You might never know of me
The wind speaks my poetry
As lovers caress in the night
My breath holds the tress
Of the.. worlds.. mightiest
For I am the Queen of The Knight!
Her brother must have been the luckiest man alive
Really? You say that in front of me? I am only a simple goat-herder but I know what it means to respect a mother’s child sir. You should be ashamed……
I think maybe you don’t want to hear the beginning you only want to hear the end like a little child…….
If he doesn’t want to hear more from her maybe we should just skip some parts huh Shabu?
…….. but how do we explain a single thing if we leave her out?
Yes very good point. The slaved marked “dv” will shut the hell up or report to Fight Club….
As it happens dv her brother was the luckiest man alive so you’ve gone and spoilt almost ALL of the suspense! Congratulations!
I won’t bring up your implications about my sister if you don’t bring up your food when I torture you how’s that for a deal dv?
I think that would be better than letting her penalty stand but don’t let her know I said that. She makes me sleep with her for days to resolve these … differences of opinion……
היא אף פעם לא יכול לשכוח קצבאות אלה
Ooo-ooo-ooone DAY!
My father’s court received a guest
A thousand sheaves upon his chest
Yet humble as the morning…….
The Tiger knelt with all discord
And begged my father no reward
For securing the nations border
He had instead
A gossamer thread
Of reason beyond wonder
He asked my father
Could my mother sing to his people
Of futures untold
And riches tenfold
That might come should we build a great steeple.
Suluu… you can come back now. You do have a story to tell.
Oh ok thank you my dear. You have refocussed the audience’s attention. I meant to give them some idea of the conversation I had with your father but you have transformed all the boring bits into something of equal wonder to your beauty. I did enjoy our meal, with all the yoghurt and cucumbers and sweet meats and wine. And the cakes… sheesh!
Baby….. the story not the food?
Yes of course, how can I forget? So, yes, we were saying that I came to discuss some thinking I had done while ignoring the goats mating. Being a goat herder I had travelled extensively and seen the condition of much of the world. They say a goat herder is poor but poor in what I ask? We always have the best directions because we know who to go around and who to go through. This can be a trouble for someone who has lived in one place permanently.
In my travels I had noticed that the world had filled with good peoples. Nations might rise and fall and fight with the neighbours but this was not a thing filled with great animosity but inevitable with the fallibility of farming knowledge of the time. A goat herder jealously guards their independence because this works very well for us and we get by through most troubles without having too become involved.
This, at the time, had become less reliable for us. The farmers had developed some new thinking and also something called intellectual property. There was much competition to grow more and better and also much resentment when one person’s successful idea was borrowed by another and made more successful. There is the funny story of the tribe that took the other tribes rain idols. Rain idols! Sheesh! They never work but sitting around waiting for rain makes people itch in very bad places.
This bickering among the farmers had made the trade for herders quite hard to predict. We would return to places we had long ties with and find they had fallen on hard times and could not trade without credit. Credit is not something goat herders are happy with because we know how quickly things change when we go away.
One time when I was still learning the seasonal routes from my father he says to me “Sulu, I think I would like to visit an old friend I have not seen in many years. We will turn east and south and cross the mountains into the Indus valleys.”
This was very exciting for a young man. The Indus was a fairly private affair but tales of this places wonders were always around the fires. The mountains had given it isolation so some of it’s practices had matured to become more reliable than those of my home plains. If a young man could not find a wife in our tribes they often disappeared into the Indus and never returned.
So we crossed the mountains and visited my father’s friend that year. I tell you I learned more this year than I had learned in the previous 15 years. Possibly because of the difficulty of leaving the Indus, the locals seemed able to discuss a problem for longer and did not so readily fall to blaming the neighbours for the ways of nature. Interestingly, their warriors were not set aside simply for fighting. They always were called on to bolster the efforts of the people where ever it was required. This put the seeds of the ideas in my head, though they did not mature for several seasons.
When my father and I returned to our normal routes we discovered things had progressed while we were gone. The herders would often return to their home grounds and find no one they knew and be forced to trade only with strangers who haggled every trade down to almost nothing. We herders had become seen as destitute beggars who must have stolen their animals from elsewhere.
This did not seem very hospitable to myself so I spoke to some of the other wanderers and we agreed we should form a trade delegation. We dressed those chosen in fine garments and sent them to speak with the city leaders everywhere. We found these people had grown so fat on the cream of their peoples their ears had sealed up to anything but dinner bells. We were turned away with scorn.
So when this happened I think to myself, these leaders are eating everything left over that is good and leaving their people with not so much. Maybe they are the reasons these cities fight so often. So I formed a small plan. We would send the delegations for 2 more years, once a season. This would allow them the opportunity to maybe hear what we have to say over the sound of all the slobbering and munching. If they would not listen it would allow us to surprise them with our preparations after they had become accustomed to us visiting them peacefully.
Inevitably they did not listen and were wide-eyed with wonder when on the 3rd year our delegations responded to being turned away again with producing weapons, executing the very rude leaders and then demanding that the peoples of each city bring forth the next in line for command to negotiate. Mostly they did not and we had to assume control of these places. A small handful showed strong backs by putting forward someone who they admired but who had been passed up till then. These people turned out to be strong friends to us in the years that followed.
Now you might think 2 years is a very short time to develop a strong military to back up such audacious actions from simple herders. What has not been said yet is the results of the conversations my father had when we visit the Indus. I have said that many of our single men would cross the mountains and not return. It had turned out that these men would be allowed to marry so long as they became a part of the local armies. This worked very well for us. My father had suggested that if we needed them they might be allowed to return. To ensure we would not turn on those of the Indus we negotiated a trade in which our single men would be given wives from the Indus. As I say, this worked very well for us and our armies grew very quickly.
So, yes, this plan worked very well for us but managing so much so quickly has it’s own challenges that I made attempt to consider. My people had always had good relations with the Egyptians because they would simply pay in gold and jewels for our livestock. We both had some problems with raiders for the north so I decided it would be good manners to deal with this before going to speak with the pharoah. The city-dwellers had found these raiders to be mysterious in origin but our people travel to all corners of the globe and little escapes notice this way. We took the island these people used as stronghold and with this as the pendant of our gift I went to visit the Pharoah. He liked my thoughts of making a place for the learned to be protected and wisdom to be preserved and spread to all peoples.
It is unfortunate I did not understand the ways of the earth that travelled beneath my feet or the meaning of the hernia-like bulging of the earth beneath these raiders island fortress. This was most unfortunate and brought the efforts of all the wise to rest in the dirt with their knees as they lamented the lost.
That was never your fault my dear, don’t lose further tears over it. Would a difference have been made if I had not distracted you so? I think we only would have lost you also since you were so enthralled with the progress they made while they remained and spent so much time there. Would you rather my heart should have been torn asunder with the rest of the world?
Always you say the thing that brings strength back to my bones and joy into my heart.
You are and have always been the tiger that holds my heart Sulu. Our children are strong and you have secured their future against all odds and with incomparable humanity. Do not ever change.
