Transit of Ishtar

by Natalie Gibson

  Shock: he stopped and turned back to look at her body. He had heard the swift intake of breath and the soft low beating of her heart. Nathalia was alive, even after tabalu. He stood in that hallway looking at her in disbelief, gathering dust, and would, until she got up and came crashing into him.

  The memory he had shared with her made Nathalia confused. The way he had fed from Michael's heart and then obliterated his entire physical existence was repugnant, but his concern for her and willingness to stand up to the Igigi, whoever they were, for not saving her when they had the chance, was noble.

  What is tabalu?

  “Tabalu means take away.” He showed her the very difficult process in her head, of taking them apart cell by cell, then taking them away to a different place through the connection to the earth itself, and then putting them back together elsewhere. He had total control of every cell in his body and now that she had survived not one, but two tabalu with him, he knew he had total control of every cell in her body too. She could remember how wonderful it had felt to have Eiran permeate every cell of her body. She wanted to experience that moment of pure being intertwined with him again.

  Do it. Take me away. I want to feel that again.

  “I tabalu us to the sunlight. Consent?” He showed her the image of the slap she had given him when he would not let her go. He had been too amazed and shocked at his emotions to be able to let her go, afraid she wasn't real. It had hurt him that she'd been scared of him.

  Sorry about that, Eiran. I shouldn't have hit you. I'm not sure I've ever hit anyone. I was...

  “You were scared. I understand. Consent to touch?”

  Yes, why are you so worried? You've done this with me twice already.

  “You were not awake before. Humans find our touch...uncomfortable.”

  Honestly, I'd suffer any discomfort for a little fresh air and sun.

  Eiran smiled, but approached her slowly. This was a big moment for him. He had waited his whole life for a woman who could share this. He slipped his arms under hers and wrapped them around her. Their bodies pressed like that, being held in his arms, made Nathalia feel a rush of excitement. Anywhere they touched felt tingly, like the moment before you reach a door knob when there was a buildup of static in your body.

  Pleasure washed over her in waves as he broke them down into their elements. Joy was all she knew in that moment. She was the earth and the air and he was there. He gave her this ecstasy.

  Chapter 4

  In a split second Eiran reassembled their bodies. Nathalia allowed him to keep his arms around her and she slipped hers around his neck. She rested her head on his chest while the knee knocking pleasure subsided, completely unconcerned by their nakedness. Being moved in that way by Eiran was more intimate than anything they could do with their bodies.

  Wow. That was....

  “Pleasurable?”

  To say the least. That must get you a lot of action with the ladies. Can I learn to do it on my own?

  Eiran did not know what action she was talking about, but there were other ladies. Only Nathalia had survived. He had waited millennia for the one who could tabalu with him. He shared his memories with her of his attempts at this with women long ago. Each of them had reformed, dead in his arms. Fundamentally changed, their bodies never decay and rest in the mothers tomb. He had killed two women he loved, thinking they could be the one because of that love. It was a heart aching vision of loneliness he shared with her. He had sworn long ago never to try it again and had only 'taken her away' because he was certain she was dead already.

  “Tabalu is not fun alone.”

  I'm sorry about the other women, but I am glad you broke your vow to do it with me. I'm alive because you did. I want to do it again.

  Eiran took them away back to the mother's tomb. The sun was still shinning in through the sunroof but it was cold compared to the full light. As soon as they were there, Eiran felt Nathalia's disappointment and moved them back.

  As soon as she felt the sun on her skin, Again. Nathalia demanded. Please. She begged.

  Eiran capitulated, dissolving them and reforming them only a few steps away. It was no less gratifying the next time and rapidly repeated tabalu left Nathalia out of breath. Her eyes were clamped shut. She tried to hold onto that insanely erotic moment and when the impression slipped away she needed it again.

  More. Nathalia held her breath and clung to him, but nothing happened.

  “No more now.”

