Немийская Федерация (nem EE sky ya fe DER at see yah) The Nemaean Federation is symbolically represented by the idealized countenance of a large, predatory cat, now restricted in habitat-range to the African Continent of Terra. This symbol, often called Ras Elased Borealis, maintains a position of considerable emotional and sociological significance to the people of Nemaea, and is, thus, the most common design-motif in Nemaean Classical architecture, and interior decoration. It is an inescapable presence. It haunts me. In the city of Bes, where the architecture runs along hyper-modern Slavonic lines, the disembodied lion's heads stare at me from doors carved from caxa wood, and artistically-weathered ferroplaz. In the city of Kor Nemaea, the same visages greet me from older, weather-worn thresholds. Even in the hellish understreets of one Black City or another, the lion—usually sprayed as graffiti—stares with gaping jaws and absurdly sharp teeth. As members of the Nemaean Cloister, Ilya and Aleo manipulate these symbols in ways that I have yet to understand. I have seen their work, though both are hesitant to speak of what they actually do. It is because of them that must learn to understand the most subtle of meanings behind the lion. I am Nemaean now and can no longer afford the psychological distance from these people as I knew on Earth. Ilya sees something rich and strange when he looks at one lion's head or another—mounted on a door, or shadowed beneath the eaves of some high roof line. Aleo—of Cherniy Nemaean ancestry—sees something only slight different than the most intimate of his Slavonii compatriots. But one sees what the other sees, and the lions are a strange and wordless language between them. I am one of them now, but I cannot yet speak so wordlessly with a glance at a door. --From the private journals of Dorianna Eicher. * * * * * Okay, I couldn't stay away from Nemaea for too long; it—and an as yet unrevealed univers—occupy my thoughts on an almost daily basis, especially since Ilya, Aleo, Dorianna, et al have many more chapters of their convoluted tale to tell. This is a door in Prague, in area of the city called Mala Strana—Lesser Town. I was struck by the bronze lion-head door-knocker, and I'd thought to make a post of this image earlier. Instead, I'm posting it now, as it bears a few similarities to the ruddy/woody pictures that comprise this particular “period” in my art. There will be more from Nemaea soon, more from Prague, and more from other regions in between.