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[thoughts from   ~burning woman~  ]

There is no getting away from it; the question, “What is truth? or What is the truth?” never goes away if one insists on keeping one’s mind open to “the elements of existentialism” for existence is truth but how many faces does it have? How many names? What aspects do I place upon my own existence, my place in what I used to think of as space and time and which now encompasses infinity and eternity?

The following is a quote from “Lord of Light” by Roger Zelazny. He talks about the importance of words and truth. Coincidentally I was also reading from Charles deLint today and first, here’s a short quote from a short story titled, “Birds.”

“When her head is full of birds, anything is possible. She can understand the slow language of trees, the song of running water, the whispering gossip of the wind. The conversation of the birds fills her until she doesn’t even think to remember what it was like before she could understand them. But sooner or later, the birds go away, one by one, find new nests, new places to fly. It’s not that they tire of her; it’s simply not in their nature to tarry for too long.

But she misses them. Misses their company, the flutter of wings inside her head and their trilling conversations. Misses the possibilities. The magic.

To call them back she has to approach them as a bride. Dressed in white, with something old and something new, something borrowed and something blue. And a word. A new word, from another’s dream. A word that has never been heard before.” (Moonlight and Vines – Birds, by Charles deLint)
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“Names are not important,” he said. “To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, ‘What is it like, this thing you have seen?’ So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, ‘It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.’ Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it ‘fire.’

“If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, ‘fire’ does not matter, ‘earth’ and ‘air’ and ‘water’ do not matter. ‘I’ do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality—the Nameless.

“Therefore, I charge you—forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream.” (from Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny)

We live in a fractured reality we cobble from dreams we were forced to dream using the terribly inadequate and confusing tools of words of many meanings from languages we dragged off with us from the Babel diaspora – well, that’s one way to put it. The writer is right though, we have become addicted to words and even the new words we now use are just twistings of the old ones. Lazy abbreviations that litter and pollute the cell phone and web world. Increasingly meaningless tripe oozing from lazy and dying brains. OMG! LOL! WTF, R U there?…

It was claimed once upon a time that a picture is worth a thousand words. If we look at the internet clogged with discordant images, at TV, at bill boards and book covers we know that to be a lie. Book covers hardly ever depict what’s between the pages. The rest is chaos in spades, overload of colors and shapes that become essentially mirages blending into each other until one word describes the entire imagery: meaninglessness, that describing much of modern existence.

The River has many Moods – image by Sha’Tara, September, 2020

 

 

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[thoughts from   ~burning woman~   ]

I know now that for a life to have any sort of meaning it has to be experienced from the point of view of having asked one big question. You may well ask, what do you mean by ‘a big question’ and I will reply, I mean such a question which, no matter how you try to find an answer for will remain unanswered. You can watch TV ‘til your cross-eyed, scour the internet, pray, ask whomever, do research, meditate, ponder. You can read philosophy, study all the greatest collected wisdom, watch Ted Talks or even play with algorithms and everything you put in that basket will fall out the bottom.  

That’s it, that’s what real life is: a question bigger than anything a single life can ever answer and no one else has ever asked and given answers to. You see, a big question does not lead you in circles. You’ve all heard the saying, that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So think: isn’t that what our civilization (so called) has trapped the population of an entire world into doing? It’s our endless search using repetitive small questions that is bringing us and our bullshit accomplishments (again so-called) to their ignoble and much deserved end.

You may not agree and that is certainly your prerogative. You may continue to think about your traditional answers to your endless small questions and they will gladly continue to drive you to power society’s squirrel cage with their trite, repetitively useless non-answers.

If you would put an end to your personal contribution to society’s merry-go-round; if you would figure out a way to exercise your mind outside the pointless running with the herd up the forever collapsing side of the squirrel cage, try to ask one really big question.

The answer is always in the question, of course, or there could be no question, but you have to know how to ask the question if you would extract an answer from it. It takes imagination, courage, daring, commitment, dedication and I daresay compassion to ask one big question knowing that eventually an answer will begin to form to hang over your head like the sword of Damocles.

Each big question’s answer will demand your life. No, not your physical life, that is of little consequence to any big question, but your mind’s life. It will demand that you be ready to change your mind completely and endlessly – without ever reverting to simplistic answers given by little questions. Without ever going back to the squirrel cage even if you discover that you are the only one who jumped out and are standing alone while the herd frantically continues to power the spinning wheel that makes all the great evils of this world endlessly possible, or as endless as there is a world to sustain such foolish and enormously wasteful expenditure of finite energy.

