One:Agreement to Disagree

The Agreement to Disagree marked the beginning of the Eleven Days’ Peace, a brief cessation of hostilities in the War of Cartwright's Buttock.

Negotiations leading to the Agreement are believed to have taken some 38 years, though the exact period cannot be determined owing to the secretive nature of the communications between the estranged Bantu Brothers. All overt communications between the warring parties having been banned, the Brothers made use of a cypher they had invented in their childhood, with messages consisting of variously-sized heaps of boulders visible from across the frequently-shifting territorial boundary. Contemporary accounts suggest that each message required the labours of some 2000 slaves over a period of weeks, with further efforts needed to relocate the heaps following a border shift. The high fatality rate among the slaves led in several cases to a breakdown in negotiations so that raids aimed at obtaining additional slaves from the other party could take place.

The Agreement is preserved today in Mummers’ Hall, though rumors persist that the original document was spirited away by Cartwright prior to her exile and replaced by a subtly altered copy.

Stats

Approximate word count: 190

Phantom Links

• Bantu Brothers
• War of Cartwright's Buttock

St. John Battersea 16:17, 13 August 2012 (PDT)