Finding a balance between reality and faiths

Year 1231, the Sanctuary of Athena:

Helping to watch the large herds of sheep belonging to the Sanctuary, was not quite what many orphans were expecting when they had been sent out today.

"This is soooooo boring!"

"I thought we were brought here to learn how to fight for Athena, not doing the same chores on the land as we used to do before!"

Quite a few of the boys were bored out of their minds, but two in the group were focusing on the task, showing that they had done this before.

"Hey! Three of the lambs are missing! We need to search for them at once, or the adults will be furious!" Seti expressed with alarm in his voice when both he and Ramses had done the counting twice, and each had found that something was not quite right with the number.

"What? They are likely just laying next to the ewes so they are not seen…" one of the newcomers started, only for Ramses to imitate how Irina would react when he or the twin brother was in trouble for some serious mischief and rammed his shepherd's staff upon the other boy's head.

"You idiot! Have you never watched sheep before?! If any of them goes missing and is found dead because of our failure to watch the whole herd properly, that is a loss to the Sanctuary as a whole because we need the wool for making textiles, the meat for food and it is a resource of fats and other stuff needed for something else!"

Not to mention how their master, Grand Pope Irina, most likely would react upon hearing that they had not tried to fix the situation. After living under her care for almost their whole lives, Seti and Ramses knew better than angering the old, female Gemini Saint on purpose unless it was to cheer up her bad mood.

"Granny is going to insist on this group searching for the missing lambs for the whole night until they are found…"

"I can already feel her furious glare upon us for being so careless despite clear orders from the adults!" Ramses admitted to his brother, both of them shuddering in fear of the mental image of Irina reaching out for her iron distaff for using it in a beating.

"Current mission to have been done before nightfall: Find those lambs and prove once again for Granny Irina that we are taking our responsibility for the sheep seriously!"

"Yes!"

Of course, the other boys had heard the twins not exactly being quiet.

"Oi, what is so scary about your grandmother being angry? Old people are not that scary."

"Nor able to hit us that hard, for that matter. Chill down, I am sure that lambs are just around the rocks here."

But the Egyptian twins were already sensing a very familiar Cosmo coming closer, and made the wise choice in dashing off at top speed in order to try and find the missing lambs, leaving the others to suddenly face the Grand Pope standing on a cliff a bit above them.

"Are you neglecting the intended lesson in taking responsibility for living beings?" Irina asked with a smile that would have terrified anyone more familiar with her.

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

It took an hour or two, perhaps, the brothers were not quite sure of the time, but when the sun began to settle, they had found all three of the missing lambs.

"Worth the extra trouble of needing to climb around the cliffs with the ropes for a bit," Ramses said, carrying one of the lambs over his shoulders because it had injured one front leg and could not walk as it should.

"Yes, it was dangerously close that they could have fallen down in a ravine and died there from starvation before being found or a predator taking them."

Having lived in the Sanctuary their whole lives, Seti and Ramses knew how important the livestock was not only for the farming villages, but for the whole Sanctuary itself. A place, like this, hidden away from the wider world, needed to ensure its survival by not being too dependent on food that was being smuggled in from Athen. The amount of needed food stuff to feed everyone was too large for that, and thus the Sanctuary owned a lot of fields where different types of grain and other crops were grown. Even the Twelve Temples and the main Temple where Athena was being raised, had their gardens where food was being grown, apart from the Pisces Temple needing some wider space for the poisonous roses acting as a last defense to the Chamber of the Pope and the temple of Athena herself.

"Seti! Ramses! Where are you?"

It was the voice of a young girl, calling their names in the twilight.

"Athena?"

"She better not have sneaked out when we did not return home earlier! Granny will freak out if she is gone!"

The young Goddess was five years younger than the twins, and they knew how rare it was for Athena to get separated from Irina or Aziz when she was brought out in the parts of the Sanctuary which was further away from the Twelve Temples, in general done by the female Grand Pope tying a rope around the waist of Athena to their own belt to prevent the young child from running too far, much like how she had done with Seti and Ramses in the same age. The old Taurus Saint was less strict about doing so, but both of them shared the same feeling of keeping the young Goddess near themselves.

"Seti! Ramses!"

Upon seeing them, five-year-old Athena broke out in a huge smile. And not far behind her, was Aziz in his everyday clothing as a doctor and his medicinal bag hanging over one broad shoulder.

"Good work, boys, on finding the lambs. You are showing yourselves able to understand the responsibilities that a Saint of Athena will face, in that the lives of comrades in battle may depend on you."