Whatever your big question was that propelled you out from the thundering stampede, it now begins to formulate an answer.

You didn’t start out to go on some quest to the top of a mountain, to the jungle or in the deep desert – no, no such romantic idiocy that also brings you full circle. You just asked one big question, your big question. And only you, standing alone “far from the madding crowd” can ever formulate and hear the bits and pieces of your big answer. Only then will you also realize that it is on the formulation of that answer that you will cross the threshold into death and beyond where you will continue from one existential riddle to the next.  

Inland pond – along the Fraser River, August 15, 2020

 

There are Moments

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

There are moments in my (aging) life when I become severely aware of how brief one physical human life is. I don’t live in that awareness of course but when I enter into it I can so keenly sense the past(s) and the future that beckons with its magical offerings of (mostly) unknowable possibilities and impossible to make choices. There is a dangerous longing in this greater awareness and confusion as well.

It confuses me because it does not fit the “normal” time of this world and it is this time that anchors me here, as contradictory as it seems. This particular life is the picket my ever-expanding life-leash is attached to. Until death do us part, that is. But what is death? It’s a birth canal, I suppose, a transfer from one world reality into another totally new and unexpectable or unpredictable.

That ever expanding leash is the sum total of my remembrances and memories. The longer it extends, the shorter any incarnated life will seem, of course and I’ve managed to extend that leash substantially in this life. I’m kind of proud of that actually. I’ve been hoarding some precious things this time around, things I now know I get to “take with me” because I’ve securely made them a part of me; of what I am. I have mentally evolved myself in an irrevocable fashion – a fashion not very popular on earth, I have to add. I have gathered for myself those treasures that no thief can steal, no moth can eat, no rust can destroy. Why? Because they are non-material treasures. 

In this very short life that is about to end I’ve managed to trade in a lot of petty earlier acquisitions for some serious ones. For example, I’ve traded in most of my emotional baggage, a lot of it from past lives and much of it held on to for purely egotistical reasons. I thought if something was “fun” or “exciting” once, with my experiences I could improve on that, make the same moves more fun or exciting. I learned that was silly because there was no substance in that suitcase full of emotional baggage. I got a little bag to keep some of it and ditched the suitcase. Done and done. Instead I’ve learned about self empowerment; about detachment; about joy and sorrow. I’ve taught myself the true meaning of ‘love’ which is spelled ‘compassion’ and I’ve activated my own sense of empathy. I’ve learned to manipulate energy so as to be able to give without expecting to receive in return because I can extract my spiritual and mental energetic needs from myself.

Sometimes I can actually see the “gateway” I will soon be standing in front of and I get shudders. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve stood in front of such a gateway there is no memory of how it was before. Because we mutate with each incarnation we are never the same when we approach the gateway, and it is never the same gateway. Each one leads to a different reality based on the message it receives from your mind, hence the shudder: it’s totally unpredictable and a little bit scary.

OK, it’s unavoidable so… go! Jump! And that’s what we do isn’t it. Believer or not, prepared or not, we all make the jump and we all end up somewhere. This last time that somewhere was here, as it was for all of you! I don’t know if I’d ever met any of you (all of you who crossed my own path in this life) but now we have. For lesser or greater memories! I don’t know if any of us will ever meet again – possibly if we have unfinished business. None of that matters at this point, does it.

I remember saying to some, “I’ll see you again on the other side.” and only recently did I come to realize how childish that is. Considering an infinity beyond size or boundaries of space or time, it’s silly to say, “I’ll see you again.” Such a limiting statement, such attachments deny one the freedom offered by a cosmic infinity. This reminds me of a poem a friend wrote some time back which said, let me live a full and vibrant life that leaves no path, not even a footprint to entice anyone else to try to follow into. That is total detachment. That is self empowerment.

This is April 2020. I see and read about a lot of frightened, confused, even angry people. Needy people who want to be safe, protected, felt sorry for, dependent, needy for collective support and agreement and very confused. You know what I’m referring to and this may be a good place to mention that if there really is a truly deadly killer virus about, I can think of one good reason for it, never mind all the theories and beliefs.

