Bloom & Dark

by Regina Watts

  “Arrogant! I’m no such thing, slave.”

  “All your kind are. It’s all right—I find it appealing when a woman knows her worth, since so many of the nuns and nurses who raised us were humble. Docile. I’m quite shocked at how thrilled I find myself by this world of yours, Materna, but I cannot help what I feel.”

  “At least you’re open to it. Some slaves never adapt to society and must be consigned to roles toiling in smithing or masonry or some other tedious, body-destroying task.” She propped her cheek upon her fist and turned to look at me. “Are you still planning to try to escape, I wonder?”

  I had spent the whole day so awash with thoughts of her body that it had hardly crossed my mind. The greedy mortal in me craved to take advantage of my time among the durrow as a kind of vacation; the warrior-priest in the service of Weltyr and his own immortal soul, however, could no more lie to her than could it be satisfied with a slave’s lot in life. “I would be a fool if I did not dream of freedom, Materna,” I decided to tell her carefully, studying the beautiful arcs of a face I soon caressed. “But after only one full bloom of your company I find myself dreaming of freedom with you, rather than freedom from you.”

  Her lips parted, shock mingling with the splendor of new love while she searched my face for the truth of this statement. I meant it. She smiled slightly, then turned her body and face away from me to stare off toward her lush green garden. “Tell me of your home, Burningsoul. Whence do you hail? Your features are most refined—you must be of noble blood.”

  “If I am, I have no way of knowing. I was brought to my Order as an orphan, no parents to be named. A small babe, not yet a year old. My childhood home was Weltyr’s monastery on the outskirts of Skythorn, and when I came of age I was sent to work the city’s central Temple. I was only formally accepted into the Order as a paladin this past year; in order to be confirmed in the role, I must carry out the duty assigned to me while adhering to the principles of Weltyr’s service.”

  “The retrieval of that Scepter, you mean.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “What does it do, precisely?”

  “The Scepter? I can’t say for certain it does anything; only that it is a relic said to have been crafted by Weltyr himself, a symbol of the just rule of the First King who oversaw the realms of men. It was lost eventually, and in its duty to re-collect and restore all the relics of Weltyr, the Temple took a recent interest in rumors of it having fallen into the hands of the spirit-thieves. Turns out the rumors were accurate…and my colleagues didn’t feel they were paid enough.”

  “No matter,” said Valeria to me, reaching back for my arm to draw it around her body. I smiled to myself while folding her in my arm, embracing her to me while she stared out across her plants. “Tell me more about what it’s like to be aboveground.”

  “I couldn’t even begin to know what to say…it’s blue. Very blue, because of the sky. Have you ever been aboveground?”

  “Goodness, no. I’ve never left the city.”

  “Never! Never left the city—never seen the sky, save for that simulacrum on the ceiling of your throne room!”

  I had asked her if she had been aboveground in a casual way, not ever expecting it possible for the answer to be ‘no.’ To hear her say such a thing utterly shocked me. A being her age, never having seen the sky with her own two eyes? I could hardly comprehend it—then, as swiftly as the shock had come upon me, swifter still came the realization that perhaps this was the way with most durrow. Humans spent entire lifetimes barely leaving their provinces. Why should even long-lived elves be all that different?

  All the same, I was amazed, and I told her with the great, unthinking delight of one lover for another, “How thrilled I would be to show you the sky! Oh, the stars! Valeria—you would love them.”

  “Roserpine has shown them to me in dreams more than once. Little moth holes of light through a dark curtain. I long to see them with my own eyes, my physical eyes. I long to see the aboveground world that I’ve read so much about in books and heard spoken of on the lips of our wanderers and slaves.”

  “You would love it.” There was an opportunity here. I felt it immediately but, not willing to spoil it by seeming to seduce her away from her people, I continued on with an innocent gesture toward her garden. “I see you’ve an interest in horticulture; oh, there are more plants than you could possibly name upon Urde’s surface. And the flowers, Valeria!”

