They called them "words of the wise", and they guided everything in their life. The Arhada lived by them, followed them strictly and sometimes created them out of thin air: these words filled their days with meanings, and the unexpected vicissitudes of life with a sense of calm acceptance. They hung in the air, filling silences, guiding them through conversations, solving their problems.

Alanaporo took a small brush. Her hand was deft and able and the mother Rededojôrho admired that about her – so much so that she had tasked her with decorating all the pots that the women of the house made from then on. She would paint swirls and curves and other geometrical patterns encircling the main pictures: symbols that represented those "words of wisdom", ancient and new. With enough inventiveness, one drawing could stand in for the answer to a great existential question: words of wisdom no longer hung in the air, they became alive in everyday items, in rooms, on the very faces of people. Alanaporo was the most skilled artist of them all, and all the famous ladies and men of the palace wanted their faces painted by her with the proverb they strived to embody and their marriage pots painted with vivid reminders of their future life.

The one she was working on now was a large one, crafted with ability and care by young hands. The youngest daughter of Rededojôrho had made it a long time ago, when she first entered adulthood. Three years had passed and the vase had remained in the treasury, filled with the gifts she had received on that fateful day. It was already decorated: the young girl had marked it with her comb, undulating it across its circumference, and then filled the undecorated areas with regular white dots all around. Since then, however, her tastes had changed and she wanted something that represented her more, something that reminded her of her impending wedding. With a rough stone, Alanaporo had scraped the white paint away and had begun her new work.

She dipped the brush in a mixture of red ochre and jaba oil, made thick and shiny. It would take a while for it to dry, but this was a ceremonial object, it would not be touched until the lady's wedding, two months later. She drew the symbols: a man a woman above, a couple of holy spirits below.

"a groom and bride become divine: all gods are brides and grooms, all brides and grooms are gods"

The red pigment flowed swiftly across the porous surface of the vase. A symbol to honour its bearer.

***

The mother Rededojôrho herself had once again tasked Alanaporo with the decorations of a wooden box where she would put her copper jewelry. The small chest was handsome, built by the lady's husband in black ebony. Yellow ochre would be quite beautiful with that, but the lady requested Alanaporo would carve it instead.

A persimmon tree had provided the wood – they said the tree was almost two hundred years old when it was cut down: the clan had kept some for themselves and sold a great deal of it to neighbouring villages, insuring themselves against the penury of a less than abundant harvest.

The painter decorated the sides with a wiry decoration of parallel lines conjoined at the bottom and the top, and then drew a larger symbol on the lid of the chest:

"when a man speaks out of turn he breaks a wall and burns a roof: for to disrespect a woman is to disrespect her house."

This would remind any man who would dare to open that sacred object about the grave affront they were committing towards the lady – the disrespect that merely entering the treasury would signal to the entire clan. A symbol to warn off intruders.

***

Tears streamed from Alanaporo's face as paint dripped form her brush. This vase was meant to hold the ashes of her dearest matriarch Rededojôrho, the woman who had welcomed her into her palace, given her her favour, given her her trust.

She remembered, many years ago, Rededojôrho had seen her wares at the market. "You hand is talented, girl, you deserve fame for your craft."

She had grown used to life at the palace, and she had made lifelong friends amongst the lovely halls of the high-house of Kamābarha, friends she would keep forever; none of them were as important to her as the woman who had given her that life, who had given her art the chance to thrive. The vase was entirely glazed with a white, shiny coat. She would not paint upon it, it would wash off too easily: instead, she took a small knife and scraped away to glaze to reveal the symbol.

"A person is a stalk of rice: we are planted, we grow and we are cropped when we are ready."

It was Alanaporo's way to say goodbye to the woman who had been a second mother to her. A symbol to remind everyone of the beginning and the end.

____________

Background: The formative era sees the emergence in the lands of the Arhada of the growing cultural practice of proverb glyphs. These symbols, visual representations of key cultural concepts, usually summarised in one of two simplified pictures, become a foundational part of Arhadan visual language as the most commonly found decorative and expressive tool. This vast semiotic vocabulary develops as a way to create "speaking objects", especially pots, pipes and other ceramic apparatus. A proverb initially served as a reminder of the objects function – later, as the symbology deepened in meanings, and decorated objects became more ceremonial in function, the message behind them became more culural, rather than functional, reminding either of the virtures of the owner and user of the objects, or the more implicit meanings behind an artifact. The practice spreads away from artisanship and towards art: facepaint, usually made with basic oil paints of mixed ochre and jaba oil, became another vessel for the development of pictographs, as well as woodcarvings and textiles.

Because the creation of specialised crafts, especially when dealing with smaller, ceremonial objects is tied to the work of elite women, the people who most readily specialise as painters are almost exclusively from the palace – either women of the clan, the wives of clanmen or favourites who entered the palace later in life. This period is also a great time of craft specialisation: those who become more skilled and talented in a specific art are most often tasked with performing exclusively that task: the maker of a vase, its glazer, its painter become separate figures, following the design of a single piece of pottery, especially the most complex and prised ones, at different stages.