Statues

Atia gave birth to a healthy baby boy via c-section. She was only pregnant in Ouroboros for two and a half months, and she spent most of that time off her feet. She was given accommodations amongst the other pregnant women in a maternity ward that she learned was of particular religious significance to the Daughters of Hecate.

She learned from her ward-mates about the highly formalized and practiced ritual of conception within the Daughters. All pairings were organized by the Goddess herself, and to have a child that was not sanctioned by Hecate was blaspheme. Atia was terrified that she would be forced to give up her baby. Unbeknownst to her she was supposed to have an abortion in order to stay with the Daughters, but Julia interceded on her behalf.

Atia was still scared of the strange world she had been brought into. After she was outed as a blasphemer none of the other women in her ward would talk to her. She was alone in what at first seemed like a very inviting place, but which had turned out to be unfriendly. Thankfully, Julia visited her regularly.

"Don't worry," Julia comforted her, "Once you have your kid everything will get better. You can see the baths, the gardens, the library..."

"What's a library?" Atia interjected.

"A library?" Julia sipped on her coffee. Whenever she was in Ouroboros Julia wore her facepaint, as was respectful to the Goddess. She also preferred to be shirtless. She spent so much time away from Ouroboros, weeks spent without taking off her armor even to sleep, that she tried to wear as little clothing as possible when she was back in the fold. Her right breast had been tattooed with a swirl when she was still a Twisted Hair, and her face paint was styled after her tattoo. "A library is where we keep all the books. I'm sure Caesar has one somewhere."

"Books!" Atia sat up in shock, "There are books here?!"

"Oh yeah," Julia smiled over her cup, "And that isn't all. There's a bar, a dancehall, the hookah room..."

"I haven't seen a book that wasn't a military ledger in years. I haven't even seen a ledger since I got sold to Aurelius," Atia reflected sadly. When she was still part of the Fredonians they had a few books that she had poured over, only to watch them thrown into the fire by the Legion.

"Well, the next time I visit, I'll bring you a book, okay? Any preference?"

So Julia started bringing books from the library whenever she visited. Atia had not made any preference as to what she wanted to read, so Julia brought her some history books about ancient Rome and Julius Caesar's Commentarii, to educate her on the true history of the Legion. At first Atia was furious, angry that she and the whole wasteland had been deceived. She talked to Julia about it and Julia laughed it off, telling her, "Well now you know. Don't worry about anybody else."

"That's, that's... irresponsible! This monster is out there subjugating innocent people because he wants to pretend to be Julius Caesar and you aren't doing anything about it?!" Atia argued.

"I'm doing plenty about it, okay? We all are. We're working on a new plan to bring Caesar down. In any case, exposing the lie wouldn't change anything. Most fall for the lie pretty damn easily," Julia muttered. Atia was offended by her insinuation, "I mean to say, most of the Legionaries probably wouldn't care even if they found out Caesar was just a pretender. They'd still go around killing and enslaving."

Julia started bringing other books. Some fiction, some non-fiction. Atia read them all hungrily. Sometimes they discussed the books, but other times Julia hadn't read them and they had to talk about other things. Mostly they talked about their lives, funny and sad stories of things they had done or had happened to them. Sometimes Julia helped Atia work through the trauma of being a slave. Once when they were talking (and Atia had just read Huckleberry Finn) they discussed slavery in general.

"One thing I always wondered, why don't Legion slaves just escape?" Julia asked, "I've seen them in plenty of situations where they're left alone for hours on end, right on the edge of Legion territory. Why don't they just run?"

Atia was sometimes shocked at how ignorant Julia was, and she had to remind herself that Julia had never experienced life under Legion rule.

"And go where, exactly?" she asked.

"I don't know, but if you go far enough west there's a whole nation of people who are free. There's places out there!"

Atia took a deep breath.

"When my tribe was defeated, back when it was still the Blackfoot tribe and not 'Caesar's Legion,' they destroyed... everything," she sighed mournfully, "I don't remember a lot about being a Fredonian, but I will always remember the statues. We had these stone statues, it was this thing the tribe had done for years, everyone decorated their houses with them. Some people had kind of crappy ones but some people had... just really beautiful, really intricate statues. Statues they had spent their whole lives carving. Some were of people, some were of animals, but everyone had their own to be proud of. Your statue was who you were," Atia made a sad, far-away look, gazing into a place that didn't exist anymore, "Among the Fredonians, your statue was who you were. When the Blackfoots beat us, I mean really beat us, in a way that no tribe had ever defeated another tribe before, the first thing they did was they took everyones' statues, and they smashed them. They picked them up and they threw them on the ground, threw them off the cliff-face, whatever it took to destroy them. That was when we stopped being Fredonians."

Julia thought about her own tribe, how after the Legion conquered the Twisted Hairs they probably made everyone cut their hair. She had the sad thought of everyone forced into the meeting circle to have their beautiful dreads hacked off by Legion machetes.

"For all of us that was home. We didn't know anything else. We had our village, and our hunting ground, and when that was gone we had nothing. The wasteland isn't a place of possibilities, people who left the tribe died out there. We had nowhere to go. So we stayed," Atia looked back at Julia, "And anyway, there are slaves who try to escape, even still. At least there were before I got sold. They all end up being crucified, but they still try."

Julia looked away, and thought sadly for a moment.

"I'm sorry I asked. It's a painful thing, I understand."

"I'm glad you asked," Atia squeezed Julia's hand, "because you understand now."

A week later Atia gave birth. She named her son Julius.