Offering 1301

Lmumba had eaten the flesh offered by a man whose son had offered a pound of his own who had tasted the bitter flesh of man and knew their tongues and knew of their darker than the darkest lords and..... Lmumba fainted.

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"I name this land Caroline." The soil screamed as the pole found its way into thick, clay-like soil. "In honor of the Queen-Mother of All Lochaber, in honor of the womb that bore the Blessed Child, the Sun King Hugh Magne."

Black faces stared in silence, hearing the voices of those lost to flames as they still stood in the air as dust. White faces looked out from their inhuman beards, their frightening suits of metal, looked at the black faces and saw.... nothing. Only the leaves of the jungle. One white man seemed to give a shudder as he stared into the forest. Lmumba could taste his flesh upon her tongue.

"It's a bad job."
"Whats 'at?"
"That whole shipment of slaves.... killed."
"If 'ey was resistin'......"
"All of 'em? Ain't no people in the world all fight to the death. And I would know, I've fought 'em all. Deraxti, Ayrabs, Badoo, Wehrwulfen...." He gave a scarred smile, and Lmumba could feel that leathery skin slide down her throat.
"Well, there is that one-"

And with that, Lmumba saw only the glimmering haze of combat, like hot air rising from a stone. She saw the assegai tear through the two men's conversation, watched as stone and bone met screaming stell,and tasted as the warrior who had offered a pound of flesh for one last story to his grandfather took more than a pound of the empty flesh-thoughts of man.

And, suddenly, she knew that one. The One-Who-Grokked-But-Should-Not-Have. And she saw the torment of prophecy. There was no goat skull to explain this horrendous turn of events. Only the labored digestion of human flesh.

"Hold him down!" The man with the leathery skin.

And there He was, the one whose seed-spark Lmumba needed. The Griot, picked clean of all his flesh, lay off to the side. The One was full to the point of retching, blood and bits of flesh accumulated on his mouth. His teeth wore a dark clotted red and Lmumba desired nothing more than to embrace him and take his tongue deep, tasting the invigorating blood of a griot together. She had acquired a taste for the rich and bloody secrets in the minds of griots.

But there was no sign of hope upon the One's face. A look staring off into the Endless Void, like the fo of her village. Like a crazy man.

A hand covered in metal, metal that screamed of little girls in port towns, came against the One's bloodied face. "Physico, you are sure this will work?" The man with the scarred smile was talking to shadow of a man, thin and sickly.

The physico pushed up clear stones upon his face- held with a rim that spoke of death. "Well, milord, it works in stock animals. Gelding a bull produces an altogether calm animal." The One gave only a coughing sputter. He had no energy, and gave a twitch upon the ground. There was a third voice, of the man who had stabbed the earth itself. "There shall be a bonus if it works, physico."

The metal that screamed of little girls left the room with the scarred meal. And then the physico unwrapped cruel, cruel, screaming, crying, wretching instruments with hooks and dried blood and.....

Oh, the torment of prophecy!

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"We bring an offering to you, She-Who-Bleeds." A young warrior, from a different tribe, laid a tray of raw meat at her feet. "We hope that your gift of fertility will aid our village."

Lmumba looked upon on the youth, and the youth put his tongue before his teeth in embarassment. This tribe was... an odd one, to be sure. Plenty of warriors, but a paucity of women. And as the midwives say, what use is a man when the babe cries to suckle? Lmumba was used to some degree of reverence when visiting another tribe. She was inviolable in her fertility. No tribe could touch her, under code of honor. But this tribe was pandering, reverent. They had fought for women, to no avail, and now found many willing to join them.

She had heard them all talk of the loss of their women. The younger children said women had just left one day, walking off into the sunset. The older men said demons from the north took them, to be used as carnal toys after they lost the griot's forebearance. And apparently, in the northern villages, that was not an all too uncommon occurrence. The young warriors said they didn't know what to think.

The griot himself was elderly and sickly. He was already losing control, as evidenced by the many fo of his village.

A child with glowing eyes danced naked around the lmumba tree, endlessly. She was a Not, a child stuck as a child but not a child, a vessel filled with the void. They were common, especially in the wake of white men and in the north, of demons. And old codes required tribes to adopt them, for good fortune. A silver tray of fruits was brought to the child who danced in ecstasy, and the little savage eagerly gobbled it up, nectars and juices dribbling down her chin before she gave a cackling laugh and returned to her dance.

Their griot had not found a suitable boy to pass his seed-spark on to. Lmumba had heard of this in her feast towards the white men, and had a novel idea. She came to this village and offered herself to take the seed-spark, to share all the experiences of their lives and those they had eaten, to act as a marriage until he passed on. And of course, some were offended. The griot's code of abstinence was well-maintained. But soon the older men of the village gave way, desiring the many young unwed Lmumba had brought to her.

She had only to wait for the griot himself to take the offer. It would not be long, for the thirst in his eyes was stronger than a fo wandering from the Great Sand Sea. His spark had never seen release, and he was growing old.