Historical Setting, cold unknown
“Do you know what this is?” the raging man asks Os.
Us doesn’t answer.
“It’s a bog body! A pagan priest chooses a glamourous or youthful perfect specimen, and leaves the burn of the rope or the mark of the blade nearly hidden when a sacrifice is given to their gods — then it is buried in a peat bog so it may never rot and can be food for the gods forever. [Footnote] And you, detestable rat of the death pits, you have gone and dug in the bogs! The gods will be very angry! Do you see what you have done to me?”
The other, the Oos, doesn’t answer, only cowers more deeply.
“What do you take me for, Oos? An idiot? I am the smartest man in the world.”
Still Us does not to answer.
“I’d have to be a fool to think you could dig the grave of three spies and find no gold, only two skulls, and this… this nearly living man!”
Now the raging brut slithers the circumference of the hovel to get his boot wedged for a kick to the whimpering bundle of Os; and the Us is upended spilling the dregs of the dig and exposing its tender underbelly.
“You’ve got my gold and the third suit of mail, haven’t you? You dug up this peat bog body and expect me to believe there were three bodies and only two byrnies. You are a thief! The stash was supposed to be mine!”
I have no strength. Dead as I was for a decade or a century or a thousand years, I have no voice to say ‘Os was right.’ I was buried with them but I wore no chain mail and the gold was already stolen from us while we lived. I’m thirsty now and hungry and tired, so tired, I can’t speak. But the stinking russet giant is relentless.
He looks this way. Maybe he saw me watching him. I close my eyes, but now he is speaking to me as though he assumes I see him.
“So bog man, it is your good fortune to be unearthed and found among my treasures! I, a better lover than Thor, am your best hope.”
Am I supposed to laugh? He has no resemblance to any Pagan god or Christian saint, or even has he the lesser glow of a king. He is simply a raging braggadocious idiot.
Dear God let me not forget trust and truth in all of this.
[Footnote] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/europe-bog-bodies-reveal-secrets-180962770/ retrieved, 4-27-24
(Continues Tuesday, Nov. 12)
Lazarus Ink 