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you are all on my list.
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Arfarfarfarf aaaaarrrrrrf!
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“Why would you bring me here?” I asked the god of shadow and silence, not the least reason being that it would be the least disturbing when he didn’t answer. “The people are strange and their food is funny. And it stinks.” There was nothing I was used to: no maize, no cuy, no chili or vanilla or cocoa. The city was too large, with too many people, many of them dying and all afraid. That, too, informed my choice of interlocutor: to him were offered the newly dead, lest he come to take more of the living. I figured he could forgive my casualness in the appropriate rituals: for one thing, if the gods cared, they wouldn’t have separated me from all the things that made ritual possible and for another, since I was the only one left to talk to them, they were undoubtedly as lonely as I was.
These people could not have my excuse, however, and I couldn’t help but wonder which of their rituals they had failed their gods… No, god: they made one do all the work of many. Perhaps that was the problem. Their god was too busy and overworked that he forgot to keep this sickness at bay.
“Perhaps you could help these ghost people.” I spoke this time to the god of strength and good health who we used to entreaty when babies were born and bounties were feasted. I doubted our dance to honour him would grant me favour from the locals, however. How could I explain how the bags filled with large rocks were meant to symbolise our strength as we carried them throughout the dance, the men competing to see who could lift the heaviest one, too often outmatched by the women who regularly gathered our firewood. “Drive this sickness away, since their god is too overworked.”
I needed to get away from here. Even unfamiliar trees were still trees, even if they couldn’t provide the way the ones back home could. At least in the forest there would be less ghost people to stare at me.
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Can I bring something? Dessert?
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Dessert?
Well, I suppose it’s cooled enough. There’s plenty for everyone, so no pushing please. And wash your hands first.
I don’t hear any water running in there!
Much better. How big a piece would you like? Ice cream?
My, you certainly all are squinting a lot today. Are you tired? I asked you not to stay up reading all night. We have to stay on schedule for school you know. Goodness you are hungry. How about a second piece?
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*wakes up
Heeder? Whit?
Gonnie hae tae think aboot that fer a bit.
*thinks furiously
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Peasant Pies in SF rules. I eat there kinda often.
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They don’t make a humble pie, do they dearie?
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What is this ‘SF’ you speak of? The Saracen Frontier?
And perhaps you could do with a few less pies {wink}
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Unless you’re going for those immortal achievements
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Har har! Perhaps that will be his only Immortal achievement!
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[excerpt from The Diaries of Other Pendragon © 2017 by TrilloCom LLC]
I can’t remember when I began to keep these journals. The monks at the abbey of St. Trillo must wonder at the number of volumes that have arrived over the centuries, each by a different name, with instructions to shelve them together. I must have filled half their library by now.
I arrived in Avignon in the autumn of 1310, to find it much changed from when I had last visited. The streets were packed with monks, nuns, and pilgrims, and the prices of everything had increased shockingly. There was an air of fear and suspicion over the city, and I was warned not to speak of religion. Even a simple question such as “Is the Pope Catholic?” could lead to one’s arrest on suspicion of Catharist sympathies. To blend in, I purchased a red cap embroidered “Make Avignon Guelph Again”.
It wasn’t long before I became aware of the presence of other Immortals. On my first day I saw a man dragging an enormous wooden broadsword, the height of three men, down the street. I took him to be a pilgrim reenacting the journey of the Christ to Calvary, but mayhap he was merely compensating for something.
Later, as I strolled through the market, I saw a Pictish-looking ginger lad staggering towards me, wearing a kilt in the Mac Feegle plaid. He was brandishing some sort of flexible metal whip in intricate patterns, much as the pubescent girls of Estonia wave their ribbons. He clearly hadn’t mastered it yet, for his entire face and body were covered with healing scars, and his clothes had many crudely-stitched slashes. As I watched, he attempted a tricky under-the-leg maneuver, and the razor edge slashed through his sporran and kilt with a metallic clank, revealing that he wore a wee iron codpiece under his garments.
His face was set in a truculent sneer, and as we passed he lurched towards me and trod on my toe, obviously trying to provoke a fight in violation of the armistice. I remained calm and employed a move I had learned from the warriors of the northern tribes in the Lands Across the Ocean. Stepping back with one foot, I executed a sweeping bow, following up with a flowery apology. Perforce, he had no option but to respond in kind. He bowed even lower and grunted a few words in his barbarian tongue, which I chose to accept as an apology. We backed away, grinning furiously at each other, and went our separate ways. I was happy to have avoided an ugly brawl of the sort his kind are known for instigating. As we say of such incidents back home, “Without Picts, it would never have happened.”
The next day, while out seeing the sights, I saw two more Immortals arguing. A fool dressed in motley, who brandished what seemed to be a large church candle as if it were a sword, was being berated by a tall woman in Frankish dress. She was clearly furious about something, but I could not understand a word of her odd dialect.
