Flickr Fiction:

The crowd will roar. The streets and buildings will echo with the sound and nobody will be able to escape. We will all be caught up in it and rattling like peas in a pod. It will be the worst day of our lives. It will be the best day of our lives.

And Sanctus Oren the Paramount said that all of you will be forsaken by all of your gods, Marabus and Dominia and Crator, and that one shall rise to take their place, and It shall be the Golden Ox, the One who lives but to strive. And after your centuries of striving, of hard work in the name of the Golden One, then comes the Day of Release, and we shall all be released from our burdens.

That is what they tell me. That is what I learn from Mother and Father, from Mistress Bett during Sanctusday lessons each week. When I am in school, those rare days when I can be spared from the farming, they tell us, too. It is coming, they say. The Golden One's Day of Release. Nobody knows exactly when, but all the Revered Ones at the temple say that it is soon. I ask my parents how the Revered Ones know this, but this earns me a hard slap every time I ask. I know I deserve it. For everyone down to the littlest child knows that it is true, and that until the Day of Release we are commanded by the Golden One to spend our days in toil so that our kei, our innermost selves--that part of us that makes us individual workers for the Golden One instead of merely automatons--so that our kei are worthy of ascent into the Next Plane.

Before, in the Lower Planes, it was first the mountain kingdom of Marabus the Monkey where our people toiled to create the first tools, the first fires, the first clothing to cover our nakedness. So it was that we, the Ascensior, were lifted to the plane of Dominia, where we built rude structures to live in, and our first holy idols to worship. When these were deemed worthy of the Great Dominia, we were then lifted to the existence of Crator, the Owl, who ushered in the age of Wisdom in which the books of the Golden One were first received and written.

But the Golden One has not seen fit to transmit to us any knowledge of our destinies beyond the Day of Release. He has not seen fit to tell us what god will rule our next Plane, though there is much speculation by the Revered Ones. Even the great Sanctus Oren, prophet of old, had little to say on this. It troubles me greatly that nobody seems to find it odd, this lack of knowledge. Am I the only one who questions? Am I the only one here who will brave a slap to find the truth?
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This week's piece was inspired by King Kow by Flickr user isolano. I'm on time this time! Amazing! Worship my Golden Ox! Check for more Flickr Fiction on the sites of The Gurrier, Tea and Cakes, Elimare, Chris, Mina, and TadMack.