Goddess, Sing of the Rage of Anaxandros | A Pelasgian Tale of Three Realms: Aresura, Caria, & Cyrene

[Josepania]

Aftokratorikó Anáktoro tou Anaxándrou, Anaxandroupolis, I Ierí Aftokratoría tis Aresoúras
27/12/2021, 1000hrs

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The church bells were still ringing as joyously as they were on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, though at this moment they were only heralding the beginning of the tenth hour on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month in the Year of the Savior twenty twenty-one. It seemed that any item, Basileus Iōséph XV Anaxandros-Konstantinos observed, that was given a religious significance in at least some form could transform the most mundane of its functions into something holier, more mysterious. Be they bells, buildings, bread and wine, even Emperors, what was perceived to be touched by the Lord could be transformed from the profane to the sacred, and that was a power few could understand even if they even bothered to attempt it.

The Basileus had tried. Ever since he was a child he struggled to understand the reverence and near-worship that was laid at his feet day after day, even though, hidden in the deepest corners of his heart, he did not understand why he was deemed worthy of it. He had attempted to confess his fears to his father when he was still alive, who sharply rebuked his apparent attempt to shed the heavy mantle of Successor to the Conqueror. Years later he confessed the blasphemous sin of his doubt in His Own Majesty to the Patriarch of Antiochia, the highest religious authority within the Empire before the re-acquisition of the Holiest of Holy Cities of Hierosolyma. Rather than gently guide him back to fold with the love of a shepherd, he was verbally struck, beaten, and corralled like a recalcitrant sheep back in his place with the cruelty of a novice farm hand. It was clearly unthinkable to the powers-that-be that the power-that-be, the Basileus himself, could not understand the nobility of his bloodline and the holiness of his person, as head of the true successor to Anaxander's Dream of a united Pelasgia under the rule of his sons and daughters in Anaxandroupolis. And so, rather than seek wisdom from a mortal on this earth for a third time and risk further humiliation and shame, he sought the answers in prayer to the Savior, to the Conqueror, to the Archangels and the many, many, many Saints he could choose from within the Tiburan Catholic Church: Why Was He Basileus?

They were silent.

Maybe they didn't know either. If so, that was incredibly troubling, for if even the Divine doubt the majesty of His Majesty, then who was His Majesty to remain His Majesty? The subsequent questions, for indeed many others sprouted from this rabbit hole, would've made the Pelasgian ancient philosophers' heads spin in bewilderment. It was, ultimately, a dangerous road to travel without guidance, and thus far the Basileus had not recruited a sufficient guide or, at minimum, companion for this journey.

So he remained in Purgatory of Existence, trapped between the Heaven of His Perceived Majesty and the Hell of His Blasphemous Doubt, allowed only to show one and not the other, and not able to enjoy the life of moderation in all things that the philosopher Aristotle preached centuries before Christ preached his own holy philosophy. Therefore he resolved to showed the former by being inaccessible to most, and remained in the latter through the same self-imposed inaccessibility. A vicious cycle that allowed him no exit or relief.

His one remaining comfort was, perhaps, that Anaxander had the same feelings as well. This too was a blasphemous thought. To the Aresouranoí the Conqueror was the ideal Pelasgian they were destined to emulate: glorious, confident, invincible, unbeatable, unstoppable. But did they know him, truly? Or did they only know him like they currently knew the Basileus? That was a mystery that, perhaps, the Basileus could solve. Perhaps the answer was indeed to emulate the Conqueror, regardless of his true personality.

Perhaps through living Anaxander's Dream, he could escape the Nightmare of Reality.

 

[Natal]

Stamatis Estate, between Palia Dongola and Pakhoras, Sublime Cyrenian State

Andreas took a deep breath and sighed absently. He returned for nearly two weeks already at his family's estate, and was now walking between the rows of orange and pomegranate trees. He could feel the strong sun shining and burning his head and his shoulders, as the Cyrenian heat, even in December forces one to be shirtless when it was socially acceptable, so aid the cooling process. He was feeling a mixture of boredom and desperation, if it was even possible. His phone vibrated again, as it did for most of his time when he was away from Cyrene, but he couldn't push himself to see what it was... probably yet another message from his colleagues and friends, either wishing him a merry Christmas, or a great new year, or just wondering what happened with him that he was so absent. There was something in him that just made him hate the phone when he returned to the estate where he grew up in, and just preferred to ignore all outside interference, even if that also brought him extreme levels of boredom.

Even so, there was something magical about the place. From the Verousia Mountains, which he could see at his 6 o'clock, stemmed the Idamos River, which was relatively big around Palia Dongola and even at Pakhoras, but afterwards, as it flowed to the south-west, into the Sabean Desert, after about 300 kilometres after Pakhoras it ran dry as its waters were sucked all off by the insatiable dry earth and sand. He wasn't sure if this river counted, as he was flowing permanently, but he was sure something like that was called a wadi by the Uroduah. In front of him, the orange, pomegranate and date orchards of the Stamatis family run for hundreds of meters, but as the estate itself was situated on a hill at the foothills of the Verousias, he could he far away to the west and south. He could see in front of him the sea of sand dunes that was the Sabaean desert, the city of Pakhoras, even the great complex of pyramids and temples the Ma'in built in antiquity. Of course, from here they were all but dark brown dots in a sea of light brown and golden colors, sitting in opposition to the grey and light blue color of the sky. But he knew where they were and what they represented.

