April 19, 15 PE
A quiet but busy few weeks up until recent days. We've enjoyed a welcome respite from attacks and have been able to accomplish some equipment repairs and prepare for our next move. The lack of offensive strikes by rogue bands has made us a bit nervous and distracted, but thank heaven the 'spite' season has ended. At any rate, our distraction with earthly matters made us overlook the holy. Easter is upon us.
I ate meat on Friday, I confess, with relish. It wasn't until a bedraggled, deranged group of 'left-behinders' straggled through our camp scourging themselves and spattering their blood about with every blow, that I became awakened to the holiday spirit. Left-behinders generally consist of those who had at least a nodding aquaintance with certain tenents of certain faiths and who had ,like most, lost someone in the Event. Lost, that is; no bodies, no funerals, no awful but merciful finality. While others were 'raptured' to some joyous heavenly reunion, they imagine their own faith too faulty to win admission. It's very complicated and beside the point at any rate. Likely their people were vaporized, blown to unrecognizable bits or buried under a thousand tons of rubble somewhere. Or perhaps they just took the opportunity to disappear into the chaos without leaving a forwarding address. The stench of untended death has long since dried to dust, horrendous chaos has settled to a mindnumbing struggle and we deal with our memories however we can. I have few memories of before, being all of five at the time. It ruined Christmas, I remember. It's been uphill ever since.
At any rate they scourge and weep and proselytize in a winding pilgrimage to the south. I wonder at their conviction; their self involvement and focus.Hear the chanting and the wet thud of scourges. There are no clear words but occasional beseaching cries for God's mercy. I cannot tolerate public and gratuitous stupidity. Tomorrow is Easter, when Christ rose from death and left colored eggs for all good children and lumps of coal for the bad. If you believe and find three different colored eggs on Easter morning then you are right with God for the next year. What could be simpler? I don't know where these howlers get their bizarre misconceptions. They'll be gone by late tonight or early tomorrow, the last of them shaking the dust of our camp from their feet. They call us heathens. |
