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“Cabol Blessings” meant to experience luck as if a rock perpetually skipping on a pond’s surface. In the year 1720, all fortunes plunged for the Cabol group, the namesake of unending prosperity.
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Jean thought of all days, she would die today. Jean believed that because she had asked her friends to fetch her a slow-acting poison.
Jean sipped the poison as Bee massaged one shoulder with a nearly imperceptible touch. Ava massaged the other shoulder in a pounding way, always like punches with the accompanying pain. Both of her friends sang "The Song of Life Reflections" as they gave the massage. The song was meant to be pleasant, but more importantly, it was meant to accompany the listener as they reflected back on their lives.
Ava and Bee would continue to enjoy each other. Bee liked Jean more than she liked Ava, but would be fine after Jean went to a better place. Ava might be tortured.
Jean had earlier disclosed to Ava everything she knew about the nation's defenses in case she was to die unexpectedly. However, if their enemies realized that Ava had these secrets, they would want to know them.
The whole situation was irrational, Jean knew. Since their enemies breached her nation's defenses today, they would no longer need this knowledge. Their enemies relished torture however, thus Ava might be a victim of it regardless.
Jean's life was unusual. She was born in Milwaukee, although raised in New York. She acquired a new house upon returning to Milwaukee, the one where she planned for her last breath today.
When Jean and her mother left Milwaukee for New York, her mother gave Jean a Frenchman's name to infuriate her relatives that had told them to leave. Jean inherited her mother's bitterness towards them. Paradoxically, she also hated the New York inhabitants that sold guns to the Irenshoa Nation that attacked those same relatives.
Jean's mother died when Jean was a teenager. Not knowing where to go, Jean trekked back to the Cabol Nation city of Milwaukee. Jean had a culturally provocative hairstyle at the time, but the tribe's open-minded leader, Thunder, threw her a homecoming celebration. He apologized and said that they shouldn't have earlier banished Jean's mother.
Thunder was receptive to young Jean's strategy about defeating the Irenshoa. The Cabol Nation planted fields of potatoes to send copper wires full of electricity into the Great Lakes, preventing amphibious assaults. They used electricity to get hydrogen from water, then inflated enormous balloons. The Cabol effectively weaponized these balloons, hampering the Irenshoa advances on their southern prairie border.
Once Thunder died, the Cabol grew bored of simply defending themselves. They irrationally lowered their defenses just so they could directly engage the Irenshoa. The Cabol were soon overrun, and the Irenshoa started killing their males.
Since Jean knew about the nation's defense system she might be tortured. Jean decided to kill herself instead. Jean enjoyed her friends' voices, and the sensations from the massage, until she lost consciousness.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