Mankind has allowed itself the unthinkable luxury of growing its population and a gargantuan technological society that is literally eating everything this world had to offer in terms of comfortable survival for all. Eight billion individuals(and growing) wanting and needing and taking, contributing absolutely nothing to their natural environment(!) when it is calculated that one billion is a maximum number in a fair exchange situation.

Isn’t it conceivable that if there is such a thing as a smart nature, or a Gaian super-organism, call it what you will, sooner than later the axe is going to fall and mankind will be called to account for engaging the greatest crime of all: ecocide.

It may seem contradictory but it’s in times when I feel the strongest attraction to my gateway that Earth’s condition appears the most poignant. I look back at what I’m about to leave and I have to ask myself: what has man accomplished that stands superior to anything natural life has to offer?

Not a thing. Not one single thing. Quite the opposite, in fact.   

 

 

 

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #96

You may wonder why they did not just back out of the event?  They can’t.  Once the bets begin to go in and are registered, no challenger can change his mind.  Since a fight depends entirely on the bets made on it, challengers are forced to declare their intentions long before the actual match is scheduled and set.  Bit of a catch-22 for the drooks.  But that does not help us much.  They know our weaknesses.  Mine is age.  That’s what they bet on, that I won’t be able to endure a sustained bout.  I shouldn’t be except for two things: my desire to see things to their end, and the amazing Cedric.

End blog post #95
—————————-
Start blog post #96

Chapter 38 – One Woman Fights two Drooks – more Teaching

It’s still dark when I’m taken from my cage and given the ritual treatment with the cold water.  Only at this time of year it is actually pleasant.  The water has not had time to cool much and it feels good to stand in the trough and spray it on myself.  My trainers join in and splash me, a rare bit of tomfoolery between men and women.  But in the faint light and this early no one is watching.  My fighter breakfast is brought by, surprise, Tieka.  She smiles at me just as Deirdre and Tiki used to.  She has the same moves and slowly drags her head on my shoulder, letting her fingers move along my back while hiding her hand from the trainers.  I don’t think they’d mind but this girl knows the score and takes no chances.  She doesn’t want any confrontation.  Wise one.  Except for the falling in love.  But even I fell into that once. 

The food is good.  I made sure the kitchen knew I cannot abide chakr.  How I miss Deirdre’s stim these days!  Even if they still had some at Doc Balomo’s place, I cannot access it and it appears the Cydroids have other matters to attend to.  I’d hoped the kitchen Cydroid would remember the stim but none, so far.  Tieka returns with more of the same concoction and while pouring some in my bowl, she grunts, pressing her left hand against my throat.  I reach up and she drops a cube in it.  Stim!  I squeeze her hand in thanks, let her go and finish the food.  Was that a break?  Did I make that happen like so many other seemingly insignificant things over the years?  Matters not, I’ve got the stim.  I ease it safely inside the little nest of shaggy hair I keep over my left ear and signal to the trainers I am ready to go.

Do I give you a play-by-play description of another arena battle?  Why not.  Just skip this part if it bores you. 

Realize though, before you skip, that for those of us who actually do the fighting there is nothing ‘boring’ in the act.  Each time we must kill or be killed.  Each time.  Only twice do I remember mercy being asked for by a challenger and granted by the crowd, through me.  Twice in how many bouts for me alone?  Averaging two per week with our year of 48 weeks over a period of eleven years now, that would be two who lived with over one thousand killed.  Did I not say this is a world at war with itself?  How many other arenas, combat rings and unofficial fighter compounds operate all over this world?  No one could even guess.  No one even knows what the population of this world is except perhaps on Albaral.  Keep in mind that for every male killed, you can easily triple the number for females and children.

So you see, it’s not an academic exercise.  These are real people, real blood, real deaths.  But that brings something to mind I should make you aware of since you will be reading this long into my past, some of you likely still living on Túat Har or ‘Old Earth’ circa C-21. 

At this time your death toll from victims of your own ‘Powers’ number around 30,000 each day of your year of 365 days according to your UNESCO statistics.  It’s probably much higher than that but that alone adds up to ten million nine hundred fifty thousand innocent victims you allow to die each year of preventable causes and most of you are completely unaware of this horror, or care little.  At this time your Earth has a population of close to 8 billion and you boast a marvellous computerized technology and an expanding “economy”  throughout most of your nations.  So you Earthians deliberately murder eleven million innocents each year as an offering to your technocracy and financial interests. 

