Grey skies set in across all corners of the earth. The messengers we send out come back with identical reports of the same unmoving weather, from the gloomy mountains and forests to the west, to the wind-blasted steppes to the east and even across the flat deserts to the south. All is shrouded in eternal twilight. If the sun and moon rotate, then we do not see it behind the iron blanket that has been drawn over our villages, temples and castles.
It’s a danger we can’t swing a sword at, or buy off with coin, or seduce, or threaten, or stab in the back. So our lords are stuck with what to do. One would hope that the omen would dampen petty rivalries and snuff out little grudges. I despair, for it has only enflamed hatred and engorged spite into our memories. The lords and the serfs alike are snapping like mad dogs, more than ever before.
People accuse what they can. When they are not pleading to God, they are accusing the foreigners and their foreign gods. They accuse the cynical for lack of piety. They accuse the pious of zealousness. The gregarious for indulgence. The reclusive for pride. They accuse the rocks and the trees before they will accuse God, or the merchants, or the lords. They are so happily unhappy with their system that to change it now, in the face of oblivion, is unthinkable.
And all the while, the clouds grow thicker and the flames in our hearths splutter and fade.
Paddy Dobson
17th November 2020