Haenseti Senators : A Comedy

[esterhase 164]

Haenseti Senators : A Comedy

Author Huig de Sixt.

Written on commission.

 

Already the campaigns of the senatorial elections had steeped into a crippling leprosy. Looming above the streets the red, black, white, and blue posters fill the walls of town-houses. The peasants hurry to gather their oats and grains before the political whirlwind sweeps in.

 

People walk past, cross the lorraine across their hearts, don’t recognise their brothers, and see their own neighbor as enemies. In all eyes there is a challenge, on every lip bitterness, and a threat is carried in every clenched fist. A silent war had flared up in the finest hearts of the empire, and already we see two young men, who stood together as brothers, get into an argument in the imperial diet, and spill eachothers’ blood into the dirt. The tension of secession means we can no longer keep count of broken marriages, and matters of faith and tradition being now so austere, everyone is playing hide and seek from the constables.

 

On the sides of the roads, there are always these suspicious-looking bearded men who we don't know and who we've never seen, following one after the other, constantly greeting everyone with the same smiles, and even greeting the trees, the rocks, the stray pigs, and the feral street-dogs. They are our good candidates. Some wear long beards, while others are clean-shaven at the sides of their heads. Some are old, very old, and bent over in age, others young and full of energy. But they all have the same smile and sing the same tune, which echoes from the valleys to the hills, and then from the hills to the mountains at the far reaches of the empire. They say;

 

- “Listen to me, good people, rich and poor, honest and treasonous. You, too, deaf and lame, cripples --look at me, and listen. It is Haense who makes the harvest plentiful, Haense who turns the miserable cottage into a palace, Haense who fills the old, empty coffers with gold, and Haense who crams the poisoned hearts full of happiness. Hurry over here, good people, for Haense is the savior for sterile women, and for anxious, obedient people. We say to the rain, DO NOT FALL; to war, DO NOT KILL; and to death, DO NOT COME. We turn piss into fine wine, and delicious nectar flows out of sting-nettles when a Haense-man touches them."

 

 Here is what I saw: while the candidate was speaking, a crowd appeared from the air and gathered around him.

 

- "Kind Sir," wept an old woman, "I have a son who's off in the war against the Inferi, far, far away."

 

- "Haense will return him to you."

- "I have only one leg," cried a crippled man.

 -"Haense will give you another one."

- "Look at this horrible cancer that eats away at my stomach!" wailed a wretched orphan in the most pathetic whinges.

- "Haense will lay a medal of honor on your wound with it’s own bare hands, and you will be cured of every sickness."

-  "I'm ninety years old," croaked an old man.

- "Haense’ll get you back to forty."

- "It's been four days since I had a scrap of food to eat!" a vagrant pleaded.

- "I'll stuff you with cakes until you burst." Then a murderer appeared brandishing a long sword, with his clothes all drenched in blood.

- "I've killed my own brother, and the imperials have sent me off to prison!" he shrieked.

- "If it were not for those imperials, Haense would tear down the prisons, and slaughter justice with the guillotine. Then I'll make you a guard."

- "My neighbor is too rich," said a peasant, "his rabbits eat my corn, and his foxes ****** my chickens."

- "I'll give you a county on my own land, and you can nail his children to the barn doors, like rabbits ripped from their warrens."

- "There aren’t any customers buying my products!" exclaimed the merchant.

- "I will push our field of independence straight to the end of the world."

- "Long live the Senate," said a voice.

The candidate responded, "Long live the Senate!"

- "Long live a free Haense," said another voice.

The candidate responded, "Long live a free Haense!"

- "Long live the Emperor," said a third voice.

- The candidate responded, "Long live the Emperor!"

At that moment, a beautiful, superbly-dressed woman stepped from the ranks of the crowd, and walked up to the candidate.

"Do you know me?" she asked.

"No," replied the Haensetian candidate, "where should I have seen you, you lousy foreigner?"

"I am Oren. What will you do for me?"

"The same as I'll do for the others, my love. I'll eat, I'll sleep, and my stomach will feel better for feeling full. With the mina I'll be pinching from your pocket, that bottomless purse, I'll have beautiful ladies, fertile fields, and respectability throughout the world, if you don't mind. And if you're not happy about it, that's no problem, my dear. I'll just have to work you over with my club!"

 

[LithiumSedai 5750]

“Perhaps Haense can get me back to forty too,” pondered an ancient collector of missives known as Corwin von Alstreim. “Gott knows they tried to make me forever three-and-twenty!” He hummed to himself a long-forgotten Renatian war tune, nonetheless content to witness the proliferation of Waldenian political works once more.