Meeting the older Gemini twins
The sound of some people landing on the stack of hay just outside the window, made Aspros look up from the scroll where he had done a lot of calculations. He could see Shion without the long robe he normally wore as the current Pope, that wild hair of his was impossible to miss, and the two boys were a slightly familiar sight from everytime one of them passed by the Gold Cloth.
"Ah, Shion already bought them here? Oh well, if the boys already have stopped that argument, might as well start the tales of our lives right away."
Closing his inkwell, the oldest twin from the 18th century went out to greet the three visitors to this spiritual space inside the Gemini Cloth.
"Ah…ah….achoo!"
While they did enjoy playing in the hay during harvest time together with the other children in the village, this unexpected landing caused Saga to sneeze from some stray hay straws in his nose.
"Fun to see you twice in a day, Shion, it is not often you get to have a talk with us thanks to your duties as the Pope," a voice greeted them in the Persian language spoken in the Ottoman Empire which Greece had been part of in the 18th century when they had been born, and Shion had to hide a smile. Of course Aspros would show off his skills as a polyglot just to impress the young Saga and Kanon, which was rather common among the Saints of Athena due to them coming from across the world.
"I think you and your fellow Gemini twins may be able to tell the story of your lives and the details of that damn "Curse of Gemini" better than myself, because there are some things that I personally do not know about," Shion responded in the mostly unchanged Greek spoken in the Sanctuary, so Saga and Kanon would understand what they were talking about.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
While Aspros was guiding the three guests to an agreed room for this meeting, the other generations of Gemini twins were busy with other stuff that could be useful for this.
"Defteros, could you please bring Amari and tell Irina to bring the girls too? I think he is still in his painting chamber," Daria asked as she kept an eye on the pot of boiling water for tea that was on the heath. Right behind her, Azel and Amir were helping to finish a few trays with bowls of dried fruits and nuts on one hand.
"Sure," Defteros responded, moving out of her way before something risked to happen without warning because it got a little cramped with too many people in there. The kitchen was the domain of Daria, because she was most like a normal housewife in character at first look, with literally nothing revealing her as a former Saint of Athena in her typical dress for the Viking culture and head scarf that she wore as a sign of having been married in life.
First, he went to a chamber where the female Gemini Saints would spin thread and weave fabric into clothing for them all. Even as spirits, they needed to pass time to avoid boredom between the Holy Wars in the living world and why not do the stuff that they had done in life?
"Irina, Shion have already brought Saga and Kanon, I saw Aspros greeting them."
"Oh, that was fast of him," an older-looking woman whose orange hair was strained with silver as a sign of having lived to a high age, yet still somewhat similar in looks to Daria, responded as she had just finished helping Elena and Lydia to dress up in finer clothing for this meeting. But unlike her sister, Irina wore a robe over her dress that revealed her as having been a Pope in life after their Holy War.
"We did not want to bring attention to our scars, so we chose to dress in our ankle-length dresses with long sleeves. You guys are used to seeing them after all those years, but Saga and Kanon are…"
"Yes, yes. They are our likely heirs in this era but still strangers yet because this is their first meeting with us all," Irina interrupted after attaching a hairpin to Elena's braided updo, then checking so the hair band was not too tight in keeping the hair of Lydia out of her face.
"Ramses! Seti! Where are you?"
"Coming right away, granny Irina!"
Out of habit from life, the two Egyptian twins hastly ducked for a pair of sewing needles of bone that were buried into the stone wall behind them from the sheer force of strength that Irina had tossed them with.
"Don't you ever learn that you better call me Master in public and Granny in private, you two desert brats!"
But the scolding from the sewing chamber was spoken in fondness, and the two brothers did grin towards each other, knowing that it was a normal reaction from their female Master. Some things had not changed in death.
"Irina, we crafted those new bone needles for you and the other ladies only half a year ago at the winter slaughter, do not break them that quickly, thank you!" Amir called from the gathering chamber further away, after recognizing the sound.
"Where is Sade?" Azel asked Ramses as he poked out his head from the kitchen, giving over two trays for the Egyptian brothers to carry with them.
"She went to catch Tirenan and Owen so they are coming back for this meeting. You know how far they can swim…"
In another chamber, Defteros was not surprised at the other man not reacting to him entering. And it was not merely for Amari being very focused on the half-finished painting in front of him.
"Amari, Amari."
Patting the African Gemini Saint gently on a shoulder for attention, Defteros made sure to keep his face within eyesight for the other.
Saga and Kanon have come with Shion to be told of our lives and that stupid curse that Romulus and Remus placed on the generations following Lydia and Elena.
Defteros did say this with his voice, but he was also raising his Cosmo so Amari did hear the words by connecting it with his own. After all, Amari had gone completely deaf from a hard-won fight against the Dream Gods just before the Holy War that he and his younger twin sister Sade had fought in, and yet that complete loss of hearing had been expected for a long time since Amari was born with a congenital hearing impairment, which had not been a easy handicap to live with in a era where literacy was not particularly widespread outside the educated nobility and others who could pay for a school education.