  Her breath hitched and she turned to look at me, a lock of white hair falling across her faintly blushing cheek. “I love flowers from aboveground. Those who wish for my favor and know me will bring me living plants to grow. Fruits and flowers are my favorite things. Is it true that there are great masses of trees?”

  “Forests? Oh, yes, there are many forests, and of many different kinds. North of Skythorn is Klexus, which was where Hildolfr and I met Branwen and Grimalkin; a region blessed with beautiful trees of rich red wood that live at least as long as elves, if not longer. They tower higher than any other tree I’ve ever seen, and grow to be far wider, too.”

  “How wonderful! Oh, I should love to see such a thing. And it rains, yes? Water falls from the sky?”

  What amazing minutiae of life had managed to escape the durrow priestess’s most basic sets of experience! I could not help the faintest laugh as I told her, “That’s right, Madame…it rains. And sometimes, when it’s cold enough, the rain comes down instead as snow. Everything is blanketed with a soft powder as white as your hair…lovers frolic and people happily warm themselves by the hearth, waiting for the next holiday to brighten up the winter days.”

  “How truly lovely you make it sound, Burningsoul…I almost feel a certain shame at the thought of keeping you from it.”

  Not wanting her to feel any negative way concerning me, yet also not willing to discourage her from experiencing that very shame that might eventually lead to my liberation, I stroked her hair and assured her, “I feel a certain shame of my own to think of you missing out on the glory of the sunshine, the brightness of the moon. Maybe someday you’ll get to see it…maybe someday I’ll get to show it to you. You have at least left this tower, haven’t you, Materna?”

  “Why of course I’ve left the tower—do you think I was born on Roserpine’s doorstep? I’m not a girl, you know…I’ve lived longer than you have.”

  “It happens that I was just marveling at that fact…anyway, I didn’t mean to offend you, Materna. I suppose I’m just surprised to have found you so evidently sheltered…you are so open and eager—worldly, some would say—in the expressions of your sexuality, that one would have thought you had traveled everywhere, done everything.”

  “Not at all. I have too much to do here at the tower. My intimacy with my body comes because I know so little of the world from personal experience. My freedom of expression lies in my sexual life. Everything else I do is done in service to Roserpine…and, sometimes, not even sex is exempt from her edicts.”

  “Like the sex between you and me, Materna?”

  A smile lit her voice. “Good dark to you, Burningsoul,” she told me, waving her hand in a gesture that put out the magical lights in the room and plunged us both into the dark.

  It was truly maddening to love a priestess! Perhaps the experience should have helped me develop a bit of empathy for Branwen, who was a child of the forest with absolutely no interest in my theological discourses whenever matters of discussion were more abstract than the subjects of warfare or business. The difference was that unlike Branwen, I was interested in what Valeria had to say—what she felt—in matters of the divine. There was no doubt in my mind that Weltyr was the superior god, but it also seemed to me that anyone who approached any portion of the godhead with the lifelong dedication of the durrow high priestess was surely in possession of some esoteric secret, some metaphysical lesson, that would benefit any member of any faith to know.

  And I knew that Valeria possessed such information from the way she earnestly refused to speak a
bout it. It was not a coy playfulness with which she denied me details on, say, her dreams of me prior to our meeting. Rather, there was an apologetic tinge to her smile whenever she had to patiently refuse an elaboration. As if it truly was a matter she believed better kept between herself and Roserpine.

  That mysterious nature of hers was surely what made her so appealing to me. She and I both shared a spiritual core and each side longed to connect with the other, but neither faith could fully permit such concord. She thought much and refrained from sharing all things except those bits that were absolutely necessary. I wished to observe firsthand the workings of her elegant mind, the driver of those wandering eyes that drifted around the room within the depths of her pondering or the pit of her sleep.

  She was beautiful when she slept; beautiful when she was awake. I had yet to see any sign of danger in the well-guarded Palace of Roserpine, but regardless of whether or not her life was truly at stake, I was glad to put myself on the line for the opportunity to admire her beauty with the innocent appreciation as she dreamed the dark away. Her gentle features were always sharp with a commingling of stress and serious duty while she was awake; when asleep, they were so limp and peaceful that she looked almost happy. Certainly less pained by the contents of whatever knowledge she held.

