With rare exceptions, Marco thought, the inexorable fate of one who has been great since youth is to suffer the frustrations of life in old age, when the lack of flexibility, perspective and imagination makes them more painful and laden with consequences.
Unfortunately Jezebel was no exception to this terrible rule.
As the years went by, step by step as her power grew, Jezebel became less and less curious, brilliant and innovative, while at the same pace her need for distraction and “amusement” grew.
The solitude that had allowed her to study and equip herself with her extraordinary abilities became chronic, bringing a heavy and growing burden of sadness.
She had never married, she had never wanted to give herself the comfort of a family so as to better devote herself to her mission, but in doing so she had made her life arid, and this awareness came when it was no longer possible to remedy such an ill-fated choice.
Jezebel’s mother had died prematurely, her father remained, increasingly taciturn and evidently worried about the turn Jezebel’s life was taking.
Even her beauty had been taken away by time, the mirror gave back to her more and more the image of a woman who had aged badly and was neglected, excessively thin, whose skin was inexorably becoming covered with wrinkles and imperfections.
Her free sexual habits and the ever more marked age difference with her occasional partners were by now the subject of tavern jokes, which were more and more often uttered even in the sacred temples.
Finally the herb whose astonishing properties she had learned from ancient books, and which was from time to time used in rituals, became a daily companion, to the point that she had a personal greenhouse built for it, and she could wander around incoherent and confused for entire days, ignoring the growing duties that her role demanded.
To complete it all, part of her theories had been refuted by the practice made possible precisely by her own vigorous innovative activity: in particular her emphasis on matriarchy in the priestly order had been demonstrably made obsolete: it had been discovered that male priests were not intrinsically weaker in mastering spells, that it was instead a different cycle of development of evocative powers: women tended to be more precocious and needed less practice to reach maturity, but they were not necessarily the most powerful in mastering spells once training and development were completed, the “final” strength reached by a priest had remained unpredictable, nor could it be linked to any physical or psychological characteristic...in other words the real capacity for developing magical qualities had remained a question shrouded in mystery.
Things were no better on the social side either: Jezebel had successfully introduced enormous innovations, but in the end historical tradition and centuries-old habits had returned to prevail, oligarchies and privileges still existed and in some cases were growing stronger, the availability of knowledge was simply ignored by most, the study of new methods of producing goods, especially in agriculture, had in fact stalled, and even the new female figures in the army and in the ruling classes, made possible thanks to Jezebel’s work, had remained substantially irrelevant in number, considered “exceptions” they were often more tolerated than loved.
[Marco interrupted his meditation/hypnosis for a moment...he was beginning to feel growing embarrassment and pain and, having already seen the epilogue of that life which he was now preparing to relive/recall, he found a little rest indispensable]