Shadow And Light

by K. R. R. Bridgstreet

  The Conservatory graduated her at the unprecedented age of nineteen and founded the brainchild of her research: the Observatory of Celestial Music. Here she had presided the past eight years as Chancellor of Mathematical Concordance. Her star map equations expanded every day with her observances—until the equations stopped working, until the madness of the last...how many days?

  Her current Minister of Harmony, Ganshi, rose to his position through his intuitive understanding of the equations, despite his exasperating inability to actually solve a mathematical proof. Ganshi could see the harmonies in just about everything his eyes rested upon, in everything his hands touched, in all his tongue tasted, and in all his ears heard. He did not understand, or perhaps he never tried, to prove them or apply them to anything other than music. It was damnably frustrating. Ganshi, though, sang such beautiful songs. This music reached her now. Ganshi was singing a lament to mother sun, and the melancholy sound brought the stinging tears of loss and insomnia to Kali’s eyes. Kaliana rose. Her legs had fallen asleep as she knelt. Time could no longer be sensed. As the pins and needles returned feeling to her feet, she hobbled toward the door and took the stairs down to the public observation deck. There, students gathered and raised their voices with Ganshi’s, imploring the sun’s forgiveness and pleading with her to return. The scene, although the music stirred her, also sickened her. She walked softly behind the singers and turned down the hallway that led to her quarters. She noticed Ganshi’s eyes following her.

  Kaliana entered her rooms and saw fresh moonflowers in a vase next to her bed. They were immaculate and beautiful. Their pale blossoms glowed in the moonlight streaming through the windows, petals gaping, beckoning. Their intoxicating odor led those unfortunate enough to taste them to a swift death. Only the most advanced of the priests and priestesses dared take the flower, and only in the most sacred of ceremonies. The blooms tempted Kali to take them into her to end the nightmare of the previous...days? “One night, one nightmare,” she said, as she fell into her massive white-cushioned, feather-stuffed bed.

  This garish bed, which she had always considered excessive, enveloped her now like a mother’s embrace. Despite its comfort, she could not bring herself to close her eyes. Time passed, and sleep did not come. She did not hear Ganshi enter her room, and the sight of him moving toward her bed, though it startled her, did not provoke any response except a quick flick of her eyes in his direction. An incubus seemed to deaden her limbs, but her mind whirred.

  “Have you slept, Chancellor?” Ganshi asked, seating himself next to her on the bed.

  She blinked slowly. “What is sleep?”

  A corner of Ganshi’s mouth turned up. “My father taught me as a young man that there are two ways to overcome oppressive stress. One,” he said, raising a finger. “Deep breathing and song.”

  “I do not feel like singing, Ganshi.”

  “Two,” he said, with the briefest of pauses. “Passionate lovemaking.”

  Kaliana laughed. It felt strange. Ganshi, who was so pristine, had rarely been seen with a woman since entering the Conservatory. It was a running joke that he had been castrated so that he could hit the high notes. “Ganshi...what by the sun would you know about that? You have never stopped singing long enough to make love.”

  “Who says a man needs to stop singing to make love, Chancellor?” Ganshi’s dark eyes flashed but remained fixed on Kaliana’s face. No hint of a smile crossed his lips, which Kali noticed were shaped like a recurve bow at rest. She began to feel oddly aroused. Her lips parted to speak, but no words came forth. Her confusion must have been written plainly on her face, for now Ganshi’s mouth drew into a smirk. That expression surprised her almost as much as the four-night phenomenon that refused to allow her any sleep.

  “Ganshi...” she began, and then stopped as his hand brushed a long strand of dark brown hair off her forehead.

  “Ka-li-an-a,” he said, as if tasting each syllable. The sound of it sent blood rushing to her face. Her Minister, priest-like in his piety to the harmonies, went about his work demurely, always polite, and ever engrossed in his students and personal studies. Kaliana noticed her mouth was hanging open.

