Blood Feud [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER FOUR ☽

Ethne and her sister Esras bathed Tara in lavender and rose oils. Their small hands worked gently to rub the oils into her skin. The routine was often quite soothing, but their hands were freezing this time of year and left trails of goosebumps.

The recent fall of chestnuts heralded the annual purifying ceremony of her Clann before the veil between two worlds thinned. Her Clann performed rituals to cleanse themselves before the start of the sowing season. A purifying ceremony dictated abstinence from alcohol, rutting and revelry on the eve of the ceremony.

Instead, they were all to expel their impurities through bog jumping.

The little rí was anointed in coastal flower oils to soothe her rubbed-raw skin, roughly exfoliated by ground sea salt and sand. Esras aided Tara in threading her arms through her ritual costume whilst Ethne stood to the rear, deftly tying the garment's textured belt tightly around her waist. Her chest tightened at the hefty brooches pinned above her breasts, adorned with large silver clasps and impressive animal motifs. She favoured the stag one, carefully inlaid with russet beads to mimic eyes.

Ethne prepared the headdress behind her while her sister bound her hair with an oat coloured cap. Finally, she secured the headdress with a neck brace to support her neck, the ceremonial antlers were incredibly heavy. She hated to admit that it was the hardest part about being rí, attempting to walk with the weight on her head and neck without the big shoulders of a man.

The headdress was a grotesque yet impressive Clann creation, fusing differing antlers of wild stag together to create a ceremonial piece to adorn the rí. Two behemoth antlers stood tall atop her head, perhaps as tall as she. Tara gritted her teeth and prepared herself for bearing the burden for the remainder of the evening.

The sisters helped her steady and ran over the garment with their nails to remove lint and stray threads. Job done, she shuffled out of the tent, the girls hurrying to lift the poles on either side of the door to make the exit higher for her antlers. Unlike her elk skull for Calls to Session, this headdress would make her topple over if she had to turn to stop herself scraping the tent walls. She walked briskly, propelled forward by the sheer weight on her crown.

Her brothers set upon her instantly, always lurking in the corners ready to accompany. They peppered cautions about the evening's proceedings with usual slags, mostly appearance-related. Tara batted them away with non-committal sounds, overcame by the effort it took not to topple over.

They warned her not to laugh. Under no circumstances was she to laugh during ceremonies for her Clann, specifically purifying rituals, similar to funerary rites for the dead, a most solemn occurrence. As rí Tara was imbued with the honour and spirit of her predecessors, to laugh would laud the whole thing as a farce to their people and damage her image as a mature leader.

Solemnity was necessary. No, her brothers had emphasised solemnity as fundamental to Clann ceremonies. It showed the people how an exemplary Blood should act and legitimised all the solemn ceremonies practised before it. If she wanted to be taken seriously, she had to act seriously.

If she were honest, all that stuff went over her head. She cared little for religious rituals or the pomp of ceremonies. She preferred worshipping her ancestors and the Morrigan, more personal deities that did not necessitate a ritual every week and shoving her hands in animal guts.

These patron deities seemed logical. Her ancestors bestowed her with her weather affinity and the Morrigan (a goddess and a queen of war) had bestowed back-to-back victories in battle. Tara's dutiful worship of the Morrigan helped the reconquest of neighbouring territories she had inherited in name only, prone to rebellions during her father's rule. Thanks to this worship, she consolidated her territories decisively with her powers and people. These victories meant she was allowed to keep her life and the torques of Connacta.