Virgin Birth
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VIRGIN BIRTH

Bosatsu

It isn't often that an event comes that surprises even me. Lunar eclipses and solar eclipses are common enough that I yawn every time I am asked to do them, even though lately all these religious nutters get all hyped about the moon turning to blood. Seriously?

The moon turns to blood every time there's a lunar eclipse. Now, if the sun goes dark and the moon goes red on the same day, well, that's something to talk about. But that only happened once, and it was on a certain day of Passover. The day the Savior was killed. To say nothing most of those other prophecies about end times being false. But the one about the sun and moon? All of that happened the day he died.

As Reaper of the Unseen World, I have three duties: maintain the Unseen World, give other Reapers tasks, and occasionally, to carry out great tasks. The first and second are relatively routine compared to the last, as you might imagine. Yet they are of no less importance. For without the Unseen World, magic would not exist, the Reapers would have no place to go when not appointed to tasks, and the underpinnings of this world you mortals call real would quickly fall apart. Nor would it be fair to say that the second duty is not important. While it seems like the Pales can do the job for the Reapers, given how many of them there are, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Each of these Reapers is very much not human, and yet very very human. For example, Yomi does her job better than any Pales could, and she does it flawlessly and efficiently. And yet, she routinely gets depressed about the idea of causing death to others. If not for both giving her tasks, and assigning her mental health days and vacation time, she would quickly become a nervous wreck. And so it is with each of these. Seishi tries too hard to lighten the mood, and is herself at risk if ever her efforts go in vain. These Reapers cannot die, but this just makes things for worse. For you see, they still have pain.

But never mind all that, it is the last task we are focused on here. I send wars and famines, meteor showers, tidal waves, and great destruction. But I also set up prosperity, great harvests, and events of great joy. I won't boast though, these are not my plans. I too have someone to answer to. God, of course. As powerful as I am, my power is dwarfed by God. Or as she calls herself, Ambrosia. These days, she spends the bulk of her time hanging out with family and sleeping, but when this universe began, we got to watch her work. Every now and then, she creates a planet or life form, and she merely says a few words and that's it. I suppose you could compare it to a dentist's office. The nurse scrapes at the teeth, uses the toothpaste, gets them to spit, and takes the x-ray. The main doctor does their job seemingly effortlessly, double-checking the work of the nurse, talking to the patient, and founding the dentist's office in the first place. Her job, if you can call it that, is far more interested in the personal aspects of existence, but if she wanted to, she could do all of our jobs.

But it is today we are concerned about. Today, Ambrosia handed me a series of papers. "What is this?" I asked. She explained, "This is prophecy. Specifically, real prophecy, that I intend to make come true." I was shocked. Human beings, unlike our dear Reaper of Physics, Engaku, have basically no ability to see time. So their prophecies are a joke. A man who called himself John wrote a number of false prophecies to rationalize to himself why the Temple was destroyed, predicting that at some future time there would be brutal destruction when Jesus came, instead of just admitting the obvious. The Temple was only provided as long as God's chosen kept the covenant. Since they gave his Son to be executed, naturally the Temple was done away with.

Another named Nostradamus gave over six thousand prophecies, but only five or ten could even vaguely be read as true. And most had such vague language that you could claim it was true even if it wasn't. "Before the war comes, The great wall will fall, The King will be executed, his death coming too soon will be lamented. (The guards) will swim in blood, Near the River Seine the soil will be bloodied," in reference to the French Revolution. But most of what he wrote were assorted visions, swimming images of events that the man himself didn't understand. "They will think they have seen the Sun at night, When they will see the half-pig half-man: Noise, song, battle, fighting in the sky perceived, And one will hear brute beasts talking." Was this a reference to fighter pilots and their masks? “Few young people: half-dead to give a start.” Well, I suppose it could refer to the whole masking up thing, and how people weren't really living. Or it could refer to actual brain-eating zombies.

In contrast, when Engaku passed along predictions to people in dreams, they were clear and unambiguous. "In five days, if you do not prevent this, a man named Victor S Alexander will start a war with Hungary. You must go to the tallest tower in your town at 9pm, and fire a weapon on a man wearing a green shirt and a blue hat. Factor for 5 mph winds, and be sure to use a pistol." Humans can't make prophecies like these. So the idea that humans made over 300 prophecies about a single man, and God intended to fulfill all of them was just unbelievable!

I looked through these, and became concerned. Somehow this man was to be born of a virgin, die on a cross, be a sacrificial lamb like that intended when Abraham was ordered to kill Isaac, be a mediator between God and mankind, and numerous other predictions. "Uhhhh, God, how am I supposed to do all this?" Ambrosia sighed, as though she thought I had failed her terribly by not being able to guess her thoughts, then manifested a complicated schematic. "You want to do what?!?"

The next few days were intense. God introduced me to his Son, who outside a human body didn't even look male, much less like God the "father." The both of them were shapeshifters and could take literally any form, but God preferred the form of Ambrosia due to her marriage (in the future) with Nevras. Meanwhile, Jesus didn't appear to care how he looked, now taking the form of a preteen of indeterminate gender. I had met Jesus over the years, but this was usually when we visited the Earth after he was born, or after he died. Unlike humans, with their crazy notion that Jesus was no longer on Earth and would visit again only in these so-called end times (yes, the same ones they predicted with the moon turning to blood), we saw Jesus in every era. But I had never seen Him like this, before becoming human and revealing himself to the Earth. It was quite a different look. And no, like us, Jesus wasn't fixed to linear time. After Jesus died on the cross, Jesus appeared to Jacob and wrestled with him. He appeared to people earlier and later in time, including the Egyptians as Akhnaten, and the writers of Proverbs as Lady Wisdom. But here was Jesus in the spirit only, not in the flesh. Jesus had a wispy unfixed form, much like a ghost. And Jesus said, "Touch me and take me in your arms."

