Chapter Two: The Silent Matriarchs

Long after the blink of God, the towers of words grew tall. Men gathered in the shadows of their own stories, speaking of origins that began and ended with their names. They declared themselves the makers of worlds, though not one of them could recall the weight of birth.

But elsewhere, far from the etched stone and trembling scribes, there was no need for such proclamations. Beneath the boughs of ancient trees, the silent matriarchs moved through the rhythms of their days. They had no need for written lines to prove their existence. Their knowing was older than language, older than the gods that men had chiseled into form.

A midwife’s hands knew the world better than any priest’s tongue. Calloused and sure, they cupped the heads of newborns, guiding them from the red dark into breath. The mothers roared as they bore life, their cries splitting the air - not in anguish alone, but in triumph. And with each birth, the matriarchs bore witness. Not as creators, but as continuations. They did not speak of divine sparks; they spoke of wombs and bloodlines. For that was the only creation they knew. The only one that had ever been.

Still, the men with their quills wrote otherwise. In their books, gods burst forth without mothers. They traced the heavens with ink and declared the stars fatherless. Thunder was no longer the pulse of the sky’s veins; it was the voice of some invisible patriarch. They built monuments to these stories, carving the absence of the uterus into the very stone.

But the matriarchs did not raise monuments. They traced the curves of their daughters’ bellies, feeling the swell of life within. They whispered the names of ancestors, not as legends, but as echoes that stirred within their own bones.

There were no temples for them. Their altars were the earthen floors of birth-houses, slick with the water of labor. No prayers were spoken. Only the rhythmic hum of breath and the low songs that carried women through the threshold of life and death. And when a child emerged - gasping, writhing - the matriarchs did not thank a distant god. They thanked the body.

But even as they moved in their ancient knowing, the towers of words pressed closer. The scribes wrote laws that forbade the midwives from practicing their craft. They labeled the knowledge of the uterus as dangerous - a heresy against the hollow fathers they worshipped.

Still, the matriarchs did not write. They did not argue. They did not kneel.

They remembered.

And so the knowledge passed - from hand to hand, womb to womb. In the flickering glow of hearthfires, grandmothers traced the lines of their daughters’ palms, speaking of cycles and seeds, of the blood that called forth the moon. The body remained their scripture. The contractions of labor were their hymns.

They knew that no man had ever touched the threshold of existence. No man had ever walked the borderlands of birth and returned.

And for that, they pitied them.

The silent matriarchs did not raise their voices. But they did not forget.

And though God still did not watch, the Earth did. The rivers still remembered the songs of the mothers. The trees still bore witness to the trembling bodies that leaned against them in the throes of birth. Even the stars, named falsely by men, blinked with an ancient knowing.

The matriarchs remained. And so did the truth.