Jeremiah Joseph was sitting with some of the village mothers, helping them weave baskets. Jeremiah had large hands with surprising dexterity. He learned to weave whole roaming the wilds before being taken in. He taught himself to weave reads and braid vines to make baskets and ropes. They were very crude but his talent was noticed right away.
Joseph enjoyed weaving baskets. One of the types of baskets he was taught to make was tall, about waist high, tall and narrow. They had many uses: to protect large wine and oil vases, holding various objects like brooms, carrying kindling sticks, holding dirty clothes, and many more things. Some had kids, others not.
Jeremiah was making one one day but he made the bottom too narrow. He had gotten the weave wrong and the insides bowed in too tightly. Jeremiah threw this basket into the nearby stream, carelessly.
A while later he as he was walking home, he passed the basket in the stream. He noticed that the fish would be forced to swim into the basket. This gave him an idea. Jeremiah thought about the time he made that big basket to go fishing. It was a lot of work and that basket boat was rather unwieldy. But this, could it work? Could a fish somehow swim into this and then get stuck?
He thought on this as he walked home. He went to sleep that night and the next day came back to look at the basket. In his sleep, or in the time before he fully fell asleep he had some ideas he wanted to try. So, that morning he set to work modifying the basket in a way he thought might trap fish.
After some trial and error he had a working example, a test basket. A proto-trap. He set his trap in the stream and watched for a while. After a bit, he got bored and went to chop wood for the village and his own home.
While he was chopping wood, Weibe Hsu appeared. He watched Jeremiah chop wood for a while, just standing there, unnoticed, until Jeremiah happened to turn around and see him. Jeremiah jumped, startled to see anyone, let alone Weibe Hsu standing there. He nearly threw the axe he was holding. “Reekris, master- I mean, Weibe, you startled me.”
“That’s not the first time someone has told me this”, Weibe said. He chuckled to himself, seemingly at a joke only he understood.
“So, what brings you around?”, Jeremiah asked.
“Oh, ya know, my usual wanderings. Collecting stories, idea; the usual.” Weibe said, in a way that say everything and nothing at the same time.
“Well”, Jeremiah said, wedging the ax into the chopping block to mount the axe. Jeremiah swaggered over, a smirk on his face and said “Well, lemme show you something I came up with.”
Jeremiah Joseph led Weibe Hsu over to the stream where he had left his basket. Jeremiah looked down at the basket; Weibe had a stoic, but inquisitive look on his face. Jeremiah’s face lit up when he saw a few small fish darting in and out of the basket, while a larger one appeared to be trapped in the basket. He pulled the basket out of the water, the large fish stuck, the little one escaping with the water that rushed out.
“Ha ha!”, Jeremiah exclaimed. It had worked. He excitedly showed Weibe his trap and explained how he had come to the idea. Weibe looked at it, curiously.
“Yes, the Ancients had done something similar”, Weibe said. He went on to explain the schematics he had found and examined in a ruin temple in the mountainous jungles nearby. Few folk went up there, as there were rumors of spirits and other mischievous beasts that lurked in those hills, said to protect the spirits of the Ancients, or something to that effect. Jeremiah didn’t pay much attention to them. He mostly didn’t like the spiders, ticks, and aggressive wasps that made their home there.
Weibe explained to Jeremiah what he had seen and how what Jeremiah had invented was quite similar, if a crude example, of what the ancients often employed. Weibe sketched out on a flat piece of wood, using some charcoal as a scribe, a rudimentary schematic of what an improved trap would look like based on what Jeremiah had already made.
“Wow, I guess great minds think a like I suppose”, said Jeremiah.
“Yes! That they do!”, said Weibe in cheerful agreement. “Now, would you like to join me at a gathering in a nearby village? There’s tell that there will be plenty of wine flowing, great food, and even a magician!”, Weibe said, in a comically conspiratorial kind of way.
Jeremiah Joseph and Weibe Hsu arrived at the gathering in the early evening. The wine was flowing, music was playing (a group of three folks honking on reed flutes is what passed for music), and the roast bird on a stick in great quantity. Jeremiah was greeted by the matriarch of the House, Gisela. She was dressed up for the occasion, her red hair worked into an elaborate bun, her ample girth fitting comfortably into a bright red and gold dress, special made for the occasion.
“Weibe, you made it! And a friend you brought as well, no? You must introduce me!”, Gisela said, clearly having been imbibing a bit of the freely flowing wine.
“This is a friend of mine, Jeremiah, Joseph” Weibe Hsu said. They made introductions and Gisela encouraged them to part take in the food and drink, enjoy the music, listen to the stories. There were games.of cards and dice being played as well as an older man telling stories to a rapt audience.
Weibe perked an ear up as they passed the story teller, and he smiled to himself. He knew this story, for he was the one who told the teller of the story the story he was telling.
