Sacerdos of the Culte

The fourth such (and the second in Parquet) Ruidero is the sacerdos of the cult of the great deeps. Each in turn given up by the sea as a young girl this the current Ruidero has occupied the role for nearly forty years. The cult something that came to Parquet, it was established here after the first Ruidero was admitted to the peritus of the Troges after walking the sceironian way unmolested. What transpired there (now a hundred years gone) is not described, like so much, by the Troges. That Ruidero took up residence in the caelum, building a shack by the pool in the temple of Juno. That residence better now, albeit still very much a shack, it remains occupied by the contemporary Ruidero. It is the Troges that refer to the woman that heads up a cult (that she would deny is a cult at all) by the term sacerdos, Ruidero would have others simply refer to her as Ruidero.

Worshippers might go about their beliefs in the harbour far below but Ruidero herself rarely leaves the caelum, and never goes further than the uppermost steps of the sceironian way. Others come to bathe her, to wash her, even to feed her. Those that come to her (whether incognito or openly) might be believers in the cult, or simply those that would have her to be an oracle. This as with most things she denies. A gift might be accepted and left, though her shack and the temple are noticeably empty of such things. Often a task might be given, a request made.

Ruidero once approached cannot be left until the purpose has been discussed, or she dismisses the visitor. When filthy, her hair tangled, dressed in rags if at all then Ruidero has the manner and delight of a child. When arrayed in finery, her hair coiled into serpents, Ruidero is quite the opposite. It being difficult to determine beforehand a visitor must accept her in whatever aspect. When filthy and delightful Ruidero is found in company with many dozen vollies; when well arrayed instead by a number of nereids.

Amongst the citizens of Parquet Ruidero is just another story of the mad things found in the caelum. Just as those that go into the water of the harbour are considered to have caught too much sun, and especially to feed the leeches, most wouldn’t even think of the cult as a church so much as the occupation of the idle rich. Another madness amongst many in the caelum and the Looms. If a scholar or a more curious onlooker spying Ruidero in the Looms, or seeing a nereid accompanying its possessor, should wonder at how it is that Ruidero works what she so patently does then it is indeed considered a mystery. Yet a mystery with doubtless a decent explanation if one were ever to learn of it. Parquet after all is a place of reason. And reasonable folk demand reasonable explanations, in the absence of which it is only reasonable to conjecture. In the Looms where there is no cult, no cult at all, the cultists there are not are said to meet in a temple that does not exist, and which is almost certainly not beneath the caelum itself. Whilst it is widely known in the Looms that the cult only invites, is not petitioned, so too is it known that it is a society occupied only by those born to the isle. Known, but dismissed. Such tattle! It might be so that certain of the noteworthy scandalise with their pretence to the cult.

To those in the Delves the cult is a club where people with too much wealth gather to fuck fish. Gossip that in Port Mercy is greeted with little disgust, for who can rightly say when upon a drunken night they have not?

Through all which Ruidero passes. Haughty or haggard, delighted or disgusted. Rarely leaving the caelum, and never the Looms. Unless, if drunkards and dullards are to be believed, it is pass unseen by the sober and the sensible. The world about her slowed, its sound deadened, her hair and robes drifting on ghostly tides.