What it means to Believe

[thoughts from  ~burning woman~ …]

For those who have, or want to take, the time to read. I’m not sure the title is appropriate but here’s the story anyway.

I remember much of what I’ve been told over the years, even those things I came across I couldn’t as yet understand. Much was a jumble of contradictions but isn’t Earthian life a barrage of contradictions? Notice I leave nature out of this argument. Natural or non-people life exists in its created/evolved/adapted state (take your pick on that) accepting it, trusting it and using it to fulfill awareness. Unlike with my observations of Earthian life I see no conflict there.

Earthians (the people, man, homo sapiens, whatever label we give ourselves – again take your pick) need to constantly invent pseudo-realities, each one built upon another but each one further from sky, land and water; from the natural order we should be existing under. Let me qualify that by saying it is not our problem, per se. It is “how” we arrive at this perceived need. Maybe I can explain with this story.

Years ago I had a vision. A “god” showed me what he saw in me. He said to me, “You are of us – specifically, you are mine, though you do not at this time remember why that is, nor how it came about. The time has come that I must open your mind to another reality – beyond that of earth, beyond that of your fellow-man. I am going to give you the power, the strength and the understanding to be a bridge between realities. In time it will kill you but it won’t destroy you – you will survive for you are made of god-stuff. After you re-learn to walk between worlds in detachment and compassion you will form a bridge between two worlds: that of earth and that of man for make no mistake, these exist as two distinct dimensions however cleverly that truth is hidden.” (…to paraphrase Kipling here, O man is man and earth is earth and never the twain shall meet…)

“This bridging will seem a rather foolish and pointless thing to do because few of the rank and file will become aware of the existence of this thing. Fewer will understand and fewer yet will be changed by it. But you will know, and knowing, you will complete your labour. When it is done, and you have died from so much expenditure of energy, from abuse, exposure and time, I will give you a new life. You have been tested and you will not fail because you can no longer fail yourself. Use the information that is in your mind: think, speak and act accordingly. There is no need for more.”

And so, in the vision, I became this living bridge. Few indeed could understand the meaning. Predictably many of the ruling classes who knew of this “bridge” felt threatened by this presence. The consensus was that I posed a danger to the established order and  should be destroyed. So I was killed, my bridge-body cast down into emptiness. That should have been the end of the story. It wasn’t.

I reawakened in another place, another reality. My pain eased then left me. Only memories of what I’d tried to do remained; the sorrow that I could not make “them” understand. Now that hourglass’ sand had run down. I could not go back, certainly not in time to prevent a great tribulation from devastating man’s earth. In a dream state, I heard the cries and the screams of a world that was burning. I felt the hot breath of billions of prayers passing through my mind – but they had no substance and could not be focused. We the “Outsiders” (for now I was with my own people again) could only feel great sorrow; we could not reach back to prevent, nor heal. Because man’s spiritual reality was so dimmed, there was no return passage: the heart-rending prayers had no power to take us back to them. Had we done so of our own will, at the sight of us they would have forgotten both their prayers and their immediate pain. They would have blamed us for their troubles and would have killed us again.

I have pondered that vision over the years. Being a “bridge” can have many meanings. Let me talk a bit about “faith” for that concept properly understood is itself meant to be a bridge between worlds as those who remain religious or have passed through that stage should well know.

Recently I found myself, in my avatar mind, interacting with individuals who believe in their God; who pray to that God, and yet seem woefully lacking in the kind of power that

would help them overcome the tricks, traps and ruses of the Matrix complex. These people exist within the same maze as other Earthians, those who believe in other gods, goddesses or man-made powers, those who don’t, those who could care less: the selfish, the greedy, the ignorant, the narcissists. The God people remain helpless to break out and reach for that desperately needed fresh air of above/beyond-earth reality. They are

confused by many things, fearful, doubtful or unaware of the terrible responsibility they accrue when they claim to believe but do not live the life of obedience that demonstrates the truth of that path. They cover over this instability with verbal pronunciations of faith and attempts at imposing their religions upon others through subterfuge; by usurping

the democratic political process and spending huge monetary resources on ostentatious infrastructure. Failing that, as we see happening, they resort to overt violence and war. There is little else to show for all that religious effort.