Will you still judge the ways of this world I’m on?  That may be an unwise choice for by focusing on T’Sing Tarleyn’s obvious immorality you may be blinded to your own.  I would tread gently here.  And please don’t get angry at me for speaking bluntly.  I am first of all a messenger but I’ve been a victim enough times to know what that means; to know how to identify with it; to incarnate it yet find ways to defeat it also.  I offer you that way from here.  My hand may be callused, gnarled and bloody but my grip is firm, my voice is true.  As your song says,

Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you…[1]

I have been on your Earth many times and I have deep roots there.  Never mind that I already ‘know’ your future.  You can change any of it you choose just as I am changing the face of Malefactus.  In fact Earth and Malefactus are linked in this death struggle.  If you do not change, I will not succeed.  If I do not succeed neither will you.  Refuse to believe and nothing at all changes.  That is the Mystery we are bound to as ISSA beings throughout these stack worlds.

So I would teach you and reach for you from hundreds of years in your future and from another dimension.  To you I am both the voice of the damned and the voice of angels.  The voice of despair and of hope.  You have the choice of either, not both.  Now while I hope you forgive me for this tutorial and ‘historical’ outburst, I relate another fight, the non-philosophical side of my current incarnation.

Though it is early the stands are full and the crowd is yet silent.  Most are munching on various concoctions that pass for food, for breakfast.  Blood and gore does not affect these people’s appetite in the least.  This is a sport, nothing more.  Although most of them hope to see the female killed and cut into pieces as some challengers will do for their fans, it is the money that talks the loudest.  These people have money, they are not riff-raff from the lower streets.  They are here for two reasons: make money and be entertained.  So this is it.  Apart from medieval type magic shows and circus acts (minus animals) there is no entertainment media as such on Malefactus.  There is no written language except for the functionaries and upper aristocracy and probably most members of the Inner Court and higher Councils.  That is of course debatable – they probably use human ‘processors’ to record their votes and speeches, or computers such as the datacoms linked to main terminals.  Best guess.

I stand at the fighter entrance to await a signal to walk in, take my weapons, strap on the dagger belt and walk to the centre.  Rapier and dagger fights are done naked as already indicated, so no need to worry about armour and just as well as even this early it promises to be another scorcher day.  The sky is stark blue again, not a sign of sand or haze in it.  I consider myself lucky to have become a tough bone rack in my ‘old’ age.  Less to melt in the sun.  I’m like those burros of Old Earth – tough and practically indefatigable.  A donkey, that’s me when I’m not being a mule.  Oh well, this world needs an animal presence.  I will humour its needs…

Finally the challengers enter from the opposite end.  They salute the crowd and pandemonium begins.  They perform an artistic strip show for the male crowd, waving their erections to the stands, measuring their respective lengths with their fingers and fondling their genitals.  This may shock your Earthian sensibilities but here it’s considered a sign of strength and virility.  A man gets it up and keeps it up as long as he can during a fight.  He must demonstrate he’s got balls.  After all, look at the bravery extolled here:  two trained males against one female, no wonder they are admired.  Such heroism.

That little performance is a bonus for the smart fighter.  That little head makes a tempting target which is often the challenger’s demise.  It’s always one of the places I aim for.  Certainly it will be today because I need to disable one of those drooks before I get bled too seriously.  I may be tough but I bleed too and I don’t have a lot of extra to water the sands of Malefactus at this point.  Oh, and in exchange they’ll be aiming for my breasts.  Many fighters lose nipples and breasts in their fights, not to mention ears, nose, fingers.  Anything a blade can most easily shear off is a target.  Good management or luck, I consider it a miracle I still have both ears, my nose, by breasts and nipples and nine fingers.  A middle finger was sheared off years ago in a staff fight.

The first trumpet sounds.  We take our weapons, strap our belts and make the first salute.  Another trumpet and we centre with the last salute to the crowd.  I silence their usual demonstration of hate for the female fighter and instead absorb their exhortations to their male heroes.  Long ago I learned that little trick, just that little extra I can put into my blades.  Like getting that last few seconds of charge into a battery. 

We wait.  I bow while they eye me openly, trying to gauge my body, my most likely opening moves.  I’m after all the undefeated Desert Beast with an impressive record of kills.  They know not to take anything for granted.  Plus in their stupidity they forfeited their right to see me handle the rapier.  Second advantage goes to me; they already have first: two against one.  A set of drums roll and echoes across the keep and a score of trumpets blare the start of the game.

