7S_1.3

October 18, 2015 in Seven Stories

Al sits down again next to Betty.

Gemma finds her nametag in her purse and,
slinging it again around her shoulder, she
finds a seat in the second row across the
aisle from Al and Betty. She puts her purse
on the desk.

Betty’s got the notes from the board in her
spiral-bound notebook.

☉ Sun
☽ Mon
♂ Tue
☿ Wed
♃ Thu
♀ Fri
♄ Sat

“It doesn’t make sense this way, though!”
According to Al. “Those are symbols for objects
in the sky, not for days-of-the-week!”

“I disagree”, Betty replies, “the Sun and Moon still
match up with the days even in English, and, like you
said, in French they match up better still.”

“But the genders are wrong, for heck’s sake!
I want it to at least match up to the comics!
Now this
♂ (drawing in her notepad)
I know means Mars… a wargod, even.
That oughta be Thor, on my model: thundergod,
wargod… pretty close fit. But whoever this “Tiu” is,
that Tuesday’s supposed to be for, I am pretty sure
she’s a goddess: wrong sex altogether.”

“Don’t you mean gender?”

“Do I? And Odin-to-Mercury doesn’t make much sense either;
Odin’s the bigshot-in-chief like Saturn ♄ or something;
let’s see… Thor’s his son, so I guess Thursday
oughta be Jupiter ♄, not Mars… okay, good… I
always thought that was game day somehow…”

But Betty isn’t quite following all of this; Eppie and Zed
have come in and are watching the goings-on in Betty’s note-
book.

“What’s going on?”

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