Fic: And this shall be the sign

[anyanka_eg]

Title: And this shall be the sign
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Spoilers: Vague series 4
Summary: A little bit of Christmasy nonsense as a big thank you to all who sent me cards and gifts (and of course no offense meant to anyone even though I'm playing with the bible story a bit). Thank you to lavvyan , ionaonie , wolfshark , in_the_bottle , yellowvalley , but also thanks to all the other people who write such excellent stories that keep me entertained through out the year.

 

Rodney should have known there was something wrong when John found the sheep. To be fair, it was more like the sheep found Sheppard, but still it should have clued him in that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Instead he was running through his animal-encounters-in-the-Pegasus-galaxy mental check list of 'Oh my god! Oh my god! It's going to attack us. Has it got teeth? Has it got claws? Ronon'll kill it. Will it taste good roasted? Maybe with gravy.' 

Also, they didn't really look like sheep. They were a funny, skinny beasts with a speckled sand colored coat, although the one that he'd initially decided was the alpha male, had tiger stripes in its long silky fur. That was the one that had wandered up to Sheppard and bleated. It was the plaintive, heart wrenching sound of a truly pampered animal not getting it's fair share of attention. All Rodney's cats had done it but Fat Albert had had a meow that could convince complete strangers passing the house that he hadn't been fed for months, even though he looked like he'd eaten a bowling ball.

Sheppard had stared down at the creature like it would suddenly decide it could talk and tell him where the villagers had gone. Rodney didn't think it was likely but given the incident with 'Mr Ed' on Annoos he wasn't discounting it completely. The sheep just bleated again and butted its head gently against Sheppard's knee and Rodney figured that even the Pegasus galaxy hadn't managed to produce intelligent sheep.

The sun was sliding towards the horizon when they had arrived at the Menchu village, only to find it deserted. Rodney had been panicking about cullings and feeling bad for Teyla loosing friends again, until Ronon pointed out that the houses were locked up, not something people generally did when they were being attacked by life sucking aliens. Still, it was a mystery of the vaguely creepy kind.

Poking about in the streets and peering through the windows of the little houses hadn't offered any clues as to the whereabouts of the people. Ronon had suggested that he should break down one of the doors so they could check inside but the look in Teyla's eyes had suggested she'd be forced to hurt anyone who damaged her friends' property, even if she didn't know where they were either.

They had set up camp outside the village, something about the lack of people spooking even Ronon, figuring they'd head back to the gate the next morning to report the loss of the Menchu. They'd eaten MREs sitting round the fire Ronon had built in the lee of a largest bolder on the rocky hillside. He'd known Ronon was itching to cook one the faux-sheep but Teyla's protective frown had extended to the livestock as well as the houses.

Also Sheppard seemed to be as taken with the creatures as they were with him. This despite the fact that they had trailed him through the village, milling round his legs like a furry sea and tripping him up when he tried to move. That evening, the striped one, the one that Sheppard had so unimaginatively named Tigger, snuggled in close to John, snorting softly as he scriched behind it's ear.

The pilot had refused to rename the creature even after they realized it was female when it had suckled a lamb. Rodney had just rolled his eyes, thinking Sheppard was Kirk even to sheep, and then decided to never, ever remember that he might once have considered that thought because there were images in his head that were very, very wrong.

The next clue Rodney failed to catch was when the angel appeared.

Of course he hadn't realized it was an angel until he'd put all the facts together later, after all the guy didn't even have wings or a halo, but knowing what he did now he couldn't help thinking of Alan Rickman in Dogma. He wondered how Sheppard, or god forbid Teyla, would have reacted if Rodney had demanded that the man who had appeared from around the bolder, drop his pants so he could check if he had genitals. Of course that relied on the man having pants and his lack of them had been one of the first things Rodney had noticed about him.

The fact that the guy was wearing a pristine white dress, although Teyla called it a robe, was right up there with 'where the fuck did he come from?' and 'wow, Ronon's fast.' Fortunately John was nearly as fast and stopped the Satedan shooting the man before he spoke, which was good because his words were another big tick on the definitely-an-angel check list.

“Fear not” the man in the dress had said, and Rodney, looking back now, knew he had indeed been struck with mighty dread, although no more so than whenever anyone snuck up on him when he was off world. At the time though Rodney was still firmly of the belief that angels didn't exist and that this was just an average lunatic sneaking up on a group of heavily armed strangers.

For someone wandering around alone in the night wearing a dress the man was a whole hell of a lot calmer than Rodney thought natural and refused the food they offered him. Despite these obvious big flashing neon warning signs, Teyla and John decided that they should believe his clearly insane story about some sort of census and follow his directions to the Menchu gathering place the next day. There also seemed to be some worrying gaps in the gate's language module for this planet, or at least for the words the stranger was using, because it took some interesting miming to get from comitisal to counting to census.

The next day, even though none of them could really remember exactly when the stranger left, or in fact his name, Sheppard had still been intent on going looking for the Menchu. Teyla had been more cautious in the cold light of day, or the warm light of day as it was, but Sheppard's arguments had won and they'd set off to join the count. Sheppard did at least send Ronon back to the gate to tell Atlantis where they were heading and to send a jumper to pick them up later in the day so they only had to walk one way.

