sanemagazine



Temple of Mithras




"Bring in the virgin!"
A cry rose up out of the crowd of the sort that usually accompanies people shouting about bringing in the virgin.
It generally goes along the lines of 'waheey!' whether you're for or against virgin sacrifices.

It was a beautiful day.
This was taking into account that they were in London. And taking into account that half the people were Roman, and complaining loudly about how much better the weather was in Rome, lounging on the stone steps of some piazza or another in the sun and warmth and everything.
It was raining, but only occasionally, and only in the gentlest of possible manners. Very befitting the scene of a mass virgin sacrifice, as a matter of fact.

At the top of the stairs, almost missed by the crowd below in their passions against the weather (and perhaps, by extension, the whole of England itself), stood the virgin. Who would not be terribly disappointed if they continued on complaining while she waited patiently for the required ten minutes before she was legally allowed to escape quietly by slipping back out the door through which she'd come. And the crowd, realising their mistake only too late would be forced to sacrifice a Gaul instead, something that would make the English portion of the crowd happy, at any rate, and give the proper Romans just one more thing to complain about, a pasttime that was becoming exceedingly popular amongst them.
Unfortunately for her, it was one of the Gauls that noticed her standing at the top of the steps, and in the interest of self-preservation and after a few unheeded calls of "Hey, hey" and pointing at the head of the stairs, he simply shouted out "Virgin!", bound to get attention in any situation, really.

And so she was lugged down the stairs and brought to the sacrificial altar at the centre of the temple (though it hadn't yet been written, she would have been desperately calling to mind "The Second Coming" line "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold") still slick with olive oil and pig fat from a game of poker no one seemed to want to talk about. The talk, in not being about the pig fat and olive oil poker game incident, as it was allowed to be referred to but no further, slowly stopped being about the poor state of the weather as the sun came out and started to focus on past virgin sacrifices they'd seen or heard about, competent sacrificers, and boasts of having been at last year's gala virgin sacrifice/pig roast/dedication of a Turkish bath (which everyone thought was a bit strange, and would have much preferred them dedicating Turkish delights, when it came down it, over the baths, which were nice and all, but you can't really compete with chocolate, can you?).

There was also one insistent voice that this was to be continued next week... more likely than not the Gaul who'd shouted 'virgin' and was currently lying about having seen the great performance of Roger the Sacrificer at Glastonbury in '42.

disclaimer:
The weather in England, especially when compared with that of Rome, is not our fault.
And I happened to think it was a quite fine day, anyway, myself.


Yer Weekly Horoscopes for the one hundred seventy sixth week in a row.