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amascut,
thalestris

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This morning the grey kitten version of Gielinor's goddess of Death and Rebirth left Milliways the same way she entered just before the version Milliways is more familiar with descended from room 60 carrying a grotesquely oversized lobster pot.

She might bump into people with it on her way to the Caribbean inlet, but it might be more likely to find her on the jetty that was built for docking boats there. There are some nice rocks to sit on, and on one of them, she relaxes and enjoys a marrentil cigar, with a bottle of the unsanitary swill called Braindeath 'Rum', an axe, and rope leading out to the submerged lobster pot nearby.

She's going to catch whatever has been smashing her lobster pots up before, she can feel it. But in the meanwhile she's botherable.

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"Hmmm, I wonder if it was built that way on purpose, then."

"Perhaps it was," says Thalestris. "The other bull-dancers who come from cities and towns say any proper palace in their lands would have high walls in case of attack, but there are none save a small one to keep servants in around the Labyrinth. It must be its own defenses."

"Some people have a habit of attaching rooms and hallways to a building every few years, and such buildings can become very labyrinthine."

The rope running out into the water jerks a little. She takes notice, but since it was just a jerk, that is all the attention she pays to it.

"But I know of a people who built a labyrinth around their village to protect themselves. I imagine it would be a fairly difficult place to invade."

"What land is this in?" says Thalestris curiously. "My people seldom build much, and until the Cretans came I hadn't been beyond our lands."

"In Kandarin, a land far to the west of mine." Curious, she asks, "These Cretans... were you young when they came?"

Thalestris is young-looking, but, well, its not that uncommon for teenagers to wander out on their own on an adventure.

In certain universes, anyway.

"I've been among them three months now," says Thalestris. "They take their tributes every year; the youngest they take them is thirteen. I've had fifteen summers, I think. My mother never was good at keeping track of such things.'

"Tribute? Are the other," she takes a moment to remember, "bull-dancers tributes to Crete as well?"

Her world is far from innocent when it comes to human trafficking. Especially not the Kharid.

It makes for nice powder-keggy situations she can set off when she desires, at least. Freedom is such an easy cause to fight for. Or rather, to goad people to fight for.

Edited 2012-08-02 00:41 (UTC)

Thalestris nods. "There was a time, they say, when the Cretan nobles did the dance themselves, to win glory or to honor the Earth-shaker or the Goddess-on-Earth. But they've not done that in hundreds of years. They take slaves from wherever they can now, some as tribute and some just bought, and have us do it for them. It's been a long time since the Cretans put themselves to much effort to honor their gods."

"And their gods still find favor with them?" How enlightened of them. The gods. Not so much the Cretans. Well, maybe. She give a slight chuckle at the thought.

"Are your people conquered by the Cretans, or is tribute offered for some other reason?"

"Their gods see people offering their lives for them and I suppose that is enough," says Thalestris, "since that's what the dance is for; it ends when one of us dies, or when the bull grows tired and leaves, and then they say the god is satisfied for the day. So I suppose that is why they haven't shaken the place to the ground yet."

"Oh, my people are free of them mostly. It's only that my clan was down in a coastal town when the tribute-ship came for the year, and they took all the young people of the right size to select by lot, except for the girls the priestess said weren't maidens. My name was on one of the lots and the Cretan captain wouldn't let my mother call him out in a duel... the Cretans control the seas and would let the pirates range free if anyone stood up to them, or stop the tin-ships so no one could have bronze. So that's why everyone who dwells by the sea-shore pays them tribute."

She does not sound pleased with this.

"For tin?" she asks, incredulous. "Is it not very common?"

"There's hardly any to be found anywhere," says Thalestris. "You have to go very far west, past Sicily, to find any of it readily. Sometimes the Egyptians have it to trade, but mostly they offer other things instead."

"Ah, that would make it very valuable." It bewilders her that pirates would rob tin ships, or that tin would be transported by ship, for that matter. "Sea trade isn't as important as it once was where I am from but I can see how a nation with a good navy could extort its neighbors"

"So, do you know why their gods demand a bull dance?" This is either ███████ trying to find out the gossip on the gods the next world over or her finding inspiration for awesome religious rights incase she ever gets popular again. If she is ever allowed to become popular again.

