the burning heart of god

Siv Helsi · 01-01-2012, 02:30 AM

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The art of ritual was very much a part of constructing the mantle, as it had been since the idea first came. Siv was not a woman who delighted in stuffy rituals and instead very much favored the simple parts of her faith. For several weeks now her progress had been slow—most of it involved the meticulous task of stalking and killing ravens. She had ended up perfecting a rather base technique for such a thing.

Verusha, as it turned out, was skilled beyond simply child-rearing. One night she had knotted together a rope tug-toy for Draugr, and fascinated by the speed and craftsmanship in her old hands, Siv had asked (though it was a demand as such; she could not refuse it, being a slave) for her to construct a net weighted by stones. The coyote had explained this would not do for fishing, and Siv had to repeat the purpose of such a thing. Though she was not required to gift the slave for her work, Siv had made a point to allow her the finest catch of a hunting excursion.

So then it had come to the actual goings about of her contraption. Siv had spent hours trying and failing to sneak up on the birds. She was a large woman and while able to be quiet, she was spotted easily. Eventually, she ended up having to sit and wait, hidden in foliage, for the noisy things to return to a carcass. It had been a grueling process and taken another hour before she had actually thrown the net, only to be too slow and miss her prey entirely.

This had gone on for two days before she finally saw success. Two ravens, bickering over a piece of meat intentionally left out to bait them, had wound up snared under the net. Seeing this as a sign (for two was one of the holy numbers, especially when it came to ravens) Siv thanked Odin verbally and dedicated the bird’s blood to his name. That was of no use to her, though she might have whipped up a concoction in the Hearg using such a thing. Salsola was not as endowed to her gods as the home she had left behind.

It was now the fourth day of her preparation, and while the bird carcasses from the night before waited in her home, the dark woman set out intending fully on gathering the rest. The ritual, as she deemed it, was based entirely around honoring the holy signs and holy numbers. Two ravens had been a sign of All-Father’s praise, but the number thirteen was the strongest and thus she was required to snare eleven more birds to complete the thing. The leather, too, would need to be made from an animal of power—a ram. She would not take one of Salsola’s, having been warned very carefully by the Tigress watching over them of their value. Rams of the Family were meant for yearly feasts. Siv saw the weight in this as well. It was a ritual, even if they had not realized it yet.

So her goals were lofty, but time was on her side. The position of the Crone remained open, and Tlanti now fled from her when she walked. Wisteria was the only other woman capable of challenging her for the rank, but the white wolf seemed to recognize that between them it was Siv whose personality was the stronger. Siv would rise and she would have to find her mark elsewhere. Khalif’s gods, as they had been explained to her, were too few to stand against her pantheon. Nor, as she had discovered, were they truly honored. Wisteria and Larkspur alone seemed to hold faith with them, for their children had been exposed too early to Salsola’s ways and thus corrupted from absolute faith.

This made Siv extremely pleased, though she was careful not to speak of it or show her desires. As far as she was concerned, this project was for her alone. A shawl made from ravens and a ram would be the strength of a man. Women were, ultimately, the stronger sex, but she needed the physical properties of All-Father in her garments to best honor him. There were other ways to use the power of weaving, and she would see to it that this fine art was buried under the raven feathers. It would be fitting in that way, she reasoned.

Her steps were fast, and while she wore little today, she carried a bag tooled from deer hide. It hung over one shoulder and across her chest, and fit snugly on her back. There was less noise from such construction, even if it meant she had less space. She did not carry much, though. The woven and weighted net and a singular ritualistic dagger were all the tools she needed. Birds; that was the goal today.

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