The wife who cracked Mo Sephenias code

 Fiction

Mo Sephenia's code and The Forbidden Marriage

The wife who cracked Mo Sephenias code

Samsonitus lived in the country of Icerailia which ironically was a desert instead of a land full of ice.

Generations ago a woman named Mo Sephenia gave a list of laws that everyone in Icerailia was supposed to obey which all the people who heard the laws at the time agreed to obey.  But later generations tended to only hear the general concepts of the law in a form that is an incomplete and imperfect copy through traveling lawyer priests and by word of mouth from neighbor to neighbor.  

It is not that the laws were not preserved perfectly in written form but most people could not read and write and written copies of the original legal agreement between Mo Sephenia and the people originally present before her were rare and hard to come by and the law was too long for most people to memorize completely and perfectly with the large amount of time they had to devote to agricultural labor just to get enough food to stay alive from one year to the next.  

To make matters worse some of the people of Iceralia were greedy hedonistic merchants who did not even care to hear the law from traveling lawyer priests or from neighbor to neighbor, because it would go against their hedonistic lifestyle and listening to it would take time away from their dishonest sales and crooked lending endeavors and would interfere with the profit they made out of illegally kidnapping and selling innocent victims who broke no laws worthy of being captured and sold into slavery.  It is not that all merchants are dishonest, but a higher percentage of Iceralia's merchants were dishonest than merchants of other countries.

Samsonitus lived next door to a man named Nabal.

Nabal had sisters and aunts and women first cousins but no uncles or brothers or male first cousins and Nabal's father and grandfather were dead.  Nabal's only wife was named Nancy.  Nabal and Nancy had only one son named Alexander and Nancy was pregnant but had not given birth to a daughter yet.

Samsonitus was unmarried and had a brother named Samuel who was living with him.  Samuel was married to only one woman who was named Sinderlina and had no children with her.

Now Nabal was a drunkard who wanted to party like a dishonest merchant instead of working hard for an honest living like the farmers of Iceralia.  

Nancy was begging Nabal to use their Ox to do farming work so that they could have food later instead of selling their Ox for more wine and continuing to get drunk and not do any farming work or other labour to put food on the table in the long run once the wine runs out.

Nabal the drunk said, "This is the last straw Nancy!  I divorce you!  And I tell you what I think of you and your ox.  I think your Ox would be happier if he had a little less whining from you and a little more wine to drink from me."

He proceeded to try to take an open wine bottle and stick it in the Oxes mouth to try to make it drink the wine.  Whatever he actually ended up doing Nabal made the Ox so mad that it gored him to death.

The Ox then proceeded to run mad and Gored innocent Samuel to death and almost killed Alexander and Nancy only for Samsonitus to snatch them out of harm's reach.

Somehow Samsonitus managed to calm the Ox down after this, preventing it from killing any more people or merchants.

Nancy quickly went into labor after this and gave birth to a daughter who she named Anna

Now the widow Sinderlina and the divorcee or widow Nancy had a discussion about what to do now that their husbands were dead or in Nancy's case more technically now that her ex husband was dead.  Since Sinderlina was so emotionally supportive of Nancy throughout all the many years of Nabal's drunkenness, Nancy did not want to depart far away from Sinderlina to marry another man and they both liked Samsonitus who was strong and supportive.

So they mutually agreed to ask Samsonitus if he would be willing to marry both of them together.  Samsonitus agreed.

Samsonitus was 18 years old, Sinderlina was 27 years old and Nancy was 36 years old when they got married

When Anna turned 18 years old, Samsonitus was 36 years old, Sinderlina was 45 years old and Nancy was 54 years old

On her 18th birthday Anna went to talk to her mother Nancy

Anna said, "Nancy there is something I want to ask your advice on but I am afraid if I ask your advice you will be angry.  But if I just do it without asking your advice you will be even more angry.  So I could just not do it at all but then I think I would be disappointed for the rest of my life, for having missed an opportunity to do something that is really important to me because I am afraid it might make you angry even if there is a chance it might not make you angry at all.  Can you promise not to hold it against me for asking permission to do something, if I promise not to do it if you do not want me to?"

