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We spied a collection of graves in a thicket to the side of the old road & we wondered what was up with that.
“Girls don’t just up and spring out of nowhere,” Girl says, with this little half-laugh and full-smile that leaves her face in a three-quarters happiness. We like to hope it’s waxing.
There’s a spray of the prettiest weeds and wildflowers all bunched tight round the middle with a knot of spun yarn and the clench of her fingers. “To have a Girl,” she tells us while facing away, “you gotta have a Woman and a Man too.” The makeshift bouquet falls to the dry earth when she brushes her fingertips along the two tallest Ts in turn. “Or like I called them, Mom and Dad.” A stroke on the smallest of the structures. “And a Girl would just be a Kid if there wasn’t any Boy.”
It is seriously impressive how entirely out of our element we are right now. The all-knowing god is giving us zero hints on how to respond, like they are just sitting this one out, which we guess must work out for them but helps us one hundred percent not at all. Dogfella moves from his spot by our ankles to softly whine and lick the now-squatting Girl on her cheek. We consider this action in an identical light.
“We are deeply sympathetic towards your tragic loss,” we say carefully. “It’s a total bummer and stuff,” just as carefully.
Girl laughs quietly from her spot on the cool ground, but remains knelt in front of the miniature marker, one arm wrapped around herself, for warmth or — something else. We pick up on the cosmologically-sized hint and step forward to lay a hand on her shoulder. She sniffs gently and reaches to envelop our hand in hers, leaning slightly into our leg.
If ours was the appropriate genre of interactive entertainment, we would have definitely levelled up right there in some sort of social eptitude stat. At least once. Maybe twice.
“Do you have any siblings, Scythian?”
The question puts us off guard faster than a surprise attack during the dark moon. It has been an awful long while since we’ve given real consideration to… Well. Home and all that comes with it. Still, the girl is looking up at us and the girl is looking up to us and so we answer, “Yes.”
And as the dark-haired girl of the Caucasus pets the dark-furred dog of the Caucasus we tell the two of our fearless sisters and brothers from the steppes of Scythia. We speak of the coming-of-age rituals of those who came before, and how we helped to look over and guide those who came after. We mention that not all of our sisters and brothers are even of blood to us, and here her eyes grow large.
“Does that mean, if not all your sisters are related to you, does that mean…” She beams brighter than the gold trigon reflecting the bright moon. “… Could we be sisters too, Scythian? Would you be my big sister? Oh, please?”
Our own eyes take this chance to open wide themselves, but quickly soften to her pleading gaze. We give a calm little smile, and take a knee to meet her height. The embrace is a mite awkward around our armour (and it isn’t until exactly now that we notice the girl’s hair and clothes and entire being reek of worthless sheep), but it is tender, and sincere.
“Girl,” we say, “it would be an honour and a privilege if you would be our super awesome little sister.”
We spied the solitary grave at the edge of the perilous precipice & we wondered what was up with that.
“I carved them all up myself, you know.” The woodsman leans against the craggy cliff cleavage with arms crossed, looking out in the direction of the rock face and thin wooden headstone. (Part of us asks if there can really be a ‘wooden headstone’, and we promptly tell that part to shut up.)
The muscled man puts some weight on his trusty walking stick, with a faint smile on his face that would probably be out of place on anyone else in the circumstances, but we’ve come to realise that is just his regular face. “Not just this one; the ones for Girl, too. Those came first, actually.” He scratches at his stubbly beard in recollection. “The lady and I, we tried looking after her for a while. Never had any littlies between us two, but us and her parentals, you know, we were pretty close. Gotta be, in a cosy village like this.”
He gives a short breath of a laugh and an easy shrug. “That girl ended up plenty independent on her own. Back then, Girl took care of the sheep, I took care of the wood, and the lady…” He toes at the dirt with his shoe. “Well, she took care of us.”
Dogfella lets out a quiet whine and licks the man’s calloused hands. Logfella smiles and scratches behind the dog’s ear. “Guess not too much has changed, from that perspective.”
We stand a pace behind him, listening to his story that’s probably longer than everything else he’s ever said to us ever. It’s less uncomfortable here than it was with Girl, likely thanks to the woodsman’s increase in years and easygoingness. Still that doesn’t mean we know what to say here any better, so we awkwardly clutch our elbow and glance skyward.
Oh, look. Rainbows. How appropriately dismal for a burial site.
Logfella follows our gaze and grins. “She asked to be buried here, when it got close to the end. Face up, head towards the ravine, so she could always lie and watch the sky-show colours.” He must make note of our wrinkled brow and nose, because he laughs and adds, “For people raised under the clear skies stretching all over everywhere, you guys sure take offense to those things, huh?”
We’re pretty darn stunned to hear someone from the Caucasus speaking knowledge of the Scythians, most especially this someone. “You’ve journeyed to the steppes, Logfella?”
There’s a twinkle in his eye like the rainbow’s reflecting off it. “Hey, I’ve been around the block a time or two,” he says with a tilt of his head. “It’s not much my sort of hang-out; not enough wood that needs chopping. They do put on some mean bloodsports, though.”
His gaze follows the path of the arc up into the whirling infinite above Mingi Taw. The kingdom of the cloud. “What about you?” he asks, and noting how we are totally lacking context, continues, “Back home. You have any special Scythian someones standing by on the steppes?”
We loop our thumbs around the straps of our satchel in mild embarrassment. “Nah.” We halfway consider pulling the same narrative trick with him that we did with Girl, summarising our few unproductive forays into the known unknowns of romance in a few nondialogue sentences. But we remember his low tolerance for yore, and so we just repeat, “Nah.”
‘Fated martyr’ was not the sort of frozen dairy product that would call many potential paramours to the domain of our domicile.
Inside a titanic hollow tree we spied a solitary grave & we got a little bit curious about it.
But only just a little bit.
This was the twilight realm of dreams, after all. And people usually tend to recognise the things that turn up in their dreams, amirite? In any case, ‘graves’ certainly don’t rank upon the top ten in a list of most esoteric symbols requiring pseudopsychosomnolent scholarship to decipher. The meaning is pretty clear.
Pity.
We bend down under the tree to try and make out the name on the splintered stakes, but some combination of poor lighting and bad handwriting and the stereotypical ephemerality of text in dreams makes it impossible. Double pity. It might have told us something we didn’t know.
To be a Girl requires a Woman, a Man, a Boy. Every Logfella needs a Loglady. (Even Dogfella might have a Dogdamsel tucked away somewhere, we suppose.)
But a Scythian depends on no one else to be a Scythian. All we need is a Scythia from which to hail. And a martyr only asks for people after the fact. Before a martyr becomes one, she merely necessitates a cause.
We stand tall inside the titanic hollow tree and turn to leave the small sign of our destiny. Yes. As a Scythian, we need no one else. And as a martyr, we want no one else.
It will be easiest that way, in the end. For sure.