c. 585 BCE
The Babylonian Prophesy
a historical flash fiction.
The Babylonian moon flowed molten silver in the Eupharates, and taking a walk by its shores, Queen Amytis’s midnight ebony hair acquired a silvern texture to it too, in a manner such that above her forehead she had aged decades, and just below it she was still that one zesty princess with Persian melanin marinated into her skin. She was on her daily night walks, with a guard or two following far behind, and in between the queen and the guards trailed lamely a haggard woman, whom not even that romantic Mesopotamian moon goddess could beautify. She was one of those visages of crisscrossed wrinkles, traversing every facial plane that each fissure seemed like tributaries flowing through which mirage of moon water of its own kind brimmed and dried up as she crawled from moon lit to shade and again.
She was nearer to the queen, murmuring sometimes in herself, at times to her Grace, sometimes her homeland Persian prayers, and at times curses on the Babylonians. “Kara, would you stop whining now? it’s getting on my nerves!” the Queen snapped at her Persian wise woman who was a marriage gift from her family to take along with. “As my Lady wishes,” she stooped even lower than her already leaning framework. After a few silence steps though she continued again, “But my Lady must understand the crux of the matter. How carnal a sin thy Lord, his Majesty has executed, tell the King he has lost my vote.’’ her voice now coaxing yet filled with a fear that her owner might snap at her but again. But as she felt that Queen had her poker face on from the backside of her head, so she kept going, “not only the sacred Judah, but he has captivated and slaved people from the holy city of Jerusalem as well! Are you getting how serious this is?’’ and now referring to the gods not of where she’s dwelling right now, but of her Persian origin, “the gods’s anger is erupting, quaking through Earth’s core,’’ and then she volumed down her whispers even more so, so that the far off guards might not hear her, “and once it reaches these petty bronze gates of this insect like pretending to be grand city, nor their imaginary Marduk nor that frail Ishtar would be in any state to protect them save for the cow.’’ She finished up with an angry and irritated out of decades hiss, which must have angered up this goddess standing right before her too, because Amytis turned so violently in herself, forceful air around her, facing Kara now, her eyes squinting so hard that they would have erupted either out or dived in with rage. “You spit one more ill omen Kara and I’ll forget that you belong to that lineage of wise blood that’ve been guiding us for centuries now! How dare you even speak those poisons out, knowing that it was Nebuchadnezzar, and his people, and his gods who sheltered us, and took care of our every need? Don’t you see respect for you, for me, and for Persia in his eyes? Don’t you see love for his wife in them; don’t you consider the depth of that love when he built that lush green gardens up in the midst of this arid lands just because I was feeling homesick! I swear upon the temple of Marduk if someone ear drops upon you spitting those curses here in the kingdom, that I know will lead to your immediate execution, I won’t be the one interfering to save your crazy cursing arse, I give my word to you on that. So from now on you better see those wrinkled tugging lips whisper words only to yourself, or your useless life won’t be seeing more of these future years. Do you understand me now?’’ Queen’s eyes were rage red, only if it’d be possible to see through the dark. She then collected herself, her calm, and turned and continued her walk as if nothing has happened. The old wise hag, now silent at last, kept crawling behind the Queen, with just the moments ago statued guards following far behind the two now. This tiny procession ant-ed on by the side of the settlementing river, and ultimately dissappeared snakingly into that dark of the upcoming history ahead.
Not very later after Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem and this ill omened prophetic ‘talk’ did the mighty Babylonian civilization fall, ruined and taken under the giant reign of the Persian empire.
Author’s Note: The conclusion is as much fiction as is Kara, or for that matter, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is; historically, it wasn’t until almost 47 years later Nebuchadnezzar, the second’s destruction of Jerusalem that Babylon was conquered and became part of the Persian empire.
Editors:
Christina von Siebenbürgen
Dewi