  He had always called her Chancellor. Kali had only really noticed Ganshi was a man outside of his title once: she had glimpsed his broad shoulders and strongly-muscled dark olive limbs through her window when an acolyte’s attempt to fix the plumbing in the shower room had led to a multi-level cascade of spring water, a collapsed ceiling, and several weeks of repair. Ever the helping hand, a shirtless Ganshi exchanged his green Master’s robe with a pair of canvas-colored work pants, and he worked alongside the masons hauling out stacks of broken ceramic tiles, singing all the while.

  Initially stoop-shouldered and pouty-eyed, the workers soon sang along with him, flinging broken tiles into their carriages to haul off to the Institute of Aesthetics. There, students arranged them into a mural that covered the floor of their own bathhouse. From each destruction creation rises, as Ganshi would say.

  Kaliana’s reminiscence settled on an image of Ganshi, shirtless, muscles rippling as he lifted a stack of tiles. Her eyes glazed and she felt her hand move toward Ganshi’s arm, which now rested next to her head. He leaned down over her. She could feel the expansion of his chest with each breath. Ganshi’s free hand moved toward her lips, and his fingers brushed them lightly before they slid down to her robe.

  With his thumb and index finger, he undid the silver clasp at her neck, then flicked open each subsequent clasp until the tops of her breasts became visible through the gaping blue fabric. She watched her light brown chest rise and fall. His hand rested there, palm splayed open, feeling her breathe like he did when he taught acolytes how to project their voices. Her heart raced, pounding against his hand. Kaliana’s eyes fixed on Ganshi’s. She waited, as curious as she was aroused, to see what Ganshi had been keeping to himself over these years they had worked together.

  Violently and suddenly his hand moved. Kali inhaled as she watched her loose breasts spill out of her torn-open robe. Ganshi, ever the creator, had completely destroyed her finely woven garment. As tradition demanded, they wore the robes with no underclothing, to symbolize the union between physical form and duty. Her left breast was in his hand now, and she felt its curves fill it; then he traced her nipple with one long forefinger.

  He shifted slightly, and Kaliana felt his iron manhood press into her hip. Her sex pulsed with each play of his hand on her tits. Her lips had parted and soft exhalations came from deep within her. She had no idea how long she had been making these noises, and she again felt blood rush to her face. Ganshi saw her flush. He leaned in and whispered, “Don’t stop, Chancellor. I want to hear your song.”

  Kaliana inadvertently grunted again as his fingers caressed her hard nipple. “Call me by my name, Ganshi.”

  “Kali,” he spoke. His hand moved down over the muscles of her abdomen, and she arched her back to meet it. Entranced, her body moved on its own now. There were no thoughts to weigh, no decisions to make. Her sleepless nights left her with nothing but instinct, and she gladly surrendered to it. She made her needs plain in a whimper as Ganshi’s hand advanced toward her swollen clit. A finger parted her lips, pressing down on her clitoris, and then slipped inside her wetness, journeying through every hill and valley in the landscape of her womanhood.

  She spread her legs open wider, farther tearing the robe of her uniform. The corners of Ganshi’s mouth curved up, and he grabbed either side of the robe with his hands and tore it completely open. Kaliana’s naked body floated in a pool of blue cloth, and Ganshi stopped to admire her soft curves against what must have looked like a sky at twilight peering through a wash of white clouds.

  As Ganshi’s eyes traced the lines of her body, his lips began to move, and almost indiscernible music flowed through them. He reached for her, and as his fingers once again entered her, he hummed the music of their passion, and it met and melted with Kali’s moans of pleasure. Her orgasm came w
ith the rising of his melody, and her thighs gripped Ganshi’s hand as she felt the waves of pleasure roll over her body.

  Her heart pounded and her ears rang. Her climax came so quickly. She hadn’t even kissed him yet. Her hands once more found the ability to move, and she reached for Ganshi’s own emerald robe, carefully undoing each of the clasps to expose the dark skin stretched taut over his smooth chest. The throbbing in her pussy intensified as she moved her hands inside his robe and slipped it off his shoulders.