  Please. Her voice in his head sounded husky and filled with need. It was terribly salacious to have her beg him for more of something only he could give her. Eiran, please. The sound of his name almost weakened his resolve. Almost.

  “Too dangerous. Addictive. Might not come back. Could get trapped without bodies.”

  Women may think they know what it is like to have a man inside them, but no one knew what it was to have a man inside every cell. It was beyond an aphrodisiac to have him control her everything. She could live like that forever with him. Maybe she was the only human to ever truly experience Nirvana. It sure felt like 'the highest happiness'. So what if we get trapped?

  Eiran could feel her arousal. He moved his hands down from her waist to cup her trim and firm backside. Nathalia lifted her head from his chest and tilted up towards his face. He kissed her hard on the mouth. Not giving her a chance to change her mind, he deepened the kiss. Parting her lips with his tongue, he pushed between her teeth to rub her tongue with his. For the first time he spoke inside her mind. I like your body.

  Then her thoughts were flooded with his. Images of him thrusting and her rocking to meet those thrusts, penetrated her brain, lubricating it to the idea of sex with him. His very real hands were all over her back, face, throat and breasts. He grabbed at her like a drowning man as they continued to kiss.

  Yes, he was right. Losing her body wouldn't be as fun as using it. Nathalia grabbed one of the hands fondling her breasts and pushed it down towards her aching core. She felt his excitement as she pushed his palm against her swollen lips. After that Eiran didn't need any coaching. He pushed his fingers between her silky curls, already moist with excitement.

  His other hand found it's way back to her ass, cupping it and pushing her hips to an angle where he could better reach her temptation. He stoked her labia and brushed against her clit. Beg again, he instructed her.

  Yes, please,Eiran. I want you to make me cum. He would not have to comb her memories in search of the meaning of that word. He knew what she wanted him to do. He pressed his thumb against her pearl, feeling it's heartbeat. He began moving up and down at first and then side to side over her throbbing nerve center. It plumped with the attention.

  Nathalia began to move against him uncontrollably. She spread her thighs a little wider for him and he took her invitation. He pushed his unoccupied fingers between her lips, enjoying the warm slickness there, but was careful not to enter her canal until he brought her to the edge of a powerful climax. He knew it was time when she held her breath and her taught stomach muscles tightened even more.

  This was building like nothing she'd ever felt before. Nathalia felt her skin tingle, then the warm white power moved inward from all directions, collecting in her loins, as if Eiran's finger was a power magnet. She was bracing for the impending force, but even so, when it arrived she wasn't ready. He slipped his middle finger inside her as his thumb continued drawing on her nerve nodule. He wanted to feel the involuntary clenching of her womb, but then he pressed against the impossible.

  Eiran didn't stop, it would have been cruel at this point, but a change came over him when he encountered the thin unbroken barrier of her hymen. His wife, the virgin, the high priestess of Inanna, shivered, dug her fingers into his upper arms and tried to keep her balance on trembling legs. The magnetic power glowed and intensified as he fingered her and then the pleasure he was giving her core expanded, exploding through her whole body.

  His thoughts receded from her mind and left her alone as her or
gasm subsided. She felt the change in his attitude towards her and didn't understand it. He too was very confused and didn't know what to do with his urgent need. He couldn't relieve himself now, using her body as he had wanted.

  She watched as he pulled his hand from her and put it to his mouth. He tasted her climax and it pleased him. She tasted exactly as he remembered. This was his wife of long ago, but she was somehow now a 35 year old maid.

  Eiran laid them down side by side on the hot sand. He closed his eyes. Nathalia laid there deeply satisfied and yet knowing it was not fair for her to be the only one that received pleasure. She looked from under her lashes at his massive erection, but the thought of relieving him scared her. Michael had always hurt her when he needed relief. She couldn't do it without reliving that fear and pain, but she pushed herself forward. Eiran wasn't making any demands of her, but Nathalia begrudgingly took the matter into her own hands. Literally.

