Reblogged from JimWebstr, aka Tallis Steelyard:

Every so often you come across a paradox. For example I was once talking to an old friend of Maljie’s and they mentioned, “The cathartic effect of mindless violence.” But surely if it’s cathartic, it isn’t mindless, it’s done for a purpose? But there again, if it isn’t mindless violence, is it cathartic? Still I leave others to ponder the eternal verities. This story arose from the time when Maljie was a Temple Warden at the Shrine of Aea in her Aspect as the Personification of Tempered Enthusiasm. The duties of Temple Wardens are countless and diverse. So Maljie wasn’t entirely surprised when she realised that one of her jobs was mowing the temple meadow.

Now if glorifying this particular shrine with the term, ‘temple’ was an overstatement, describing that particular patch of ground as ‘the temple meadow was hyperbole. Yes I know that a meadow is merely a grassy field that is mown for hay, but still this wasn’t big enough to be a field, and to be honest there wasn’t all that much grass on it. Indeed it was one of the finest collections of nettles, briars and assorted spiky and stinging plants to be found within the city boundaries of Port Naain. Unseemly Herbalists would visit at dawn and dusk, intent of getting various cuttings at supernaturally significant phases of the moon. Still when she was told that mowing the meadow fell to her, Maljie merely shrugged and went to find the ecclesiastical scythe.

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