End blog post #96

[1]  Excerpt from ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel

 

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #95

NOTE: I have been truly derelict in posting segments of the Manifesto this month. So much happening and so much to talk about, and one has to wonder, in retrospect, what all that talk accomplishes. But be that as it may be, I intend to be much more disciplined in posting the rest of this story. I’ll give it 3-4 days in between each post, no more. So here goes with blog post 95. I hope you can re-connect with what was going on. Thanks!]

“Now hold your weapons high and salute life.  Salute victory.  Salute the goddess who slowly awakens to you as you awaken to her.  Our days are coming, as surely as the seasons change.  Hail to the weapons!”

Each time we go through this ritual the women barely restrain themselves from cheering.  These are the moments that inexorably change the face of Malefactus. 

End blog post #94
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Begin blog post #95

I am beginning to sense what the Teaching is accomplishing.  Without making any significant change to the external conditions of things here, since we do not have the power to do so, and if we attempted it the suffering would bring unimaginable terror upon us all, it is causing changes within.  It is making these helpless individuals aware there are some forms of power no amount of repression can take away.  Repression has its limits whereas personal power does not know the meaning of limit!  

What are Avatari Teachings but methods to make an individual mind aware of this power within itself?  They are that which defines us, as individual ISSA beings, and collectively as humans.  What the Melkiars attempted to do; what they may well be involved in doing here, the force of mind-life is always stronger, always survives and eventually always overcomes. The Teaching does not have to be pure, complete, ‘right’ or perfect.  It is a can opener, a ram, a hammer, a simple ice pick, a fly in the ointment; “un sabot dans l’engrenage,” anything that breaks the carapace of an oppressive force and drains it of power so life can express itself again, however much it may have changed in nature during the times of oppression.   What these women are feeling; what they want to cheer to, is the latent force that oppression has so tightly bottled inside their minds with the power of fear.  And this I now demonstrate for them.

Again, using a low voice pitched for us alone, I call their attention before we begin our training for the day.  “Now listen to this again and learn it, it is a powerful magic force hidden in words.  The following words change life:

“I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me. When it has gone, I will look with the inner eye at its passage and nothing will remain.  Only I will be standing there.”[1]

“I will continue to repeat those words to you as often as you need to hear them to learn, know and understand their meaning.  The way men control you here is through fear.  The way they are controlled is also through fear.  Men do not own the power they use.  It is given to them only to hurt us.  They fear if they stop hurting women they will lose that power.  So we all need to kill the fear that feeds the power.  That is much harder to do than fight in the arena.  Fear is our greatest challenger and we must all defeat it, leave it dead in the sand until there is no longer any blood flowing into that sand, understand? 

All the Teaching does is create the individual weapon a woman uses to kill fear.  When the fear is gone, the woman will experience no more suffering, even in pain.  Remember this, fighters of the goddess:  the fear you fight, it is not your fear.  It is your challenger; your enemy.  Fear is that which hurts you before you are actually hurt.  It seeks to kill you by disempowering you.  You defeat it by facing it and letting it pass through you so you can see what lies behind it; what it is hiding.  Always fear hides the power that can defeat it.  Fear drags its own defeat, always.  Let the first wave of hurt pass so you may see you have not been hurt.  Then the physical aspect of pain is of little consequence.”

I repeat the mantra for them, explaining the word ‘obliteration’ which they fail to grasp at first.  They are quick to understand because all of us know fear everyday.

“If we banish fear from our lives, who can hurt us before they hurt us?  Our disempowerment does not come from the physical mistreatment we must endure and eventually succumb to, but from our fear of such treatment; from the fear of what they can do to those we love.  Do you think they give us lovers because the care about us?  No!  They give us lovers so they can frighten us, cause us to snitch on one-another and do many servile things so our lover isn’t hurt.  Is that not so?”  There is much agreement and awakening to this truth. 

I have decided not to use their pidgin in some cases when applying the Teaching.  Force them to listen to new words and insert them in their vocabulary.  Add to their sense of self-esteem.  I know they hate sex-slaves because many have better education.  Perhaps if they feel they can speak as well, there will be less hate, greater acceptance?

