neverarightstep

A lot of the way they interact with their gods is ... familiar, but not the same. And, if you ever encountered hermetic alchemy, the elements are basically identical. [She shook her head.] It's just another sign that the various magics of different worlds all share something in common.

Spirit, ether, the Void, that one is always tricky because it doesn't have substance, not really. It's like a binding agent between all things, in all things, but itself separate.

More or less. If I might speak honestly, I have always been a little wary of practicing magic for that part. I have seen terrible things happen when someone is meddling in things they do not understand and took too much initiative. Or were just a terrible person.

[Like the Dark One and Oisin's poor mother.]

Did I tell you of my terror for druids when I was wee?

Yes... well, like any tool, it can be abused, and with enough power there are terrible things that can be done. [She sighed and shook her head.] But if you are careful to understand it, it isn't anymore dangerous than many others.

But no... you didn't. What about them?

That is the whole problem, many of the youth do not bother to fully understand what they do. Others just do not care.

[She shakes her head, and then gives a nervous laugh.]

When I was small, the druids always seemed to important, and they knew so much and of course there were the stories of what the dark ones had done before. Someone with that much power and knowledge is terrifying to a young one. I am a bit wary of ones I do not know still, but it is more a healthy respect for them.

Though, I would happily string Diorruing up a tree for a few hundred years for what he did.

[She snickered and nodded.] I grew up around magic and witches. The lore of druids was something that was normal to me, and I lived among the fae, so I don't think I ever had the chance to become as scared as someone from outside that life could be.

But I guess that makes sense. It's like being afraid of someone with a gun. The first time you hear it go off, it's terrifying, and seeing what it can do even more so. If you don't know as much about it, and Druids keep their secrets close, it can be scary.

...and like you said, a kid with a gun's a scary thing on its own.

I'm not sure what that means...

[Grainne's not entirely clear on the whole gun concept in the first place, but coming from a place where children had been routinely taught how to use weapons from the age of seven, she'd probably not think it too strange.]

Some druids keep their secrets close. Others, like the healers, try to spread the knowledge as far as it will go, and then there are the law makers and advisers, and the bards are their own class entirely. I've not been afraid of the healers as much. I suppose it all comes down to power and knowledge. I always wanted to go to the... the, ah, bibliotecha. Biblioteque? Library. The Library, where the sum of human knowledge rests.

Hmmm... right, sorry. Replace 'gun' with 'Sword' and it might make more sense. The use of a weapon is terrifying if you do not understand it, but in the end it is just the tool of the one who uses it. How much they keep their secrets to themselves, it is still just that, a tool.

...

The Great Library? [She sighed wistfully.] I heard it burned, long before I was ever born, though they made many after it. There's one or more in almost every town now where I live.

Ah, yes. Every child is given a bit of a lesson about weapons, when they have to handle them, and training starts around seven years. I thought I would cut my own hand off by accident.

[She had qualms about her own children, but they had to start that young to gain the skills they needed as full warriors, and not to mention the requirements of the Fianna were very strenuous. She'd seen not a few youths fail at it.]

Yes, the one of Al-icks- you know I never managed to say that right. It burned? [Grainne seems distressed, even upset.] Oh, I had hoped, someday, I could take a journey there, even if I were a bit old. The ones here in Eros are marvelous, but the description I have heard from traveling bards would put Greta's to shame. Does anyone know how big it was, in your time? Did it really hold all of the knowledge of the world?

Exactly. I need to remember to choose the right illustrations, sorry. [Ahem] And it's Alexandria, I think. They said it was a grand thing, definitely, and that a lot were lost. We only really have rumors to go off of, the fire that took the city claiming so much we couldn't be sure.

If I were to guess, though, no it didn't. It probably held most of the knowledge of the part of the world our people were part of. The isles and the mainland are what they call Europe. They and north Africa across the sea to the south were most of what the Egyptians had contact with. I doubt there was much from Asia and nothing from South Africa or the Americas.

They seemed to know that they existed, but theirs were worlds apart. The Earth is much larger than you know, Grainne.

I've seen a map. I could not even find Eire on it... I had heard rumors of course, bards have a way of picking up the most interesting things. People going on journeys so long it took years to get anywhere. What was that Greek man who took twenty years to return home... things like that.

