Jeremiah Joseph was born in a cave of limestone. No way in, no way out.
His mother did the birth there, all by her self, had a birthing pool with her. She didn’t bring it, of course, and it wasn’t brought there. It was a natural pool in the cave. Very cold. You’d think that was a bad thing, but….
Anyway, no one seems to know how they got there, but that’s where they were. She birthed him, standing in the pool, in a crouch, basically with her arms on her knees, butt pushed out behind her, and as he crowned, she reached back and pulled him from her birth canal. She screamed a primal scream, having pushed extremely hard to get him out. The effort took a massive toll on her. As she pulled him out of herself, she slumped down, stumbling just outside of the pool. She had some bedding she had made next to the pool, from flax. She made the linen herself. The majority of the birthing fluids stayed in the pool. Later ecologists would be dismayed to find it contaminated the pristine ecological conditions of the pool, but at the same time, it spawned a whole new species and created an entirely new ecosystem.
Jeremiah Joseph’s mother, whose name no one knows, lay there on the bedding, entirely naked; she wanted an entirely natural birth. The cradled him to her chest, but she was very weak with the effort. She lay there a while, not having any idea how long it took. He suckled at her breast, once, and drew strength from it. And then, he knew. He knew what he had to do. Sadly, she died there, on that bed. He was dismayed, his one regret, that while she gave him life, and from her breast she gave him strength, it was the last of her strength, and he took it. She gave it freely, but there was nothing he could give back. And he was deeply saddened by this.
And so, he decided he must tunnel his way out, he must give back to the world what she gave him. What that was exactly, he didn’t know. He knew he wasn’t going to be a milk man though. How he had all these thoughts is beyond anyone’s comprehension, but the sages that that it took him 4.5 days to tunnel out. How he didn’t starve or thirst to death is unknown. Some say he pulled water from the rock around him. Others say he must have inhaled cave crickets and metabolized their protein. Nobody know.
It is said that in the time it took to tunnel out he both lost his baby teeth and grew adult teeth. He was the same size the entire time. He did eventually become the size of a normal man, but that came later.
When he exited the cave, or really, hollow inside the mountain, he covered back up the entrance. He made the hollow space inside the mountain a mausoleum to his mother. No one could ever enter on pain of death. From him. The mountain today is know as Joseph’s Boob, a crude joke referring to the strength he gained from his mother’s breast. The mountain also has an odd shape, roughly resembling that of a woman’s breast, when view from the right angle, and if you squint really hard, some say you can actually see it. Some say only the dirty of mind can see it.