---Feast---
---Emiko’s perspective---
The tallest Sapiens I’ve ever seen (man or woman) stands, raises a horn and prays:
“Hail to you, Day! Hail the Day's sons!
Hail Night and her kinswoman!
Look upon us, here, with loving eyes
And send us victory!
Hail to you, Gods! Hail to you, Goddesses!
Hail to the generous Earth!
Give to us eloquent words, wisdom
And healing hands, in all this life!”
before bringing the horn to her lips and drinking deeply of the mead, mirrored by almost everyone in the room (the only exceptions being the gardenworlders, for whom this drink would be quite poisonous, and the singular Muslim, all of whom have horns presumably full of something besides mead(!))
The mead is both surprisingly flat, given how fizzy it was when it was poured for me, and surprisingly dry! I definitely expected honeywine to taste sweeter… but, then, I suppose winewine doesn’t taste that much like grapes, does it(!)
Her prayer-cum-toast completed, the straw-blonde woman looks down, from her raised platform at the head of the room, to the other four long tables, filled with around 1,500 locals, a few dozen Bright Plumers who accepted Tuun’s invitation, and piled with food… mostly of the roasted and… meaty varieties!
“Now…” booms the mountainous blonde, looking around at all present “…it will not escape the notice of any of you (that Óðinn has not withheld wit from(!)) but we are visited by many guests from offworld, tonight… I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone in this room that, compared to us, gardenworlders are very fragile! Please do not be as physical with them as you are with eachother… they’re liable to get hurt! Additionally, if I hear that any of you, my brothers and sisters in Þórr, have made any of our guests feel, in any way, unwelcome… you’ll answer to me…!”
There’s an uncomfortable shift that goes around the room at the imposing woman’s words. I think I understand what she meant when she told us earlier that they hadn’t elected her as their priestess just because she was the strongest, oldest or the only one of them who lived in her own meadhall(!)
She allows the threat to sit a moment before a smile breaks over her face and she quips “…and if I think you really need to be taught a lesson, I’ll pass you off to my wife(!)” smirking and gesturing to the (much smaller and daintier) woman, sitting to her left, who smiles and rolls her eyes as the room erupts into a raucous laugh!
She lets the laughter mostly die down before she holds up her hand and silence falls, allowing her to continue.
She gestures to Tuun, sitting to her right “I’m sure you’ve all noticed that my Tunie is back with us!” that’s met with a cheer “Yes, yes… not for long, I’m afraid, but tonight she will be narrating the story of Þórr’s Wedding… she’s also brought her partner, Victor… give us a wave, Victor…” the copper haired man raises his hand and gives a small wave and the priestess turns back to her congregation, wryly saying “…try not to be too jealous of either of them, Ladies, Gents and Others(!)”
This is met by a hearty chuckle from everyone.
“After the performance of Þórr’s Wedding, Victor is going to give a recitation of the first part of Beowulf: Beowulf’s fight against Grendel!” there are some considering noises at that
“But first…” she says with a conclusive tone “…we must eat, we must drink and we must be merry!”
A cheer goes up and the Norsemen and Norsewomen begin helping themselves to the food, with the rest of us following their lead.
---Xon’s perspective---
Me, Emiko and Thran have been eating for a few minutes when a short and extremely stout and stocky man, who looks to be ¾ Neanderthal, ¼ Sapiens, approaches the table from my left. He has a thick beard which, I would guess, he thinks disguises the extent to which his muzzle protrudes (Homer Simpson style). His long hair is plaited into a braid that reaches most of the way to his arse (though it must go well past there, when unbraided!) Both his hair and beard are a rich, reddish brown, burgundy colour. His skin is slightly darker than Thran’s and his eyes slightly lighter.
He jabs a girthy, gloved finger at Thran and, in a voice so fried as to suggest that he has spent all day (and many prior days) screaming at the top of his lungs, says “I know you!”
I see Thran’s face fall, almost imperceptibly.
She begins “Yes, I’m Thran ‘Gim…’”
“Triple thickness…” the man cuts her off “…silver plated, dyed aquamarine accents and royal blue gauntlets! Open faced helm! Matching plasma bec de corbin! Am I RIGHT!?” he declares with the triumphant tone of someone who knows he’s not wrong.
“How do you know what my girlfriend’s armour looks like, Sir?” I ask, my tone perfectly level.
He wheels on me, a slightly manic grin on his face “Because I’m the one that forged it!!!” he says, gleefully, gesturing at the empty space, beside me and saying “I’ve got a story if you fine ladies have a space for me…?”
I look to Thran and Emiko, both of them looking curious.
I smile “I think we have a space. Tell us your story, Mr…?”