So I found myself in an in-between position, between my life as an aspiring avatar (no faith in anyone but self) and God’s path for his followers or faithful. In these exchanges, I realized that being an avatar allows me to “obey” my detached reality while providing insight to other observers. I realized that if I am interacting with an individual who prays to God, hence must have faith in God, my task is to look into that one’s faith to see why it does not produce the fruit inherent to the basic tenets of that faith. Whether you are an avatar, or you are a disciple of Christ or believe in God in some way, the path is similar if you are fully aware of this one fact: that it demands total detachment from the things of earth (the System and its fruits) and living in a constant state of self-sacrifice. You are in the world but not of the world and you can never, ever, be confused as to what it means to live thus.

Believing in God when you live on earth and you are Earthian could be a good thing if that is lived correctly, i.e.,in humility and compassion. What I see, why Earthian faith, though widespread shows so little fruit, or I should say, produces so much bad fruit, is because people have used a book, the Bible (or Koran or any other “holy” book of any state sanctioned, incorporated religion) and relied on non-spiritual teachers and interpreters to anthropomorphize the ancient, original creator God into a modern travesty of a man-made Santa Claus who gives gifts only to those who can afford to buy them for themselves.

The kind of “faith” I would talk about from experience isn’t religion, science, or a product of evolution. Spiritual faith, to have meaning, must rely upon a holistic and whole aspect of man in relationship with spirit. In my earlier interactions with spirit or transcendent divinity, and in my readings about such, my spirit awareness has always been a call to compassion through self-sacrifice. That is the basis of any faith in any “real” divine entity. That is the only “proof” any faith-based life can give to the world. The believer or disciple’s life is the proof, positive or negative, that God not only exists, but is truly a good, loving, compassionate deity. The believer is called but to one thing: to make it so as if it was God itself in thought, word and deed. The believer is by definition the mirror image of her/his chosen divinity. When the world looks for some proof of God’s existence it isn’t in nature but in the self proclaimed exceptionalism of that God’s followers. Try as one might there is no other proof for God’s existence.

True faith has no use for wishful thinkers, deal-makers, “gimme-gimme’s” and much less for controlling power-wielders and greedy oppressors or liars. A man-made god is always conned, being but an idol, not so the intent of faith in a real divinity. Whatever the

shenanigans of organized religion to create a path to an imaginary god that by-passes volitional self-sacrifice, it’s fiction. The faith-based path to faith-based divinity and to wherever that may lead is one of selflessness, of self-sacrifice, of total abandonment to that divinity’s will. And where does that lead? To insane inner joy even while walking through a hell of sorrow.

So, what is that “will?” The funny thing about God’s will is that it cannot, ever, be found at the beginning of one’s walk. One has to “give in” and take the journey without ever looking back. One must turn from selfishness to servant-hood before any understanding can

manifest in the mind. I know this because I’ve passed through that stage. I know how it works and I know that organized religion’s sole purpose is to guarantee that no one will ever get it. Nothing is more dangerous to the organization than the one who has discovered how to synchronize one’s will with that of a faith-based divine will. Once

that is grasped, there is no need for religion anymore. Obedience is all that matters and that is the key to self-empowerment.

Do you see what I have done? I’ve logically concluded that this faith-based divinity can be none other than myself. I made a covenant with myself to think a certain way, to reason and live in such a way. Then I placed myself on the altar in obedience to my life choice.

This is where the vast majority of Earthian sheeple bleat their frustration, their anger, their rejection. Sheep, by nature, obey the herd instinct. Sheeple are bound by groupthink. There’s nary an independent mind among them and that one is always on the brink of being discovered and eliminated as a threat to the herd. Religions serve the herd. Faith serves only the individual.

By dropping the now-utterly useless God label and trusting in one’s self to make all life and death decisions, that is what self-empowerment means. One thing I’m sure of, it will not lead me to that never-never land the sheeple call heaven. For that I’m thankful. I’ve seen enough “heaven” here on earth to know I’ve had enough of it. But let me add this: I know, as a personal inner awareness, that I am an infinite being with infinite life behind and before me. My “home” is the cosmos and my “assurance of salvation” is the degree of compassion I express to myself and the world I exist within – however temporary the relationship.

