Amata

Closest match: Psylliodes chrysocephala genome assembly, chromosome: 4 Common name: Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle

You weren’t a major deity; you never had been. You’d never wanted to be a major deity, though. Yes, the dreams of the other gods included masses of followers and elaborate temples. You were content to merely sit back and admire the view of all the textiles you’d blessed. Everything, from the thinnest shirt to the most luxurious carpet, lay in your domain. You stood for a portion of what humanity did best: creation.

The others faded into obscurity. It was a natural progression. As humanity learned more about their world, as they came to understand the natural phenomena all around them, the other gods lost power. No longer were storms the work of some higher power. Now, they were the work of the weather. No longer was fire an enigmatic tool. Now, it sat in the engines that let humanity spread.

But not textiles. Your domain lay untouched by the ravages of progress, for humanity had understood it far earlier than any other. They understood that what you blessed and watched over, they would never have survived without. They understood that if you had never shown them how to weave in their earliest days, they would never have left the dust.

Over the years, you simply remained steadfast in your domain. Some days, you wove a banner representing the whole of someone’s life, blessing their departure from the world. Other days, once the god of night ceased to be, you wove the tapestry of stars that twinkled in the night sky.

And then you heard a familiar word in an unfamiliar context.

“The fabric,” a human had said. No one in particular, no one of any importance, at least as far as you were aware. “The fabric of space and time.”

You pulled your hands away from the night sky, and stared into the nothingness of your domain. It sat empty, as it always had, yet you were connected to every textile on the planet. You could feel how they were loved, could hear the stories of the humans who owned them. You could hug them back and provide warmth, or offer comfort to those who sobbed into them.

This was different. This was … new. It was exciting. And scary. And fascinating. And a million other words that you could never have otherwise thought of, if not for humanity and the kindness they had whispered to you over the millennia.

And you understood. For how many years now had you been pulling light from above and tangling its lovely threads into a beautiful night sky? For how many years had you tangled the roots of tress in an elegant balance, ensuring they never ensnared one another? For how many years had you sat there, in your domain, watching as the other gods’ domains fell into your purview?

Perhaps once, long ago, you had tired of the same old routine, every day and night, blessing a blanket here or a shirt there. Now, though, you had a purpose once more. Now, you did more than provide warmth.

As diligent as ever, with your thousand hands, you became that which held the universe together. Half of your hands caressed the threads, admiring their silky nature as you fed them into your loom. The other half wove like they’d never woven before. They roamed the fabric, searching for snags, or holes that needed patching, or anything else that might catch humanity off guard.

You remained a minor deity, a force of goodwill that humanity could pray to. You remained a simple god, a voice in the sky that humanity could ask for warmth and comfort. You didn’t have legions of followers, or massive temples situated in the hearts of cities. You didn’t want them. All you wanted was to sit back in your domain and admire all the textiles that you had blessed.

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

*

The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them.  But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s.  He couldn’t NOT have communion.

“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts.  Jesus will understand.”

Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.

A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible.  It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

They were a SPECTACULAR hit.  Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them.  Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of?  So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.

This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.

*

“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.

*

At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.”  Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.”  Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.

“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas.  Why not on easter?  Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone.  Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”

“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.

“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right?  Doesn’t look like much of anything, really.  Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.

What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”

He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.

“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off.  Just descend into his corpse like vultures.  I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.”  he nodded thoughtfully.  “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”

“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.

And so, the plan was hatched.  Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.

This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus.  Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?*  She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile.  He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.

“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?

“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man.  With all that entails.”  She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel.  “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”

Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action.  The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.

*

Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.

Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade.  Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.

Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses,  down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.

Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman.  Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.

However, two things happen that were not planned on

1. Dad misses.  In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship.  He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat.  Nobody notices this, however because

2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.  

Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab.  There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

There was  a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that. 

Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:

“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”

…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness.  The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.

*

“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked.  I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.

“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”

“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.

*

As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”

“No.”  Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.

It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.

“No.  That’s crazy.”  She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.

“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.

“And you-  you didn’t…  Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?”  the archbishop demanded of my father.

“Do I look like I can jump that high?”  Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.

Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?

Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.

*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.

What I’d give for one of the Cinderella remakes to go into how when you’re in an isolated and abusive situation, sometimes you need to be saved and you’re not weak if you can’t escape by yourself

She’s impossibly wealthy. The dress isn’t a fabric he can recognize, but it’s beaded with cut diamonds, faintly milky opals that shimmer with a rainbow, little pale aquamarines, and somewhere are little bells gently ringing with each step - he’s a Prince and he can’t afford to dress like that. The slippers ring too … there is nothing like that crafted by the hands of humans. That’s fairy stuff. She has an in with them that eclipses royal politics. She is powerful in the Old Ways.

