Dad - 12BC - UK - sighting Halleys comet - A local villager.
The Aurora Archives: Day 20
ARCHIVE ENTRY: 0012-BC-DEC LOCATION: The Kentish Weald, Britannia (Pre-Roman) SIGNAL RESONANCE: Harmonic / Agricultural OPERATIVE: Terra-Runner (Unit 12-Alpha: The Pathfinder)
TRANSCRIPT OF RECOVERED ARTIFACT: (A fragment of oral poetry, transcribed onto lead sheets by a Roman ethnographer in 43 AD, titled “The Canticle of the Frost”.)
The Night of the Long-Haired Star.
The sky was bleeding in shades of bronze. For two moons now, the fire blade had hung above the hills, watching us with its leering eye. The Druids said the new star was a mouth that was eating the heat of the sun. A comment that seemed to make sense as this was the coldest winter in my memory. The ground had turned to iron in many places, and nothing was growing. The plow broke. The deer fled. I looked at my son, Emsys. His belly was hollow, his eyes too big for his face.
“Father,” he whispered. “The Star is hungry.”
“We are all hungry,” I said.
I went to the snare line to see if any prey was left to catch. My hands were blue icicles and could barely move as I reached down. I prayed to the new star, though I hated it. ‘Give me life,’ I begged. The line was pulled tight and there, in the hazel coppice was a great hare. It was not like the small rabbits of the burrow. It was a giant, golden-brown and tawny creature with ears like the sails of a boat. It was the beast of Andraste. The Sacred One. To spill its blood was to invite the madness into your heart we are told. To eat its flesh was to eat visions of the future.
But it was fat. It was heavy. My boy needed… I drew my bronze knife, its metal making a slithering sound as it was pulled from the sheath. My hand shook. I looked at the star. I looked at the knife.
‘If I kill the messenger,’ I thought, ‘I kill the message.’ I cut the cord instead, almost without looking. Shame coursed through me.
“Go,” turning my back. “Go before I change my mind.”
I took Emsys by the hand.
“Come,” I said. “We will search the river ice for fish.” We turned to leave the copse when something heavy struck the back of my knee, hard. I stumbled. It struck again, a sharp, heavy kick to my calf. I spun around. It was the Hare. It was not running away like it should have done. It was boxing me, the ungrateful thing. It stood on its hind legs, chattering, its front paws striking out at my tunic.
“Beast!” I shouted, kicking snow at it. “I gave you life! Go!” It did not go. It ran a few paces into the deep woods, stopped, and looked back. When we did not follow, it returned, charging me, nipping at my heels like a dog with a stubborn ram.
“It is mad,” Emsys cried. “The star has made it mad!” Anger took me. I chased it. “I will roast you after all!” I roared. I ran through the bracken, Emsys stumbling behind me. The hare kept just ahead, a tawny blur leading us away from the frozen fields and into the deep, ancient canopy where the snow was thinner. The creaking of branches was loud by virtue of the weird silence we walked into. Forests always grew silent when men walked in.
Suddenly, the hare stopped. It did not cower from me despite my anger. It sat upright, its ears swiveling like cups to catch the wind. It thumped its great hind foot against the earth. Thump. It waited. It cocked its head, listening to the ground. Thump. The sound was different there. In the fields, the ground rang like metal. Here, under the leaf mold, it sounded dull and hollow. The hare hopped two paces to the left. Thump. It listened to the echo in the soil. It was testing the skin of the world. It found a spot beneath a holly bush. It thumped again, and this time a deep resonant sound issued from the spot that it had hammered with its foot. It looked at me and began to dig. The earth was only coated in a thin layer of frost here and soil flew. The ground was dark and soft, protected by the deep canopy from the star’s frost, the smell of it gave me pause to take a deep breath. There was life still. The hare pulled up a root, a pignut, swollen and sweet, and then kicked the root to Emsys before moving on and repeating the task. Thump. Listen. Thump. Dig. I understood. The beast had wanted me to follow. It was a listener. It knew where the earth was soft, where life was sleeping.
We followed him for hours, the man, the boy, and the hare, we became a pack. When he thumped, we stopped. When he dug, we dug with him and gathered. We found a cache of acorns, we found wild parsnips deep in the loam. As the fire blade faded into the dawn, we stopped at the edge of the forest near my home and watched as the light of the star was consumed in the rising sun, warmth seeping into my skin. We built a small fire in that morning light and roasted some of the roots. I peeled the finest one, steaming and white. I did not give it to my son. I laid it on a flat stone before the hare. The great beast ate with us. He watched the fire, and I watched him.
My son slept with a full belly that morning, his hand resting on the hare’s flank. The star did not bring death and did not eat the warmth, my brothers. It brought a guide, and the warmth of a full stomach. Now, when the frost is hard, I do not strike the earth in anger. I listen to the Thump. Where the hare leads, the earth opens.
Archivist’s Note
ARCHIVIST: Cas’shya ANALYSIS: The star described is Halley’s Comet, which appeared in 12 BC. The hare utilized sonic density profiling. Rabbits possess highly sensitive hearing/vibration detection. By striking the ground with a calculated mass (the “Thump”), the hare created a seismic wave. By listening to the acoustic return (the resonance), the Rabbit could map the density of the soil layers beneath. Ground (permafrost) reflects a high-pitch frequency. Soft ground (unfrozen loam/caches) absorbs the wave and returns a low-frequency dull thud. The herding behavior described, kicking the subject to force a directional change, is a standard intervention used when vocalisations were not welcome. Sometimes, to save a Human, you have to annoy them first. This event established the local legend of the hare-warden, leading to a regional taboo against hunting hares that lasted until the Roman occupation.
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