The happy human is an ignorant human.
Anonymous
It was because of the war, all the time, all inventions were lost and forgotten, great knowledge was forbidden, only people remained, small groupings of people united not by social need, but by survival. This population gathered around the few women who could still procreate (due to hunger, disease or both, as many were sterile). As the only means of transportation were legs, the populations were far away surrounded by ruined buildings.
This particular grouping lacked a name. It was formed by the remnants of annihilated populations in the surrounding areas, practitioners of a polytheistic religion sheltered in the "sacred house", a jumble of wires and rods with a concrete or rusted steel base, defying all laws of architecture and good taste. They gave the impression of multiple spiders that would come down at night to devour the unwary who slept there but fulfilled the most important needs of this society, being fragile structures and having wires at floor level it is very easy to detect any intrusion if they do not know how to slip through the jumble without noise.
In the mornings, the women left the structure, they wore their hair long, tangled, but at the end, joined by a braid, they kept a sharp bone knife, as long as the body of their first hunted prey; with a hypnotic step (slow and shuffling) they went to the work area of those months (an abandoned and semi-ruined building) and already all of them, in their positions: the sharpest ones as lookouts, the strongest ones scraping and removing debris, the thinnest ones getting into the cracks.
The search encompasses everything from food to trade or construction materials, no one speaks, they work with determination, they are alone and depend on each other. It is six o'clock in the morning.
At noon their support arrives. The men return from hunting. It is little what they collect: a few elders and when they passed on their way to the temple they leave the progenitor with them. Being the leader of this group, he imposes himself with his toga made of the skin of the defeated warriors: he is no more than one meter seventy, over sixty years old, the sun and the diet left his skin of ebony color, tanned like walls cracked by time.
To keep them together she recites the dogma of her religion, her voice, once thunderous, is a whisper that echoes within the walls of this nightmarish place: "don't forget — she said — science is evil incarnate, salvation is surrendering to nature... unity will save you, it is the only way to escape from hell... Yes, the flaming factories! That's where all the bad women go!
That's where they should work! Nothing is natural, there's nothing fresh in the food... But there's still hope! If they are good and obey the orders of the tribe, the commandments written by Natura (I still don't fully understand her gods) they will become clouds, clear clouds sent by the supreme matrix, they will be great... Powerful! They will be able to discharge burning rain (acid rain is an unfortunate effect of ecological devastation) on those who misbehave and will give shade to all of us who behave well.".
Our character in question (I named her Paulina, but names don't exist in this tribe) by her expression heard and believed everything they told her. At fifteen years old, she lived in blessed ignorance: she lived naked, her father said that clothes were a sign of power and she did not have it, she slept on the floor because it was bad to sleep on anything unnatural, her hands were tanned and her nails They were stumps from the extraction of buried material... the only thing he saw with problems was at night, you can see the fear on his face when he was back in the sacred house. When the sun sets everyone gathers under the single bonfire; They drink from a cup the liquid they called water; They ate strips of sun-dried meat and judging by the noises (my camera does not have night vision in this area) they are repeatedly raped.
This process was common in most survivor groups. It started just when the first menstruation (now called "messenger blood") arrived. She, Paulina, did not show signs of bleeding (they are all very exact and I must find out why). I secretly see how she pricks her labia... for her it is a matter of life or death; Her mother, at 40, stopped receiving visitors, so she was cooked in the special ceremony, her offspring were fortunate enough to share the first dish with their father.
End of recording.
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