The Elder's Dagger

The Change

We tied our prisoners to trees and murdered them in vain to "bring back our boys", the gods denied this request.

One by one we slowly in a painful march dumped our sacks of grain and other war prizes in the granary which became full quickly. The remaining grain was given to a group of ten people who claimed they knew how to make the grain into a "magical water".

We decorated our houses with the wicker shields and stones axes of the enemy and our youngsters wore the armour of our fallen.

After two months deep in winter's clutches we decided to be daring and grand. We had way too much grain to store so we planned to use it for celebrations! We turned the grain into bread. We ran into the forest for extra wood. We rolled barrels of the special new drink.

Soft spoken voices of mourning became shouts of joy as the piles of wood were set up outside the village.

In the cold frozen wasteland of winter, when we like hedgehogs were meant to snuggle in our homes came to face nature.

Our massive piles of wood were set alight; blinding us in the dark winter night. The barrels of " grain water" were put upright and the top was axed. Bronze and copper cups were passed to the man who stood at the barrel. The queues at the start of the night were short and sparse; but when a sip of beer became a whole mouthful we were hooked in like fish. All the barrels were axed and we ran to it like starving prisoners. It warmed our souls and hearts like the fire stopped us shivering. We overate in the wake of the bonfire; bread of all kinds was gobbled up and we still had too much of it.

It turned out the drink is too precious for any child to drink. They hate the harsh taste and spit it out moments later of drinking it.Only noble children that have that luxury!

At the centre of the celebration around our bonfire.The proud men who had fought that day pranced around the fire. Showing our weapons and armour in time with the clapping and cheering of the others.

Screams echoed around the nearby woods. As the tribe's position as the top leader of the Tamēssa finally secured for the first time in years.

The dancing and clapping of the drunken crowd lasted until the moon finally fell into its slumber and a few rays of the sun poked above the trees, only then did everyone sleep and sleep they did!

After the hush of an extremely sober and very painful late afternoon the village lazed under the golden red light of autumn. There were a few moments of confusion in the village in the first few days. Is life finished? We had everything we needed. Food, water, shelter, military, goods, happy Gods,materials, each other. What do we do now? The strangest thing happened: everyone fell in love with stories. People were making up stories and acting them out and even using words to make it exciting. They made up new words to describe things in different ways, these writers created poetic descriptions of our native lands and the struggles we faced to keep them. Other people drew pictures, they used objects to put paint on wood and stone, these paintings resembled many moments our people have had together.

From then on whenever something happened we always knew how to learn from the event and remember the mistakes of the past through stories and pictures. We fanitised new worlds and people in our little minds and hearts.

We bonded over stories by the fire and paintings on the walls.

Soon people started to walk around with new clothes with new colours all competing for dominance, people expressed themselves and made merry. People focused on specialising in what food they made and very soon we had a food specialty in the village, then special clothes in the village, people were told what clothes to wear and work in and ones to sleep in. Suddenly we had different types of clothes for different things. Many nights we made merry too. Sometimes it ended in a death, but that was rare(the druids tried to ban alcohol a few times;lots agreed with the ban however it could never happen, it's part of who we are now, you can't take our drink now! Too late!).

Life suddenly became an easy dream and after the best harvest in living memory we had such big stocks that we had even more beer before and even more time. For many years and still to this day life is an easy and fun long dream. Conflict does not end in a spear in someone's chest like it used to, now it's just a bit of bickering.

"Although", the elder said quickly " we are fighting the men who sell pots. They are the allies of the Stone Men, they grabbed their spears and shields when they heard the news, luckily they only found out in spring".

If someone is hungry they just get more food, if someone needs new clothes they get some.

We came up for a word for this type of activity....

"Culture."

Arising from his seat the younglings watched him with a new kind of interest.

"This is the last time I will tell this story", he says in a quiet hush, "it was painful to tell you these events, but it had to be done, take it as a lesson. You are lucky to be so prosperous in our tribe's history. Remember all the things you do now are because not long ago we stopped starving in winter.