"Oh, it's the Earth-shaker," says Thalestris. "They call him Black-horned Poseidon, Lover of Bulls; when they offer him animal sacrifice, it's either bulls or horses. The bull-dance used to be just putting a person in a pit for a bull to gore, and they grew to like watching people try to outlast the bull, so they made it bigger and added more people, but it was always because the Earth-shaker's sacred animal is the bull."

Meanwhile, her sacred animal was the... ugh.

Filthy beasts.

She needs a new sacred animal.

"That's the way of things, ceremonies tend to get more complicated with time. At least a person put in the bull-dance has a better chance of survival." And more time to worry about the bull getting lucky the next time.

Those cruel Cretans. It's just not right.

Thalestris nods. "A good bull-dancer lasts six months in the ring; a great one more," she says. "The Cranes- that's the oldest team in the Labyrinth, they're all of Athens- have been here the better part of a year, and not one has died. It's fourteen dancers, now, seven youths and seven maidens, and it keeps the bull busy enough to grow tired, most times."

"Oh, there are established teams? Ahh, now your talk of gryphons makes sense. How many are on your team?"

"Fourteen," says Thalestris. "All the teams are so. The Cranes are unusual because they all come of one city only, all taken at once, instead of being made up of people from here and there."

"I wonder if they practice for the bull dance there, then. That sounds quite unusual."

"Not to my knowledge," says Thalestris. "Their leader Theseus swore them to an oath, and says that keeps them alive and together, that's all."

"An oath, hmm?"

The rope jerks a couple more times, but ~~Sarah~~ ignores it. if there is something crawling into the trap, she best not disturb it.

"So was your native country very different from Crete, beside the buildings?"

Thalestris nods. "Crete is an island, all sun and fields and hills they like to think are mountains," she says. "A very warm one; the women wear their bodices open until they marry, and the men wear hardly anything unless they are very old or infirm. My country is at the back of the northeast wind, and we live in the real mountains, following our herds and flocks. Hardly any of the men of Crete are fighters at all, except Minos' guards, and none of their women would even think of such a thing. But among my people, a woman cannot marry until she brings the man the head of an enemy slain in battle by her own hand- and my mother brought my father three. They are a very soft people, the Cretans."

She smiles widely at that. "That sounds like a fun tradition, but it makes it nescessary to keep and cultivate an enemy."

Which admittedly, is easy if a goddess of friendliness and sociability doesn't interfere.

She then turns wistful. "My country is mostly desert. It extends out into the sea so there are beaches like surrounding it, but I live in the interior, near the foothills of the mountain range that divides the continent. The old stories say that our country was covered in grassland and forest full of very valuable and prized timber, but that vanished long ago along with the ships that used to visit our shores. There is a corner that is still lush and green, but it is too full of ghosts and memories. No one dares to live there."

"Generally there is someone willing to start a feud," says Thalestris. "Over grazing land or a stream to drink from, if nothing else. And that's enemy enough, for most clans."

One hand comes up briefly in an old sign against misfortune at the mention of the ghosts. "What became of the rest of your country?" she asks. "Was some god angered, or was it a war?"

"Many gods were angered, it was a God War. When the Death goddess of my country was betrayed and defeated by her own mortal worshippers, with the help of a foreign god of justice," she tries very hard to hide her disgust at the memory, "it wasn't long until the other gods became fearful and started conspiring against eachother. Soon a mortal used the same weapon the god of justice used against the death goddess to betray and steal his god's power to grant himself godhood. The entire world went to war after that."

A bitter chuckle escapes. "By trying to defeat Death, they only betrayed the world to her madness."

"It was the newly risen god's fault that my country dried up. The only green part of my country now was one of the grandest cities in the world, Ullek. But now it lays partially under the sea, partially under a swamp. For their part in destroying Ullek, the new god rewarded one of his people with the ability to cover their land with clouds that only part during the night. But to do it he diverted the clouds that blessed our land with rain. Our people prayed to the Sun so that he would shine less brighty to spare us from his heat, but he couldn't do it, lest the world die of starvation."

Edited 2012-08-02 22:39 (UTC)

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