  Eiran stopped her. “No. I will not cause you discomfort. When we are together, it will be under your terms.” He pulled her hand up to his mouth, kissed it and laid it to rest on his chest. He lay breathing deeply. She watched as his erection receded. Michael had never done that for her. He never allowed her to orgasm and he had never sacrificed what he wanted. Eiran gave her pleasure without asking anything in return.

  For the first time since Eiran had tabalu her here, Nathalia looked at their surroundings. They were in the desert. Sand and rocks for miles and miles. To the east, she could see a bluish silhouette of mountains on the horizon. The view was obstructed by the wavy heat lines coming off of everything. She stretched languidly beside him, then stood. How long had it been since she'd done her yoga? She did her sun salutation, even though the time of day was wrong, and it felt so good.

  She'd never been so aware of her body. It was as if the orgasm had activated every nerve in her body, even some she didn't know were there. Every muscle, tendon and bone could be felt. Her skin was warm in the sunlight and it felt good to stretch it. The sand, stuck to her body where she had laid next to Eiran, rubbed and scratched at her.

  She was very in tune with the sun too. It was a little jarring at first to be aligned with him. She felt it's influence like she had always felt the moon. She had always thought of the moon and earth as female, but the sun was male. The earth held life and grew it, but the sun provided what was needed to start that life. What's our connection with the sun?

  “You noticed?” Eiran lay on his stomach, with his head resting on his hands. He gestured to the great glowing orb in the sky, “Ud, our father, provides energy, Ki, our mother provides nutrients.” He grabbed a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers. “When we tabalu, she absorbs them back. Too much tabalu, she might take it all back.”

  Is that why I'm not hungry?

  “No. Ud and Ki provide, but they do not satisfy.”

  Nathalia wondered at her ability to overlook such a basic detail. She'd been underground for Mother knows how long and she hadn't even thought about food once. Don't we eat? Don't you ever get hungry?

  “We eat, but once started it is near impossible to stop. To be Nephilim is to live with hunger. I am blocking the negative aspects of your conversion that might compel you to do something you would regret.” He was looking up at her intently now.

  Eiran's English was improving with every passing sentence. His ability to adapt and learn was intimidating to Nathalia and she didn't like to feel inferior to any man. Well, stop it. If you can control yourself and my natural impulses at the same time, then I can certainly handle my own.

  “Come lay down. Let Ud's light and Ki's nutrients soak in your skin while I show you what it was like before we managed our hungers.”

  Nathalia scrapped away the top few layers of sand and laid down, but not beside him. It did feel good to have the full sunlight on her face and the cool sand on her back. She closed her eyes and the light shining through her lids began to morph.

  She saw her ancient ancestress, the one at eternal rest in Eiran's quarters of the mothers tomb. The mother had a baby and was deeply distressed because the baby, though she had just finished nursing him, would not stop crying. Nathalia saw that baby grow, constantly suckling at a different woman's teat. There was a fleet of wet nurses as well as his mother to feed him at all hours of the day and night, but still he was hungry. They introduced solid food, pounded soft with extra added animal milk, to him earlier than normal. He ate it up and begged for more. Now when the women were not nursing him, they were taking turns preparing his food.

  Then he cut his first two teeth, incisors. A very odd configuration of first teeth that frightened the women, and he began to bite them when left on a breast for longer than the milk supply lasted. He stopped crying for a while then and when he had been weened, the cooks always added a little blood to his baby food. His need for blood gave birth to fear throughout the kingdom.

  As he grew so did his hunger. Nathalia saw a young boy at a feasting table. Platter after platter of meat, bread, fruit and vegetable were brought to him. She saw him on the hunt with other hungry teenagers. They ate everything in their path, no plant or animal life was safe. They were literally eating up the worlds resources.

  The people began to starve. Then the people began to die. One of the young men had an idea to eat the dead bodies. They were after all, just meat at this point. Impulsive and impressionable as young men are, and as hungry as these were, it did not take much coercion.

