Mothers
Ouroboros blossomed with Daughters of all stripes everyday around noon, but it was never meant to. The compound (not city) was never meant to house so many women and men (especially not men). Their resources were tight, had been tight for years. New greenhouses and barracks had been built, and the Mr. Handys worked 24/7, but the temple and the surrounding buildings were always meant to be temporary. Hecate's end goal was always the dissolution of Ouroboros, as her Golden Children spread across the wasteland and reinstated the tribes. It was only ever meant to be a brief interruption in the perfect continuity of tribal living in the four corners region of the former United States. Once the "natural order" had been restored, Hecate had even planned to renounce her Godhood, and disappear back into the wasteland, as ignored and irrelevant to the tribes as she'd once been to the Twisted Hairs.
At least, that was what she claimed. Julia never thought much of that plan. As much as she respected and admired the goddess, her high-minded ideals often overlooked everything Julia understood about human nature. Hecate's vision extended hundreds of miles, into hearts and minds, and into the future, but it very rarely included what was right in front of her. There was no way any of her Daughters would ever consent to returning to the way things were before. Even if Hecate wanted to (which Julia personally found dubious) her worshippers wouldn't let her just disappear back into the wasteland. No-one was going to have a big happy smile while they tore the temple down brick-by-brick on their way back to subsistence living in xenophobic, pre-industrial tribal communities. Daughters already had the community they wanted. That was clear every day in Ouroboros at noon.
Everyone smiled at Julia as she passed, and not because she was the High Priestess (Julia was so bad about applying her facepaint that any amount would have disguised her from the average Daughter, much less the thick coat she'd slathered on) but because they were happy. Even as rationing continued and Ouroboros got smaller they were happy. The harried Sibyls, the hungover Harpies, and the Golden Children all smiled and laughed and flirted and played. That was life in Ouroboros.
A group of Hounds and Harpies liked to hunt in the morning. Sometimes they'd return empty handed, but today they returned to cheers with a colossal Colorado River Toad on a spit. It was roughly the size of two adults, and as she carried it in one of the Harpies boasted that it almost swallowed her whole! A group of children danced around the hunting party and burst into laughter at the story.
While the frog cooked, the hunters dispersed into the square. Daughters milled about the courtyard, gossiping and philosophizing and just generally enjoying themselves in a lackadaisical way. More than a few were outside simply to read in the sun. A handful of Daughters who worked in the greenhouse carefully distributed fresh fruit with peanut butter (peanuts being in good supply and not subject to rationing, although honey was scarcer). Worshippers of all stripes worked on the mural that graced the wall of the armory. On the left, a world engulfed in flames and howling with pain, on the right of the mural the world was a green garden teeming with all sorts of beautiful and delicate animals that didn't exist anymore. In the center of the mural sat the Goddess herself, Hecate. She held both death and life in her hands. Her left hand, death, was clenched and furious. Her right, life, was an open palm, and in it a magnificent bird with rainbow-colored plumage perched. Nearly every Daughter contributed to the mural. Even Julia had self-consciously added a few small ghouls to the world in flames. Other Daughters had expanded her three monsters into an entire twisted, shrieking army; one that, not coincidentally, resembled a Legion cohort, wielding blocky scrap swords and red standards. Julia was too scared to add anything to the right side of the painting. She wasn't confident she could create something beautiful.
A Daughter offered her a small, tart apple smeared with peanut butter and Julia gratefully accepted it. The smell of cooking frog made her stomach growl. In large group meals the Daughters were allowed to spice more liberally, which always guaranteed a good turnout. Unlike the tribal feasts of the Twisted Hairs, Julia was a regular fixture. These meals were her primary source of food, except when she ate with Atia. When left to her own devices, Julia's meals were mostly liquid, and their slim nutritional value derived solely from whatever fruit Avata had decided to mix into her paint thinner.
Four young children rushed past, laughing and giggling. Julia overheard a Daughter ask where the High Priestess was and decided to follow the kids, three girls and a boy. She knew who they were but not their names. One of the girls, at eight the oldest, was a bit of a bully, and the boy's bachelor status was likely to be confirmed any day. All four of them were birthed in Ouroboros to Hecate's most devout. Their mothers, Julia noted, might have even been in the square, waiting to eat. Not that they would ever recognize each other. They led her to a dirt field where nearly one hundred other young children were playing. The fad among the Golden Children was to draw in the dirt, with their fingers or with sticks. All of them worked together to draw elaborate patterns, dozens of them interlocking and spanning twenty, thirty square feet, huge mandalas that could only be appreciated from above. The kids would remotely command an eyebot up into the sky, have it take a picture, then wipe the ground clean and draw something else. They were perfect for low-resolution images, and all the computers across Ouroboros used the pictures as save screens. For whatever reason whenever she saw the kids make their art, Julia felt pangs of nostalgia.