Quote: An unconventional individual is never bound by conventional wisdom, tradition or belief system. (anonymous)

Quote: Milena lived in a culture that replicated itself endlessly but never gave birth to anything new. (Child Garden – Geoff Ryman)

 

 

What I see, what I feel, what I do

[thoughts from   ~burning woman~   by Sha’Tara]

You wouldn’t know it from the weather here, a few miles above the 49^th parallel, west coast, but it’s the middle of summer. If it briefly hovers around 20 degrees on that infamous Celsius scale and it isn’t pouring rain, we’ve hit a heat wave!

Some things I’ve noticed recently. For one, our mosquitoes absolutely refuse to adhere to the new social distancing measures. In fact they seem to be more numerous and nastier than ever. Why don’t they give them a seasonal jail term or at the very least, quarantine them to their swamp where they come from? My American friends may complain that their Orange Twitter Twat hasn’t done much in draining their swamp but the swamp ain’t drained up here either, neither in the slough at the back of my house nor in the House of Commons (which has never housed a common to my knowledge but I’m not going there). So due to fortuitous circumstances for the little blood suckers, they’re having a great time vaxxing all and sundry, and to hell with the consequences.

Good, bad, or indifferent, there is a definite lack of enthusiasm from the consuming sheeple these days. Are they all suffering from consumption? Over consumption? Boring consumption? There’s the odd ones wandering from aisle to aisle, their expressions veiled by their muzzles which they insist on wearing as a sign of their accepted martyrdom on behalf of the common good or is it on behalf of the common who shop for goods. It is truly sad when no one gets excited over a head of lettuce or a “President’s Choice” jar of fake Dijon mustard. So sad, I’m seriously thinking of relocating to Namibia and pitch a tent in the middle of Etosha national park. I’d like to get away from it all, the only problem is, it will probably find me there as well. What’s that saying? “You can run but you can’t hide!” I’d be willing to bet that the Etosha mosquitoes are at least as effective as vaxxers as are our Canadian ones.

That’s it, I’ve used up my mildly funny-funny. Time to turn serious. No, really, I’m serious.

I’ve also noticed that some bloggers I have had great and serious conversations with are not blogging recently. Is it that, like me, they have become hesitant about sharing their thoughts on the times? Why expose our thoughts to a world that is programmed to listen only to the rich and infamous? OK, admittedly it is a waste of time. But what if there is a bit of time to waste?

I’ll say this, and this is truly mine, no one else’s. For some time now I’ve become more aware of a sense of, what shall I call it – doom? I don’t know. How about a feeling of pain that isn’t mine but imposes itself on my consciousness? I call it sorrow. It isn’t about me, my current days are relatively blissful and my future is assured so what I am feeling, which often causes tears to flow, is the pain of this world. The pain can be physical, as in hunger or deep loss, or it can be psychological, as in fear. Many things can cause fear, of course, and with 7.5 billion people tossing their feelings into the ether, there’s plenty for the empathetic mind to feel.

I knew, some time ago, that choosing to become a compassionate being would entail awakening empathy. I was also warned that to be an empathetic being on a world such as this in which so much pain is deliberately induced would be a difficult thing to bear.  I was also carefully taught that I would know joy in the midst of the sorrow and that would make one bearable while preventing the other from becoming nothing more than a selfish pursuit of personal happiness in dissipation or the drive to become successful.

The teachings and warnings are proving correct. There is sorrow but there is joy. Between them, interfacing with them, is the compassion I am slowly, perhaps too slowly, learning to express to this world. It’s at this point that detachment comes into play. What I feel is generic sorrow, not immediately personal, therefore bearable.

Bearable is OK, I can do bearable. I will post this and return to observing and feeling. It’s what I do.

 

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #109

This blog post concludes “The Antierra Manifesto” – thanks for reading.

