They began arriving in large wooden ships in the mid-afternoon, just after tea and cakes and the ritual sacrifice.
Granted, the ships weren't all that large, they just seemed that way to a bunch of people who had never considered driving anything bigger than a canoe.
Admittedly, it was a large canoe, but these ships were a lot bigger than any canoe they'd driven.
And these magnificent ships, which, if they could have read the enscriptions from that distance, were property of Charles the Really Fabulous, slowly bore down on the silent seas evermore towards the shore as the sails were reigned in and the ships left to rumble down in the waters off the sandy beaches littered with people lounging in post-tea and cakes and sacrificial lethargy.
The children, who had been transfixed, as usual on lazy Saturday afternoons in the mid-autumn, by the match going down on the court below, became just as transfixed by the ships coming in to the harbour, and by the little men beginning to clamber down the sides of the big ships into smaller, altogether less-impressive ships, clanging and banging on quite a bit with their shiney hats and assorted accessories, a few of them shouting something, sometimes congenial, other times belligerently and possibly a bit bitchy, back and forth, between the men on the bigger boats and the men on the smaller boats. The men in the crowd on the shore and alongside the stadium saw a disappointing number of women amongst the yelling and clanging people on board both kinds of ship, and soon lost interest, and joined the men who had never shown an interest and had been poking the participants in the match with sticks.
Due to the lack of a crowd, the match was called short, a draw proclaimed, and both teams huddled into the small room in the wall of the stadium to be sacrificed in that evening's sacrifice.
disclaimer:
The preceding rather short snippet of a story is a rather short snippet from the forthcoming novel, And Montezuma Said..., by the author of Time: a novel, God Coffee, I Miss You, An Unrelated Storey: History Stutters, Mongolian Wine: Not a Roman A Clef, The Vernon Hotel a television series adopted for a novel, and the radio script, soon appearing on the Prairie Home Companion on the American National Public Radio, "The Man With No Name."
And, while he actually didn't give us explicit permission to use the preceding passage, he's really quite a nice guy, and surely won't mind, if he happens to read this week's issue, which, considering the circumstances, may or may not appear in the archives, to avoid possible litigation and the like.
There is the slight possibility that he may not have wanted some or all of the above projects, both pending and finished and done with, announced, and likely not in this fashion, this forum.
However, we believe, that, with time, a little hard work, a very good ontologist, and three packs of cards, we will achieve the goals we have set out upon, we shall conquer the invading legions, and the chief shall sleep soundly at night, knowing full well that life, as it is and was, will tarry forth boldly, wheresoforth great fruit shall be fruitful, and there shall be a plentious bounty. Amen.
Yer Weekly Horoscopes. star-a-riffic!