  Yet even the Materna’s sleep was not wholly uninterrupted. I spent several hours of dark lost in thought, contemplating the garden of the high priestess whose regal status belied an unexpected sensitivity. I should not have been surprised to find a woman in the service of any goddess to be a dreamer full up with longing for other worlds. All the same, I felt pleasantly shaken by her confessed longing to experience the surface. There was more to her than beauty—more than the intense magnetic attraction that provoked a kind of lightning to fill the air between us since the first time we set eyes on one another. As we grew closer to one another, surely I would find inroads to her heart. I was no great seducer, but I was confident that, with the chemistry already between us, it was possible for me to woo her sufficiently to at least earn my freedom.

  But how could I be freed of this woman for whom I was now to serve as protector? I was just thinking of settling in to rest my eyes for a few hours when Valeria, who had been shifting in her sleep, mumbled into her pillow at a volume too soft and incoherent to parse. Her limbs twitched beneath the sheets and her eyelids fluttered rapidly; I tried to discern whether she was enjoying a sweet dream or a nightmare when she clarified that for me. Aside from many repetitions of the word “No,” her muted screams were utterly lacking in meaning but full of desperate urgency. I hurried to her side, my hands running over her shoulders and across her brow in a touch that seemed to instantly snap her awake. Her final “No!” aborted very suddenly, those pale eyes of hers snapping open in the dark. Beneath my touch, her body relaxed, and she turned slightly to peer up at me.

  “Burningsoul,” she said, sighing low, turning to examine the hand that I let lay upon her cheek. “How embarrassing…thank you for waking me.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Materna…do you have such nightmares often?”

  “Often enough that you will find one of your most frequent duties to be waking me from them, I’m afraid. Oh! Roserpine.” Sitting up, Valeria ran her hand over her face, then looked at the ring resting heavily upon her finger. “I suppose my mistress feels that she does so much for me in my waking life, she has no need to care for me when I am at rest…but I do go on. How is it with you that I feel so inclined to share my thoughts, slave?”

  “I’m a patient listener,” I assured her, chuckling as I knelt at her side. “Besides…if your goddess has been sharing dreams of me, perhaps she has good reason for wanting you to trust me. The aims of the divine are cryptic to us for a reason.”

  “You have no idea how true that is…”

  Those bright eyes seemed to glow in the dark of the room, searching my face for something before continuing the search around my chest. She leaned forward, her hand resting upon my tunic, the sheet falling from her bosom while she bit her lip to look upon me. “Remove your clothes. Rest with me, slave. You will have a busy bloom tomorrow in the service of Indra and Odile, and then will have to turn right around and entertain my guests on your return. Gather your strength.”

  “As it pleases you, Materna.”

  I rose and, beneath the steady assessment of her eyes, undressed before sliding into the bed with her. The soft flesh of her long, powerful body caused an immediate renewing of that dreadful fever she inspired, her limbs extending in a tigerish stretch that was punctuated by a splendid shudder. After resting an experimental hand in the crook of her waist and finding she settled back against me, I embraced her there in the bed and arched my hips forward to let her feel the throb of passion she produced. She moaned lightly, the soft hillocks of her luscious backside rubbing back and forth along my length.

  “How you fire my blood, slave! Such excitement had ought to be beneath me…yet, like a girl with her first love, all bloom I found myself thinking ceaselessly of your body, and my own body’s intense craving for you. Feel how my heart races!”

  Her slender hand fit to the one I rested on her waist. She guided my touch to her bosom, closing my fingers around the orb of soft flesh and moaning slightly at even that simplest contact. While the arch of her back caused her ass to rub against that spasming source of my lust for her, I caressed and teased the breast whose flesh dimpled with her anticipation. “Aye, Madame”—my words were a whisper against the tip of her ear, each sound I produced a puff of air that made her shudder and sweetly moan and led me to kiss her in this sensitive region between my thoughts—“aye, I can feel you nearly trembling even now…surely you’re not afraid of your own slave, Materna.”