What is Antierra thinking as she stands there?  She looks up into the stands, makes the “mercy” gesture and points at the two young girls beside her.  Her gesture is greeted by spitting and cursing.  She turns to the two children and while they are looking at the approaching men wide eyed and shaking, she puts her sword through their hearts.  Then she turns to the men and utters the loudest blood-curdling shriek that place has ever heard.  I had never heard anything like it and it made me shudder.  It seems to come from some awakened beast, not of human voice. Long it echoes along the high walls and through the compounds; so loud it is, it intimidates that wild and unruly crowd to utter and cowed silence.
End blog post #108
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Start blog post #109

She then walks alone to meet the line of men, suddenly no longer an ugly and limping old crone who is nothing but skin, bone and sinew but a tall regal figure who knows her purpose and means to complete it.  The deadly sword flashes red in the plasma lights, the blade still dripping from the blood of the dead girls, and it performs a series of lightning movements that leave a trail of utter carnage until she drops dead, not of wounds but simple heart-stopping exhaustion.  This I can vouch for as I was standing close enough for my sensors to detect her heart stop beating.  She had taken her human body to its final limits.

One of the surviving challengers shouts his cry of victory but no one in the stands picks it up.  For once that crowd is stunned by what it is seeing.  Twenty-three men lie dead and dying around the body of the Desert Beast.  Where is the victory?

The remaining men rush upon the standing group of defenders and kill them one by one, still taking heavy losses.  Only nine men remain of that last ‘rush’ to claim their victory and all of those bear some kind of cut or stab wound.  The last female to remain alive kills herself with her dagger rather than submit to rape.  A new power has arisen on T’Sing Tarleyn.

Even in death the Desert Beast scores.  Never has this place seen such devastation at the hands of a few trained fighters against what, by comparison, can only be called an army of men.

The “harvesting” and trading of female body parts carries little excitement today.  The price paid is much too high for any male to find his enjoyment therein.  The greatest price lies in the message sent to the thousands who came to see women tortured, raped and mutilated before they were even dead.  What they saw instead was a severely organized stand by twenty three female fighters, most of these untrained and certifiable crazies, and an additional twenty females with no fighting skills whatsoever, kill one hundred and ninety-one armed males. 

A sobering set of statistics for the men to mull over.  Not all males are beyond the ability to use some reasoning or exercise wonder.  Many, I would guess, are glad their number was not called.  In previous orgies the ones called were always considered the lucky ones.  Not so today.

Of note:  The scavengers carefully avoid touching the body of the fallen Desert Beast.  No one approaches to cut off any of her parts.  They know she did not die of wounds inflicted by men and having no understanding of such a concept as spontaneous death through the shut-down of body functions as in a massive coronary, they still fear her presence.  After they leave, eunuch slaves and female fighters enter the arena to remove the bodies of the women and take them to the waiting carriers.

Of note:  There is a definite reverence among eunuchs and fighters as they pick up and carry the bodies.  These fallen women are heroes to those who remain behind.  This too is new.  Whatever else the Teaching may have accomplished in the few years it has been verbalized in the fighter compounds, it has made the fighters and some male staff aware that perhaps there is such a thing as life beyond death. This Antierra asserted constantly.  That idea was basic to the Teaching. This we Cydroids cannot know as none of us have “died” the real death. Those of us who were killed, such as XBA9 at the hands of the Warmo’s inquisition, were re-grown and are alive, all the more aware for our experiences.  Perhaps what Antierra taught is a similar process.

As to the women fighters, they are proud this day.  Among them, and perhaps among the compound male staff as well, the exploits of Antierra and her magnetic way of expounding any kind of Teaching, be it in tactical, weapons handling, relationships or ethics and her more questionable ‘spacer’ stories will live long and inspire generations to come.  I say this because I have known her.  I say this because through her I, Cydroid XBA3, became more human.  I just have this wish, that I had been able to join her in those rushes in the arena, to stand by her and use my considerable strength to protect her.  Something I know would have expanded my developing consciousness.  I wish I had been able to practice that special “touch” with her I saw the women do constantly for one-another.

As I think about it, I believe I was actually in love with Antierra.  Perhaps not as humans speak of love between man and woman, but there was something about her mind I found irresistible.  I “wish” I could believe her stories about reincarnation and crossing at will through dimensional barriers from world to world so I could hope to see her again as my sisters believe they will. 