Nancy said, "You seem to really be concerned about my feelings and not out to cause me harm since you are willing to deny doing whatever you want to do for my sake.  Whatever problem I might want to avoid can be avoided if I tell you not to do it, and whatever benefit you get can still be achieved without a problem of significant concern to me if I feel it is an idea so good I can approve of it.  No harm can be done by a bad idea that you choose not to act on and benefit can come from a good idea that you choose to act on.  If you keep silent you might not be able to know if the idea is good or bad.  But if you talk we can evaluate together if the idea is good or bad.  Plus you are my daughter and I love you and want what is best for you so tell me please."

Anna said, "I do not want to take him away from you by being a third wife, and I do not know if it is proper or incest on account of you being my mother, but I would like if you are ok with it and only if you are ok with it to marry your husband Samsonitus and be his third wife."

Anna said, "Not only have you not upset me, but my heart is overflowing with joy.  Even though I wanted you to experience the bliss of marriage, I always dreaded the idea that one day you would marry a man far away and I would never see you again.  If you marry my husband we will always be together as long as all three of us shall live.  If you want to marry my husband I would prefer that you marry him over any other man in the whole world so that I can be together with you.  And since Samsonitus is not your biological father but Nabal is it would not result in deformities.  And I am sure the whole reason it was forbidden for a father to marry his biological daughter and other incest regulations given by Mo Sephenia was to prevent deformities.  But he is not your biological father so as far as I am concerned it is not incest for you to marry him from a biological point of view.  I do not remember any law forbidding a man from marrying a woman and her daughter as long as neither of them are a biological relative of the man."

So Samsonitus married his third wife.

36 year old Samsonitus was now married to 18 year old Anna, 45 year old Sinderlina and 54 year old Nancy.  Some people might complain about how Samsonitus was too much older than Anna but Anna was of legal age and Samsonitus was no more older than Anna than Nancy was older than Samsonitus. Nancy pointed out to Anna that if she liked Samsonitus the age gap was perfectly fine just as it was ok for her to marry Samsonitus with an equal age gap.

One month later a lawyer priest came by the house and read some of the laws of  Mo Sepehenia.  He did this because his job was to go from house to house and community to community and read the laws of Mo Sepehenia to any people who wanted to hear them because not everyone could read and written material was difficult to make during that time period so even if someone could read they did not necessarily have a copy of the laws.  

The priest read a law that, "If a man marries a woman and her daughter all three of them are to be executed and if they are pregnant they are not to be spared until they give birth but still executed immediately."

They asked, "What if the man who marries the woman's daughter is not the biological father of her daughter?"

The priest said, "There is a law to execute a man who marries his daughter along with his daughter that he marries and they would not have violated that specific law in such a case, but the law against marrying a woman and her daughter is a completely different law that such a marital group would be executed for violating."

Then the priest said, "Why do you ask?  Do you have anyone you would like to report who is guilty of such an offense who we should put to trial and execute if found guilty."

They said, "We do not know of anyone who we would like to report.  We do believe it is important however to know the law with absolute precision to warn people to prevent such an occurrence by accident if they wanted to do so but did not know it was illegal.  And we wanted to clarify in case someone in our neighborhood wants to do so in the future or in case there might be any other reasons why it might be important to know."

The priest replied, "I wish everyone else I visited to teach were as enthusiastic about knowing the finer points of the law as you all are.  If you do not mind I would like to stay here a few more nights and I can read the whole law to you in entirety since you are worthy to hear it all, truly desiring to listen with more sincerity than anyone else I have ever shared the law with before."

They said, "We will make a place for you to stay overnight and cook you a meal."

They then prepared him a meal and a place to sleep.  After the Priest went to sleep they left the house never to return again fleeing to the far away country of Hindistania to the east, where they lived together as a family outside the jurisdiction of Icerailia happily ever after.