some people in a stolen world

on
Mither
Town on the grey clay of the killing plains, those mud-slick fields where the Mares of Thrace and their centaur children butchered the Bakers and trampled their synthetic revolution into the earth, and that was the end of it.
 
Homes of frozen bricks, bricks of clay and straw and blood. Murmuration of white pigeons wheeling in a cold flat sky. Their Spear of Virset is anchored in a woman’s leg, pinning her to the earth. She bleeds without ceasing. Her blood is used to drink, and mixed with clay to make the bricks. Her name is the town's name now, not her own. The birds land on the houses to peck at the bloodclot bricks and coat them with shit.

The people sit and philosophize, sift through garbage, knife one another for food. The kids of the town held staring contests to see if a Horn of Plenty is coming; whoever leaves their post first loses. They still play this game, looking at an empty horizon, but their eyes are vacant of expectation. That's the kind of town this is, where the kids play games by sitting still. 
 
Without the Horns of Plenty, people eat the birds now. Big nets of razor-wire are strung up, horns are blown to startle the birds so they fly into the nets of their own accord. Angbora's curse is heavy over everyone; they know they cannot go on like this forever. It is only because the Bakers once raised the white birds and it brings him pleasure to see them chewed and swallowed that his spite has been withheld this long, and the air trembles with its nearness like a bowstring drawn and held.

Eunuch thieves keep the peace. Who else knows the hungry and the greedy better? A Tenderhawk is allowed to own nothing but the clothes they wore when caught and the knife they were castrated with. A potent talisman, empowering them to take and give as they see fit to keep everyone equal. A humiliation and an honor.
 
Periodically, heavy rains make the earth into a slick mud; celebrations are held as the mass graves are robbed for materials. Mither is rich in capsules and medicines, plastics, glass, mirrors, photos, all taken from Baker graves. They are always in need of wood and stone building materials; the earth dissolves to near-liquid here. Only the woman's blood binds it together.
i feel very protective of Jiri Anderle i dont trot him out just any old time

Coffin-Draggers
What's left of the Bakers.  Nomads, dragging the iron coffins Angbora forbid their dead be buried in. They are scavengers, and keep carrion birds and bloodhounds to find dead beasts, use the big, horrible dredge-weaver bugs to haul them

Some ancestral memory of craft remains; they are great brewers of beer, and pull huge cauldrons and barrels alongside the coffins. When they make camp, they hold mock war to claim the land.  One dresses in a hide as though a horse, and the others pursue. They are too afraid to use real horse-hide. They light no fires, do no cooking. Food is sterilized in alcohol, dried or pickled if it needs to last. Children play games of hiding objects on one another and then stealing them back.

Those who are closest to death lead the others. Finally sheltered in the coffins pulled by their families, they can speak and think with clarity tempered in the anger and passion that was too dangerously hot for the open air. 

They will always trade for arms and armor, though only the near-dead are permitted to hold them, folded over wicker-basket ribs. In return, they offer beer and pickled meat and an endless supply of the worthless amber loaves of the Bakers. 

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