Dinah
Privileged beyond compare.
Dinah was born daughter of Israel, the jewel of her father's house, and that meant she is privileged beyond compare: her future awash with light, limitless, full of the promises God himself had sworn to her forefathers. And she was beautiful, even without the many bejeweled robes her four mothers lavish upon her. And, ultimately, this and love – the type of love that gives her shivers even in the warm sandy wind – will be her downfall.
Shechem was dark-haired and olive-skinned and sweet like a venomous flower. Of a powerful family. She'd loved him, simply, purely, the only way she'd ever known how even in a house sometimes of angry and bitter rivalries.
He came and wooed and took her. And shattered her faith in every good thing in the world.
~.~
What she remembers: Soundless explosions. Metallic points. Foolish girl. Behind them, the sunset painting the sprawling lands and lush hillsides a bloody cerise, the hue of tragedies. The day dying, and the life she has known dying with it. A blinding, searing, despairing rage and only one thought ringing clear in her consciousness: These are things that happen to other people. These are things that happen to other people. These are things that happen to other people. She repeats it so many times, in harsh choking sobs, but it doesn't change anything, nor does it offer a modicum of comfort.
~.~
And he'd had the gall to tell her I love you.
And marry me.
~.~
Her family heard, and needed only to look at her to confirm it: her lush mouth turned downwards, eyes hysterical, their black bags only making them ever more startling.
Dinah needs someone to say the right thing – she doesn't know what - her father's God would know those fleeting magical words that would soothe her soul like a wraparound balm, but He is painfully, horrifically silent, as though all her faculties attuned to Him were suddenly swaddled with wool. Her brothers – strong Judah and pensive Levi, brutal Simeon and charismatic Zebulun, even quiet clever Joseph with eyes large and sad, who's always been loved best and who doesn't completely understand what happened – all of them rise in grief and fury for her.
But none of them say the right thing.
They take revenge instead.
~.~
She remembers, once, Simeon and Judah had brought to dance with the Hivites around a bonfire. In the center of that red blaze: splintered wood and canes, boxes, charring to black. Embers glowing. Black smoke rising, wisps curling into faces that howl as if in agony.
Against the dying light, when her brother's plans come to fruition, the city looks just like that, going up in flames.