Radiance

--An Amazonian Ballad of Otrera to the Goddess of the Moon and Her
Visages--

Woman's nature
is an uneasy harmony,
like the seasons,
or the rise and fall of the sea.

Through our wombs breath has darted,
and folly has been found
racing like the chargers of our homeland.

Tomaculan roans, blue like a memory
of a lost love: They amble across
the Savannah without need,
searching for water, the reflection
of a Waning Moon to drink by. Golden
and midnight horses, never yield though.
They gallop headless through fields,
oblivious to the crescent overhead,
the Holy Serpent entwined
nearby in tall grass.

The arrows of men
have grazed
our skin, discolored
it like the light from a Blood Moon.

We hunt under
cover of foliage, bareback
across Purotan hills,
and through the mountains.
Bedraggled, we return
to ill repute, crazed eyes,
the adornments of a bedmate.

We shine
only by the spirit of Otrera,
the first mother
who felt the birth pangs
the way the night's sky pulls taut
and the stars await
the New Moon's presence.

She is the mistress of arrows.
Matron, who we call Mother,
Her breasts are hunting grounds.
Her girth is held with the same hands
with which the Crone does reckon.

Manifest,
the heavenly easer of our travails:

Her white face enlightened,
the eye of Otera dances
across Her forehead,
Her lunar body.

And three Amazons stand
clasped beneath Her,
the seasons churn around their forms,
but their vigil is constant,
and bright.


Author's Notes: 1. Sections of this text were influenced by the writing
of Hippolyta, ancient Amazonian warrior and horsewoman whose journal was
recently unearthed near the village of Tomacula. 2. "Men" in all
instances implies mortalkind.



Penned by my hand on the 15th of Lupar, in the year 410 AF.