For anyone who may some day read this data, think of it this way: Antierra was a human being who was able to make even an AI see life through a new dimension.  She made me, not less Cydroid, but more human.  I felt compassion when I watched her in the arena on that day.  I felt something hurt me deeply when she slid her sword through the two girls’ hearts to kill them instantly and painlessly.  What I felt was her pain, the pain she used to activate her decisive power.  Now her sorrow and her inevitable joy are forever a part of my brain patterning or shall I dare say, my human understanding. 

Signed: Cydroid XBA3, Doctor Balomo Echinoza Cydroid Family.  Location:

Arena Fighter Compound, Hyrete, Capital of the Kingdom of Elbre, T’Sing Tarleyn, Autumn, Year 1341.

_______________________________________________

After watching and listening to this ancient holorec report I sit for a long time alone in a darkened room.  I sip on a glass of sherry and find my favourite drink insipid as I consider the implications therein. 

 It is useless to try to dismiss it as exaggeration: Cydroids, like our Androids, could not lie.  Even one touched either temporarily or permanently by ‘real’ feelings would still be incapable of this kind of fabrication.  Only if someone’s life was at stake and a story need be made up to create a chain of confusing events or a diversion  would a Cydroid “lie” – but it would not be a lie to them, just an alternate temporary reality to complete and terminate a program loop.

 Let XBA3’s words stand forever as history; as our history. There will be no changes, no apologies, from me.  What I just wrote from the memcard records is an actual event and I am concluding my report as is. I raise my tepid glass of sherry to the crumbling stone walls of this ancient keep and toast Antierra: “To the Fighters of Hyrete!”  And from the walls comes an echo of many voices in reply, the once silent voices of the women who trained, loved, fought and died alongside of their Teacher:  “To the Goddess!”

Signed: Michele Dellman

(Personal comment – not to be included in the official report.

My work of chronicler accomplished here, there remains the daunting task of trying to understand what all this means to me personally, as a woman with the remnant of a small voice, in a greater galactic and universal world once more strangling in ever-expanding webs of male-dominated religious oligarchies, plutocracies and centralized brutal military dictatorships, all and still, in the name of God, Trade and Security where women’s voices remain taboo or all too symbolic beyond the confines of home, workplace or entertainment palaces; when men by and large continue to oppress and kill our spirit, our mind, if not always our bodies.

 And I ask myself this resurgent and damning question: what, ultimately, is a woman’s purpose in the scheme of human affairs?  I realize I just shrugged as Antierra was wont to when a question asked was not giving her the logical answer she could accept and truthfully verbalize.  

Maybe the worst part of this question is that I know what she would say: “As below, so above.  You are a woman.  You exist.  You are real.  So you continue.  The goddess lives in you.”

(“M. D.”)

Antierra Manifesto – Blog Post #107

I watch her working her mind to find names for the other women.  She frowns deeply and certainly works hard to find fitting names.  She knows these women, a couple of whom are just small girls barely thirteen I’d wager, someone having faked their brands to expedite their sale and make a quick buck.  They likely went over the edge from sexual and other physical abuse, torture, overdosing on chakr or from having witnessed horrors their young minds could no longer absorb.  It could be all of the above.  The most dangerous part of any young fighter’s life is the trip from the crèche to the fighter arena.  I try not to imagine watching these children being set upon by males to be dismembered while still alive and their parts thrown over the walls into the crazed crowd, but the image remains nevertheless.  This is one more horror I must remember, in case the temptation to forget becomes too seductive.

End blog post #106
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Start blog post #107

I know Tomia will give them appropriate names or titles and know the ploy will work.  Always it has.  For we are also the names we bear and the more names we use the broader become the personalities we may properly express, for each name is associated with a partial through our remembrances.  Each partial, associated with one or several past lives, carries a vital part of who we are.  These partials will be with us in the arena tomorrow and how much we will need their presence and strength then!  Goddess help these ahyas tomorrow when I no longer can!

When the servant women return to clean up after us and feed us I seek out the messenger.  She comes over but before she speaks I ask her if she desires a secret name if she hasn’t got one yet.  She indicates she has no name, just her branding. 

“I name you Angelia.”  In their tongue it’s pronounced ‘aneya.’  “It means special messenger.  Do you have message for me from goronda?” 

