Sulphur & Lightning Chapter 23: 022 - Unalterable

Read chapter 23 of Sulphur & Lightning by anaugustauthor on NovelPedia.

The pair was swiftly seated at a comparatively small table. It seemed she didn’t fancy having to shout to him from end to end of the large banquet table, which wasn’t too far away. She was apparently also conscious not to scare him off like last time and only laid out a modest selection of akamu and akara in front of him – the quintessential breakfast food, as far as he was concerned. He took his calabash full of the creamy pudding and poured some of it onto the floor. “What are you doing?” she queried suddenly, unbothered but still very curious. “Aren’t you supposed to offer your meal to the ancestors before eating?” he asked, surprised and embarrassed by her reaction and the small laugh she had when he answered. “Well,” she said, sprinkling something onto her own bean fritters, “that used to be pretty common but has kind of died out. I’m surprised you know about this.” “I’ve heard bits and pieces but have never had anything like an education on these matters… the Learning Crocodile Province is under Elven rule, after all.” “So, what do you want to know about Odinani?” Odinani referred to the religious and legal system rooted in the primary goddess of their realm, Ani, or Mother Earth. Besides some irrelevant and perhaps overstated snippets, he didn’t know much about it and therefore didn’t know where to start. “Is there really that much to know?” he asked. “It’s virtually just the Osu castes, sacrifices and other arcane things of that nature.” “You’re right,” she said simply, “I’m breaking the rules of the great goddess’s system by sitting down with you.” He was aware of that and looked at his rapidly cooling meal with guilt. He still hadn’t taken a bite, and neither did she push him on it. Even just sharing a table could be seen as an improvement from last time. “It’s not that big of a deal, though. I doubt Nne Ani (nne means mother) will descend on your account. I also made sure to sacrifice a large white ram to appease her, so we’re covered.” The joke didn’t put him at ease on the matter, but he had already gotten this far and would feel guilty if he let the food go to waste… again. (There were also armed bodyguards, so he couldn’t as well leave freely). He grabbed the fritters in his hand and tore them apart in the pudding, mixing the two together before using the deep calabash spoon to wolf down the whole meal. “So, do you do those sacrifices every day?” he asked almost immediately after clearing the bowls of their contents. “Only on market days,” she said with a lazy drawl, invoking the image of a sun-kissed cat. “Four days a week. But we pray to our personal god daily. That doesn’t require much sacrifice, just prayers and some special oils. We only present substantial sacrifices to it after some great success. The shrines to our ancestors are in our homeland and generally only receive attention when we travel home during the winter. Only the Bori really pay attention to our forlorn forebears in our day and age.” “The dance troupe?” he asked in puzzlement. “Well… yes and no,” she said, pushing her own bowl to the side now and washing her hands in the extra one on the side. Her guest had already wiped his hands on his clothes after eating, and she made a mental note to chide him afterwards. “They do practice their religion in large part through dance,” she continued, “but that’s just one expression of it. At the moment, a more radical branch is on the rise. I heard that even a high-ranking member of the Dari clan was attacked just outside the province boundaries. Naturally, they were wiped out.” Her cold and lazy smile made it seem like she was merely gossiping, not discussing conflicts that were shaking the world around them. Perhaps it was the security of being Highborn… the thought had crossed his mind, but he banished it very quickly. She didn’t seem so vapid as to not know when something was serious, especially as part of a trading clan. “They’re bold,” he noted, though he was not sure what else to describe them as