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)
soffy
Wonderfully done *****
claude19
realistic scene ! fantastic talent !!!
gaius
Exceptional ! I'm amazed at how complex and detailed your creations are...my PC would crash !
netsuke
Love the story line and image. Excellent posing of the dancer.
Roco43
Excellent
virginiese
very cool work Flavia ! Your scenes are always incredibly complex and full of details !
ia-du-lin
beautiful scene, excellent work
velleman
And everyone of the watchers has his or her own attitude and expression. Fundamental job, really epic picture! (Thanks about Padua, it was an occasional conference, but I would like to go there again :-)).
KarmaSong
Excellent composition for this epic and tribal scene !
junge1
Great Flavia!
Traumsuse
What a pretty image
Cyve
Marvelous creation/composition !!!
9002434
What an intesting scene! Bravo.
GrandmaT
Fantastic image and story!