Grasping my hand with his thick, sinewy one and almost pulling me off the bench with the enthusiasm of the shake, he answers “Sindrason… Brokkr ‘Clang’ Sindrason!”
“Loper…” I reply “… Lt. Xon ‘Longstride’ Loper.”
“Emiko ‘Smiles’ Miyazaki.” smiles Emiko.
“Thran ‘Gimli’ Hunter.” mutters Thran, awkwardly fixing him with an unblinking stare.
Not seeming to even notice Thran’s social ineptness, the jocular man launches into his story, speaking as much with his gesticulative hands as with his mouth “So… thirty five years ago, in Reykjavík, the UTC lost in me what, I’m sure, would have been a thoroughly mediocre and unremarkable soldier when a recruitment officer heard that I was most of the way through an apprenticeship at my father’s durasteel foundry and marked me ‘exempt from service’, gaining instead an exceptional smith!… My skills were forged in the fires of the War, as there was suddenly a need for durasteel in quantities never dreamt before! A need for practical solutions to issues you only discover once you’ve taken your armour to battle! That War made me better at forging durasteel than just about anyone else, I reckon!”
He speaks with refreshing pride! I sort of wish everyone could have this man’s selfconfidence!
“…Jumping ahead to about two years ago… I get a call from a friend and colleague I met during the War. Lives on Nova Italia, these days. He says to me ‘Brokkr, I’ve had a commission come in that I think is beyond my skill level… are you interested?’… Now… I’m always up for a challenge so I say ‘Sure! Send me the measurements and the outline of the job and I’ll have a look!’. The details come through and I read them and am instantly pissed off! I say to him ‘Fabrizio!? I don’t DO show pieces! My armour is meant to be worn, is meant to protect people, not to sit around gathering dust in some rich arsehole’s hallway!’ he gives me a smile and tells me it’s not a showpiece. Obviously, I don’t believe him!… I’m a big, strong fellow but, looking at the calculated weight of durasteel he’s given me, I’m thinking ‘I would barely be able to stand up in that armour, let alone fight!’… It took him ages to convince me you were real! He sent me a scan of your body, I nanoforged a mannequin of you and that was what finally made you real, for me!… I would know the body I spent 3 months forging for, anywhere!!! I spotted you from all the way across the room! I must say, that armour is some of my finest work! Though… I’ve always been curious: why an open face helmet? With an enclosed helmet I would dare say you could survive a direct hit with an antitank gun in that suit!”
Thran mumbles something inaudible causing the man to laugh “You’ll have to speak up, I’m afraid! I know I’ve got ears like a troll but they don’t help me hear any better(!)… Come to think of it, it’s been a while since my last regen… might be going a bit deaf!”
Thran’s olive skin flushes red as she says “I got claustrophobic… The closed helm Fabrizio had me try made me feel like I was wearing a coffin… Had a panic attack… requested an open one… I know it’s silly.”
“No, girl!” says the avuncular man, as if offended on her behalf “Armour that gives you a panic attack is armour you’re not going to wear! If offered the choice between having someone wear 70% of one of my helmets or not wear 100% of one, I’d go with the former, every time! It would break my heart to have put so much of myself into forging a paperweight! You made the right choice!”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Unconvinced, Thran responds “I should probably have just got the closed one and force myself to get used to it, though…”
The forgemaster shrugs “…and I should probably not eat so much cheese, given how horrendously gassy it makes me!” picking up a hunk of cheese from the table and taking an enormous bite of it, pausing to relish the curd for a moment then winking “Nobody’s perfect!”
---Yasmin’s perspective---
“I. shit. you. NOT! A whole arse hand inside the scrapped armour the salvage crew brought me! Most of a forearm, too!” the hybrid New Norseman says, speaking to the Neanderthal Tatar, the Tshwane ǃXóõ and the Japanese woman, gesturing on his own (thick) right forearm to where the cut-off was “Most disgusting thing I’ve ever touched! Showed it to the them and they said that it wasn’t their department but, if it hadn’t been removed then it’s original owner was still alive, so it wasn’t considered ‘remains’! I told them ‘I don’t give a fuck what it’s ‘considered’! What do you want me to do with a WHOLE ARSE HUMAN HAND!?!?!?’ you want to know their solution?” he asks, not waiting for an answer “‘Why can’t you just throw it in the furnace? Won’t it just burn up?’(!)”
Here the Tshwane ǃXóõ interjects with a question, with dozens of distinct clicks dancing around the interior of her mouth, but hers being (that most precious of commodities) a language I don’t yet speak, I’m left to infer that she asks something like ‘Can’t you do that?’ for the combination of her tone and the answer the stocky Norse speaker gives.