  Sweat beaded on Ganshi’s forehead now, and an intense longing had settled in his eyes. With deliberate motion, she sat up and pushed the rest of his robe down his back, with both her arms around him. Watching his face, she felt the curve of his bottom as the robe settled around his hips on the bed. He sat perfectly still, holding her gaze. She slid her hands back around to his flat stomach and spread the bottom of the robe open.

  His cock was hugely erect, and she was suddenly reminded of the distant mountains. She grinned, and allowed her fingers to feel the length of it, bottom to top, and she imagined taking it inside of her. Instead, she bent and licked the tip of his penis, bringing forth a drop of slippery fluid that she tasted and spread with her tongue over his manhood. As she moved her tongue up and down his shaft, she used her saliva to make a slick surface for her hand, and her mouth, tongue and hand massaged his swollen penis. Ganshi’s groans were wild and unrestrained, as if they had just been released from a dark prison. Kaliana’s wanting grew.

  His breath came faster, and Kali knew his moment was near. She wanted to feel him come inside her, so she raised her head and for the first time leaned forward to kiss her Master of Harmonies. Their mouths met in a hot embrace, and their tongues joined and parted as they tasted each other. Taking his head in both of her hands, still sucking on his lips and tongue, Kaliana got to her knees and straddled Ganshi’s cock.

  She brought one of her hands free from his tangle of black hair and used it to guide him inside of her. As Kaliana slid her womanhood over his hard dick, she felt full relief from all the angst of the previous days. She threw her head back let out a loud “Oh!” as Ganshi’s hands gripped her hips and lower back, pulling her down on him.

  They moved together, bodies thrumming with the ecstasy of first love and nights without sleep. Ganshi fell backward into the pile of white pillows covering Kaliana’s bed, and his momentum carried Kali over him. She thrust her hips against his and brought his penis farther inside of her, using the weight of her own body to bring him in as deeply as she could.

  She felt as though the whole of him filled her, as his song had so many times. Their cries met and mingled in the air above them, and the outcry of their climax carried all the emotion of the previous days.

  Heaving, Kaliana let her body crumple on top of Ganshi’s, and they lay there, panting. Kali found Ganshi’s gaze; she had never noticed the streaks of yellow and green in his dark eyes. They seemed to hold every color as they looked back at her, reflected in the ever-present moonlight streaming through her huge, open windows. He reached his hands toward her face, fingers gently touching her lips, and he gripped her long dark hair as he kissed her.

  When their lips parted, Kaliana asked, “Why did you wait so long?”

  Ganshi looked away, toward the moon. “Fear, like anything else.”

  “Am I so terrifying, Ganshi?” A smile curved on Kaliana’s lips.

  He looked back at her, holding her gaze. “Yes, Chancellor, you are as frightening as the moon tonight.”

  Kali’s chest contracted. She relished her authority but bristled when Ganshi reminded her of it. “You are mocking me now.” In silence, she settled her eyes on the moon outside her window. “I told you to use my name. You called me Kali...no one has called me that since I was a child.”

  He grinned shyly. “Your demeanor demands formality, Kali, but I thought you might want something else.” Once again he reached over and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face.

  Kali smiled. Ganshi was right. Most of the sex she had over the years she had bought and paid for. There was a well-regarded house of service that catered to the needs of the administrators, and she had used it when she felt the urge, but she had never once chased after a man she found attractive. She found the whole idea to be a waste of time, especially when she could have exactly what she wanted delivered to her without having to play the games that entangled so many of the women around her.

  Kali remembered falling prey to her hormones only one time as a teenager. She and a classmate, a boy she had known for years, were out collecting specimens for her expansive biological catalogues. As they crawled through the tall grass looking for symmetry in the insects around them, their hands met, and the young man used the opportunity to steal a kiss. The kiss enflamed her desire and curiosity, and she let him explore her body.

  When she finally let him make love to her, Kaliana felt physically satisfied, but her friend had changed. He no longer would perform research with her, but instead always tried to direct their attention toward his raging physical needs. Kaliana quickly put an end to their friendship so she could resume her studies. The memory shocked her with the sadness it brought. She had not regretted that decision until this moment.