They bowed their heads in greeting for their senior Saint, and felt pride over doing well.

With all three of the children asleep in their beds some time after dinner, Aziz found Irina sitting at her loom to weave more fabric.

"It is a selfish wish of mine, Aziz…to deny Athena the twins needed to protect her as part of the Gold Saints. Because I know the pain of losing my own sister due to the Curse of Gemini, which haunts my foster sons as well from the moment they entered the world from the womb."

As much as Irina would have preferred to do otherwise, she knew that she had to train the boys as the next Gemini Saint and witness them wear the Gemini Cloth in the coming Holy War.

"No. It is a personal wish, in conflict with what you personally witnessed in the past. You know what Seti and Ramses will face as the Gemini Saint, and you want to spare them from the pain of being separated from each other by death," Aziz answered, pouring boiled water over some chamomile flowers in a cup so Irina could drink the herbal tea later.

"Exactly. It is my duty to train them to be my successors as the next Gemini Saint, but I am not comfortable with how the past will be repeated again."

Yes. Even with the soul part of Daria being inside the Gemini Cloth, it still did not lessen the horror and pain Irina could still recall as being connected at her death. She had long ago accepted that she could not mourn Daria for the rest of her long life, but the horrible knowledge that the same risked to happen again with Seti and Ramses in the same situation, gave her nightmares during really bad nights.

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

As Seti and Ramses were born to Muslim parents in Egypt before they had been orphaned, it fell upon Aziz to teach them about their native faith, since Irina refused to let go of her own belief in the Asar gods.

"I wish that Granny Irina could come with us to Mecca, uncle Aziz."

Of course this would come up, Aziz had expected it from one of the boys at some point now when they were old enough to understand the difference between different faiths.

"Unfortunately, non-Muslims are strictly prohibited from entering the city. Irina may not be too fond of Christianity, but she respects this rule among us Muslims and thinks that it is not worth drawing the wrong sort of attention to herself."

Neither Ramses or Seti enjoyed the answer, but Aziz did agree with Irina on this point that they had to learn the differences between wishes and reality.

"Is that why she does not allow us to witness when she makes offerings to the Asar gods? To avoid that we would see something we should not?"

"Most likely," Aziz admitted, without mentioning that once Irina was gone, any closer knowledge of her religion would disappear, because Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and all the other places where the Vikings once had lived, now were Christian kingdoms. That reveal would only break their hearts, and Irina had enough trouble with them and Athena on her bad days.

Perhaps she was not the most warm or nurturing woman when it came to caring for children, but Irina drew a clear line between discipline to teach right from wrong and actually hurting children without remorse. One good example of this, happened one day when Seti and Ramses overheard someone insult her which resulted in a fist fight between the young boys before a adult broke up the fight, and she had to scold them for how they had acted:

"Boys. I am grateful for you defending my honor against those newcomers with a horrible lack of social manners, but you are still not allowed to get into this sort of trouble. Your punishment is to go and help Aziz wash clean and sterilize his surgical instruments and deliver him a basket of clean bandages for next time someone comes to him with an injury."

"Yes, Granny!"

"Men vid Tors hammare…" Irina started in her native Swedish, before this response resulted in a light slap on their respective heads.

"Call me Master in public and Granny in private! Will you two never learn, desert brats."

But with the fondness she addressed them and using this nickname on the twin brothers, revealed her softer side.

At their current age, it was to be expected that the brothers would have found different interests, to not always be together or enjoying the same thing.

"Down at the forges today as well, Seti?" Irina asked, pausing in her writing, as the older twin returned from whatever he had done when having the afternoon free of training. He paused, then realized that she might have spotted him on the walk with Athena earlier.

"I like to watch the blacksmiths as they truly transform pieces of metal into everyday stuff and other items by using the very hot fire in the forge, their hammers and anvils."

Ah? This was not something Irina had expected. During the first months that she had been their foster mother, the female Gemini Saint honestly had worried that the boys would develop a fear of fire, from a tenuous connection deep within their first memories, that fire spreading itself around them and a burning building was somehow connected with losing their birth parents.

"If you choose to become a blacksmith outside your duty as a Saint when you are fully grown into an adult man, then you can help Ramses in becoming a doctor under the tutelage of Aziz by forging his own surgical instruments."

Hearing this suggestion, Seti smiled brightly and went off to find his brother and tell him about what she had said.

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

Author note: "Men vid Tors hammare" roughly means "But at Thor's hammer" in Swedish. There are no surviving existing swear words from the Viking period, so I had to make up something for the story