All this wraps around the poorest woman he’s ever seen in his entire life, and he’s seen some very, very, poor people in his time.

Poor in money, but poor in “oh you poor thing!” as well. This is someone who has been robbed blind. This is someone who carried themselves waiting for the lash, for a browbeating, for harsh, cruel, abrupt, punishment.

He expects her to be haughty, or hard, or meek or… something else… but she’s just nice. She’s just … nice.

The rigid posture comes out of his back, his tongue unsticks. She’s like sitting by the embers of a low, calm, fire. He feels warmed and rested simply speaking to her. He wonders if it’s magic, and it might be, but if it is it is magic that is her own.

And that terrifies him, because he’s trained to see these things and he knows someone with a cruel hand is waiting to douse her, and snuff her, and beat the last glimmer out of her shining eyes - eyes that put that dress to shame and and and and… she’s gone.

Oh god, she’s gone. It will be all over her sweet, kind, warm face that she transgressed and … oh god they’ll kill her, whoever they are. This will embarrass them and if there’s anything he knows, it’s that you don’t humiliate someone who has power over you and walk away unscathed.

And all he has is a fairy slipper that will only ever fit her foot (it’s not merely shoe size, it’s a kind of spiritual fit as well), and the vain hope that he can keep such a bright light from burning out. It doesn’t even touch his heart that what he’s feeling is a kind of pure philia, not until it enraptures him soul to bones, all at once. Oh god, oh no, oh shit… he’s reached well above his station, but…he can try to be good and worthy.

The people love her because she was one of them. They learn quickly that she sees them. There are rumors about her dressing her husband in rags and working for a day in the fields during harvest. There’s a couple that looks an awful like the Prince (and later King) and his wife who sit at the fountain in the market square and eat meat pies from the baker on the corner. There’s whispers from the palace of the new Queen pulling the King out of the room during trials and debating in urgent whispers before returning with a ruling that, somehow, most those involved are happy with.

Not everything is perfect, of course. There are still those who prefer the life of a criminal, and even the most fair and careful justice system has flaws. But generally speaking, people are happy and the kingdom is more united and happy than it’s been in anyone’s memory.

lighting candles in jack o'lanterns (to keep away the fairies)

roasting s'mores on bonfires (to keep away the fairies)

bobbing for apples, fortunetelling, ouija boards, and other assorted divination rituals (to forewarn those doomed to be kidnapped by fairies)

haunted houses (to preach against the dangers that lurk across the veil in the otherworld, home of the fairies)

community effort to stuff kids full of candy (that if whisked away (by the fairies) they might resist the temptation (of strange fae foods) long enough to escape)

during Samhain (pronounced sow-win), a liminal festival, the boundary between here and the Otherworld gets fucked with, so you best watch yourself by celebrating with:

fire. lots of fire. cleansing and protective fire. communal bonfires, fires inside jack-o-lanterns, torch fire, need-fires summoned ritualistically, lots of fire. it's getting cold and dark out, fire makes a lot of sense right now. oh and hey you know what goes well with fire aka loves to be warm and roasted?

food. lots of food. gotta appease the spirits with food and drink. gotta ward away bad luck (hunger, starvation) in the coming winter by keeping everyone fed. feed everyone! feed the spirits. feed the kids. feed the people going door-to-door. feed the people going door-to-door in case they're spirits. which brings us to:

disguises. every decent festival needs disguises. costumes. whatever. put on a mask or disguise and go door-to-door to receive food and coins (guising). dress up in costumes and perform folk plays (mumming), perhaps taking the opportunity to warn about otherworldly dangers. and hey! if impersonating the spirits of the dead means spooks can't recognize you and whisk you away? so much the better

divination. lots of divination. involving fire, and apples, and nuts (and sometimes stones and bones). yes, this is where apple bobbing comes in! (with origins dating back to roman times.) interestingly divination at Samhain wasn't just to foretell death and misfortune (let's guess which of us won't survive the winter!) but also focused on luck and marriage (who will i marry! how many children will i have! will i be rich! will i be happy!)

also i'm so serious, keep away from the mounds, the (burial) mounds are portals to the Otherworld, those portals are especially open at Samhain, keep away from the motherfucking (fairy) mounds.

Happily single: I have no reason to question that, nobody else gets to decide how you feel, and I'm happy for you.

Happily dating: Kind of weird that you'd feel the need to clarify. You know you don't have to date someone who doesn't make you happy, right?

Happily engaged: Same as previous, but more so. You know you should not be getting married to someone who doesn't make you happy, right? I'm not leaving before I know that you know.

Happily married: Could go either way tbh, but most likely you are. If someone's not actually happy with their marriage, it shows, no matter what they say.

Happily divorced: Yeah this one I have no reason to doubt. Nobody says they're happy about being divorced unless they really are happy about it.