5 - The Bear’s Gift: Opna’s Dance by flavia49
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Description
Finally dawn rose, a time when darkness still struggles with light and the doors between the spirits' and men's worlds are open and closed.
At dawn, with tremulous hands, Opna unfolded the sacred bundle. He felt a pang seeing that the outer wrapping was new, but inside the fabrics were in pieces.
"Old Srwos was blind like a mole, or he would have new fabrics made," Opna thought, and reluctantly told Chaisos, his daughter, the best weavers in the village despite her young age: "The bundle falls to bits. The Emmer spirit could get angry, tomorrow you will have to weave new fabrics."
He sighed: the more Chaisos worked at the loom for the sacred bundle, the less she wove cloths, Opna's family source of power and wealth.
While Peqo was chanting the sacred songs to be certain that no word was forgotten, no consonant missed, Opna went on checking the contents of the bundle.
"Oh powerful Gods, I beg you, make no item be lost by that old fool Srwos. Please Mother of the Emmer God be kind with me."
As one of the village leaders, Opna had often witnessed Srwos during his official duties and knew perfectly the contents of the sacred bundle: a crescent-shaped sickle made from a goat jawbone with shiny gray flint micro-blades, nineteen perfect emmer ears, taken from the last sheaf of the previous harvest, a bear's tooth, the Great Mother's pottery statuette with broad breast and buttocks, a spondylus shell filled with red ocher dye, a green stone polished ax and ....
"Where are they?"
Opna panicked, the three rock crystal arrow tips were missing. With extreme care he moved the folds of the inner fabrics: nothing. He checked within the outer cloth: nothing. With his heart in his mouth, he went back all the way from where his so-called friends had ambushed him to his hut and oh, here they are! The first rays of the sun made them glitter like shining stars.
Opna wondered if Srwos's ghost was mocking him: the arrowheads were there, but he could not pick them up and put them inside the sacred bundle as if nothing had happened. No, to please the Gods he, Opna, The Goat Spirit of Emmer, had to invite the leaders of the two villages to the East and West and give them away an exorbitant number of cloths as gift for their witnessing that the burden was again complete. Fabrics from his own stock, of course.
Two weeks later, therefore, Opna gave a great party with the neighboring villagers and danced and chanted about his deeds and restored the arrowheads to the bundle. Yet cunning as he was, he had tied and glued the hawk feathers to his goat-head headdress carefully, because for each fallen feather he would have to give away many other gifts in order to be allowed pick them up.
Comments (44)
flavia49
Thank you to all people who appreciated the previous picture! Thank you for viewing and drop a note if you like!
CREDITS: Snarlygribbly: EZSkin 3; Merlin: Saxon Settlement; mapps: hay; Daz Originals/Colm Jackson RuntimeDNA Syyd Traveler: Terradome2; DAZ: Dog; Lisa Botanical: Weeping Willow; DAZ Originals/Ravenhair/Jack Tomalin Cheyenne Bundle; ElorOnceDark: Woodgod M4; Thorne: Forest Prince Clothing; Traveler: Naturals; goat headdress by me.
rbowen
Excellent work!!!
MagikUnicorn
BEAUTY
Ken _Gilliland
Nicely done!
jeffy3ds
Beauty scene!!
eekdog
Wonderful job and welcome back.
CleonXXI
A fine addition to the story, well done!
adorety
Excellent scene and great bit of an informative back story.
ontar1
Awesome image and fantastic story!
Leije
Very realistic scene with all these characters, great work !
Faemike55
Troubles are in his life now. I wonder if he will ever find a semblance of peace in the future.
Great image and chapter
bakapo
good work on this. your characters are wonderful to view and read about..
mtdana
Impressive scene - he won't drop any feathers LOL!
Richardphotos
superb composition of so many characters and clothing/props
Freethinker56
Excellent work with the image and story..all way around! I specially like how he had tied and glued the hawk feathers to his goat-head headdress. Bravo!
mauk
Excellent!!!!!
Jean_C
Fantastic scene, great work!
DukeNukem2005
Very beautiful!
A_Sunbeam
Great set of characters!
JeffersonAF
Excellent.
jocko500
very wonderful done
VDH
Nice composition, cool scene !
Madbat
Excellent
Radar_rad-dude
Fantastic! Bravo!
buffalosoldier
stunning scene
romangirl
Great scene!
blondeblurr
I'm a bit of a fashionista and love those different coloured textures and patterns, your story-line Flavia fits in well with your Sister Sandra's photography and archaeological work and investigations...
rajib
Wonderful scene with so many characters and nice write up.
AidanaWillowRaven
Rendering that people is always a trick for me. Great job.
anitalee
Excellent