The deeds of the outside world

As Irina finished the tale of the Holy War in 996 AD, Daria pulled back her sleeves to reveal some very faint scars on her arms, hands and fingers. From the way she also rubbed her neck, it seemed like she felt some form of phantom pain from how she had been killed.

"It is not very visible now, but it took a long time for those broken bones of mine to heal here in the spiritual temple. And I am not the sort of person who can remain in bed for long without feeling restless…"

For most of the earlier Gemini generations, they had one thing in common outside serving Athena: They all hailed from historical eras where physical work was necessary for survival, especially if one wanted a roof over the head, clothing to wear and food on the table. They did know the need of taking a break, but honest boredom from not having anything useful to do, was almost worse than an endless list of things, even those which were repeated every day like cooking, caring for the animals and such chores.

"What happened to Eric? He should have lived in your first decades as Grand Pope unless he died young, right?" Kanon wondered carefully, mindful of what the others had told of what had happened to their families past their deaths.

"Yes, he did survive to adulthood. But being the nephew of the Grand Pope sadly was a special position that he abused to act like a bully towards others, which I naturally did not accept him doing and often led to me being more harsh than intended in his punishments. And when he entered the wider world…he converted to Christianity in the foolish belief that Irina and Vlad would welcome him in heaven upon his own death, something which led to a massive argument between us two because it felt like Eric was taunting my memories of their deaths by abandoning the Asar gods, and ended with me actually banishing him from the Sanctuary because I wanted to force him into realizing that disobedience to a leader can have unpleasant consequences for oneself. He died unmarried and without any known offspring for me, during a battle in England in late 1013, when Sweyn Forkbeard, already the king of Denmark and of Norway, overthrew King Æthelred the Unready of the House of Wessex," Irina signed in a defeated manner, clearly feeling some form of guilt for how her nephew had turned out in character despite her attempts of raising him well among all her most pressing duties as the Grand Pope. But Daria laid a hand over the one of her sister, to show that she did not blame Irina for what had happened to her son.

"Is it just me imagining things, or are the goats outside being unusually noisy?" Amir asked, looking out through the small window to see what was happening outside. Then he rushed out:

"Some of the goat kids have managed to climb over the enclosure which they are in when they do not graze out on the steppe!"

"Eh?!"

"We strengthened the fence to avoid this happening just a few weeks ago!"

Nearly all of them followed out.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

With the goat kids being quite fast in escaping on this unexpected little adventure, Azel and Amir chose the natural way for them to quickly catch the runaway animals:

Riding on their Mongolian ponies, bringing some ropes with them in order to not have the goat kids running away.

"You others try to find the spot where they managed to climb over!"

Grabbing a few axes with Amari coming with them, Tiernan and Owen knew that they better bring some more hazel trees to make the already present wattle fence higher.

"Never a boring moment with animals here!"

Thankfully, most of the herd of goats had not escaped because of the quick reaction from the Gemini Saints. Now, the humans ensured in a team effort that any further escape was impossible.

"This is how we basically pass time here, doing the same things that we did in life. With us coming from different cultures, we have tried to find the best solution to this sort of situation," Aspros explained to Saga as he and Defteros helped to weave the willows together into a higher wattle fence, Saga blocking the goats from running past the older twins.

"The elders in our villages get furious if any of us are careless when watching the sheeps and goats as sheep herders during summer, and our grandma would be quick in knocking her closed fist down on our heads as punishment as well as scolding us…"

They heard Ramses laugh somewhere on the other side of the enclosure, in a quick break of his hammer putting in iron nails into the raised posts to prevent the now higher wattle fence from falling down in a bad storm.

"Sounds like something master Irina would agree with, about raising children. Tasking me and Seti with watching the herds of sheeps and goats belonging to the villages around the Sanctuary was her way of teaching us responsibility for the lives of others and that we could not be careless."

With Shion using his telekinesis to move away smaller rocks and other things that the goats could use to try climbing on the way to a new attempted escape, Azel and Amir returned with the escaped goat kids.

"Here are the troublemakers."

While the others were outside to deal with the animals, Daria took the chance to boil some more tea water on the kitchen hearth.

"I do not think you need to mention for our young guests that your reign as the Grand Pope happened during a difficult time in history, Syster."

She referred to the crusades, a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The ones happening in the Holy Land, intended to recover Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule. With the Holy War against Hades happening in 1246, Irina had witnessed six of those, or seven if one more was added, in the Barons' Crusade of 1239–1241.

"Witnessing Eric openly wearing that damn Christian cross was bad enough, but I can not forgive the crusaders for orphaning Seti and Ramses! If I had not saved them that night…the Curse of Gemini would have ensured their death along with the rest of their village! It was impossible to ignore such a scenario, when my own curse mark burned like it did when you died, Daria…!"

Irina was rather open with how Christianity was a sore point for her, especially in how it had robbed her of many things that she viewed as precious in her long life. Not only most of their family, but also what had made the homelands of the Viking culture unique when the kings in Denmark, Norway and Sweden realized that Christianity was a source of increased power base together with the church, like how it was down in Europe. The loss of the Great Temple in Uppsala had been a very painful blow for Irina.

"Irina?"

Holding out her arms, Daria welcomed her sister in a comforting hug.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Finally, they all gathered back in the chamber after checking one last time that the goats would not be able to climb out as a way of escaping again.

"Um…can I ask something which I have noticed to be a little odd?" Saga asked, looking a little unsure if it was a safe question or not.

"Yes, Saga?"

"How come that Seti and Ramses have names from Ancient Egypt, and not Muslim names if they were born to parents who lived in a Egypt with Islam as the main faith?"

Ah, of course he would have noticed something after checking in a history book in the library of what was known of the ancient cultures across the world. Shion glared at Irina and her two successors, who honestly seemed to also have expected that question to show up when someone noticed that their names did stick out a little bit from the others.

"Because they were freshly orphaned by crusaders when I brought them to the Sanctuary and I had no contact with their birth parents prior to that. They got their names from a pillar with engraved hieroglyphs not far from their burned down home village, where I could read the names of two Pharaohs, Seti I and his son Ramses II. As I did not know their original birth names, I instead named them those names in the hope that they would feel a connection to those famous warriors who had been the divine Kings of Egypt."

The sheer venom in her voice told them all that Irina still held some very much alive bitterness over that.

"My original plan, after realizing that Seti and Ramses was born on 5th June in 1221 AD, was to let them just enjoy life with their birth family for their first years and then, carefully, start arriving from time to time with Aziz in the disguise of a old, married couple and that my "husband" was looking for possible apprentices to pass down his skills to. Unfortunately, it never happened, and all the blame is on the fifth crusade that ended in September that year…"

Rolling up her sleeve as she talked, Irina revealed a rather nasty-looking old burn mark on her arm among other scars that she had gotten over her long service to Athena.

"This is from that attack on their home village, as I had to save them from being burned alive inside their cradle."

Taking the scroll and pulling out a drawing of Seti and Ramses as newborns under their date and year of birth, she started the tale of how they had ended up in her care at such a young age.