“One late afternoon when the sun was spreading honey-gold over the autumn trees, Ash lay on the riverbank beneath an old oak whose limbs grew nearly down to the ground to form a splendid, secret room. She had been reading an old fairy tale that afternoon, and when she finished the story, she looked up through the leaves across the river and saw a woman there. She was kneeling on the edge of the opposite bank with a dripping hand raised halfway to her mouth, and she was dressed in hunting gear. The woman drank from the water in her hand and then flicked the rest away, the droplets scattering like crystals in the slanting light, and when she looked up she saw Ash staring at her.”
Hiccups and delays aside, here it is. Xena is equipped as an early hoplite; (my headcanon is that, owing to her immense, perhaps semi-divine strength, the bronze is between 4 and 8mm thick- too much for any muscle powered weapon to handle from any angle) packing an early Doru, a Boeotian shield, and a Makhaira sword. Gabrielle’s Amazonian outfit is a composite of Scythian grave finds; she wields a composite bow and Akinakes sword, wears an elaborate phrygian cap, and the trousers and moccasins of a culture seriously weird to Greeks. Other avenues are still waiting to be explored! Don’t forget to reblog, and tell me what you think. I’m absolutely willing to defend my questionable use of snarling Gorgoneiona. Fight me.
i love this illustration… and not just because in my (now scrapped) xena reboot, gabrielle was a scythian!
The Doctor Is Out 