by Brian Smith
Jeremiah turned as pale as a ghost. “Alas, my brethren. Not here as well. Dryvellophobia! The haters have found us. First Syldavia and now here. Woe the day, woe the day that the enemies of God attacked His holy temple. Oh, it is too much! I can’t anymore. My heart won’t take it.”
Jeremiah clutched his heart and several of the brethren quickly came to his aid.
“Master Jeremiah, what have you? What is it?”
But Jeremiah just shook his head. He made short feeble steps back into the temple and permitted the brethren to take him back to his chamber where he lay down exhausted from the horrible ordeal. Sycko went into his room on tiptoes and left Jeremiah’s lunch on his table. After that no one dared disturb him for the rest of the day.
Sycko tore the offending posters off the wall and screwed them up. “Curse you, Judas,” he said bitterly. “If you want hatred then so be it. Do as you would be done by.”
Another Miracle
Riches that are the fruit
of dishonest work
are full of shame.
Democritus
Sycko came into Jeremiah’s study, a medium sized room with white walls and a brown wooden desk in the middle. The only shelf in the room was occupied by one book, The Holy Dryvel. The only other thing of interest in the room was a computer on the desk. Whenever Sycko had surprised Jeremiah working on the computer he had always closed any open windows before Sycko could see what he was doing. Today, however, the computer was pushed to one side and Jeremiah was busy with plaster, paint and some other things.
“Good morrow, Master Jeremiah,” he said politely. “What are you doing?”
“And a good morrow to you, my young friend. Come and join me. I’m sure you’ll find this very interesting and most instructive. I’m making a statue of holy Diana. I see you look confused. Permit me to explain. Diana is the goddess of the hunt, the moon and birthing. She is important to us Dryvellers as a divine lunar being and because she helps with the process of giving birth to babies who themselves will be drivelling. Look at these two pictures of her. In the first you see her standing with bow and arrow ready to shoot, an important action in life. Are we not all hunting for something?
And in the second picture you see her with a crescent moon on her head.”