Three Same Moons

2. "Three Same Moons"

The Three Same Moons festival, in remote Dubba Berra Chank, is distinct in that tourists, who are almost universally on their way to the Fire Shores Medical Museum & Scarification for a once-only lifetime pilgrimage and either get lost or have to stop anyway, arrive in Swirling Ponde dazed by travel and hunger, and by chance just as the procession toward the towne centre is getting underway, and are taken in by the elaborate costumes and somewhat menacing but compelling bell shaking and drum battering. A highly decorated adult bull would be at the front of the noisy caravan, trying to shake off his own bells, his own flowers. 

Three Moons is also the seasonal festival most likely to be left uncompleted by virtue of the ever-refreshing crowds of guests, how little word travels about the goings on at a sacred spot, and those innocent, bucolic opening moments of what turns out to be a march up to the ancient stupa at towne centre, surrounded by a moat. 

Even before arriving there, it is now known, the bull is goaded into becoming anxious with a rag soaked in menses slapped against his snout. If that were not enough, just as he's getting out of hand (and you might expect a bullfighter or other culturally appropriate heroic mime to play their part here and slay the agitated beast in the most skillful, merciful, cathartic, and beautiful way possible), the towne elder retrieves an olde pistol from a fold in his toga and shoots the dumb innocent proud strong patient vittle box in the head, twice. 

The bells and drums stop at least, and the marching as well, for a respectful beat. Upon starting up again toward the stupa, the merriment is swelling and drunken while the bull gets dragged off to the picnic grounds by dozens of children and a thick rope, and the lovely hand-embroidered designs on the backs of the costumes of the quaint olde country festival cosplayers turn out to be all the letter J, taking their true form at the height of the Jans' beige issue. Even tourists know the meaning of that letter and its legend, but not that it happened in this very towne of Swirling Ponde. 

Where all of the ancient Jan family potters and carpenters from the surrounding hills and the Jan merchants and hygienists and Jan tour guides from the comfortable homes around the center and all of the street Jans and manufacturing Jans, all the Jans, the original towne dads and dad's dads, were being mass-replaced by crusading Pharmsupply employees, who blamed the Jans for their own terrorist attacks against homeless non-compliants and forced the Jans of Jansbuurg to wear these gowns and march to their deaths in the moat around the stupa. 

Spontaneous mobbing of triplets in urban areas are overreported during this time. We now understand that relatively few actual triplets are ever involved in these incidents, but rather that the enthusiasm for being able to act out mass violent social aggression, in celebration of a deeply cultural tradition, on unsuspecting but perhaps naturally wary individuals or small groups, perhaps the kind that knows or thinks they know at some level they are indeed a freak or freaks, the chance to light upon them is irresistible to many youth and may even appear to them to be their purpose as socially responsible and deeply spiritual beings. 

Three Same Moons, or "The Ritual Mobbing Moons," occur when three of our smaller moons, Jan, Jan, and Jan, appear side-by-side in a beige refraction of sunlight and can temporarily be confused as to which is which—as can other random persons, places, and things at this time.