He sighed again, as his phone vibrated again. Andreas was a man in his mid to late 20s, not too tall, somewhere between slender and athletic, with a fashionable haircut, with the sides and the back cut closely and the top of his head longer and with a short cropped beard. He was enjoying a 2 week reprieve around the holidays as he was working in the Military Police. This was still a testament of the aristocratic traditions of Cyrene, even nearly a century after the reforms of Colonel Christopoulos. People from formerly high ranking and noble families had their holiday requests approved at any time. Good luck in trying to get some free time around Christmas and new years eve if your surname wouldn't have been Stamatis.

The dull sound of an overly ripe pomegranate that fell from the tree and broke to pieces as it fell on the ground made his wake up from his day dreaming and made him decide to take the phone out of his pocket. He could see a series of messages on social media congratulating him, and an email, that notified him that he was one of the few that were approved for transfer from the Military Police to the counterintelligence unit of the KYP, the Central Intelligence Agency. This made him smile. The KYP did say it wanted to transfer more cadres from other ministry of the interior agencies to them, so a series of exams and contests were organised and he was happy that while leaving behind some friends from the Military Police, he could move up to something that he found fascinating and much more thrilling.

He looked again at the panorama in front of him. Such a weird country, Cyrene. Much of its scenery and landscape was so arid and sandy that you could paint it using only warm colors, yet at the same time, it was so full of life. The trees along the rivers and the oases, the foxes hunting shrews and moles, the desert wild dogs, the camels and even lower and smaller, the sea of insects that was living under the dunes, from spiders to scarabs, beetles, wasps and other six and four legged creatures. He went abroad too. Spent 2 years in Caria, but the world was completely different there. Much colder, much greener. But for some time he was back in Cyrene. He was thinking of those differences between Himyar and Gallo-Germania as he went back through the orange trees to the main house of the estate and sat himself on the patio at a table.

The Cyrenian sun was relentless so he knew that even if it would make him sweat, it would be preferable to wear a shirt to he dressed himself back up. His mother came from inside the house, passing by a red Cyrenian flag that was flowing in the wind, hanging from a wall stand near the door. It was the flag that they received from the state when it was reported that his father died. A captain in the Imperial Army, his father died in a land mine accident close to the Aresuran border, when the Cyrenians decided in the last crisis that threatened with war with Aresura to mine the shore of the Gihon river vis-a-vis from the city of Tripolis. The flag was very worn. The red turned at first into an orange and now it's a sad reddish yellow and the previously golden sun is all but white, but his mother was proud of it, and when he said that it must be replaced, she always said that until its completely deteriorated it must stand proud of the glory of the Cyrenians and the martyrdom of the Stamatis family for the Sublime State. While at first she had her episodes of hating the state for its incompetence in causing the death of her husband and her child's father, she turned all her frustrations into some sort of cult towards the State and and soldiers of the Imperial Army. Sometimes she became quite fanatical with it, but it was something that Andreas always said it was because of her age, slowly becoming more and more senile, but most of the time she fully ignored what became nothing more than a ragged duster flying by the door.

"I know you're passing through a hard time now, but it would do you well to get reconnected with the outside world," she said as she sat herself at the table. She was a woman in her late 50s. Her natural hair was a very dark brown with a certain reddish shade but now it went grey so she always dyed it blonde. She grew up in the aristocratic circles of Cyrene so she always did her best to look her best and as chic as possible, so all the treatments of hydrating her skin, always using creams and everything made her look about 10 years younger. "It might be actually quicker than you would expect," Andreas said. As he explained to her the whole story of the email and the transfer to the new position in counterintelligence, Mariam, the Nobatian maidservant, served them both with a bright orange cocktail made out of a local bitter made of rhubarb and gentian flowers, mixed in with sparkling dry wine and tonic water, all set over ice. A drink that was bitter-sweet, yet surprisingly refreshing in the Himyari heat.

"Counterintelligence. Might mean more than old Dongola or Pakhoras as it is now, policing the Nobatian units of the Imperial Army. It might mean Cyrene, or hell, even worse, everything from Anaxandria to Myrthios," he said, taking a sip of the cocktail and referring to the potential issues that might come at the northern border with Aresura or in the deep south, past the gulf of Tethys, where the Alodians lived and where in the past century have always been issues as groups or separatists and dissidents always made problems for the authorities. The state tried to calm things down through hearts and minds operations and by colonizing Pelasgian Cyrenians and mixing them in with the Alodians, but it was always a crisis flash point in the Sublime State. Andreas could see that his mother sighed. He wondered if she was being her pessimistic self again, if she was making parallels between him and his father. "I know you can't choose," she finally said, "but try to end up in Cyrene, you'll be safe there.... stay away from Alodia or the far north," she concluded, after which she took a sip of her drink too. Andreas nodded. For him it was clear, she did make those parallels in her mind. But in the end there was nothing one could do. The Stamatis family always provided officers for the Imperial Army, probably as far away as the 1500s, even though they knew their family history going as far as the 1700s and nearly all of them were either officers or lawyers, with some teachers here and there. But he himself, hoped it would be somewhere with more action, as he yearned for some adventure.​