Spanish Diosa! Work 💯

"But we are your children!" Viriato cried. "We leave you offerings of black lambs and the first wine of the harvest."

The tunnel sloped down, down into a silence that was not empty, but full of listening. Stalactites dripped water with a sound like slow, ancient heartbeats. Finally, he emerged into a vast, domed chamber. A black stone altar stood in the center, carved with spirals and crescent moons. And there, on a throne of polished jet, sat Ataecina. spanish diosa!

And deep in the Mons Sacer, she listened to the rain fall on the earth above, and she smiled, turning a skull over in her hands like a favorite marble, waiting for the next shepherd brave enough to come and listen. "But we are your children

She told him then, in a whisper that filled the cave. The true story of Ataecina: "Long before the first wolf howled, the earth was a raw, screaming wound. The sky loved the sun and ignored the shadow. I was born from the first rock that fell into the first deep water. I saw that things needed to end to begin again. So I carved the underworld with my own hands. I built the rivers that flow under mountains. I planted the seeds of stars that had died. When the sun's favorite child, a beautiful mortal, was struck down by a hunter's arrow, the sun begged me to give her back. I said, 'She must rest in my arms for half the year. In that time, you will weep. That weeping will be rain.' The sun agreed. And that is why the land is barren in the cold months—it is the sun's tears for the child I hold. But in the spring, I breathe on the child, and she runs back to the surface as the first flower. The sun does not give life. I do. I lend it." When she finished, she handed Viriato a single seed from her pomegranate. "Plant this. When it blooms, the rain will come. But you must tell the story every year, at the winter solstice, when I hold the sun's child. If you forget, the seed will turn to ash in your mouth." Finally, he emerged into a vast, domed chamber

The story begins not in her cave, but in the world above, in a year of terrible drought. The sun, Helios (for the Romans had brought their names), beat down on the lands of the Vettones tribe. The river Tajo shrank to a muddy trickle. The acorns, the lifeblood of the people and their prized black Iberian pigs, shriveled on the branches. The cattle lowed in agony.

Viriato, shaking, prostrated himself. "Great Mother. Our world is dying. The sun has cursed us. Send rain."