Challenge #02128-E299: Pick Up Your Skirts and Walk Away
"Have fun with your crisis, I'm going to live among the goats." -- OohLookShiny
Leth had told them. She'd told them often. She'd told them so much that they mocked her for saying it, but she said it nonetheless.
"No good has ever come from making the rich richer and the poor poorer," she had said. Or, "In order for an economy to flourish, you have to give money to people who will spend it."
They didn't listen. They didn't listen because Leth wasn't one of them. They were the men in charge and she was just a lowly woman who talked too much[1] and had too many like-minded followers. Leth and her terrible regiments of women were openly mocked, called ugly, and generally derided. Until the war came.
The men, the stupid, ignorant men who demanded everything of them demanded one more thing: "Fight for us." They even went to the extreme of asking Leth in a very public forum. She, who had warned them of their idiotic diplomacy choices that were doomed to fail. She, who had spoken again and again about why the economy was failing. She, who had fought for rights that only the rich men ever had. She, who had said so much, and was listened to so little.
She accepted the noble speech about defending the country and how worthy as warriors her regiments were, about how much they had fought and, when you got down to it, what was one more fight for a proper cause? She sat through it all with a poker face, betraying no emotion. Then it was her turn at the podium.
Leth said, "Have fun with your crisis, I'm going to live among the goats." She walked off the stage, out of the arena, and calmly gathered everything she'd need for her professed future life.
So did every woman who followed her. They took resources with them. Food, seeds, knowledge, skills, and all their children who were too young to have swallowed the lines the rich men fed them. They took their sewing kits. They took their knowledge of remedies that worked. They took all the things that the men had mocked.
They took it all far from the realm, into the wilderness, and made a new home with the goats. Within a month, they had something of a city springing up. A city with clean water and proper food and health care for all. The men there were raised to be polite and think of others and be open with their emotions.
In the realm they left, the rich old men were busy. They were busy blaming the women who were left whilst working them to death and calling them lazy. They were busy creating destitution and deprivation whilst lining their coffers with money that never went anywhere. They were busy rattling their sabres on two fronts whilst the women who had left were showing the world that these men were wrong in so many ways.
The last of those tyrannical despots went to the gallows blaming others for his own mistakes, but that was after the revolution came.
By then, the city of women had a stable infrastructure, a council of commons, and guarantees that those who needed received what they needed from those who could provide in abundance. There was no need to suffer. There was no need to struggle. There was plenty of work, there were plenty of people who could work. Those who needed were no lazier than those who laboured all their waking hours. It was all a matter of choice.
Their progress was slow, but it was well-thought. They shared stories of the fools who had mislead themselves to death, and judged the rest of the world harshly by how well or how poorly it listened to women. There was no wealth, that was true, but there was also no poverty. Some did better than others, but they never did better because others suffered.
Leth was a great-grandmother by the time the rest of the world was starting to come to terms with the concept that maybe - just maybe - she and her regiments might just have a point. By then, women were flooding to the ever-growing borders of their settlement. By then, they welcomed all who needed and still had plenty left over for trade. By then, the realm that had once sung the virtues of rich old men and silenced women by force had since been taken over for more useful things. Things like: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and filling all the other needs of life and the living.
By then, people were listening to her.
Her last words were of most import. "Look after each other and little will ever go wrong."
[1] It should be noted at this point that this society had the common saying, "Women should be seen, not heard," and still believed in Hysteria as the root of all feminine problems.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Fyletto]
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