."
David paused, and nodded.
The spider went on. "Please let me live. I can help you, David beloved of Israel. Let me help."
This tiny creature, helping him? David showed all his bright teeth, but he nodded again. "Thank you, then, small friend," he said to the spider. "Thank you for your help." And he tilted his arm and let the spider climb onto a ledge. It waved one foreleg much like a salute, and scurried away, and David could barely wonder at it before he sank into exhausted sleep.
He woke to voices at the cave's mouth, and stilled his waking shudder, clutching his sword's hilt, motionless as he listened. He looked, and saw --
-- a shimmering curtain of spiderweb, all across the cave's mouth, waving lightly in the desert breeze, with a circle left open, just broad enough for an eye.
King Saul was speaking. Thundering, truly. "He must be nearby!"
"But Sire," said Jerubabel, this fortnight's Captain of the Guard, "there's no shelter for miles but these rocky caves, and this one clearly hasn't been disturbed for ages. Look at all this spiderweb!"
"You!" Saul roared. "My unloyal son who reserves his greatest love for my enemy. Would he shelter here?"
"Father," Jonathan sighed. "Even could he slip by spiderwebs that catch up flies, he wouldn't choose a bare cave when he could bed down in warm hay. Let us return to the villages in the valley, please. These cave-ridden hills are barren and broiling. Please, Father, please."
Saul rumbled and grumbled, and at length said, "I suppose we shall." and then lifted his royal voice and bellowed, "To the valley!" And so David listened to Saul and his company trudging and clanking off, the dogs whining and snuffling. Last of all, somehow freed from his father's suspicious grip, came Jonathan, who looked straight through the gap in the spiderweb with one luminous eye, and winked.
And so by the grace of the Lord and the gratitude of the spider, David lived another day.
I read a legend that has Jewish and Muslim variants. This is the Jewish one as retold by tragically gentile me.
David, before he was king, was dealing with one of those periods when Saul was trying to kill him. Now David was gorgeous. We all know he was fucking gorgeous. Not supermodel gorgeous but a good sturdy gorgeous for the working day, strong arms sleek with muscle, shoulders broad enough to sink your teeth into, pearly white teeth and gleaming tumbled curls and huge dark eyes to drown in, below thick expressive eyebrows, above a proud nose.
Jonathan was taller, with straighter hair that puffed around his higher cheekbones, and leaner to David's broadness, and everyone thought they looked [suspiciously] perfect together.
So David was exhausted. The angry yandere King was close behind, with dogs and guards and Jonathan dragged along all unwilling. David had sent his companions away to keep Saul from catching them with him, and was wondering to the Lord in the depths of his heart if this were it, his time, after all he'd done for Israel, all the embraces he and Jonathan had exchanged, all the times he had sung for Saul until the storm clouds cleared from the King's brow and he was favored with a rare smile like the sun through clouds. He stumbled into a cave, rough rocks beneath his feet and scratching and scraping at his limbs, until he slumped against a rounded rock and panted like a pursued animal and could go no further.
Something tickled along his arm and he looked down in the dim light and saw a spider, its gleaming carapace and tiny waist and eight legs. He raised his hand to knock it away.
The spider turned its head up, and said, in a tiny smooth glimmering voice just like its spider-silk, "Please don't."
David paused, and nodded.
The spider went on. "Please let me live. I can help you, David beloved of Israel. Let me help."
This tiny creature, helping him? David showed all his bright teeth, but he nodded again. "Thank you, then, small friend," he said to the spider. "Thank you for your help." And he tilted his arm and let the spider climb onto a ledge. It waved one foreleg much like a salute, and scurried away, and David could barely wonder at it before he sank into exhausted sleep.
He woke to voices at the cave's mouth, and stilled his waking shudder, clutching his sword's hilt, motionless as he listened. He looked, and saw --
-- a shimmering curtain of spiderweb, all across the cave's mouth, waving lightly in the desert breeze, with a circle left open, just broad enough for an eye.
King Saul was speaking. Thundering, truly. "He must be nearby!"
"But Sire," said Jerubabel, this fortnight's Captain of the Guard, "there's no shelter for miles but these rocky caves, and this one clearly hasn't been disturbed for ages. Look at all this spiderweb!"
"You!" Saul roared. "My unloyal son who reserves his greatest love for my enemy. Would he shelter here?"
"Father," Jonathan sighed. "Even could he slip by spiderwebs that catch up flies, he wouldn't choose a bare cave when he could bed down in warm hay. Let us return to the villages in the valley, please. These cave-ridden hills are barren and broiling. Please, Father, please."
Saul rumbled and grumbled, and at length said, "I suppose we shall." and then lifted his royal voice and bellowed, "To the valley!" And so David listened to Saul and his company trudging and clanking off, the dogs whining and snuffling. Last of all, somehow freed from his father's suspicious grip, came Jonathan, who looked straight through the gap in the spiderweb with one luminous eye, and winked.
And so by the grace of the Lord and the gratitude of the spider, David lived another day.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 09:43 pm (UTC)ETA: I really do enjoy everything about David and Jonathan. (And, apparently, the spider, which is new to me.)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:11 pm (UTC)I almost messed up my keyboard at the yandere reference, because I never thought about Saul and David that way, but I can see it. Jonathan and David, David marries Michal, Saul's daughter, by obtaining 100 Philistine foreskins...
no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 08:08 pm (UTC)(Thought it might be a variation of yonder. Clearly, not.)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:14 pm (UTC)But I haven't heard this before, but I love it! 🕷️🕸️
no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-18 10:44 pm (UTC)This is delightful and as the Official Spokesthing For the Entire Jewish People, I declare that your tragically gentile self* tells it perfectly, canon, the way it absolutely happened.
* Surely you count as an honorary Jew by now, come on.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-22 12:30 am (UTC)This is one of the best comments I have ever gotten on anything. tacklehugs you
no subject
Date: 2022-07-22 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 02:58 am (UTC)yay, thank you!`
no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 04:31 am (UTC)this is such a great descriptor for this look, and I'm so glad you put it in these exact words.
Last of all, somehow freed from his father's suspicious grip, came Jonathan, who looked straight through the gap in the spiderweb with one luminous eye, and winked.
a cherry on top of a wonderful sundae of a narrative, thank you.
I am entirely unfamiliar with this story, but I love it very much just as it's told here :)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-22 12:26 am (UTC)beams I don't even know where that one comes from, but it emerges when I write "ancient" stories.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-19 07:34 pm (UTC)Not supermodel gorgeous but a good sturdy gorgeous for the working day --awww!
Jonathan was taller, with straighter hair that puffed around his higher cheekbones, and leaner to David's broadness, and everyone thought they looked [suspiciously] perfect together. --AWWWW!
This tiny creature, helping him? David showed all his bright teeth, but he nodded again. "Thank you, then, small friend," he said to the spider. "Thank you for your help." --MY HEART!
no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 01:51 am (UTC)Very nicely told!
I did not know "yandere" either.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 12:52 pm (UTC)Is it terrible that I am far too amused at taking all that Sunday School and turning it into this? (I know you know what I mean)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-21 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-25 06:23 am (UTC)