“Goronda say, ‘Your friend is well on planet Koron.  Now she is teaching a new course in ethics at the high academy for philosophers.  Also she is being studied, at her insistence, by medical authorities for possible cloning.  We are excited at the possibilities and everyone who knows her loves her.  The President of the Koron World Court has given her a special citizenship.  She is citizen of the entire world of Koron, not just one of its fifty-two countries.  She can freely travel to any part of the world she wishes and no one can question her as to motives.  She also expressed her undying love for the fighter Antierra to be conveyed to her whenever possible.’ 

“That is what goronda say.”

“Thank you Angelia.  You are a perfect messenger.”

“Thank you for name.  May I share with goronda?”

“Yes you may.  She will understand and help you with it.”

“I know you die tomorrow.”  There are large rolling tears on her white pinched face.  “I not know to say proper, wish you not die.  Wish you stay to teach more.”

“Listen Angelia.  No one really die.  Just body die, give much hurt but after, one alive again, free.  Maybe I return and teach you when you training for fighter.  I look different but it be me.  I make sure you know.  Take my hand, hold tight.  Touch me and take from me what is left.  You be the last fighter to take Antierra power.  Use it well, Angelia.  Be not sad.  Is good for me go away tomorrow into timeless.  I come back: this believe.  Now is good for you learn name, practice self-empowerment.”

“What means self-empowerment?”

“Ask goronda to explain.  She know you better.  She mind touch, explain with power.  She very good ahya.  Trust goronda, Angelia.  Go now, or guards punish you.”

She slips through the returning trainees and disappears. 

It is always especially quiet in the cages any night before an orgy.  Tonight seems even more so.  I can just make out the silhouette of Tomia sitting quietly.  I try to focus on her thoughts but I encounter the white noise again.  She has shut down, just waiting.  I swing my gaze around, see the two little trainees lying down.  One is crying, whether in knowledge of tomorrow’s horrors or from some other nightmare, I’ll never know.  I wish I could reach over and hold her.  We can’t even comfort one-another.  These people’s cruelty seems boundless.  Yet how many times have I encountered the same, in quality if not in quantity, on Túat Har?  The people there had the same lack of awareness of the pain they inflicted on others, including millions of non-human sentients who shared planet space with them; the same lack of empathy towards those of their world who died every day so some could become rich and be comfortable.  This is nothing new, just more of same in a concentrated bitter brew.  Indeed, that is the lesson of the stack worlds, isn’t it. 

As below, so above my teachers insisted on telling me.  Here you no longer doubt the wisdom of that saying.

I must sleep now.  Tomorrow I will be empowered, one last time, to use every technique, every trick with weapons I’ve ever learned and used or can remember.  I will be free to grab an opponents weapons if I so choose and use it against him, or them.  There are no rules tomorrow.  I plan to use Tomia as a bulwark against the attacking males to protect the two young trainees for as long as we can, if the girls will let us.  At least that will give us a common purpose, apart from just tearing men apart and being torn apart by them in turn.

Tomorrow is our future.   

 

 

 

End blog post #107

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #106

“Never again we be goras.  Now we be ahya!  Always! Forever! Together we be ahya!  Say it low together.  This is my last mantra, my last Teaching.  Remember you all be ahya!   Let men say ‘gora’ but you must translate that as ahya in your mind each time to break the evil spell.  Practice self-empowerment, always.  That is our greatest weapon, ahyas.”  

End blog post #105
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Start blog post #106

Throughout the cages hundreds of voices in turn repeat that last Teaching.  Then there is silence.  They sense I wish to be left alone now to think and sleep.  It’s not so different than facing a fight to the death in the arena.  The part about not being able to win doesn’t quite become real after so many fights ‘won’ during those long, long years that seem at least four times their physical number: a mere thirteen years. 

Yes, only thirteen years to go from a beautiful twenty five year old female to one who feels seventy-five and looks it.  My hair is short and almost completely white at thirty-eight.  My body is covered in scars and lumps.  One leg is bent outward from a badly set fracture when I was not able to get proper medical attention after a particularly vicious fight.  I’m missing my middle finger on the right hand.  A deep cut across my left breast left a thick ugly brown welt there.  The top half of my left ear was lopped off long ago and half my teeth are missing from blows to the face, not all from the arena.  It’s no wonder they learned long ago to feed us with gruel, broths and stews.  Many of us could never chew solid foods and would starve to death.

