Rituals
My father liked rituals. He said that it kept up morale and preserved the rightness of our cause. I’ve always felt like one of those Balkan royals that bumped around the globe after World War I. Bowing and scraping to each other in the slums of Shanghai.
I was about four when we escaped. I don’t remember much except being bundled in a blanket by one of the guards, and the nauseous passage through the gate. I remember being hungry after that, most of my childhood memories are of hunger or of the occasional great feast.
The court, if you would like to call it that, has established a small settlement here at the head of navigation for the river Mira. We are turning in to quite the trading center for the region, shipping down river and with pack trains into the bush. Our home is a distant memory and the sons of my father’s guards now serve me.
We raise and lower the flag each day, and once a month hold a grand parade. My mother’s serving maids still curtsey to her and the guards salute me. Rituals.
We still post a guard at the gate, though I suspect our enemies haven’t the vaguest idea where we went those many years ago. The gates technology was beyond them, and will forever be, I suspect. We came through, though, so I keep the guard posted, against enemies or to aid other refugees such as ourselves.
Pastor Samuels died a few years ago, and with him went the faith of our fathers. Most of the young people now worship as the natives do. Others, like myself, still mouth the old words out of habit. Mother spends hours with her beads before the icon of Our Lady of the Stars. A few of the older guards and a smattering of young ones profess the old religion, blood and steel. Without conflict, however, it is a dying faith as well.
We have no conflicts. The natives are very generous and tolerant of our peculiarities. An epidemic of fairness and trust broke out upon our arrival and has lingered the last three decades.
Each morning I make a circuit of the town with my personal guards. I hear the occasional grievance and resolve the usual disputes. And, of course, the mothers with marriage age daughters parade them before me like prize winning stock at a county fair. I am young, and hold no desire for marriage as yet, though my mother would have it otherwise.
I go through the motions. We all do. Our morale, well, as good as one might expect. Our cause, lost long ago and far away. And our uniforms are beginning to fray.
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