After the fool wandered off, the woman noticed me staring, and struck up a conversation. Her name was Maud something, and she shared some groat cakes she had bought from a street vendor (still warm). Then she suggested that we join the locals dancing in a circle on the bridge. She was comely enough, for a Frenchie, and I’ve never minded a faint moustache on a woman, but the memory of my Sylvia (not her real name), so cruelly taken from me (I blame her mother) was still too raw, and besides, something made me suspicious. I pleaded a previous appointment and we parted, vowing to have lunch in the future.
That evening, I had an unsettling experience. Seeking drink and fellowship, I visited a tavern I had known in the past, before it became popular with the rabble. The place was crammed, with seemingly nowhere to sit, but I ordered a flagon of ale at the bar and drained it, then ordered another. As I looked over the crowd, I noticed a young woman in a diaphanous robe sitting at a small table with two empty chairs. I went over and asked if I might sit, but she stared coolly at me, with eyes that seemed older than the rocks of Gwynedd, and informed me that both seats were taken. I realized she too was an Immortal, and I stumbled in embarrassment back to the bar. As I did I thought I heard girlish giggles behind me and whispers of “Oh, thou did’st not!” and “In sooth, sister, thou’rt bad!” and “Nice hose, though”.
The landlord was talking to a tall woman with her back to me, who somehow reminded me of Maud, but when I saw him glance over at me I got his attention and ordered more ale. He brought me a flagon engraved with a dragon, much like our family crest. The ale must have been unusually strong, for I soon felt a great weariness come upon me, and the room began to bend as a tree in a wind. I happened to glance at the table where the woman sat, and for a moment it seemed I saw two more women sitting there, in robes even more diaphanous than the first. I shook my head and blinked, and when I focussed again the lady was alone. She met my gaze and raised one haughty eyebrow, and I stumbled out of the tavern, waking the next morning in the mud of the alley next door.
I like not this Avignon, it is a place for sorcery. It’s time to move on.
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Chers Mots Flottants:
The lovely thing about immortality is not the meeting of people and enjoyment of the brief bloom of relationships, but getting my dancing practice in over their gravesites. With every passing year my legs become more lissome and strong.
Maintenant je visite la belle ville d’Avignon, although the odors here are terrible from the public burning of Knights Templar. Perhaps I should write this where I am not upwind. I wonder if this Pope Clement regrets moving from Rome, as LeRoi Polyp IV seems to be adversarial toward the Knights.
Son vénérable vanité royaume peut savoir que nous ne sommes personne de vassal en matière temporelle.
This Avignon is not like the Normandie Papa took us to when the Wallingford winters were intolerable. All this “it seems you learned French at an early age, although it is a curious French” nonsense from the southerners – yes, my father was French and brought us over with his copain “Duke Billy” when we were little, now down here some take me for a silly Rosbif unless I use my fork and my doily at table. Non, I do not shovel the repas down my gullet like a dirty peasant, wiping my hands on my dear clothes. The Genoese gentleladies, attended or not, nod to me and beckon me over to their table, and we have fine Latin conversation over delicious vin(o). I even sell them a doily now and then.
I am not thrilled to be here, but I am helping to rescue some Knights from imprisonment and destinies as kindling, for a fee of course! A lady must live! and have entreated some of the foreign gentlepeople to take them west to Aquitaine, east to the Holy Roman Empire, to Genoa, or up north to Angleterre. Should anyone smelly raise a questioning look, I shake off my natural hauteur and grunt like an animal: “Old thing! Old fruit! I am from Wallingford Castle, what? I sure miss my bedmate, my sheep Wolfstanus! What manger animal do you miss sleeping with?” What a good joke, what? Wolfstanus! Sheep! “Give us a pint, old fruit!” Hee! C’est-à-dire, c’est-à-rire!
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Pondering on what animal best resembles the barkeep, Ennis decides on a walrus. She does not like walruses. They are envious spirits, souls unhappy living on the boundary, cursed to hobble on the scorching sand and to never be one with the endless sea. A creature between worlds, much like…
Shaking the thought. She sighs takes another swig of mead.
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Sorry the diet wasn’t more interesting.
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Ooh, pie! I remember this one time, working for Warrant the summer of '90. CC DeVille asked me to come along as the tech and, man, we had so much cherry pie backstage it began to freak people out. Everyone brought cherry pies to the show, they had the tee shirt, tour bus, everyone thought they were being clever and original, but I have to say that I literally ate my weight in pie that summer.
Except the one that the rats had gotten to, on the bus in Cleveland. The bus parked right next to a dumpster. Terrible idea, but nobody noticed until it was too late. Clever bastards came right in through the bathroom window and Jani Lane got one right in the face. Some say that was why he left a few years later, but I think it was the one up the pant leg that really bothered him.
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