Chapter Ten #2
Ethyr fidgeted his hands. “A farmer struggles to feed his family during a famine.” He glanced around.
They all watched him expectantly. “S-so he makes a deal… with a hunter. The hunter will bring back meat for his family, and while he’s gone the farmer is to test his wife’s fidelity.
He’s suspected for some time that she is disloyal. ”
“Ooohhh, how perfect!” Gallus sat up, clapping his hands together. “I’ll be the hunter.”
“Shouldn’t I be?” Catocus complained.
“No, you have to play the main role,” Gallus instructed. “And besides, theater is no fun if you stay the person you already are.” He jumped to his feet and hopped over to the other god, dragging him—reluctantly—to his feet.
The others gathered around the table or sat in nearby chairs to watch the show.
Gallus turned to them with an overly dramatic bow.
“Welcome, and thank you for joining us,” he called across the room.
He sounded like a real play master, the ones who went to markets and tried to get peoples’ attention.
“Today we present—“ He paused and looked at Ethyr. “What was it called?”
“The Farmer and the Hunter,” Langath said sharply. “How could you possibly forget that?”
“The Farmer and the Hunter!” Gallus boomed over Langath’s last few words. Ethyr bit his lips to stop a laugh. The others clapped so he quickly joined in.
Gallus cleared his throat and sat languidly on a seat, sharpening an invisible knife. After a few seconds he looked pointedly at Catocus.
Catocus sighed with a roll of his eyes. He pretended to rap his knuckles on a door.
“How strange,” Gallus said, looking around. “I have this sensation that someone is at the door, but I hear no knocking. It must be my imagination.”
“Knock, knock,” Catocus said flatly.
“Ah!” Gallus sprang to his feet and went to ‘open’ it. “Oh, the farmer! Whatever are you doing at my door?”
“Help me, my family is starving,” he said, just as flatly as before.
“How terrible!” Gallus stepped aside. “Do come in.”
Gallus closed the fake door behind him and pretended to sheath his knife at his waist. He really was quite good, even his mannerisms and the way he held himself had completely changed. Then again, it would have been strange for the god of theater to not be a good actor.
“Tell me your woes, good sir!”
“Uh,” Catocus sighed, tossing his hands. “My crops have all failed,” he said, with a rather emotionless attempt at emotion. “Now I cannot feed my thirty children.”
“Thirty?!” Ithna laughed.
Catocus turned to her. “I don’t know! How many children do mortals usually have?”
“Half that, at most,” Gnaeus said, laughing too. Catocus returned to the waiting Gallus.
“My twelve children are starving,” he tried again. “They’ve already gnawed off my hand.” He lifted a hand, only there was no hand at the end of his arm, only a stub.
Ethyr caught a surprised laugh in his mouth, slapping his palm over it before it became more than a snort.
“Hmmm.” Gallus tapped his chin in thought. “Have you tried feeding one to the others?”
“Yyyes,” Catocus said slowly, narrowing his eyes. “I used to have thirteen.”
Ethyr couldn’t hold back a laugh then. At least the others chuckled too.
It was nothing like the actual story but Ethyr was not about to tell them that.
They never asked what happened in it or what the ending was, choosing instead to make it up as they went along, which resulted in outlandish nonsense that had Ethyr in tears from laughing.
The funniest moments were when they broke character all together; the removal from any sort of reality or knowledge of normal behavior couldn’t help but be hilarious.
There was a sidebar where Catocus and Gallus discussed how often a human needed to poop and, without asking Ethyr, settled confidently on once a month.
There was a long, stretched out scene of Gallus, taking the role of the hunter’s wife, flirting with Catocus, the ‘farmer’, while Ainder mercilessly critiqued them for it. It was followed by a very real sex scene, which Ethyr mostly averted his eyes during.
It ended with Catocus giving Gallus—the ‘hunter’ once more—a slap on the back and an indifferent, “Yep, she’s unfaithful.”
Ethyr almost couldn’t believe it when the two bowed and the others clapped, indicating that that was the end.
Gallus whipped upright, his stoic hunter persona returned to his usual exuberance.
He grinned and bowed a few more times as Catocus, much less interested in adulation, went to sit down and steal a goblet of wine from Langath.
She only sighed and poured herself another from the pitcher.
Gallus gave one last sweeping bow before falling between Ethyr and Ithna, forcing them both to scoot over and make room.
“Wonderful! Splendid!” Varuut praised as she finished clapping.
She stood on her knees and leaned over the table to reach Gallus, not caring that her long, untethered hair trailed in the food as Gallus tilted his head back to accept her kiss on his mouth.
“One of your best. Your talent has no limit.”
“I know, I know,” Gallus sighed, taking the wine Ithna handed over. “It is a blessed curse, being as skilled as I am.” He turned a cheeky grin and wink to Ethyr, nudging him with an elbow. Ethyr blushed, though he didn’t know why, and reached up to rub his warm neck.
“What do you think, Ethyr?” Ithna asked around the new obstacle between them. “Would you act in a play?”
Ethyr shook his head reflexively at the very thought. “O-oh no, I wouldn’t dare.”
“Why not?” Gallus asked with one of his perfect pouts. “You couldn’t get much worse than Catocus.”
“Excuse you,” Catocus said. Gallus ignored him.
“It’s quite fun,” he continued, playing with a lock of Ethyr’s hair. “Don’t you ever wish you could be someone else?”
More and more these days. The thought sobered Ethyr’s mood. Gallus noticed and dropped his hand.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said lightly.
“You probably upset him with your big mouth,” Catocus sneered. “Can we humiliate Gallus now?”
“You know that’s impossible,” Langath said.
Ethyr hoped they would continue speaking and he could stay out of it, but attention returned to him. He forced a smile.
“I’m okay, really.”
“He’s tired,” Varuut said. “He’s had a rough few weeks.”
Ethyr looked to her in surprise, unable to stop the question leaving his lips. “You know about that?”