I did so, giving Jesus a big hug, only to suddenly find that I was cradling a hitodama instead. "Go to the woman named Mary, and put my spirit inside her womb," the ball of spiritual energy said. It was after she had met the angel Gabriel and agreed to this plan. I went with Seishii and Engaku, the latter of which was busy tabulating variables to produce an astronomical event she called the Star of Bethlehem. Apparently, it was not a new star at all, but several heavenly bodies lining up. We had to be quick, because if anything was done wrong, the child would not be born. In a world where surnames weren't a common occurrence, three Reapers had to find the right Mary. Thankfully, there was the trail of an angel, so it was really just a matter of finding a woman that still had that glow to her.

We managed that, so it was up to us to start the process. I called the Holy Spirit to this area, and immediately there was a feeling like rushing wind surrounding the woman. Mary's hair was starting to get mussed up as she moaned and made certain sounds that I won't repeat, not the least of these was calling out, "Oh, God..." The Spirit overshadowed her, and I placed the soul of Jesus inside her. Next, Seishi pressed on her stomach, and a faint rune glowed on her stomach. It flickered out briefly, before exploding into light covering the room. Jesus, inside of her, took this life energy and the power of the Holy Spirit, and formed a rapidly developing embryo. As for Engaku, she appeared to finally finish her calculations, and this cosmic event formed directly where she was going to be when she was born. As shocking as all these events were, they were beyond the sight of mortals, so while Mary saw everything because it was happening to her, if someone were looking at the house, the only light they might see was a candle sitting nearby.

As to the pregnancy over the next few months, it was a parthenogenesis. A type of pregnancy that happened a lot in certain animals, but not much at all in humans. Mary made a child with what was already present inside of her. This child by genetics should have been female, but due to Jesus's own decision, would grow up an XX male. Artists would depict him as a long-haired male for centuries to come.

Of course, it wasn't done. Jin convinced a Roman emperor that it was in his best interest to write a tax that included all of his territory, including Israel. Herod was convinced that this child was a threat to him, so the family had to move to Egypt. Shepherds nearby were in the fields when they found out about this child.

And then there were the wise men. Sometimes this is translated as "kings" but they were religious people, each from different countries, each whose religion had predicted a Savior of sorts. One of these was a Zoroastrian, whose religion frequently looks for spiritual leaders. Another was a Buddhist, a religion who would later search for Dalai Lama candidates and which had a tradition of Miroku, the new Buddha who would teach pure dharma. In fact, the story of the Prodigal Son is in Buddhist texts. And lastly, there was Taoism, a religious guide to living according to nature that was called The Way. Each of these added teachings to the boy, each gave him a physical gift to match the nature of their religion. Gold is common in Buddhism, with many of the Buddha statues painted thusly to represent immortality or perfection. Incense was local to the Near East where Persian Zoroastrian sects would have been. And myrrh is a natural plant, suitable for a natural religion like Taoism.

In fact, during the years to come that were not reported in the New Testament, I happen to know what he was doing. He was visiting each of these lands, and learning the religious truths they had to offer. Like the Jews, they didn't fully accept him as their Savior, but they didn't have a group of Pharisees.

In any case, with my job done, we Reapers were ready to leave. Jesus would fulfill the rest of the prophecies himself, he had been born, visited by wise men and shepherds, and his dad had been warned in a dream to head to Egypt. My tasks were done, it was time to...

"Hey, you can't go," a voice called to me. Jesus looked up at me with sad eyes. I found that the portal that we usually made to return to the Unseen World simply wasn't working. I couldn't go. And Jesus said, "Touch me and take me in your arms." I held the child Jesus tightly before he whispered, "see you later" to me and released his hold. Jesus plopped back into bed, waking his mother up. "Huh? Were you talking to someone?" Mary asked her son. "Woman, I had business with the Reaper of the Unseen World. I was overdue a hug." Mary looked peeved at the disrespectful tone of her son, but shrugged. This was a child who never cried during his infancy. She knew him to be a somewhat creepy child. It was time to go, so I opened the portal with my scythe. Jesus waved at us while lying with his mother on the bed. And so, one of the longest jobs we had been tasked with was done. We would see him later.


As I've probably mentioned, I'm a syncretic Taoist/Buddhist/Christian type, so alot of this stuff interests me. Mostly though, I wanted a new take on this story, because it's kinda gotten typecast that alot of people "know" that Jesus appeared, and then died and was kinda never heard from again. But the Gospel of John says Jesus was with God at the beginning, so does the "begotten not made" part of the Nicean Creed. I also take except to gloom and doom prophecies. Lastly, I wanted Jesus to be a cute and relatable child so I had him give the Reapers a hug and wave goodbye. Tales from the Reaper is not about the supernatural so much as slice of life, so more important than this prophecy coming true was that young Jesus basically stops to hug a Reaper who is on his way out of the area.

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