The Hollowhorn Toast

From the journal of Elder Moss “Three-Fingers” Karrin, Spring 11th

  Giggle when they say it. Like it's some tavern game they made up on the spot. No reverence, no stillness. Just cider and noise and some poor fool tumbling off a stool because his cousin blessed him with a poem about goat farts.   It wasn’t always this way.   I remember when the horn was carved by hand under a new moon. No blades, just teeth and time. Still got mine tucked in the cellar, smooth as riverstone. We used to pour real offerings. Not just drink. Bits of ash from a loved one’s hearth. A braid of hair. Once, a snake’s shed skin. Stuff that meant something. Stuff that stuck with you.   And then you shut up. That was part of it. After the horn passed, you kept quiet through the night. Let the woods speak instead. Now it’s hooting and clapping and someone yelling “may your stew have chunks” like that’s a blessing. It isn’t. It’s barely edible.   These days it’s a drinking game. They pass the horn around like it’s a soup ladle, trying to “full-heart” each other. That’s what they call it—full-hearting. You shout a blessing, or an insult, or some secret. If it makes the others laugh or gasp or choke on their drink, the named person has to drink. Then they take the horn and keep the chain going. If someone gets full-hearted twice, they have to sing. Drop the horn? You confess something you regret. When it circles back to the first pourer, they dump what’s left in the dirt and thank the soil. Loudly. Sloppily.   It’s not that I hate laughter. I don’t. I’ve laughed at funerals, gods help me. But this was something else, once. You didn’t pass the horn to anyone who hadn’t earned it. We did it in pairs—kin, lovers, enemies, didn’t matter. You whispered your blessing into the cup, and if they could speak it back without stumbling, you drank together. If they failed, you poured it out in silence and buried the moment. That was the test. It wasn’t about being clever. It was about meaning.   I remember when Merrit poured too deep and saw her brother’s face in the coals. She didn’t sleep right for a week. Or when Falla poured too shallow and forgot how to speak her own name for a day and a half. We didn’t call that failure. We called it consequence.   Now they’re carving horns out of resin. Resin. Might as well drink out of a pisspot. I tried to give a real toast last year—“To the roots below, may they hold fast”—and some wide-eyed bard clapped like I’d done a performance. I left the horn in the dirt where it belonged.   Still. Sometimes, when the fire crackles low and the horn makes its round a little slower than usual, I see a flicker of what it used to be. That hush. That waiting. Maybe the horn remembers, even if they don’t.   Anyway. If they’re going to mangle the rite, they could at least oil the damn thing. It squeaks like a strangled squirrel. No wonder the gods ignore them.   Postscript scribbled in the margin: Bury the bark scrap from last year’s horn. Don’t want another visit from the faceless stag. Mira still won’t walk past the garden at night.