  “Only of the feelings you inspire…only of this fire roiling inside of me, a more furious and dangerous blaze than any I’ve felt. Oh! Burningsoul…”

  Her leg lifted and hooked back around mine, this act of feminine flexibility leaving her splayed and ready to be touched. As I was occupied, she did it herself, thrilling me with the artful hand that trailed between her legs in the dark. “How excited I am to be near you! It is indecent that I should think of a man your status in such a way—yes, indecent—”

  After rolling her stiff nipple between my fingers, I let my caress trail down the slope of her taut stomach. There I rested my hand to enjoy the twitching of her torso, her whole body affected by the source of pleasure she nursed with a teasing index finger. I worked myself steadily against her, my aching prick only all the more tortured by the perfect fit of her soft rump against its length. While she touched herself and rubbed against me, I kissed her ear and teased her with the proximity of my hand.

  “I like the thought of tormenting you the way you torment me,” I told her, lifting my head and kissing the side of her softly gasping face. “I confess, Materna…I have been obedient since my coming here out of some misguided hope of escape, but how quickly all those hopes have left my mind! Now…now, I crave this body this yours. Crave to be used to your pleasure. How sweet it is to be commanded by a woman this beautiful, this powerful!”

  “Oh, it will not always seem sweet to you...and perhaps the reality of your circumstances will wear thin on you after a time.”

  “You sound like a woman assuring her new lover that he will tire of her.”

  “Isn’t that what this is?”

  “I don’t know…is it?”

  “It’s not proper,” she corrected herself with a gasp, “no, not proper for you to think of yourself as my lover…oh, no, you’re a toy, a pet…”

  Valeria moaned as my hand lowered further, trailing just over her pubic mound and worsening the teasing impact of the proximity. Finally she lifted her hand from its work and caught mine, pushing me down and guiding my fingers between her spread labia. While I groaned with appreciation to feel her so ready for my attention, she arched her hips in small circles against my fingers until at last I picked up the rhythm. As I saw to the pleasuring
of her slickened body, she moved against me, her leg still folded around mine and her body still splayed open. “How many lovers I’ve had…one such as you should mean nothing to me…”

  “Perhaps there’s a reason we feel so attracted to one another,” I suggested, kissing her jaw.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a love spell…some potion of seduction that was used against us without our knowing.” While she laughed softly, then soon dissolved into another spate of moans, Valeria rocked in my embrace and let me go on joking, “Anroa herself has convinced Weltyr and Roserpine to bring us together for her amusement.”

  “Then I will offer her libations, oh—Burningsoul, yes, that’s right, please your mistress, oh!”

  She gasped when I sat up and pushed her legs wider apart. As I lowered my head, her body trembled; my kisses soon applied themselves to the pink flesh peering wetly amid her dark folds, and while she moaned at the gentle but rapid coaxing of my tongue, I was rewarded. Her hand extended out to the member throbbing near her side, those long fingers furling around me to tug sparks of pleasure down out of my mind and through my every inch. I spread her wider, kissing, nuzzling, teasingly licking between while she trembled and played with my aching life.

  “Most men from aboveground refuse to use their mouths in such methods without a strict beating first—oh, Burningsoul, oh, what a good slave…how violently this thing of yours twitches when I call you a good slave! You really do enjoy working in the service of your mistress, don’t you?”

  In answer, I bent my head more closely against her and plunged my tongue as far into that wet little hole as it could get. She moaned, and to my great delight the regal high priestess of Roserpine tilted her mouth against the base of my anatomy. Her lips and nose nuzzling against me, she applied longing kisses, extended her tongue for a few teasing feline licks, blew torturous puffs of air along the surface. Gradually, her lips folded around the tip of what was by then my entire mind. There she suckled and licked, the tips of her nails teasing up and down the shaft while I groaned against her body’s holy center.