  Ganshi smiled now too, amused at Kali’s faraway eyes. “You are a furnace, Kali. I no longer fear the cold moon, because I have felt your radiant heat, and it is the sun.”

  Kaliana again felt blood flush her cheeks. She felt like a foolish girl. She turned away, but Ganshi’s hand turned her face back toward him. She looked down and saw his spent cock still standing up, not quite as straight, glistening a little in the moonlight. His mouth found hers, and again they kissed, this time softly, feeling the weight of each other’s desire with each breath.

  Kaliana pulled away. “We must find the answer to this, Ganshi.”

  “Yes, Kali,” he said. “But first, we need to rest.”

  They lay down together, and as her eyes closed Kaliana entered a deep, dreamless sleep. The clock in the Conservatory square, normally powered by the sun, slept with them. The moon stared at the terrain below. Time went unmeasured and passed unheeded, held transfixed by the moon’s translucent gaze.

  Chapter Three

  Suspended in blackness, Jurad remembered.

  A vision would take anywhere from one night to several months to appear, the council had cautioned him. “When you have the vision, the realization of that vision will be unmistakable,” Grena told Jurad, much to his exasperation. On lonely nights, thoughts of her had relieved the tedium, and he added his own seed to the heavy wafting sex of summer pollination.

  Jurad was amazed with how often he felt the need to ejaculate during his travels. The council had directed him here, toward Two Mountains Standing, and his shaft seemed to have developed a mind of its own once he entered the mountain valley. Splashed with fields of dark irises and bright columbine, the valley could not help but evoke flushed womanhood; or at least what Jurad imagined flushed womanhood might look like.

  Jurad felt as if the weeks of his journey were, if not utterly wasted, highly unproductive. While he found the thin, crisp mountain air rejuvenating, and the hot sun on his face while he dozed a comfort, his mind never failed to return to his ultimate goal: before he could return, he needed to experience a vision that would aid his clan in some way. He knew very little about the vision the elders sent him seeking, as their knowledge was what marked a child from an adult, and he must find it for himself. The burden of this duty oppressed his thoughts and stooped his shoulders each time he recalled it. He had not expected the seriousness with which the council had addressed him. His western clan, the border Kaphal, was in need of more than his vision, he reflected.

  Young people left the village years before they were called for their vision quest, and teenagers skipped out of their vocational training to take hallucinogens and practice screwing in the desert. He couldn’t remember any of his peers doing that when he was in agricultural training. He remember
ed feeling a deep sense of duty to his classmates and family. Without this training, he knew his family would continue to struggle.

  Jurad’s studies had focused on water identification and acquisition. An almost decade-long drought gripped the entirety of the western borderlands, but Jurad’s own research kept the Kaphals from starvation. He had located and tapped into an underwater reservoir that none had known existed. But the water, he knew, would not last long.

  He had kept his research completely to himself and his instructor, because its progressive tactics were not in line with the clan’s own dowsing traditions. Jurad scowled at the memory of the elders’ insufferable stubbornness. In his research, Jurad discovered how to sing to the water, and to his delight the water sang back to him. Finding the notes had meant many long years of waiting, watching, and listening while his hormones flogged his body. His project had not been conducive to an active love life. He sighed as he remembered Grena once more.

  Jurad was pulled from his reverie by an unfamiliar bright buzzing noise. He had been staring at the ground as he walked, deep in thought, and he cursed himself for falling into this internal prison. Careful observation, he knew, was the only way to truly see. When he raised his eyes, he saw in the distance a large group of people ambling in his direction. The train of gypsies came upon him slowly, but with increasing noise.

  Like a colony of ants, they followed the long-inscribed memories of their ancestral leaders in a winding file across the ancient valley. Jurad sat down at the edge of a low, granite outcropping of partially-buried stones to watch and wait. After a few minutes, he unbraided his long brown hair, combed his fingers through it to dislodge whatever nature had accumulated there the past several days, and re-braided it down the back of his head. As was customary, he knotted the braid between his shoulder blades and let the bottom of his hair flow loose.