Odysseus. Used the gates of Gibraltar to enter Hades. [She nodded. That was a story she knew for personal reasons.] Eire is a very small part. Very quiet. Very alone.

[Very quiet? Grainne starts giggling, feeling in good spirits.]

You would not say that if you had ever been to a Samhain thrown by Aengus Og himself.

Heh, yeah... it got quiet after the Catholics arrived and the brits took over. Saint Patty's day's pretty loud though, I hear. Not that I celebrate that. [She snickered] But I believe you. It would have been something to see.

It was amazing, in truth. There is always a little part of the night where the world goes still and you can practically feel the ancestors in the air. What is Saint Patty's Day?

It's a festival for one of the people who brought a foreign religion to the Irish soil and who supposedly kicked the snakes off of the island. [She grunted] Usually an excuse to get drunk on green beer and act stupid really.

Aengus sounds like a much better host than that sort, trust me.

Oh, the... Catholics. Snakes?

[It takes Grainne a moment.]

What are snakes? And what does green beer have to do with it?

[It might be a bit strange to think Grainne hadn't seen a snake before, but sometimes life had a habit of not filling in all the details during one's course through it.]

Snakes? [She shuddered before she managed to laugh at the faint irony. Most people said that Patrick probably didn't scare shit off the island, that there had never been any real snake presence there.] They're long, scaled animals, some thin some very thick, that slither along the ground.

[Another shudder and she conjured up an illusionary image of one. It didn't stay long before winking out. There was an obvious look of discomfort there.] I ... really don't like snakes. but they said there used to be snakes on the isle, and he scared them off. It was supposed to have been a miracle he performed. Of course, there's a lot of stories in the world that aren't true.

And yes, Catholic.

Oh, those things. Some of the men from the Brigantes, and not a few of the Lochlannach, that come to trade have tattoos of them, but I have never heard of anything like that in Eire, sparing worms and dragons.

[She's seen worse, really.]

I've never heard a name for them, I just thought they were long squiggly decorations with heads or maybe spirits. Ah, men, loving to take the credit for everything. Why are the lack of snacks such an important thing?

They associate the serpent with ... well, the closest equivalent might be Bres, Balor or Crom Dub, Crom Cruach... the thing is that I don't really remember our myths having a 'devil,' some great evil who sought to corrupt mankind and turn them towards darkness. The Fomori were bad, but they weren't that nasty in the tales.

Catholics obsess over temptation, and the serpent, the devil, was the one that started all of that. It's... well, I only know it so well. Sorry. I never looked into my father's mythology that deeply.

We don't, except if there might be something called evil, it would be the Dark One. I'm sure you've heard of Oisin's mother. But he was still a man.

[She pauses.]

I have heard of the devil before. Isn't that the one the Maeve did something with?

They have a version of it, but it's not quite the same I'm sure. That said, I think it's related to temptation.

[There was a pause and she nodded.]

I know of Donn. I met one of his servants once, one of the last vestiges of their power among men. I don't know that people think of him as quite as evil as he was in life. He just rules the dead now.

Donn is a strange case, I do not know much about him myself because those were not stories I felt... inclined to listen to, especially recently. The ruler of the dead is an honorable position, the ancestors are revered and worshiped, and the ruler is the one who cares for them. Many men who were troublesome can be calmed when given a responsibility.

[She looks down at her hands for a moment.]

Could you... tell me about temptation?

Duty can temper any soul. It's hard to say. His servant and I didn't speak much when it happened, so I never had the chance to ask what I wanted. That, and he'd apparently been very ... indisposed for a long time. I think there were things he didn't know.

Temptation, though? [She paused.] It's the urge to do something that society, or your beliefs would tell you that you shouldn't do. It can be mild or great. What do you want to know about it?

[It was, after all, meat and bread for succubi.]

[Grainne looks somewhat surprised.]

That could be practically anything, then. Does that mean following one's heart even if it defies what people expect of you is considered a 'temptation?'

Well yes and no. [She sighed.] Temptation, for them, tied into commandments and rules of conduct that they followed. Ten commandments, sounded simple on the surface but tended to be a lot bigger in general, and different Christians would think one meant one thing, others would think it meant something else.

It kind of boiled down, a lot, to what they called seven deadly sins. temptations that described emotional states that led people down paths they thought were dangerous. Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Pride and Envy.

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