7S_1.2

October 17, 2015 in Seven Stories

Saying not a word, Del proceeds to draw in [his] pad without
looking again at any of the others.

Meanwhile, Gemma’s erasing part of the board.

☽ Moon ♂ Mars ☿ Mercury ♃ Jupiter ♀ Venus ♄ Saturn☉ Sun
monday mars-day make-ready jove-day friga-day saturn-day sunday

Al is simultaneously drawing the various symbols
at the other end of the board, along with their
Gods-and-Days identifications.

“You see,” says Gemma, and she looks around the room
trying to make eye-contacts, “it must have had something
to do with the number seven itself: there were
seven celestial objects wandering around in the night sky…
‘planet’ means ‘wanderer’ (or so I’m told)… and seven
days in a week… so the fortune-tellers decided that
maybe each planet should ‘rule a day’, so to speak…
whatever that might turn out to mean, as it were…”

“But wait a minute. No, before that, even.
What’s your name? I see you haven’t got your tag
on…” Al grabs a corner of the nametag hung around
his own neck and wiggles it a little.

“Oh, hi… Al. I’m Gemma. I’ve got it here with me
somewhere.” As she roots around in her purse.

“The thing is, why should there be seven days in a week?
Are you saying they did that because of these
seven so-called ‘planets’ or whatever?”

“I always heard it had something to do with the Moon,”
says Betty. “A month is about 28 days, and”

Al interrupts her with “OK, seven goes into 28. That
makes sense, I suppose.”

“Right.”

And Al sits down again next to Betty.

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