“NO! Forging durasteel takes precise conditions! A single Human hand, added to the mix, would have the capacity to contaminate more than 14 tonnes of salvage! This is armour that has to let its wearer run headlong at a machinegun nest! It has to let our soldiers do what they do to win us the War! NO bodging!… ‘Good enough’ isn’t good enough! Forging durasteel isn’t exactly a technical feat, Hel, if we’d known what to do we probably would have been able to forge it since the invention of artificial gravity, in the 23rd Century… but it’s so finnicky, so particular that, if you don’t already know what you’re doing… well it would take more trial and error than is possible, for one lifetime, to work it out from first principles! The fact that Terrans were the first to produce it, despite not being anywhere near the level of technical advancement as the rest of the galaxy, is probably because we were the only ones who would…”
Losing interest in that conversation I turn my attention to the head table.
I nudge the Norsewoman next to me, attracting her attention.
“Excuse me, Miss…?”
By Allah! The thrill I get as her glittering, sapphire eyes widen and flick to my left temple, then right, to confirm that ‘No… I’m not wearing a translator and, yes, I did just speak to you in your natural language’! This is what I live for!
“…I was wondering if you could enlighten me?”
She hesitates a moment before stammering “Err… w…what do you want to know?”
I gesture to the table at the head of the room “You see those three, tall, blueskinned nonTerrans, sitting at your priestess’s table? I was wondering if you could tell me everything you know about them…?”
Looking uncertain, she answers “Tuun, Vol and Baasa? You mean about their species or about them as individuals?”
I smile “Both! As much as you know and are comfortable telling me…” and take a sip of my tart applejuice as she starts speaking.
“So… erm… th-their species is called the ‘Don’… there are about three hundred, or so, on Fennoscandia… They’re from a planet, about 25ly away, that isn’t part of the GU… It’s an eyeball world… They historically hated outsiders but one of the clans had an embassy here, from a few years after the War ended, when the first settlement started, to about 16… 17 years ago? Those threes' parents popped back home and the only thing that came back was a message in untranslated DonAvu saying that ‘any Don who has left DonOlu is considered a traitor to their species and will be dealt with as such, should they return.’, making the embassy into refugees.”
Externally, I make sympathetic noises but, internally, I’m greedily gobbling up the linguistic titbits of this rare language with delight it would be entirely inappropriate to express!
It’s sounds like their language is big into compounding… ‘Avu’ must mean ‘language’… but is probably in a genitive form, right?… So ‘language of the…’ ‘Olu’ must mean ‘planet of the…’ would ‘-u’ be a genitive case marker?
I’ll have to ask the one on the Bright Plume if she’s willing to help me learn her people’s tongue. If there are only a few hundred, off their cradleworld, I imagine there aren’t enough resources for me to be able to teach myself!
Turning my attention away from the juicy new potential addition to my collection, I ask “So how come they’re sitting with your priestess? Are they even Pagans?”
“We-well… Tunie is…” she gestures to the one I recognise “… Vol…” she gestures at the grim faced man with harsh, angular, black lines tattooed across his face and hands and wearing princely clothing “…He keeps to DonOuvu, at least officially… His wife, Ástríðr, next to him…” she gesture’s at the caramel blonde Human sat beside him, with a matching set of tattoos “…she’s one of Priestess Þorradóttir and Mrs Árnadóttir’s natural children, but she converted for him.”
“They wouldn’t have been able to marry without being the same faith?” I query.
She shakes her head “They would have… but it would have meant Vol relinquishing his position as leader of the splinter of his Clan, here… They’re very traditionalist… they rule by male primogeniture, which is why he inherited over Baasa (who’s the oldest), but they wouldn’t have accepted a leader who was married to someone not of the DonOuvu faith.” she says, tautologising the word ‘faith’ by my guess “Baasa I don’t know about… I’ve not heard her or anyone else talk about her religious views… I know she doesn’t wear a cross or Mjölnir around her neck but that doesn’t mean anything! Neither of those faiths requires a pendant to be worn…”
From context, I can infer that those tattoos have nothing to do with DonOuvu… or, at least, are not a requirement of it, since my conversation partner doesn’t mention their absence from her… I would guess they’re a mark of leadership?
I’m going to have a lot of fun gossiping to Jae about this, later. That Korean Sociologist has some very interesting perspectives! I wonder, for instance, why the exiles would cling to the trappings of a culture that made them pariahs and exiles!?
“And… why are they at the head table?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m irritated that she forgot the other question (which I’m not!)
“Oh… that’s easy! Katrín and Heidi raised them… Tuun was 6… Vol was… I want to say 10? And Baasa was, I think, 14 when their parents died, so they took them in.”
A mirthful grin spreads across my face as I ask “You mean Vol married his stepsister(?!)”