On the day's walk Rodney consoled himself with the daydream of finding a fully charged ZPM under a handily placed Norwegian spruce somewhere along their route. He knew it was utterly improbable but he figured it was nearly Christmas back home and it was on top of his wish list, somewhere just above a supply of good coffee and getting laid. Plus he'd been a good boy this year. Really, really good.

He hadn't had much time to notice his ZPM-related disappointment once they neared the caves because the Menchu elders were out in force to greet them and hurry them in to the large 'gathering hall' that opened up deep in the mountain. Smaller caves let off the main hall, all crammed with people apparently observing some mad custom that required them to return to the caves every year to be counted. Rodney thought they might all be just a little crazy, and told Sheppard so, because there seemed to be no reason why the Menchu couldn't be surveyed in their comfortable homes without the need to pack into unsanitary hovels nearly a day's walk away.

The elders wanted them to stay, of course, to celebrate the happy 'comitisal' with their people and discuss trade once the team had been counted too. Rodney pointed out that there were four of them, he could count them easily not even using all the digits on one hand, but Sheppard had kicked him under the table and he'd shut up. He thought it was probably the elder with the face like he'd sucked a lemon, the one Rodney was now calling Herod in the privacy of his own head, that insisted they were assigned the accommodations that they were.

Rodney found he wasn't overly surprised when they were told that there wasn't any room at the metaphorical inn and they were shuffled off to sleep in the 'stable'. Looking back it was another stupidly obvious sign he had failed to spot, but he was distracted by the Sheppard's hyperactive sheep swarming round his legs like some kind of hairy soup. Their guide, who turned out to be an actual inn keeper, told them there were others already assigned to the stables, a man and his very heavily pregnant wife who had arrived late. Having seen Teyla's gait when she was pregnant (and he was never, ever going to call it a waddle to her face) he wondered that the family had made it all. Especially as these people seemed to be actively resisting inventing the wheel.

Sheppard looked vaguely unsettled as they made their way back outside and then into another set of caves that opened off the mountain side. Rodney wasn't sure if the pilot was beginning to smell something fishy over the almost overpowering reek of animal dung or if he was just panicking about the idea of assisting at a birth. Rodney had by this point the distinct feeling that there was something just in the corner of his mind that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

The stable was filled with gray cow-ish things, that also needed counting according to their guide, a forlorn looking small zebra-like beast of burden and the wails of a new born baby. Rodney gritted his teeth against the noise and the smell and dropped his pack in the least filthy corner he could find while Teyla handled the introductions. Their guide shouted his goodbyes over the crying and left them, hurrying back to the main caves with what Rodney thought was unseemly haste.

The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, the bit that forced his disbelieving mind to accept what was clearly happening, even though he knew it was utterly ludicrous, was the gifts they ended up giving the couple.

Rodney had felt compelled to hand over two of his precious stash of power bars, his favorite gold wrapped peanut butter flavor ones, to the baby's parents when they enviously watched his every bite of the one he ate while Teyla cleaned the baby. Teyla seemed to be taking the lack of help the couple had received personally and was setting about rectifying it single handedly. She was expertly cleaning the baby with antiseptic and, after she'd made the guys turn their backs, the mother too. She then helped the girl feed her child for the first time. Rodney sighed with relief when the wailing finally stopped and he noticed that even the cow-ishes seemed to relax too.

There was a few minutes of quiet, broken only by greedy sucking sounds, before the child decided he'd had enough and started wailing again. Nothing seemed to calm him down, not Teyla's expert winding, not the worried mother's offer of more food, not the father's frantic rocking. Eventually Ronon huffed a breath, scooped up the tiny baby in his massive paws and settled him against his chest. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle, dabbing a drop of the liquid on the baby's forehead.

A few moments of gentle whispering from the big man and the child quietened, falling asleep in the crook of Ronon's elbow. Everyone, except Teyla who just smiled, stared at him like he was a magician. He just shrugged, put the baby in a handy manger and said he always kept the relaxing oil with him since Teyla gave it to him when he first babysat Torren. Rodney wondered why he hadn't been given relaxing oil but then remembered that he'd been avoiding handling the baby just like Sheppard had, because they were both big, fat cowards.

It was then he remembered that frankincense was known to produce a calm euphoria in people who breathed in it's smoke and that myrrh was used as an antiseptic. Take with his own offering of 'gold' he realized that he'd unwittingly fulfilled some mythical role that he'd sung carols about in school. Sometimes Rodney hated the Pegasus galaxy.

And that was how he found himself sitting in a stable just before Christmas with a woman who had just given birth and her husband, whose expression was flickering between shell shocked and ecstatic. Rodney supposed that was what all new fathers looked like but he thought the arrival a group of strangers, with a flock of rustled sheep in tow, hadn't helped his sanity any. The couple called them all wise. Well three of them anyway. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla were called wise while Sheppard was clearly just a shepherd in this mad story that they seemed to have found themselves in.

Outside moonlight glinted off a jumper as it uncloaked, the light twinkling like a star over the stable.