Hello and welcome to meet us pod episode six. I'm your host de metus. I'm sorry for the delay in this episode, I hope to be able to get back on a regular release schedule from here on out. I've been getting some really great submissions and for all of you that have submitted stories and haven't gotten response yet, I will be getting back with you this week. I have fallen behind. We have some new theme music for me this pod. It's called into the unknown and it comes to us courtesy of pod
Sprite. You can check out more of odd sprites work over at odd sprite.com which is linked in the show notes. Please stay tuned after the story to hear about how you can help us keep the show going and growing. Our story for this episode is raising words by Stewart see Baker? Stewart see Baker is an academic librarian I coolest and speculative fiction writer is fiction and poetry has appeared in Cosmos modern Haiku, and
flash fiction online among other magazines. Stewart was born in England has spent time in South Carolina, Japan and California and now lives in Western Oregon with his wife and two sons. Although if anyone asks, he'll say he's from the internet. His website is info mansi.net Stewart also has novelette called the Abbott's garden on Amazon. I'll put a link in the
show notes if you'd like to check that out. The story will be read to us by Lauren Burwell. You may recognize her voice she played the part of Lynda in Episode Five is dead guy walking. Lauren has been dabbling in voiceover narration work for the past two years. You can find more of Lauren Burrell's. narration@librivox.org As always, her Librivox page will be linked in the show notes. Without further ado, here's our story.
Raising words by Stewart see Baker. After we entombed my father, he transformed into a giant bird of purest white, and burst forth from the earth all holy and clean. My mother and her co wives my sisters, my cousins, all followed as he soared majestic and terrible, filled with beauty away to the east and the sea. I alone are the women in that place stood watching the rest ran through the plane and brush pushing past
the sharp bamboo which must have cut their feet like soars. They ran through the wave and spray unmindful of the cold wetness, which wrap their robes about them like black ocean weeds. As they ran, they sang their high pitch nasal voices rising and rhythmic bursts of ritual limit to the commie my father had become I alone saying no songs. I alone remembered. When I was very young I used to beg my father to take me hunting.
though even then he was stern he would always relent the sun glinting through his jet black hair as he grinned our secret grin and set me in the bow of the sky reaching Black Oak at the forest edge. I love the burst of activities as courtier swarmed around reading horses and bows. The shouts ringing out in the crispness of the early spring air. But I love more than way my father sat perfectly still astride his own horse, his own bow held loosely in his lap. He would chant the ritual
blessing slowly, with a godlike calm. I used to sit in the Oak for hours and listen to the distance the Romina bowstrings reveling in the idea that all things were connected. And the idea that my father connected them, when he slayed the Warlords of the Komodo tribe. My father received a new name Yamato Takeru. They called him as he died, Yamato brave. When he returned, he had changed. He no longer hunted, no longer held
his bow. Instead, he practiced swordsmanship he stood waist deep in the Kenai River, drawing and slicing and drawing and thrusting over and over and over again, with a sword we learned he had received from his aunt, the High Priestess at Issei. He did not come to my mother or her co wives a single time before leaving again at the emperor is ordered to pacify the peoples of the East. A part of him I thought, a part of my past, was dead and gone forever. My mother cried for days, and I was filled
with an unease of a world on strong. We heard tales of his further exploits this Yamato Takeru, who had been my father, he smashed savages, argued with commie and gods, and struck them all down to the dead land of Yomi if they did not submit, my mother and her co wives received reports daily, tracking his progress with a mix of hope and trepidation. From the bowels of the yoke where I sat alone once again, I could find no trace at former times, you will marry the inverse first grandson in raised
my chance of ruling. Those were my father's first words to me when he returned my cousin, I stated it flat and unflinching, ignoring my mother's grasp. Yes, my father said, the thrones air. And if I will not, my father laughed a sound sudden and sharp like an arrow striking would you would raise words On Me Girl, I have killed kami and burned to the ground hold tribes of stinking rebels. I have subjugated the rivers and the seas, and bent the messengers of gods to serve my own will. If
you refuse, I have other daughters. Any of them can easily become my eldest. I set my teeth and raise my chin. As you say, my lord father, keeping my words to myself, but that night I went once more to the forest. I did not stop as I usually did at the foot of the oak, but walked further than I ever had before into the untouched wilderness of the deep forest. I walked until the canopy closed overhead, then opened again to reveal the eternal patterns of the heavenly River. The air was rich with a
smell of houmous and rot. I came to a mystery spring in there I stopped and missed the dim shapes of pines and rocks, and the silent blue distant stars reflected on its surface. A white bore, as big as a war horse rose from the waters, its eyes and focused. Its form shifted as it walked, lop size, bulges of life forming on its body and sluicing away into the air with each step. A commie it's now close enough that I could feel its breath on my skin, even in deep it spoke.
Woman child, it said, What do you seek? The words echoed in my skull with the sound and thunder of trees falling. I do not reply, I do not dare. Woman child. Do you seek justice? No, I, woman child, do you seek vengeance? No, I do you seek? It paused, JAWS opening slightly. Death My father died already. What I seek is your father's death. It will come again. If that is what you seek. My breath set like a stone in my stomach.
My throat burn like fire be scarred a rasp, I order you stop I wanted leave this place woman child, the kami said or what you say you do not seek will come to you. Then it turned back towards the spring. And as it did so slowly melted upwards into the mist. I walked through the forests for long enough to count a lifetime. I lived off mushrooms and berries, drinking from polluted streams whose water chilled my throat and
aching belly. When I last found my way back to the Yamato. I knew I was told that a half moon had passed my mother ran to me her hair in disarray and her robes disordered. Her eyes puffy and red. Think the white plane of heaven. She have sobbed collapsing against me. I thought we had lost you too. So it was that I learned my father had been struck dead by Mount buki
by massive white commie in the shape of a bore. While I wandered lost in the forest, as my father's commie vanishes towards the sea and the wailing of my mother and her co wise fades from hearing. I stepped from the shadow of my father's new built whom faces empty grave and speak. Raising words one final time. I will remember you as you were I say and not as you became daily will I erase your divinity ever chronically in your early mortal life until your godly wrath is not but
legend. I will tell all who listen, have order and calm. Then I turn I do not look back at the fields and the cliffs in the mountains and the oceans of my homeland. I turn and face the sun and I leave that barren place and search a fertile Grail. Meatless pod runs on donations we rely on support from our listeners to keep the lights on. I'm humbled by the feedback I get and it feels so good to be able to say that I have genuine
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