The nervous Norsewoman shifts, uncomfortably and answers “Yes… well, sort of… Technically, Tuun was the only one who was legally their daughter… they were just guardians of the other two…”
I grin wider.
More defensively she says “They’re not even the same species! Let alone related by blood! It’s not incest, in any way!”
Still grinning, I respond “Except emotionally…”
She gives an exasperated eyeroll and answers “Yes, well, when ‘emotional incest’ starts causing birth defects, let me know(!)”
I laugh at that and answer “Fair enough! You’re right, it’s not my business…” then I realise there's something I haven't asked “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Re-Revna…” she answers, back to her adorably shy stammer.
“I’m Yasmin… It’s a pleasure, Revna!” I smile.
We shake hands.
---Jae’s perspective---
I watch from a few seats away as my new friend and Dormmate converses, flirtatiously, with a strikingly blue eyed, ravenhaired woman, who’s noticeably more drunk than she is (not hard when her faith prohibits the consumption of alcohol and has no loopholes for fermentations of honey, whatever certain films might lead you to believe(!)).
Seeing the flush on the face of the paleskinned stranger reminds me to check in on my own little drunkard(!)
I turn to the skinny boy I’ve got my arm around and see the expression on his face, he's struggling slightly.
It’s understandable, he only started drinking very recently.
“How are you holding up, sweety?” I smile, kindly.
“I’m… OK…” says Tymie “…It’s… not as strong as your [soju] but… they’ve given me so much more of it!”
“Tymancha…” I say, using my Mother-voice “…if you’re not enjoying drinking it you should stop! Nobody’s going to be offended…”
He shakes his head “It’s fine, Mu… Jae…” he corrects himself, seeing how my eyes widen at the word he was about to say “…it’s fine. I can finish this horn and then I just won’t have any more…”
Living the lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer his entire life, until recently, has made this boy abhor waste! It’s cute… sort of… Though, it does make me think of a friend from uni, who once told me ‘parents may hate picky eaters but social workers love them!’ then explained that a picky eater was one who had never been starved for days on end… past the point where hunger feels physically painful to the point where it becomes a numb, allconsuming absence! In short, a picky child is one who’s been loved and well taken care of, their whole life!
I think about arguing the point further but decide to just let him be and give him a reassuring squeeze, saying “Alright then, young man! Your last one… I’ll hold you to that!”
He blushes and I smile.
Letting him get on with the business of nursing his drinking horn I look around at the room we’re in.
Everything here is Frankenstein culture; a term used for societies that have at one point or another entirely died out and had no active participants.
The Norse faith had no practitioners for centuries during the second millennium. The Norse language evolved into Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, only staying partly intelligible to its prior form in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
Of course, elements of the culture survived and got incorporated into the successor cultures (like Christmas, for instance) but the culture was functionally extinct from the 11th to the 19th Centuries.
Even after its revival, though, it stayed with only a few thousand people until a sudden explosion of popularity in the 22nd Century brought it to once again being more than a fringe phenomenon.
Today, the Norse faith has nearly 2 billion practitioners and the New Norse language has several times that many (difficult to say definitively, though, since it’s close enough to Icelandic and Faroese that they readily swap vocab and have only a little trouble register shifting to be able to converse.)
However, the fact that it spent hundreds of years extinct means that there is a lot that simply can’t be reconstructed.
Those people singing a song, with rhythmic guttural chants, are singing a combination of what early 3rd millennials thought ‘Viking music’ would have sounded like, and musical techniques borrowed from other cultures!
That man backing the song with throat singing, if I correctly recall my sociology seminars, is using a style originally borrowed from the Mongolic peoples of Central Asia.
Those people, over there, who’ve set up a ring on the floor and are boisterously trying to push one another out of it are, effectively, just sumō wrestling!
We have no way of knowing what Old Norse songs sounded like and only vague references from the sagas and eddas for what their contests of strength were like.
Regardless… everything around me feels genuine… Not like a hollow recreation of a culture that lived long ago but like a culture that is truly alive, now! Today!!!
I’m just looking at the head table when I notice that several of the seats, including Katrín’s and Heidi’s, have been empty for a while, when the room is plunged into darkness and total silence falls, broken only by a few people shushing those that need to be shushed.
There’s some shuffling I hear from the head of the room and to the left, when I face that way, which moves into the centre.
A spotlight shines on a standing Tuun.
“Long ago, in the halls of Valhǫll, Þórr, son of Óðinn and the mightiest of all the Gods, whose hammer, Mjölnir, both defended Ásgarðr and was thrown, each Spring, to break the sea ice that had formed in the Winter, lay sleeping beside his wife; the fair Lady Sif…”