The White Road of the Eagle

in those days which came neither before nor after the great tribulation that made all things different.

It begins with the appearance of a white mountain road that began at the end of all old roads, as if all the roads that led to Rome ended up in the middle of nowhere, but at the beginning of this white mountain road.

Take heed, dear reader, in this story, it is not the mountain that is white but the road, a confusion that stubbornly resists correction—and for good reason, since almost nobody has seen a white road...

abide about the whiteness of the road and whether this was due to white stones, faded asphalt, thick fog or pure metaphor as if the road resided in someone's mind...

But let me assure you dear reader, that none of the above are the case... In this case, the whiteness of the road was due to a mistake made by the painters who became overzealous in their task of painting boundary lines, and painted the whole road as a boundary line.

Well you can image the confusion this caused for the residents from all the provinces surrounding Rome—not least of which the Emperor—you know the one who located his palace in Tivoli.

The residents didn't know which side was forward and which backward; Nor did they know on which side was located a road as opposed to its shoulder... Which profoundly confused direction period. (In contradistinction to chaos, vicious cycles and random, pell-mell, knee jerk and scatter-shot driving-your-char-into-the-dessert...)

who stood head and shoulders above the others was able to see a solution in the distance...

It came in the form of a whisper from a muse who resided along the border of the Black Sea in a town called—if my memory serves me correctly—Sebastopaul (not to be confused with Bishopaul, who was another Paul altogether...

And it also came in the additional form of a jingle since this muse worked in the advertising industry. Now this jingle which went something like this: "Love knows no boundaries" and it became so popular that it resulted in the enormous rise in the number of bastards in the population...

Especially from the loins of the Emperor's wife who moonlighted as a madame, as the saying goes in French...

as you can imagine, dear reader, what a problem this caused when the Emperor's real son was killed in battle and all the bastardly pretenders started to file claims to the throne—that is—once the Emperor became ill...

and started the pillaging of the palace in Tivioli, since the bastards had began to pry apart the stones of the palace as a sign of ownership of "their" own wing to the place... A contest was organised for the hand in marriage of the Emperor's daughter ( yes, dear reader, the Emperor had a daughter. )

And here's where things really got complicated, because without the colour black to identify the four directions leading into and out of Rome, the only possible competitor-suitors were those already residing in Rome, hence: slaves, which the princess really detested.

herself to such a "prize" and / or insure that nobody of slave origin wins, she devised a very clever ruse.

It was announced that the princess had fled the palace in disguise and was hiding out in the country with a dark lover who had poisoned the Emperor and was wanted for attempted murder.

The competition then was announced as the search and killing of the dark lover via a public duel after winning over the heart of the princess, not before.

Which meant that the princess in hiding had to be found, secretly wooed, won over and her previous abductor-lover killed with her permission...

insured that her suitor would not be a slave from the city, and that he would be bold enough to find her and kill her lover...

However, the only catch was that there was no "dark lover" to kill. And if there were, he would have to be carefully selected as not to kill her "fiancé" in the putative duel which would only add to the princesses distress since such a "win" would be no win at all as it would be the equivalent of marrying a slave anyway...

So it became obvious to all the authors of this ruse, that her true love had to either be killed or kill in re-turn in a legitimate duel bearing no slave at all, but only after the ruse had begun and the princess had already fled with her "fictional" lover into the country side from which nobody could return, neither to Rome, nor to their provincial homes.

So the duel really became how to find fictional love in the first place with a man who would be capable of be-killing himself and healing the Emperor’s illness ( I think ). And the answer, of course, is by having the Queen-bee give birth in the provinces… ( if the princess’s departure is not a fiction ).

"An eagle can reach the age of seventy years; at forty however he has to make a decision...

Beak and claws have grown to the extent that he no longer is able to catch prey and his long and ponderous feathers make flying nearly impossible.

He faces two options: to die or to undergo a painful process of renewal. He retreats into a protective rock crevasse; forcefully pulls out his feathers and claws and pounds off his beak...
After several enduring months his beak, claws and feathers have grown back. He walks into a new life..."

Indian legend