It’s back to our training and the difference is palpable.  A victory of sorts was scored here today.  A victory over collective darkness.  Now back to some personal details involving promises of help.

I work my way to the one I nickname Zel, Huntu’s lover.  She knows I want to talk to her and switches position, still working her long sword without missing a beat.  Finally we face each other and I signal a pretend point jab where she scores a hit and gets to stand over me as I kneel on the stones.  I say to her,

“I call you ‘Zel’ so keep secret name.  You, Tieka, have plan yet?”

“No sir, cannot make.  Not know how.  Need to run away but many troubles.  Gates, doors, alarms.  Guards with guns.  With carriages.  What we do?”

“Nothing I know now.  Plan.  Think.  Think, not how to escape.  Think what you do when in desert far away.  No food.  No water.  No shelter from sand storm or hiding from evil eye.  No man to give drink, food, care.  How you survive, huh?  Think that.  Maybe other problems not so big, eh?  Think power, Zel.  Think love for man.  That be miracle already.  That already be escape from hate.  Understand?  Already I speak to Hudu and Huntu.  They thinking too.  Find escape plan.”

“Yes sir.  Understand.  Thank you.”  

The day does get oppressively hot again but no breaks are called.  We fight fiercely in sweat and dust, drinking tepid water to stay on our feet.  Guards, handlers and trainers drink cool home-made brew in the shade under awnings and ogle us.  Today they are not keen on taking the young ones to rape in their huts.  I see the overseer cabin is open and empty.  No one has replaced Achnarr yet.  I’m sure the judge I spoke to yesterday will see to it that the next overseer is a stickler for rules.  That will make the men tense and angry.  They will be more inclined to find fault and to carry out ‘official’ punishments.  It will be more difficult to curry favours with any of them.  Hudu and Huntu sit together at a small trainer table and watch Zel go through her routines.  I assume Tieka is working in the kitchens. 

I feel it before I can turn to look.  A woman has fallen down from heat stroke.  Fortunately for us, Hudu jumps quickly to be the one to investigate.  As he approaches, two women have revived the other and she is sitting, then with surreptitious help manages to stand, leaning on a staff she was quietly handed.  Hudu goes through the motion of warning us about slacking off. 

“Know rules: anyone falls, stays down, flogged.  Good for nothing goras!  Cannot stand little heat?  How stand fight in arena?  Lazy!  Lazy!  Now continue training, now!”  He yells but wants us to know his heart is not in it.  It does save the girl’s life though.  She recovers enough to walk to the water trough with two others who throw water on her and help her drink.  Then she goes back to the training, her partner taking care not to force her to move fast.  It’s ridiculous to keep us in the heat and cause heat stroke.  This doesn’t make us tougher or better at fighting, just weaker.  We need food and shade.  I signal for attention and motion for a general subtle slow down of movement to save our strength.  In the heat waves it’s unlikely the men will notice our subterfuge.

And that is the thing about becoming a real leader.  From the ordinary you make it appear as if you create the extraordinary.  You make ‘stuff’ happen because you care.  You forget yourself in the drama and crises around you and incarnate it all.  Of necessity.  You don’t resent any of it.  You just do it.  Sometimes I feel I’ve been graduated to that rather unenviable position. 

True to his word, judge Algomo rescheduled the fight and as he warned, he was unable to rescind the plan to have me fight two trained challengers.  The two men choose late afternoon to come and let me see their choice of weapon.  They deliberate, then ask a handler if they could watch me work with each one.  It’s late, I’m tired and the heat is beyond oppressive now.  Would I get a reprieve from the handlers?

“Slave, you show challenger skill in weapons.  Start with staff.”  So much for that.  A male trainer is assigned to be my sparring partner.  If I play dumb this time, I’ll get thrashed.  So I must ‘demonstrate’ my abilities on the poor trainer.  He’s good but not in league with bionic implants.  I lay the staff on him twice and he quits.  I guess they won’t choose the staff now.  Another trainer is sent forth for the sword routine.  The sweat is pouring off him and no wonder.  There he sat, through the heat of the day, drinking cooled beverages and in the shade while I was in the sun and by now my bony frame is practically dry of sweat, just covered with dust streaks.  I fear he’ll drop from heat stroke himself before I can lay a hand on him.

