<USS Cervantes> "Relief"

"Relief"
Ashne'e Al Kiara

Ashne'e gestured to the others to follow as she approached the temple
doorway. If the Ss'thlan 
were inside, then the culture had already been polluted - actions of theirs
could do naught but 
set it right. She would hang back in the shadows as long as she could,
letting them hide her. If 
the guard challenged her right to enter, she was unsure what to do, but the
anonymity of the 
cloak lent her confidence - could these felines really know she was not
serpentine like their 
futuristic counterparts?

She approached the guard, and as she'd suspected, he turned away from her,
and opened the 
temple door. His demeanor suggested respect with a tinge of awe, but no
fear. Nevertheless, 
his absence of terror did little to comfort her. Even if these people had
set themselves up as 
benevolent gods, they were still exercising unfair power over another
civilization, temporarily 
gullible due to its lack of technology. Such power plays were disgusting,
but usual, she knew. In 
other parts of the galaxy, it was rumored, primitive populations grew to
maturity with cultures 
that were richly mixed with advanced civilizations. Mysterious technologies
peppered their 
creation mythos and the concepts of science replaced the spiritual mysticism
that had reigned on 
earth. Alongside flying saucers, their primitive gods perished. Yet Ashne'e,
as a cultural 
anthropologist, was as firmly opposed to the amalgamation of cultures as her
counterparts on 
Earth had been, the ones who tried to stop industrialized nations from
dominating the third 
world. In cultures that were meeting as equals, it was another issue, but
for cultures still 
germinating... interference was disgusting, like statutory rape.

The temple was different at night, in its heydey. Violet tones of light
spared eerie illumination for 
the pressing darkness. Forms were aparent, outlined as though illumined by
halos, golden 
fringes of fur dazzling. The stones shone bright as white, though their
violet was the same color 
as the light above, some sort of inner radiance shockingly revealed. They
had the property of 
lightning: the same terror and splendor wrapped in an electric embrace.

Ashne'e could hardly see her fellow crewmen in the dark. They all followed
her lead and clung to 
the shadows, holding their tongues, and watching through the veils of their
hoods. Each had the 
presence of mind to restrain the awe their limbs might have betrayed, so
they stood solemn as 
statues. The Ss'thla, opposite, did the same. What were they thinking? What
were they doing? 
As Ashne'e stared at them, her eyes, which had amazing properties of
adjustment since they 
were sometimes required to stare into aquatic mists, began to note them by
the edges of their 
cloaks. It was an amazing feat to discern black on black. There were only
nine of them. Only 
nine?

The stones formed a glowing circle around a pair of felines. One was male
and in the same 
height of glory most of the murals depicted, muscle-bound, and handsome to
shame Adonis. The 
other was the woman Ashne'e recognized from her crewmen's descriptions of
the murals in the 
catacombs, the supple figure bound in white cloth that accentuated her form
and made her 
graceful as an angel.

She said a word that might have meant "Here" or "Now" or "Welcome" or been
the name of a 
God. The universal translator was helpless to render the unfamiliar words of
this feline language 
on so little notice. It was a word that was growling and majestic, filled
with command, but not 
unkindly so.

An elderly female cat with patches of baldness creeping across her belly and
whiskers that 
drooped walked forward as though each movement of the claw pained her. She
was ancient. 
Once, one of Ashne'e's cats had lived into extreme old age, and had become
haggard like this 
creature, greying and in constant agony. Although the twenty-two year old
cat had been well, 
she was suffering greatly from the pain in her joints, the loss of her
senses, and the constant 
agony of movement that Ashne'e had thought it best to sing her to sleep with
a doctor's kind 
hand easing her into the quietude of eternity. It was hard for Ashne'e, but
the cat drifted off to 
sleep, and for once, was not in a half-wakeful agony robbed of dreams. When
she slipped away, 
Ashne'e wept, but the cat... if one knew what was in a cat's head, one might
have guessed it 
was relief.

The priestess in white, still in the blush of youth, had a look of heart
breaking tenderness as she 
eased her paw toward this matron's face, and embraced her mane in youthful,
well-cut claws. 
More strange words twisted through the air, lightly spoken, gently, with
gratitude and 
sweetness, like wild flowers, or an amphora of wine.

She smeared a white concoction of paint upon the woman's brow, and dipped
her paw into a 
finely wrought bowl filled with fur. The fur she dabbed upon the woman's
neck, sprinkled on her 
toes, and her paws. When she had done with the carefulness, she showered the
rest on her like 
a rain of rose petals.

The violet stones glowed so eerily, so dazzlingly, so...

Ballerinas in France would sometimes slip away from their orphaned,
fine-boned existence, into 
the glory of the footlights, and rebirth themselves in a fall ino brightness
from which they could 
never return. Phoenixes who could never rise again, they burned...

The man gave her some leaves to chew and started a chant. Each mastication
was a labor for 
the jaw. A feline somewhere was weeping, its back to Ashne'e, but more were
keening happily 
over the wail, a vibrating ululation like a purr, while the chant was a
melody for all. It was 
inextricably beautiful.

Behind the altar, three shaven cats took places in a half circle behind the
male, the female, and 
the matron. They stood with their heads high, chains of violet stones
decorating their bodies in 
loops that swung across breasts, through thighs, behind their ears. They
seemed proud. 
Ashne'e remembered that Kennedy had reported this ritual involved shaving a
volunteer to 
sacrifice the burning fur against the religiously prophecied encroachment of
the sands. These 
were those brave volunteers then. 

The woman held the matron close to her and kissed her greying muzzle with
her own, then ran 
her paws along her back. From behind, the male was posing the woman into a
graceful and 
reverent stance, her arms braced in a prayerful clasp, her eyes lifting
upward, her feet proud. 

The woman gave her the last of the leaves as a gift, dangling them into her
mouth as a harem 
girl might offer peeled grapes. 

And then the chant stopped.

A moment of utter silence, dark, and only the violet stones to relieve it.

The woman bowed and kissed the matron on her forehead, then stepped back and
bowed her 
head. The man, supporting the matron in this stance that was awkward for her
aged bones, 
stepped away, and knelt at the woman's side.

The matron stood still, and never moved. 

Felines rushed toward her and kissed her feet, and murmured words that
sounded joyous, 
sounded like thanks, though their meanings were lost. They showered her
motionless paws in 
violet stones.

She never moved. Ashne'e let her eyes flicker to the matron's face, afraid
of what she would find 
there. Not even a muscle twitched  there. Her eyes gazed unblinking, her
muzzle upswept and 
unflinching in the air. Her ears did not flick down to hear the noises
below.

But, for all this, her expression was unmistakeable. It was one Ashne'e's
cat had worn years 
before.

Ashne'e allowed herself to be caught in the chain of felines that passed her
feet, and bowed 
herself to touch her fingers too, concealed by the cloak, to the fur of the
paw below. A wave of 
feeling overcame her - an empathic echo? - insinuated in her brain like a
warm blanket. It was 
quiet and needful. It was a long draught of water for a thirsty throat. It
was a faint whispering 
breeze. It was relief.

-- 
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net

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