Fruit of the Vine:Anorexia

In Locus Imperius IX, the rich have thousands of meeting places where they may gather, display their trappings of wealth and beauty and enagge in petty battles over postion. So many meeting places they could not all be listed. For the impoverished, there is only Anorexia, the Well of Beauty. This accursed well is always packed with strutting peackocks, hoodlums with curved blades, dazzle-girls and glitter-boys, prostitutes, pimps, and the royalty of the scum, all in deferance to the strange blue-eyed, elfin men and women of the erotic and fragile form. Brave tourists venture into it's proximity covered in protective gear to see the seasonal "fashion shows", and hear a local tell the story of Pappa Hades and the River.

While the dirt of the hill is completely encased in hard steel, the underground spinrs could not be easily contained. For hundreds of years, the flowing underground rivers twisted and turned in their bonds, their reckless love for beauty and for being loved keeping all dispair from it's depths.

When Hallisious Echau, Thrice-Noted Chosen of the Gods, Prophet who Hears the Voice of the Emperor in Dreams went to bless the rivers, he took with him his daughters. He brought with him his daughters, especially the youngest, Calliope, could please the rivers with their youth and whimsy. As he spoke from the Codex, the girls danced.

Now, as it is told, though some cannot believe it, so great was Echau's art that even the evil Pappa Hades was bound to observe his prohecying and work no mischief. Others of less faith suggest that Pappa Hades had instead made one of his infamous deals with Echau, granting him his false visions, and thus was watching his pawn.

Regardless of the truth, Pappa Hades was there when the Prophet was moved to speak of the coming green vinyard in the city, to be ruled over by a beloved patron of the arts, beautiful and destined to be loved and worshipped, a god among men. Purity and hope incarnate, the daughters were moved by these words and danced a new dance for the river. The river could no longer contain itself, and Shattering through the pavement and roads, tossing buildings aside in it's display of romance, the sparking blue water flowed out onto the streets in a display of colour and mirth.

The Master of the Unsatisfied, Keeper of Ashen Tongues, looked upon the untamed heart of Calliope moving within the water, and saw it's love of life, and was drawn to it. Naming the fountain Shereen after his mortal niece, dead at the hands of his enemy-turned-lapdog, he went down on one knee before Calliope and promised the water would bring beauty to all those that hungered after it and self-love to all those who loathed themselves, that it would be under his protection. He then asked if she would allow herself to be adopted as his daughter. The water did not listen, did not hear, and nor did she as she awaited her love, the Dionysian winemaker, the beautiful Lucifuge. Spurned, Pappa Hades took his bitterness and his gall and worked it into his promise. The river would still bring a form of beauty, and self-love, but now at the price of sanity, health, family and life. Her love would be death to all those that shared it. Calliope was cursed for seventeen years, that each day she would prepare herself for her coming love and that would be the power that kept them apart.

And, as with all Pappa Hades evil witchings, it came to pass. Each day, Calliope would drink from the untamed waters, and become thinner, more graceful. However, she could not but gorge herself of any lesser nourishment, and every reflective surface, be it steel, glass or water, drove her to race to the fountain of Shereen and drink heavily. Thus, years before Luxifuge arrived, she died of her diet and fell into the waters. Where Calliope and Shereen are as one, her mourning father named the fountain Anorexia, simply "fretting want of proper appetite".

In that time, others drank from the waters of Anorexia and suffered Calliopes fate. They first grow beautiful and gain a sense of worth. Them, sip by sip, they become thin, haunted and weak, and need to drink more deeply from the well to regain their equipose. Some say the curse worked itself into the very fabric of the universe, and in the Worlds Beyond the Hill, from whence the Arenas Guests come, it spreads like a disease, a ritualised madness that acts as a prayer to Pappa Hades.

The eventual fate of Hallisious Echau, Thrice-Noted Chosen of the Gods, last of the true prophets, is another story.

Anorexia, the Well of the Beatiful, lies exactly halfway between the Starvation Court and Lucifuges vinyard. And so it shall forever more be, the hunger of Hunger feeding the vanity of Vanity.