He takes his stance and does his best, I’ll grant him that.  A few well-chosen thrusts and while he parries one I lay into him and drop him with a hilt blow to the shoulder.  I put my foot on his belly and lift my sword.  It’s comical to see the look on their faces when I do that.  He cannot know I won’t follow through.  What if I’m dikfol?  There’s real terror there.  My challengers are frowning.  Good.  Got them a bit confused as to their choice.  I lift my foot from the trainer’s belly and help him up, patting him on the back as he turns to leave, adding insult to injury but this one had it coming.  He mistreats the young ones. 

The sword still lies on the stones.  In a moment of stupid bravado, I pick it up, walk within two meters of the challengers and offer either of them the sword.

Any other slave had done that she would have been instantly dragged to the flogging post by handlers.  But I know their thinking, and their limits.  They’ve got money riding on me and the more I intimidate the challengers, the greater the chance they’ll lose.  Also, I’m running out of time and they know this.  The day of their retribution will come.  I cannot win, according to their view.  I can never win.

The challengers at first look nonplussed by my offer.  Then they gather their thoughts and sneer, turning to the handlers and motioning for them to set me straight.  The handlers don’t care, just snort and laugh.  We have to settle it then.  I pull the sword back, turn submissively and return to the rack where I file both weapons and take out two axes.  I wait where I am supposed to stand, one axe in hand, the other’s pointed handle set in a crack between the pavers.  Finally another trainer reluctantly takes his position.  He has put on the required armour and looks as miserable as anyone can.  I remain naked, not having enough strength left to handle both the axe and the weight and friction heat of the cheelth skin.  In the last four years they haven’t had a trainer who could come even close to matching my strokes and they all know it.  I’m not worried on that score.  I recognize the trainer as he moves close to me before he picks up the axe to ask in low tones,

“Please no hurt, I not hate you.  Only do what must, see?  Make you look good, I do, then let me go?”

“I no hurt you Tarnat.  You good man.  We fight fake, I win, go back to shade.  Now loud, you curse me.  Look angry.  Fight crazy Desert Beast.  Be brave.”

Always the necessity to make those men look good in their peers’ eyes.  He curses me loudly, spits, yells ‘krosspeeg’ and attacks.  I take several steps back deliberately for our little play, parry each stroke, then go on the attack in turn.  Several swings, neither intended to connect fly around cleverly.  Finally he lays the side of his axe against my side.  I flinch and go to one knee.  He charges and I throw him off balance with a hook in his armour skirt, spinning him and laying him flat down.  I throw my right foot on his chest, raise my axe… then lower it.  I move off him and offer to help him up.  He refuses, stands up, throws the axe apparently in disgust and walks away.  There’s one relieved trainer.

I have to rack the weapons again.  I take the last in the acceptable series.  Rapier and dagger combination.  I put on my belt with the dagger and again I wait.  But the challengers have seen enough.  They choose the one weapon they have not seen me handle.  Perhaps they want to keep an illusion that in a two on one competition four blades to my two is a greater advantage.  I’ll grant them that: it is.  A wise choice, not so good for me.  I wonder if the Cedric is available tomorrow and if I have a date? 

That’s no way to think, girl.  You can beat those anal-retentive drooks.  After all, it is the drooks who more often than not refuse to acknowledge our superior speed and skill with any type of weapon cleared for use in the arena.  They are the ones who are the most likely to sneer when our skills are mentioned.  However many we kill, they keep coming.  And why not?  Over all they do kill more women than we get of them simply because in fixed fights, as most of their fights are,  they get the young or the weaker ones.  Some of these drooks take months to investigate a group of fighters and pick the ones they will fight.  Of course the law as written does not allow challengers to choose their fighters, only the Fighter Council judges can do that.  But then laws are made to be broken and law enforcers are equally made to be bought.  All a part of the game.  Had Achnarr been in charge the game would have gone much more in their favour and that’s what they had counted on.

You may wonder why they did not just back out of the event?  They can’t.  Once the bets begin to go in and are registered, no challenger can change his mind.  Since a fight depends entirely on the bets made on it, challengers are forced to declare their intentions long before the actual match is scheduled and set.  Bit of a catch-22 for the drooks.  But that does not help us much.  They know our weaknesses.  Mine is age.  That’s what they bet on, that I won’t be able to endure a sustained bout.  I shouldn’t be except for two things: my desire to see things to their end, and the amazing Cedric.

End blog post #95