The wine was kept in large clay vessels about knee height and protected by woven baskets, the kind Jeremiah often made. Jeremiah helped himself to the wine, which he found a bit off, was self served with a ladle dipped into the amphora and poured into one’s cup. Jeremiah noticed one rather uncouth and a bit inebriated guest pouring the wine from the ladle straight into his mouth and placing the ladle back in the amphora. “Note to self” he thought, hoping he’d remember to avoid that one later.
The evening wound on, and he ate much food, some of which was completely new to him. He listened to stories, lost at dice, and generally enjoyed himself. There was talk going around that the wine was running low. Weibe, unbeknownst to Jeremiah, was telling folks not to worry, that he knew a guy who could do powerful magic. If the wine ran out, he could make more. All he needed was some water.
And so the evening progressed and sure enough, the wine ran out. Jeremiah himself was a bit tipsy at this point, the lights a warm haze as his head buzzed lightly. Jeremiah heard Weibe making an announcement but couldn’t actually hear what he said. Weibe came over to Jeremiah and told him they were out of wine.
“Take these jars into the old cellar” Weibe said. Jeremiah looked at him confused and asked what cellar? Weibe explained that there was an old, forgotten storage cellar on the other side of the house, away from the party.
Weibe gave Jeremiah a hand cart full of clearly labeled amphora of water. The blue ones were usually painted with a blue stripe around the top, while the ones for wine a purple or red stripe, and oil a yellow or gold stripe. The amphora here were all painted with a red stripe, which was common for cheap, common wine.
Jeremiah went into this cellar, which was mostly clutter and dust. The dust kicked up from his rummaging made him sneeze. There was a lot of old stuff just kind of thrown down in the cellar, junk mostly. He took the water jars in to the cellar and put them in the back. He wasn’t really thinking clearly and thought it would be kind of funny. As he was rummaging around he noticed some other jars, with purple stripes. These were apparently special wine amphorae, partly because of the purple stripe, but also because these had a date on them. They had been sealed with wax around a cork, different from the common amphorae, and the date was old. About 15 years old from what Jeremiah could make out. The date had been written in charcoal. Jeremiah opened on of the and sampled the contents. It was quite good.
He had a funny idea then. He decided to move all of the special jugs to the front of the cellar. Then he went and retrieved all of the water jugs, of which there were a few more of than the fancy wine jugs. He dumped out what water was left in the water jugs and filled them with the wine from the fancy wine jugs. He then took the empty wine jugs and buried them back under the mess in the back of the cellar. And back onto the hand cart went the water jugs and Jeremiah carted them back to the party. He made a small show of unloading the water jugs, clearly full now, but also clearly marked as water.
He placed them back on the tables where the wine had been before and walked away without a word. A few people looked at him quizzically, but also a bit sad, with a few even a little angry. What was this? Some kind of joke? Jeremiah settled himself at a table a little ways away and just watched. Weibe was wandering around, making jokes with other folks and didn’t see that Jeremiah had returned.
As Weibe wandered amongst the guests he eventually noticed that the water jugs were on the serving table where the wine jugs have been before. He stopped and looked around, craning his neck and stretching up on his tippy toes. He found Jeremiah and walked over to him.
“I see the water jugs have returned”, Weibe said.
“Heh heh, yes they did”, giggled Jeremiah.
“Whoa! Whoooooa!”, came the cry of a young male guest. “Gisela, look!”, he exclaimed, showing his cup to Gisela, which held wine, yet was retrieved from a jug marked for water. She had been dismayed that the wine had run out, having planned for quite a while for this party. She was both relieved and confused. How could this be?
Weibe and Jeremiah watched this exchange, and Weibe turned to Jeremiah with a questioning smirk. Jeremiah just gave a nonchalant shrug and smirk back. “It’s a miracle, I suppose”, Jeremiah said.
Weibe came up to Gisela, who was excitedly telling the guests that the party was back on. “There is more wine, and”, taking a deep sip, her eyes bulging, “… it’s really good!” she exclaimed. She turned to Weibe, who had just sauntered up, a pleased smile on his face. “Weibe, you wouldn’t know anything about this, would you? Where did this come from?”, she asked.
Weibe said, “I told Jeremiah to take the water jugs away, they were depressing. And so he did, and when he returned, it was a miracle. There was now wine in them.”
“No. No! A miracle?”, Gisela said in disbelief.
“That’s what I said”, Weibe replied. “It is indeed a miracle”.
Weibe didn’t bother asking how Jeremiah did it. And Jeremiah never bothered divulging his secret of finding that good wine stuffed way back, seemingly forgotten in the cellar. And so spread the word that Jeremiah Joseph had turned water into wine. Jeremiah never fully took responsibility nor fully denied it. He would just say “yes, well, wine is mostly water anyway” or something to that affect. Never confirming or denying the allegation.