The clanking of the cage gates awaken us in the morning.  A shaft of sunlight bathes our space for a few moments and it is glorious to see the dust motes floating in its gold and silver rays.  I can sense how much nature would like to speak to all of us and teach us simpler, better ways.  I have sensed the same things on Altaria… and back on Túat Har.  For a few moments I let myself bask in the comfort of those memories.  One more day, and however long I can last in the arena tomorrow and I’ll be going home should I choose to do that. 

I try once more to communicate simple words with some of the dikfols – we are twenty-three, including myself, shackled to the sliding rings – and this time meet with some success.  A few are not so far gone that they cannot speak but their minds are all darkened.  They spit at me, or in my direction and call me every low slang curse word they can dredge up.  I let it pass as a storm and say nothing in return.  They had expected me to react in the same way; my silence takes them by surprise.

“Why you hate me, goras?”  ( I have to use that term or they will get even angrier.)

One of the women snarls at me.  “You turn men against us, evil you be.  We know.  Men, they beat us and say because you hate them.  We know.  Now you die in orgy too krosspeeg.  Maybe I kill you myself.  Hate you.  Haaaate you!” She screams it at me.

“Stupid you be goras.” I reply in the fighter’s low throaty power voice.  “Stupid to listen lying men.  Is why you are here, because you stupid.  I help women, many years.  You be knowing this.  I get lovers together.  I send hurt goras to doctor to save life.  I take on bad drooks and fight myself for some I know cannot fight good.  I teach many good weapons trick, yes? 

“I say this to you goras.  Yes, you kill me tomorrow, instead of men who be killing all us.  Is smart?  I be best fighter ever.  Tomorrow, if we together, kill many, many evil men.  Maybe so many they no have killing orgy again.  Maybe young lovers not have to be killed that way no more.  Try understand!  Tomorrow  we all die.  We be friends to fight men? Or we be stupid and kill one-other to believe lying men?  You try kill me tomorrow, I promise I kill you first.  I better than you, any weapon I use.  Weapons my magic.  I be daughter of Great Desert Beast.  Ask others tonight.  They be knowing.  But maybe I just let men, let you, kill me because I tired living with stupid goras.  Maybe I just die, go home, never return to help more.  Maybe I just spit on T’Sing Tarleyn and let women and children continue die.  My world, it good place.  Everyone happy there.” 

And I turn my head away from them and say again the one word they understand better than anything else: “Stupid!”

There is silence for a time then one of them says hesitantly, “I think.  I too be good fighter.  I think I fight with you, be partner?”

I reply slowly, “Yes.  Is good thinking.  I like.”

“How you know when dead you go home?  When dead, I dead.  Not have home.”

“Listen to me.  First I give you name, Tomia.  You like?”

“Yes, very good, I like much.  I be Tomia.  It mean?”

“It mean quick understanding.  It mean now you have person.  Now you have name, no stay dead.  They kill, you move from dead body, you fly to home.  Not hard.  You find quick.  Friends there, they help.  All fine.  Is how it is.  This big ahya secret, men not know this.  Men not find Tomia home.  Safe there.”

“Other dikfols here, how they go home?  No name, cannot speak.  Brain broken.”

“They be your family now, Tomia.  You think name, give name to each one.  That name, it go inside broken brain and follow spirit after body dead.  Very powerful is secret name.  When awake from dead body, they find name.  They too be free.  You, Tomia, set ahya friends free.”

I watch her working her mind to find names for the other women.  She frowns deeply and certainly works hard to find fitting names.  She knows these women, a couple of whom are just small girls barely thirteen I’d wager, someone having faked their brands to expedite their sale and make a quick buck.  They likely went over the edge from sexual and other physical abuse, torture, overdosing on chakr or from having witnessed horrors their young minds could no longer absorb.  It could be all of the above.  The most dangerous part of any young fighter’s life is the trip from the crèche to the fighter arena.  I try not to imagine watching these children being set upon by males to be dismembered while still alive and their parts thrown over the walls into the crazed crowd, but the image remains nevertheless.  This is one more horror I must remember, in case the temptation to forget becomes too seductive.

End blog post #106