Pontifex Ursa – Part 1

Not entirely sure what I want to write today.

I have two really good stories that I can bounce between, but most of my occupational brainpower is being used for the submission I’m working on.

Very tired after a significantly sleepless night all around in the Wallace household.  My son had a rough time, my wife was sick, and I wasn’t doing so hot myself and wasn’t much use.

I want very badly to take a nap, yet the nap won’t come.  Today has seen a lot of errands, followed by some disturbing news from the you-were-offered-a-job-but-there’s-no-job-here company I’ve been working with / against for the last two months.

Suffice to say: I’m not in a good space for creativity today.  I’ll do what I can, but let’s not hold our breath, yeah?

UPDATE: I have some extraordinary friends, one of whom came up with the gem we are about to all explore together.  This will run for AWHILE, so strap in.

Pontifex Ursa – Part 1

There was one rule that was never negotiable at the College of Cardinals.

Don’t eat the salmon.

It was an odd rule, if you had no familiarity with The New Orthodox Church of The Living God.  I had to admit that before I met him in person, the Pontifex Ursa was never a real figure in my life.

By the blood of the Pontifex, the promises of the Old Covenant were fulfilled, and the promise of new life was fulfilled.  By His might, we are saved.  In his arms, we are made whole and warm.

If you say something so often, you tend to lose scope of what it actually means.  As a child born after the madness of the Last War, I’d never thought anything of the Priests of the Claw.  Their half-bear faces, their enormous, paw-like hands.  They were simply a part of life in my small village.

They were the ones leading the plows as we sowed the salvation of the land cursed by the nuclear fires.  They lead our prayers at mass every evening and every morning.   They ran our hospitals, gave food to the poor, shelter to the homeless, and clothing to the naked.  None were spurned from their care, and they asked for nothing for their services.  When we were ill, they cared for us.  When a wedding was needed, it was their voice which joined lives.  They were the cornerstone of our society, the bedrock that humanity had begun rebuilding itself from the ashes of our malcontent.

When I became of age, and took the woven bear fur of manhood, I could think of no trade I wanted to apprentice to more than the Priesthood.  From the time I was eleven until I was fit to travel to the College of Cardinals at eighteen, I was with the priests night and day.  I broke bread with them, sweated beside them at the fields, and helped every morning and evening with the mass.  In the time between activities, I would study the history of our race.

It made for awful reading.  More than once I had to put the book down and seek shelter in the arms of my family or Priestess Lilith who ran the Library at our village.  It was horrible.

Science had done the impossible in the middle of the 21st century: They had united the nations, and managed to reverse the madness of climate change.  Governments had fallen, entire industries had been shuttered, ways of life extinguished to save humanity from themselves.  For over two centuries, the Council of Sciences had held sway, guiding humanity with an eye towards the future and the good of mankind.

Then had come the Undoing.  The Council had fallen, the people fractious in their desire to be free of a central authority.  They had no more fear of the Earth becoming uninhabitable.  That lack of fear led to atrocities too numerous to count.  Slavery, genocides, oppression.  It was madness, and in the end those enslaved rose up and started the Last War, knowing nothing else they could do to end their torment.

The world burned, and when the fires had died, the snow came.  For almost fifty years, it hasn’t been anything but winter.  If we hadn’t had the Pontifex, humanity would be gone now.  We weren’t doing great, but at least we were starting to expand again.  Thanks to the relentless efforts of the Priesthood, children were born whole again.  Water was clean to drink, and we had all the fur we needed to survive the cold.

To be continued…

Ursafully, 
Justin