Can we get a beautiful family portrait of neal with his beautiful family? Or at least just him and his parents, idk how big their clan is so idk how annoying it'd be to draw every single slomen lol
Picture of Maaj and slom-Neal close to a Ciwan beach
Neal always had a small family. Only him and his mothers, outcasts to the rest. They lived in a host family, one that had them employed and included them in *some* family activities, but it's hard to say if they would include them in a family portrait. Painting generally isn't much of a thing in Tatlich - Neal's childhood home, so his first was in Ciwa, where he lives now.
A painting is a thing for the wealthy, but he is part of the royal sub-family, and so this is paid for him.
When he moved his mother to Ciwa, she was excited to have a picture with him, but less excited about him requesting to be only painted as a clear sloman.
The first painting was on cattle skin, but it unfortunately got destroyed while being moved to a new place.
The new one was made to be portable. Though it was hard to find an artist willing to make something so small, most ciwan painting is done in groups on a large canvas/wall to be displayed in the wealthy families' large territory, not a single witch's workroom.
A "witch" burning tradition continues through the night in a Tatlich village. Only a few more tokens are deposited before the song begins.
Burning of the 'posilma' is an annual tradition found in many western slomen groups. While not all these groups burn the same symbolic beings or do it for the same exact reasons, the tradition is recognizable to a large majority of Western populations.
In some places, simple cloth/dry plant material figures are used to represent local spirits in mythology that haunt the season with illness and misfortune to ruin the upcoming spring. Causing infertility of man, soil and animal. The beings are very similar among all these cultures since most do have the same origin, but their name and behavior may differ.
To bring them into crafted bodies and set them on fire is to weaken their power over the future months. Often, it is accompanied by songs and melodic whispers of the families. To create a wall of connection around the fire so no demon escapes its heat.
The Tatlich word for a witch (a person who's perceived as capable of doing and seeing more than a regular person) is the same as for evil spirits, so when one doesn't specify which spirits, an outsider might think people are being sacrificed to nature.
The word started being used for outliers only after witches started being recognized as separate people when new families came to power in the sea's culture, looking for patterns to weaken communities. Thus, the concept of a witch in Tatlich is not identical to the concept in Ciwa.
Additionally, Tatlich people celebrate the tradition more as helping the body and soul, a personal ordeal to make sure demons don't find their way inside the homes and flesh of family members while still helping with the future season.
The posilma burned here is made of a thick root of a winter plant, formed into a shape of monstrous slomen with evil little grins. It is made to withstand the fire, unlike one of cloth. For bigger and longer fires, they may even be covered in fire-resistant materials. And that is to be a test of the maturing generation.
Tokens are made as a preparation for the event from wood or 'eddible clay' (cookies). Slomen either make their own or get community-made ones to symbolize a deed or aspect of themselves they want to burn away for the new year. One doesn't need to visualize their token's meaning onto it, but it's thought to be more effective that way. These aren't the same as sins, that isn't a known concept here, but it's similar in that often they are things a person is ashamed of or feels guilt over. Some choices for a token may be spreading a lie, spreading a sickness, carrying a child of another, losing an important fight, or even just an emotion that doesn't go away and hinders communication.
A token can stand for a worse crime, too. Criminals who don't get punished by exile are more than encouraged to join the tradition, so they don't become the weak point, carrying their guilt into people's homes. At this time, a cord cutter must be treated the same as an honoured herder.
When all tokens have been thrown into the flames, the fire is left to go, only sometimes it's killed purposefully if it's lasting into a working day.
If the figures are lost to the fire, there is sometimes a backup at the base of the stakes. If there's non left, the tradition has a pathetic end, and some misfortune in the next weeks can be blamed on the fire masters.
If at least some of the posilma remain, select brave young men and women, most often entering adulthood or anticipating their first parenthood, take on the task of eating the cooked/burned root. With that, the weight of the tokens is lifted, and the young prove their devotion to the collective. And yes, it definitely tastes disgusting.
(Some subregions are not as keen on having women eat the posilma since they "don't need to show anything", and them getting sick is worse for the family than when a man does. While others actually think young men can't be trusted with something so important, so only maturing women are allowed to eat the root. These conflicting ideas are more recent and change quite easily with the major matriarchal vote. Important is someone eats it.)