  They ate the recently dead and when the meat was gone from the carcass's, they broke up the bones and ate them too. They were not hungry for a while after such a feast on raw human flesh, but it never lasted.

  Nathalia didn't say it, but she was disgusted. No matter how bad she wanted to she would never be a cannibal or blood sucker. Being the uncontrolled empath that she was, she didn't have to say it aloud. Eiran knew her feelings about what he had shown her and felt the need to explain.

  “We were children. Children of god kings who knew no self control nor reason for it. You have never felt the hunger. I protect you from it, or you would not find the vision of our feasting so repulsive. You must master the hunger or devour all life on Ki. I will teach you now if you are ready.” Eiran stood and then offered a hand to Nathalia. She didn't take it, but stood on her own. Eiran walked several feet away from her. “If it is too much, all you need do is ask for my help.”

  Before Nathalia could say anything about not needing the help of any man, it hit her. Hunger was too small a word for what this was. It felt like standing in the worlds strongest waterfall of need. Resistance was futile. Every thought was washed out of her mind except getting what she needed to escape the current. She wanted.

  Nathalia felt her incisors lengthen into sharp daggers. Her eyes darted around, searching for something. There was a thought in her head, maybe hers, maybe someone else's. It said to give into the hunger, Eiran would taste so delicious. His blood would stop the pain. She lunged at Eiran, but he was faster than she. Just as she reached out to him, he disappeared and reappeared behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pinning her arms against her. She thrashed, trying to get away, trying to get at him.

  “You must never drink the blood or eat the flesh of another Nephilim. It would force the hunger down permanently, but at a great cost. It would change you to Akhkharu. You would be a monster forced from communion with Ud and Ki would no longer accept or protect you. You would be sustained only by the pure physical violence you could incite.”

  Nathalia heard him through the rushing sound of the need waterfall in her head. She slowed her thrashing down to a small resistance, but this change in movement caused another hunger to surface. If she could have, she would have purred at him, as she writhed, rubbing her backside against his crotch. Feeling more animal than human at the moment, she began to show him images of ways he could satiate that hunger with his body.

  “Yes, that would help satiate the hunger, and I admit, it is what I planned, but we cannot. Nephil
im are not allowed to take a the maidenhood of any woman without something special in exchange. My something exists, but I gave it to you long ago and only you know where it is.”

  Eiran changed the subject to the task at hand. They would search for the necklace later. Right now he had to help her understand what she was and what she needed. “You hunger for life itself. Prana is found in all things living. Its most concentrated form is orgasm liquids, but there are satiating levels in blood also.”

  He ignored the image she broadcasted to him. The image of her extracting the most concentrated form of prana from him was most erotic, but before she knew control he could not risk it. The temptation for her to bite would be strong. Even if it was not so, her incisors had lengthened and could slice that very delicate area with ease even without intent. Drinking his blood, even if it happened on accident would be her demise. “Less sentient animals have less prana and plant life contains even less, but it is there. It is lawful to take the prana from the blood of humans, but we only do it when necessary. We never kill, only taking what one can share safely.

  “This is what we will do now. Send your senses out and find a human who is alone and asleep. When I release you I want you to run towards them. I will be right with you and help you through this first feeding.”

  Nathalia didn't have to work at the first step. She knew instantly that there was a man tending sheep to the east just beyond the desert. He was sleeping standing up, leaned against his shepherds staff. She also knew there were 109 sheep in his herd.

  Knowing her thoughts, Eiran said, “Even if you drained every drop of blood in the whole herd, they could not satiate the hunger. I said we do not kill, and taking his herd would destroy this man's livelihood, killing him and his family. The human has what you want.”

  Nathalia didn't wait when Eiran released her. She was running faster than lightning across the desert floor instantly. She outran the sun, and it sank below the horizon behind her. She felt the ground change from sand to dirt and rocks. She stopped running. Eiran stopped right behind her.