A False History, Of Sorts
Somewhat continued from last week.
For all intents and purposes, life didn't change drastically for Ben and his crew under Roman rule, which is what they were under, after that day at Stonehenge, which was simply known as "The Henge", back in those days.
It wasn't not called Stone Henge because stones were the only building material handy at the time, so of course it was going to be a "stone" henge, because what else would they have made it out of, marmalade? No, it was simply because Druids were, as has largely been forgotten by history, lazy, and found calling it by its proper name, Stone Henge, entirely too cumbersome, especially when there was an opportunity to stop talking about the damn stones they'd carted all the way all over England, Wales, and Ireland because no one could make up their mind where they wanted the stupid things left.
The men wore more tunics, the women wore more makeup, and they drank wine instead of mead, which was a godsend, really, since the vast majority of the Druids hated the taste of mead, and only drank it because it seemed like an authentic Druid-like drink to be drinking. Ben picked up a job working down at the baths, in Bath, which he was tasked with showing the Romans to, in the first place, as a pleasant sort of place to send tourists. His designation as first official tourist official and tour guide took place in a quiet ceremony at midnight, with half the elders dressed in tunics, received from the Roman centurions on the day of their "Great Showing Up", as it was coming to be known. Ben, being one of the brighter, chattier Druids, when he wasn't hungover, was selected to show the visitors some of the lovely scenery on the way to the hot baths at Bath, partly because the elders knew of his generally sunny disposition, partly because they figured it would keep him away from their daughters (which was a driving force for most of the elders' decisions, seeing as nine out of the ten of them had daughters of a certain age), and partly because he'd worked on the crew charged with carrying one of the giant stone blocks down to Bath and back, when it was proposed, then un-proposed, that the stones be moved further apart, with some of the stones remaining on Salisbury Plain, some moved to Bath, some moved to Newcastle, and yet others moved right on the very edge of the cliffs of Dover. The crew charged with moving stones to the cliffs of Dover never quite made it to their destination, though, in a practice run thought wise by their foreman, accidentally dropped two stones off into the sea while doing a "test run" of balancing the stones on the edge of a cliff somewhere near Bournemouth, where they probably sit to this day, though no one would ever know, since the foreman did his level best to ensure the elders that he was only given charge of one stone to move, anyway, not three, and he had no idea what they were talking about when they went on about the missing stones being replaced with fresh ones from some mountain in Wales with a name containing far too many 'y's to be pronounceable. This foreman would later run away with the elder statesman's daughter who no longer based his decisions solely on getting young men away from his daughter, prompting renewed vigor from the nine other elders with regards to idle young Druids.
And so Ben took the Romans on to Bath.
Maybe to be continued next week? Maybe? I don't know? Why am I speaking like I'm constantly asking questions? No idea.
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