Wild Roses fic prompt 093 "Thanksgiving"
Title: willing
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Aodh
Prompt: 096 "Ritual"
Word Count: 562
Rating: PG for Roman-based sacrificial practices.
Notes: a folk tale, in a peculiar fashion. Un-tied to the main world. Sparked by the mental lines "One is not to burn down a cultural metropolis through judicious abuse of rituals associated with religious cults. . . Again. >.>"
This year's sacrifices were harder to catch, the hunters forced to wander farther from the sprawling ragged-edge city than in previous years. Snares set near garbage dumps caught rats or the legs of feral dogs. More snares were broken, or found with only a bit of fur caught in them.
One rather memorable snare had been found dangling in four pieces from a tree covered in trailing grape vines.
Some of the priests had begun to plant the idea that perhaps it would please the goddess if her eventual blessed ashes were raised for the purpose, instead of needing to play catch-me-if-you-can.
But they had their sacrifices for this year, on the day of sacrifice. Who seemed resigned to their fate, not even fighting as the sheaves of dry-headed wheat were woven in and tied to their tails.
The fire was lit, at the edge of the Circus, bright twigs held to the heat until they smouldered and caught, ritual scents rising with the smoke of wood. The wheat was lit as the sacrifices were held by trusted, burly under-priests, then let go, to run out into the Circus, and burn.
The small, brightest-red sacrifice was the last to be lit, gold eyes sleepily half-lidded until the smell of burning began.
Then it ran, leaping from the arms of its holder--who screamed briefly as his clothing came singe-ingly close to the tail--and beginning to outpace its fellows.
The priests watched, horrified, as the tails of the earlier sacrifices began to go out, the bright lights of burning wheat extinguished from the passage of the last, which was only burning brighter and bigger as it ran.
The blaze was big enough that the sacrifice should have stopped moving long since, when one of the watching handlers came to one of the staring priests, and asked if it was a sign of divinity for the fox to have more than one burning tail.
As the priest turned to stare at the handler, nonplused, a collective gasp rose from those still watching, as the fox took a sharp turn and left the Circus.
Still staring at the Circus and the scattered failed sacrifices barely visible in the light of the sparking fire, the eldest priest asked what was along the street the last sacrifice had turned up. It was asked in the tone of someone who knew already, but was hoping they were wrong. The second-eldest priest replied that there was nothing stone there.
Only wood, and paper, and the storehouses dedicated to the goddess, filled with the season's grain.
Stories told later about the Great Fire differed slightly in their details. No one argued about what had begun it--the cult of the grain goddess had attempted their yearly sacrifice and had failed to control the avenues leading away from the Circus used for the purpose. The cult fell out of favour--what remained of the survivors almost entirely took to farming, as far away from the city they'd burned in their failure as they could get.
Where the stories truly differed was what, exactly, they had failed to sacrifice. Some survivors claimed to have seen a many-tailed fox, trailing fire from its tails and the burning wheat tied to them.
Others had seen a young man, red-headed as a fox, with yellowed eyes, carrying a sheaf of unconsumed burning wheat in his hand like a sword.
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Aodh
Prompt: 096 "Ritual"
Word Count: 562
Rating: PG for Roman-based sacrificial practices.
Notes: a folk tale, in a peculiar fashion. Un-tied to the main world. Sparked by the mental lines "One is not to burn down a cultural metropolis through judicious abuse of rituals associated with religious cults. . . Again. >.>"
This year's sacrifices were harder to catch, the hunters forced to wander farther from the sprawling ragged-edge city than in previous years. Snares set near garbage dumps caught rats or the legs of feral dogs. More snares were broken, or found with only a bit of fur caught in them.
One rather memorable snare had been found dangling in four pieces from a tree covered in trailing grape vines.
Some of the priests had begun to plant the idea that perhaps it would please the goddess if her eventual blessed ashes were raised for the purpose, instead of needing to play catch-me-if-you-can.
But they had their sacrifices for this year, on the day of sacrifice. Who seemed resigned to their fate, not even fighting as the sheaves of dry-headed wheat were woven in and tied to their tails.
The fire was lit, at the edge of the Circus, bright twigs held to the heat until they smouldered and caught, ritual scents rising with the smoke of wood. The wheat was lit as the sacrifices were held by trusted, burly under-priests, then let go, to run out into the Circus, and burn.
The small, brightest-red sacrifice was the last to be lit, gold eyes sleepily half-lidded until the smell of burning began.
Then it ran, leaping from the arms of its holder--who screamed briefly as his clothing came singe-ingly close to the tail--and beginning to outpace its fellows.
The priests watched, horrified, as the tails of the earlier sacrifices began to go out, the bright lights of burning wheat extinguished from the passage of the last, which was only burning brighter and bigger as it ran.
The blaze was big enough that the sacrifice should have stopped moving long since, when one of the watching handlers came to one of the staring priests, and asked if it was a sign of divinity for the fox to have more than one burning tail.
As the priest turned to stare at the handler, nonplused, a collective gasp rose from those still watching, as the fox took a sharp turn and left the Circus.
Still staring at the Circus and the scattered failed sacrifices barely visible in the light of the sparking fire, the eldest priest asked what was along the street the last sacrifice had turned up. It was asked in the tone of someone who knew already, but was hoping they were wrong. The second-eldest priest replied that there was nothing stone there.
Only wood, and paper, and the storehouses dedicated to the goddess, filled with the season's grain.
Stories told later about the Great Fire differed slightly in their details. No one argued about what had begun it--the cult of the grain goddess had attempted their yearly sacrifice and had failed to control the avenues leading away from the Circus used for the purpose. The cult fell out of favour--what remained of the survivors almost entirely took to farming, as far away from the city they'd burned in their failure as they could get.
Where the stories truly differed was what, exactly, they had failed to sacrifice. Some survivors claimed to have seen a many-tailed fox, trailing fire from its tails and the burning wheat tied to them.
Others had seen a young man, red-headed as a fox, with yellowed eyes, carrying a sheaf of unconsumed burning wheat in his hand like a sword.