Among the Golden Children was a group that Julia was close with. There were five of them. None of them were popular with the other children, and the only reason they grouped together was because of Julia's influence. There was Tysha, who at the age of thirteen still wet her bed; Norris, who had a stutter; Vansar who was mildly autistic; Nualla, who had a hormone imbalance; and Deva, who was ostracized simply because she was odd-looking. They were the ones who started the mandala fad- they started drawing them in empty dirt fields because no other kids would play with them. They loved Julia and she loved them. She had to catch herself before she joined in and accidentally let slip her disguise.
Tysha was in charge, of course. Save the other outcasts nobody liked her, but nobody questioned her authority, either. Among the domesticated and docile Golden Children she was one of few to possess a drive to lead, who refused to be complacent. Nor did anyone dispute Norris when he angrily and sputteringly corrected someone on their drawing, since he was the geometry king. Julia chuckled to herself as the boy, a few years older and twice Norris' size, supplicated himself and hastily undid his mistake, before Norris could even finish berating him. Even Deva, who remained timid and withdrawn, was smiling and laughing and enjoying herself. The kids all came together, they flitted apart, they played with that special anarchy of innocence. Julia couldn't help but smile as she watched, and unthinkingly rested her hand on her abdomen. Before she knew it she was calculating, in the event of war, how many of these children would die.
She stared at each of their faces as she personally tallied their chance of survival. It wasn't a matter of skill or strength. The cold fact was that people died in wars, regardless of who they were. For instance, despite excelling in combat training, the older boy who Norris chided would almost certainly die. Since he was older it meant he'd be firing the opening volley. It was safe to assume every child who fought in the beginning of the war would die. That was the way of war. Even if every soldier enjoyed a kill ratio as lopsided as three-hundred, four-hundred to one, they'd still die with Caesar's forces not even a third depleted, and those forces that yet remained would be the veterans and Centurions and the most dangerous. The first wave of Hecate's Golden Children were going to exhaust themselves slaughtering unskilled recruits; the second wave would die fighting battle-hardened soldiers.
Not that they wouldn't win. Three-hundred to one wasn't a wholly unreasonable goal for Hecate's Golden Children. They had the training, they had the weapons and the resources, and most importantly they were striking when Legion command was at its most disorganized (provided there were no more Butterflies). Overcoming Caesar's numbers would be a problem, certainly, but they planned for that. It didn't matter, though. In war, people died. They died together, they died alone, they died of illness, they died on accident, they died after weeks and months of agonizing torture. These people, these children she was watching play in the dirt behind Ouroboros were going to die. The children of mothers all across the wasteland were going to die, on both sides, if Hecate and Butterfly got their way. For what were the Legionaries, if not children too? Malformed and cruel children, to be sure, but children all the same.
Norris would almost certainly be killed in the war. Tysha, perhaps not, but Nualla definitely. Deva would likely survive. Vansar would be lucky to be killed, he was the top soldier of his age bracket and his orders would be to engage in unconventional warfare deep behind enemy lines. The most skilled would see the most, have the most opportunities to meet their untimely end. Those that did return would never be the same. Julia had waged war for more than fifteen years. The girl she'd been at the start was a stranger now, and even then, she'd never been allowed the innocence these children were afforded.
That was the cruelest piece of Hecate's plan. As much as she loathed the docility of the Golden Children, Julia also believed it was precious and novel in the wasteland. These kids had nothing to hate and fear. For them, the world wasn't a bad place. Hecate made sure they grew up in a loving environment where their physical and emotional needs were provided for. No children had grown up with so much in a long time, even before the bombs fell. To raise these children in such a loving environment just to make them fight in a war was nothing but pure sadism.
Sure, they were taught to fight, but there was a difference between fighting and war. For them, the war was about bringing enlightenment and peace to the rest of the wasteland. That was a cruel trick, though. When war came, they wouldn't be fighting for the rights of the oppressed. They wouldn't be fighting for a better world. They were fighting for Hecate and Butterfly and the grudges of all the other bitter old bitches across the wasteland. They'd be fighting on behalf of the angry dead. War is spiritual rot, it rots the heart and soul of everyone it touches. Julia didn't want to think what would happen to these kids, after all the bloodshed and torment and killing and watching their friends die, after war had burned away so much, when they realized the lie. Just the thought of it made her sad.
Julia wanted better for these kids. She wanted a better future for everyone in Ouroboros. War was the way of the old world. Tribalism was Hecate and Harpy's way. As the Golden Children finished their play and returned to their schooling, Julia made her decision. The Daughters might want war, but no mother ever did. There would be no war. There would be no war.