flint, #5: the first companion.

[sunfright]

Title: The First Companion
Author: S. / sunfright
Color: Flint, #5: "The best things grow from the worst disasters, the best things grow when we begin again." + Draco
Styles & supplies: Palette knife, canvas, silhouette, life drawing, panorama, seed beads.
Story: Exultations of Ara Vana
Wordcount: ~770
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Fictional religious themes, a fictional religious text, a religious genesis myth like many others in various actual religions. Also, mention of ritualistic suicide.
Summary: Ha-Fal birthed Ha-Sal, which means ‘the positive aspect’, who birthed Ha-Nal, which means ‘the negative aspect’, who then birthed Ha-Val, which means ‘the sacred aspect’, and Ha-Val would become the founder of the first temple to the Mountain Mother among whose tall walls priestesses would live and work.

THE FIRST COMPANION

“The best things grow from the worst disasters, the best things grow when we begin again.” + Draco

Time was swept onwards by its own currents, and many cycles would pass.

Ha-Fal birthed Ha-Sal, which means ‘the positive aspect’, who birthed Ha-Nal, which means ‘the negative aspect’, who then birthed Ha-Val, which means ‘the sacred aspect’, and Ha-Val would become the founder of the first temple to the Mountain Mother among whose tall walls priestesses would live and work.

The first temple was built in huge marble slabs dragged to their place by oxen and covered in glaze by artisans, shining dark blue like the sky at dusk, with the Mountain Mother’s sacred goat carved into every windowsill and threshold to protect the Goddess’ relics and secrets from being stolen, and to protect the priestesses from harm and the threat of darkness.

Thus, Ha-Val became the first high priestess, standing above the minor priestesses, but bowing down to the Goddess at the knee.

The Major Altar was installed with a silver altarpiece to reflect the moon, where the Minor Altar was installed with a smaller, round altarpiece in gold, to reflect the sun and hold its light all day. Such did they balance the day and the night, like the fair lover to her dark counterpart.

And sacred chants were heard on the hour, and twice a day the priestesses sounded the drums in the Mountain Mother’s honour.

Since Ha-Fal had birthed and married her husband, Ha-Kal, the Goddess had been alone on her stone peak, and the chants and the drums from the temple reached her ear, but left her body cold, without touch, without caress. Without companionship, the Mountain Mother grew unhappy and displeased. She had carried her people in her heart, but now her heart was empty, its contents spread all over the world where Ha-Fal’s children lived their own lives.

Soon, the Mountain Mother lay down and covered herself in rock and stone and dust, the mountain becoming her, and she becoming the mountain, and the fields were drowned in shade, and the wind hushed to nothing, and as the first cycle ended, all had died out. The birds were quiet. The dogs didn’t bark. Babies ceased crying.

Ha-Val who recognised the bad omen, sat down in front of the Minor Altar where the daily light was locked in its mirror, and she spoke thus to the Mountain Mother: What saddens you, Goddess? Do we not live by your laws, do we not worship you as we ought?

And the Mountain Mother answered: Child, it is not what you do, it is not what you are. It is what you do not do, and it is what you are not to me.

Ha-Val took these words to heart and pondered them for a while before replying: What are we not doing, Goddess, and what more can we be to you than this?

From her hiding place, the Mountain Mother said: Companionship. My heart is empty of love.

Then, Ha-Val understood what must be done. She prayed to the goddess and asked her to allow ten years to pass in which Ha-Val would strengthen the temple and ready to priestesses for their tasks, but then she would come to the Goddess, and she would be hers in body and spirit, she would be hers in heart blood.

Only tell me, Ha-Val urged, how I can cross the distance between us in due time.

It is easy, child, said the Goddess and the smile with which she spoke gave voice to every creature again, the wind howling, the dogs baying, babes whining for their mothers; you must first die.

So went by ten years in which the temple rose to hitherto unseen heights and never was a more glorious building observed on this earth before or since. All the while, Ha-Val whetted her sacrificial knife in preparation, and on the morning of the tenth year, she sat down in front of the Minor Altar as the first rays of dawn touched it, and she took the blade to her throat and she sacrificed not the blood of a goat, but of herself onto the steps of the altar’s inner circle.

As the Mountain Mother had promised, the blood would bridge all distances, and she joined with her Goddess on the high mountain to live with her the next ten years in peace and prosperity.

Such began the long tradition of the Companion priestess who every tenth year gives her life, so that the Goddess shan’t grow lonely and her tears drown the world.