Mothering Day

An origin story inside an origin story. Well, we've got to start somewhere, so how about the first day our protagonists/antagonists meet?

Mothering Day Outline and Character Profiles

The Big Picture:

This chapter should occur very early in the story; perhaps the first, although I believe an introduction to the Empty Earth of 2528 would be best accomplished if we met the Spaniards first.

The whole chapter is a three-string braid, in terms of its character interactions. The selection process of the Mothering occurs simultaneously for all our three main protagonists. Nueguan society is communal in the extreme, from an Old Human's perspective.

The Nueguan life-cycle can be illustrated by showing the various girls and comparing them to the First and Oldest Sisters.

Character Profiles.

Rintiala of Clan Tiala, Candidate to the Healer's Guild.

Physically an angelically beautiful young woman, already mature at twelve, the Nueguan norm.

Poised, self-confident (to a fault), and very serious. Her impression on an Old Human would be that of a young nun. She is five-foot ten, and weighs about one hundred twenty at this time; later she will add fifteen pounds of muscle when we meet her again at age nineteen.

Dianire of Clan Redourine, Candidate to the Builder's Guild. Physically gangly and awkward, boyishly cute by Old Human standards, but decidedly homely by the more exacting Nueguan standards.

Stringy and muscular, six feet tall and one hundred ten pounds.

Berylia of Clan Demetra, Candidate to the Healer's Guild. Her look is the very definition of sultry and voluptuous; Berylia is darker in skin tone and hair than either the Tialans or Redourines. She is five foot five and one hundred twenty pounds.

Alathea of Clan Tiala, First Sister of the Healer's Guild and Guild President (First among Firsts).

An older, tougher version of her daughter. Age thirty-five, which would place her in her middle twenties by Old Human standards.

Oldest Sister, First Sister of the Healer's Guild and Overseer of the selection Process. Nearly two hundred years old, and no longer able to get around because most of time is now spent in the Grotto of the Pregnant Virgin. (I've made a few drawings of her, that I'll dig up.)

Additional background characters are:

Ariana, biological sister of Rintiala

Tianara and Alope, biological sisters of Dianire Redourine.

Clan Mother Redourine

Clan Mother Demetra.

Note: No males are allowed on the Healing Temple precincts on Mothering Day.

The principles behind the action sequences:

Each candidate manifests their strongest wish/desire/dream during the Mothering, and each dream during its unfolding is integrated into the dreams of the other two protagonists.

The tension and conflict occur right from the outset; Berylia is a Demetran, a Gardener, and she represents the best of her Clan. Demetrans outnumber Tialans and Redourines by a factor of ten-to-one.

The problem is that she is much older than the other candidates—fifteen compared to Rintiala's twelve and Dianire's thirteen—and sexually experienced. Normally, Nueguan girls are Mothered immediately after their first menstrual period.

The fact that Berylia is sexually experienced is not a problem for the Mothering; but it is the norm for Nueguan girls to begin their sexual experiences after the Mothering. The Mothering experience unleashes the full power of the Nueguan physique; without it, a Nueguan girl—however superior she may be to an Old Human—cannot control her own fertility or her immune system. This is a fail-safe in the Cactus Mother technology and not an accident.

I don't want to force too many of my ideas upon you at the point, but here is the gist of their dreams and their conflicts:

Alathea, First Healer, normally would preside over the Mothering, but since her own eldest daughter is about to be Mothered, she steps aside to allow Oldest Sister the honour. Both Clan Demetra and Clan Redourine are in awe; Oldest Sister rarely ventures out of the Grotto of the Pregnant Virgin, the organic virtual reality upon which all Nueguan Cactus Mother dreaming is based.

Rintiala begins with the first string (plait?) of the three-braid, and her dream is of a vastly expanded Healing Temple, where the Cactus Mothers are entwined inside and outside of the structure, a truly living building. Dianire creates the second string, strengthening Rintiala's dream. All the Guilds watch in amazement as she recreates one of the genetically-engineered termites that form the basis of all Nueguan technology, giving it gills so that it can work underwater, removing the silt from the San Carlos Reservoir, and allowing the water necessary for Rintiala's dream to flow.

It is important to illustrate that no one in any Guild has ever had to the power to re-fashion a termite in this way.

Berylia's string starts off innocently enough; she weaves new vines laden with exotic fruits in and out of the Cactus Mothers until the beauty and the scent of the flowers is overwhelming to the other two candidates.

A general reader will not know that we Old Humans can only dream in the two senses of vision and hearing, while a Nueguan dreams in at least five: sight, sound, smell/taste, touch and movement. I'll let you work out how to show the difference.

But her dream begins to choke the Cactus Mother vines, and her flowers have poisonous thorns that seek out the termites of Dianire, and kill them. Dianire fights back, creating new types of soldier termites that snip off the flowers of Berylia. As good as Dianire is, Berylia's strategy is superior; her vines have infiltrated the two other girls' dreams.

It is Rintiala who brings order out of chaos, but at a terrible price. In order to stop the fight, she slams down all three dreams by removing the safeguards that keep a dream from feeding back to the dreamer's body. This power--which she did not know she possessed--sends all the horrible dreams and body messages to Oldest Sister, who absorbs it all, and dies.

At the end, Rintiala is accepted into the Guild of Healers, and her dream of a new Temple is accepted, provided that she passes through the stages of Novice, Second Sister, and First Sister, like any other Healer.

Dianire, because she tried to save what was best of the dreams, is conditionally accepted into the Guild of Builders, but her tendency towards violent solutions will be monitored closely by her teachers.

At the end of the chapter, First Sister Alathea speaks for all the Guilds: “Berylia of Clan Demetra, Guild of Gardeners (this is an intentional slight on Alathea's part), we Healers cannot discern your intentions, but we can in detail ascertain their effects. There is malice buried deeply in you, tied to your misuse of sex. Either you have been abused, or your Clan has allowed your darker nature to develop until it is out of control. It is the decision of the Mothering Council--made up of Healers, Builders, and Gardeners--that you be denied entrance into any of the three Guilds.”

Berylia breaks down in tears, and her Clan Demetran representative shouts out in rage. “You Healers have created a system of testing that shuts out our best and brightest, and only allows Healers to have privilege. This is an injustice to all Clan Demetrans, and we will take action against you.”

Dianire, always ready for a fight, counters. “I am not a Healer, and yet I passed the same test. Perhaps you Gardeners cannot tell the difference between a shovel and a jeweller's blade.”

And here are some very rough sketches of the hairdos of the Healer Guild: