Washing the Feet of the Enemy

This article is archived, and is no longer part of Vekllei canon.

He had sent her a wire some weeks before asking to meet her. She did not remember him. By now he was an old man, and she, a Gregori baby of sixty four years, had not aged a day. He was close to dying and wanted to relieve his soul of the war crimes he’d committed as a member of the Vanguard in the Second American Civil War. She had been a little ptitsa back then, fighting with the Milita. He was desperate to repay her, and what she stood for, as in 2127 she is one of the few living Militia women on this Earth.

In this scene we see Michael Greenfield washing the feet of Tzipora Zelda Desmoines at a spirit shrine in Vekllei, in a melding of Christian tradition and Vekllei cultural humility. She is surrounded by her friends, including her estranged Japanese husband on the left (fourteen years old, sixty two years age). She does not like her feet being touched, but it is important to her to see a living artifact of the war that shaped her childhood. She still carries part of the war with her — as he fills a basin and she bares one foot, Michael notices she is afflicted with nervous tics. She rubs her nose and picks at her shirt. When she is nervous, like she is now, the tics are almost constant.

These two are survivors of the Second American Civil War, which spanned a decade in the 2070s. They fought on opposite sides — Tzipora on the liberal, socialist, anarchist coalition called the Militia, Michael as a fascist for the Vanguard party. Tzipora grew disillusioned with the war and fled after three years of fighting. Michael continued to serve until the Federal Government succeeded in crushing both movements. The crimes he has committed in war weight on him, now late in life. He passed away six months after this strange and awkward meeting.