I will come, Amari responded by putting down his brush on the table next to him. From an open window as he handed over a damp towel for Amari to clean off any color stains on his hands, Defteros heard the muted sounds of protests followed by what had to be two separate bodies being tossed out of the water. It seemed like Sade had just returned with the Irish twins, just in time to pour two large buckets of freshwater over them to try and lessen the almost eternal smell of saltwater on them before they would be hastily dressed in dry clothes.
"Good, no one is missing."
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On the way towards the chamber where they could hear different voices, Saga and Kanon could tell that this spiritual version of the Gemini Temple had to be much bigger in size than the real one. But it was not only the indoor decoration that revealed the different eras and cultures of their predecessors, but the surroundings outside.
"Is that the sea?!"
"And the pyramids in Giza!"
Laughing for himself over their wonder, Aspros took the chance to explain what the different surroundings meant:
"Yes, we believe that this spiritual temple is trying to let us connect with our roots, even if some of the cultures now are part of history. The sea here to the west is for Tirenan and Owen as they were born in an Irish fishing village, Amari and Sade come from a tribe living in Sahara not far from the Nile, so they have a small connection to Seti and Ramses despite being born centuries apart. That dense forest in the north side is for Russa where Daria and Irina was born, but also for their blood relatives in Sweden during the Viking era. And the steppe there is for the Mongolian origins of Azel and Amir, despite that they were named in Arabic because that was the common language of the era."
"Wow…"
Shion made a point of not reminding the young brothers that they were acting differently from earlier today.
The chamber was big enough to hold a high number of people, pillows and mats to sit on had been spread out, with a table of snacks and drinks in the middle. Yet the different Gemini Saints had made a point of dressing in the everyday clothing of their birth cultures, perhaps to help to keep them separate, and they also made a point to not dressing up in the same colors or patterns.
"Saga, Kanon, let me present them all and the years they fought for Lady Athena, clockwise: Lydia and Elena, 246 AD."
The Greek sisters nodded from their place, despite having died five years between them, there was little doubt that they had been identical sisters in the same age.
"Tiernan and Owen, 496 AD."
The Irish brothers were less identical despite sharing the same brownish-blonde hair color and pale grey eyes, Tirenan having a Celtic spiral tattoo in blue under his right eye and slightly curly hair, while Owen had straight hair with a faint scar on the left side of his nose.
"Amari and Sade, 746 AD."
The African twins was indeed a break from the norm of same-sex twins by being a brother and sister-set, and looked more like normal siblings born close in age. Sade wore a head scarf as sign of that she and her older twin brother had been born in the faith of Islam, and kept following it even now in death.
"Daria and Irina, 996 AD."
If they had died at the same age and people only saw their shared orange hair in the distance, the shoulder-length hair and scar across her left eye would have revealed it to be Irina on a close look, while Daria had hips-length hair in two long braids on her front.
"Seti and Ramses, 1246 AD."
The direct successors to Irina as the Gemini Saint in the mid-12th century had also styled their hair differently to easier tell them apart; Seti had his hair cut short like most men in a hot desert climate would do, while Ramses had his hair a little longer, enough for a small pony tail to be spotted over his shoulder.
"Amir and Azel, 1496 AD."
Perhaps as a nod to their nomadic origins, Amir had a single yet very long braid falling along his back, and Azel several smaller ones.
"And finally, my brothers in arms, Aspros and Defteros, 1746 AD."
Since those seven sets of twins were their seniors as the Gemini Saints, Saga and Kanon knelt as a sign of showing respect.
¨We are honored to meet you all."
"You are welcomed, boys."
"Shion, how much do they know about that curse?"
Revealing that he had only shared the story of Lydia and Elena so far in the history lessons when that curse had been mentioned, Tirenan and Owen looked at each other.
"Might as well start our part of the tale, then. Amari, could you please?"
Taking out a long scroll that he had laid beside him and carefully rolling out the first part, Amari revealed it to not be written text, but a long series of drawings of the different generations that he had used his artistic skills in to create a little help for this sort of storytelling. Rolling past the drawings of Lydia and Elena during their life, Owen came to the image of him and his brothers as infants, with the same Celtic spiral as the tattoo of Tirenan painted above them to help identify which generation it was, and the year of their birth.
"Our story begins in Eastern Ireland, in the year 481, in the small fishing village where we were born…"
And the tale of the Irish-born Gemini Saints from the 5th century started.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: Persian was one of the common languages in the Ottoman Empire, and was used for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works as well taught in state schools. Given that Aspros seems have literally hoarded as much knowledge as possible as part of his goal to become Pope, him learning several languages just to be able to read and write in those languages as well, seems very much in character for him (part of the reason Shion and Dokho joked about him as a professor in the modern world last chapter!)