Pinar del Rio: Image by Murat Çelik on Google Maps
“Your Excellency.” Padre Bartolomé bowed his head and waited, a flick of his hand to the lad behind him, Bori-Damaso.
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar looked up from the papers cluttering his makeshift desk.
Padre Bartolomé took that as permission to say more. “You enquired of the crops these Taino-folk grow.’
“Of the leaf, sí, that they do not eat.”
“It is their god.”
The lad, Bori-Damaso, waiting behind him, grunted something inaudible, his shaken head vehement that Bartolomé had said it wrong.
“Let the boy speak,” said de Cuéllar.
“Not god,” Bori-Damaso said. “Voice of god.”
De Cuéllar sat back to consider him. “Voice…? As in our Bible?”
“Sí, our grandfather-god sent tobacco to take his place among men. When we smoke, we talk with him.”
“He speaks good Spanish,” de Cuéllar observed.
“My son,” Padre Bartolomé said.
Wordcount: 139
Written for What Pegman Saw: Cuba
crispina kemp 
What an original take! Oh, this is excellent!
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I thank you. Inspiration called again
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Interesting, I’d never heard that kind of ritual or myth about tobacco. You are an endless source of arcane knowledge, Crispina!
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I know where to look. And I have quite a library covering folklore and mythology
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And an excellent memory for it, as well!
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Oddly, most of it absorbed during my illness.
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Oh this is great, Crispina. What a ritual you have captured. What a way to talk with the Gods. The pride and passion in this prose wafted over me without making me splutter once!
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I thank you. I enjoyed writing it. Just had to look out some names. The lad’s Bori-Damsaco roughly translates as Tamed Native.
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A most excellent story! The concept of tobacco as a party line to god isn’t one I’ve heard of. So fascinating! I want to read the whole book.
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I thank you. You know I always look for the less expected angle.
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