> 📗 The following story stands alone and can be read without any knowledge of my prior works, but does take place in the same city as [Haze](https://eleanorkonik.com/haze/) %% ( [[2022-04-06 Haze (MF) (DRAFT)]] ) %%, a tale of repudiating conquest and symbols of sacrifice. Six Monstterran widows sat around a carafe of moonfish bile and oh-so-casually inserted as many mentions of dead husbands as they could into their otherwise banal discussion of the weather. No matter what my childhood impassivity instructors would have said about making sure to keep an open mind about other cultures, Monstterran women were creepy when they counted coup. Thankfully, I'd spent most of my time in Monsterra hanging out in universities, where everyone was far too young for mating games. It wasn't like here in Srineport, where most of the time it felt like mating games were the whole point of the classes. Here, university existed only to subtly enforce a caste system that had been technically outlawed a century ago. The widow with ring of jade snakes wrapped around her prehensile tail held a priceless porcelain teacup a handspan from her nose and paused for effect. "Would you believe he expected me to _dance_?" "No!" the woman I was trying to serve nearly knocked the bowl of snapper pie right off my serving tray as she flung her hands up to cover her ash-grey cheeks. It had taken me sixteen years to work myself up to this position, learning everything there was to know about the cuisines of all the realms that could be reached from the aetherroads criss-crossing my homeland. I recovered my balance and kept on serving the appetizers. "I like this one," Green Snake said in a language I realized belatedly she didn't realize I knew. "I think it would make a good host for my sixth nest." "Do you desire entrees?" I knew better than to let her know I understood her language. Tourists liked to show off their efforts, and I was in the business of keeping rich travelers happy, not correcting their accents. "I want to eat a platter of roast wyvern on plumberry sauce," she said in awkward Maehlensh. "Of course, madame," I assured her. Wyvern haunch was a gamier cut of meat than anything we locals preferred, but some travelers preferred the more exotic cuts of meat, especially the dangerous predators like snapper and wyvern. We imported wyvern from the northern desert, so it wasn't even local, but since it came from this realm at all, I supposed she thought of as good enough. Monsterrans in particular ascribed high value to the strange. When I returned with their meals, the women were flushed with something that was certainly not moonfish bile, the purist natural substance in the known realms. The ancients had used moonfish bile to clean fouled wells and bathe newborns; it was no more likely to intoxicate than water. They must have smuggled in a little liquid bravery. Green Snake lunged at me while her companions launched themselves at the handful of support staffers scattered around the restaurant floor. The Porcelain Pig held no obvious protectors, and by Monstterran standards we were all helplessly delicate, but honestly. Did they not realize that all Srinese food servitors were trained diplomats? That every person in this room had at least ten years of instruction in using our auras for combat? Green Snake gasped when I flung her back into her chair with a splash of indigo magic. "But you're male!" I offered her a little bow. "Would you like a box for the remainder of your roast wyvern, madame?" ## Afterword It probably seems like this story was inspired by something like black widow spiders, or some other species where the females have a habit of eating the males after mating. But actually, this one was inspired by a song. Some folks I know have trouble "hearing" and understanding the lyrics of a song; I'm the opposite. It took me years to learn how to hear the beat of a song well enough to dance to it. This is one of the reasons I like folk songs (especially Irish Punk). Songs like [The Sick Note](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Vfxuk8x_A&list=RDEaoqJ6hr1Dc&index=2) and [Darcy’s Donkey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6N6W59nQh4) rank among my favorites. I like stories, and not just in prose; I like stories in my music. All my favorite songs have strong narratives. It’s not just folk music that tells a good story, though. For example, Rock and Roll lays claim to David Bowie’s tale of Major Tom. For those who aren't familiar with it, [Space Oddity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT3h0cs54eM) is about an astronaut who loses contact with Mission Control and winds up drifting in space. It came out in 1969, and the protagonist, Major Tom, reappeared in 1980’s "Ashes to Ashes" and 1995’s single "Hallo Spaceboy.” The tale of Major Tom would have been perfectly at home in a science fiction magazine if it weren’t already set to music. It even spawned the musical equivalent of fanfiction, like Peter Schilling’s Major Tom (Coming Home) in 1983 and [Mrs. Major Tom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AZBshVJMCw) by Kirby Ian Andersen (later covered by Sheryl Crow for William Shatner’s space-themed album [Seeking Major Tom](https://williamshatner.bandcamp.com/album/seeking-major-tom)). Every time I hear one of these, especially Space Oddity ("tell my wife I love her") or Mrs. Major Tom ("When you didn't come back, and didn't come back / My nova heart collapsed to a black, black hole"), it reminds me of an article I read back in 2018 about how the early NASA space missions represented an American death cult. [Rocket Men and Grieving Girls: On The Myth of the American Astronaut](https://www.tor.com/2018/08/22/the-myth-of-the-american-astronaut/) specifically references the behavior of astronauts' wives (metaphorically the high priestesses of the cult). It talks about how there was a weird sort of prestige that came along with risking one's life, and with mourning. It also frames American history through the same sort of anthropological lens — national myth, rituals, death cults — that many books about history use, in a way that made me feel like I _understood_ ancient societies through the lens of my own. Before, whenever I would read something about a "death cult," I know I'm supposed to think of stuff like the [Jonestown suicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown), but my head usually goes to fantasy novels like _The Black Company,_ in which a religious cult worships a death goddess by assassinating people bloodlessly. They're known as "the stranglers" and based on Indian [Thugee bands](https://www.damninteresting.com/the-thugs-of-india/). The article about astronauts was the first time that I finally understood what people meant when they accused various groups of being a "modern death cult," and gave me the emotional context to imagine how a Carthaginian "death cult" might have felt like in a way that doesn't make ancient humans seem incomprehensibly alien. Ironically, though, I have to admit that somehow _Rocket Men and Grieving Girls_ always gets a little mashed up in my head with [The First Wives Club](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116313/), a 90s movie I barely remember about women who get revenge on husbands who left them for younger women. The idea of a death cult kind of has two versions; the version where people sacrifice themselves and their culture celebrates their sacrifice to the national glory (NASA), and the version where people murder outsiders as a sacrifice to their god (Thugees). Add in the angry-ex-wife motif and of course I'm going to start thinking of black widows, of sacrificing fathers for the survival of the brood, and of how that would look at a fancy dinner party if it were normalized... ## Further Reading - For more about [NASA Wives and Families](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/moon-nasa-wives-and-families/), here's the Public Broadcasting Station version.