Birthrites: How Sabatna Received the First Blessing

 On this fine Boxing Day, let me share with you an excerpt from my WIP, currently titled "Birthrites."

Sabatna's journey across the mountain was terrible. Rough. She found, in the end, that she had no use for any of her lovers and servants but as food. Ans so she entered the Yula's territory well-fed but alone.

The Yula had never had visitors from across the mountain before, because the passage of the mountain was so fraught with danger and the Small Lands had not yet become a fishing nation. They had never seen a person with such dark hair, who burned so easily under the desert sun. Sabatna marvelled at their camels, water-collecting techniques, and appearance, but thought their one god was quaint.

"Why have only one when you can have many? The more blessings, the more prosperity."

But the Yula did not ask their god for blessings. "He provides balance to our world, not for any individual person. Life when life is needed. Death when it is called for. Rain in some days, and sun for the others. Camel, lizard, human, fox, crocodile. Land and river."

This was before the days of the temples. Even Sabatna did not know she could bind the gods to her will, and the Yula had not dreamed of it.

In those days, the triplet gods visited the Yula almost every night. They passed over the Small Lands as well, so Sabatna knew them. The god of the land rarely visited the east, but she knew the god of power and the god of posterity by name. One night, while the triplet gods spoke by the Yula fires, Sabatna approached the god of posterity and called him by name.

"On my journey here, I ate all my lovers and my servants to survive," she confessed to him."Give me other lovers so I can have children."

The god of posterity called over six Yula peopel. He told her to lie with them that night and see what would happen.

It soon happened that Sabatna gave birth to four children at one: First, the twins, Nenler and Benler; then Oster; and last of all, Principae. Because the god of posterity had truly blessed her, Sabatna took him as her patron.

This is how Sabatna received the first of the three great blessings.

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Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash