Djinn
Tiamat's Gift
Qingu cocked his head watching the delectable mortal as she went through the process of denial that all mortals seemed to do when meeting a god. Her outrage was delicious. It smelled of equal parts desperation and desire.
Even though he had been imprisoned for the last hundred thousand years, brought low by Marduk, the son of a hyena and treacherous mate of the Queen of Heaven, he had been able to keep abreast of mortals. He knew of the empires they built that turned to ash and sand over time. He knew of the new god they had crowned, Elihu, the desert dwelling god of unwashed sheep herders and celibate Romans. He knew of the Age of Reason, the revolutions to overthrow men who would claim to be the dead god’s right hand, and the toys they built to make themselves faster than a swift river. He read their words, enjoyed their music, laughed at their obeisance to the ridiculous notion of sexual purity. How could a man judge if a wife were fertile unless she had many lovers and at least one child with one of them?
He also knew that the gods he had sought to rule so long ago were dead, his sweet Tiamat, the treacherous Marduk, the beauteous Damkina, the fierce Ishtar, and the rest of his brothers and sisters, all dead for lack of worship. Their altars were buried in the sands of the Euphrates, their immortal bones scattered in the heavens. He alone, through Marduk’s treachery, was left.
They lay panting into the cool silence of the chamber for a while. She broke the silence with her next wish. “I wish that I could be respected in my field and not have to struggle forever against the stigma of my gender.”Qingu laughed against her skin, too tired yet to pick up his head. “Your wish will be granted, if you promise to worship me with that very profane mouth of yours.”He flopped over on his back. “Now.”She looked doubtful. “But, I’ve never… only… bad women do that kind of thing.”“I will teach you that pleasure is not a sin, my flower,” he said as he summoned a pot of honey tipping it haphazardly over his cock. “The god of your land is a liar if he says it is. Now, worship me so that I might pleasure you again.”She slid down his body, following the same path he had on hers, peppering his oiled skin with biting kisses. Once she reached his cock, she hesitated, opening her mouth as she worked his foreskin back. She regarded the still slick head with some trepidation, but opened her mouth and let her questing tongue wipe the honey off the mushroomed head. She opened her mouth slightly, before asking, “Am I doing this right?”“Oh, yes, my gazelle.”She dipped her head, sucking more of him into her mouth, licking the path of the honey off his skin. It took all of Qingu’s self-control not to buck into that cavity and take his pleasure as he would. He was a god, no matter how lonely he had been, he could show her patience. She soon became confident as he voiced his pleasure, but too soon, his control began to fray and he pulled her away from him. “Enough worship, my flower. I would give you pleasure now.”He eased into her this time, drawing the sighs and moans from her with his gentleness. He would have his freedom and her too, if he gave her enough pleasure. He said, “It is time for your third wish, the one that might just give us what we both want, my treasure.”
He ghosted her skin with a brush of his lips, his hair falling in a cascade around them. Her sheath convulsed around his iron-hard rod causing the Dragon Lord to plead with her, something he had never done in his long life, “Please, my precious gem, please…”“I wish that this… we… could go on forever, that this isn’t just some fevered dream, and that you were… my lover, my friend… I wish...” He thrust into her harder with each phrase, frenzied now that his goal was in sight. She panted, “I wish… Oh God! I wish you and I were together and out of here…. I’m going to…”Once again she reached her pinnacle with him and he froze, spilling his seed into her. His senses expanded into the realm beyond the physical world for the first time in his aeons of captivity, and he felt his Queen, weakened but alive, give her benediction to him and this mortal. Tiamat let a soul loose from her own womb and pushed it into his mortal’s body. When Qingu kissed his thoroughly modern mortal, he tasted himself and the tiny flame of awareness in Madeleine’s belly. Her wish, along with his, had been granted. They fell asleep in the aftermath of the divine storm of magic.
&*&*&
Madeleine awoke from her nap.
She stretched, feeling the creak of the camp bed, hearing the shouts of workmen as they went about the excavation. Her body ached at the remembered pleasures of her dream, almost as if she had actually been stretched and opened. A soft burn of pleasure filled her womb at the thought of such a thing actually happening, especially as she remembered her wanton behaviour. She chided herself, even as she blushed, remembering the succubus’ actions. It was only a dream.She rose from the bed, drawing on her clothes that felt a little rougher, a little more pedestrian than they had before her nap. It was if her flesh remembered the whisper soft feel of silk, and the burnished warmth of bronzed skin against hers.It was just a dream.
Voices drew nearer as Madeleine readied herself for a foray outside the tent. She could make out Dr Nassir’s but the other was softer, strangely accented, as if he spoke only rarely. She exited the shelter and stopped, her mouth working in shock.Qingu, the god from her dreams, with his unfashionably long hair, bronze skin, and tawny eyes, stood before her, speaking to Dr Nassir in an earnest manner. His attention flickered from Nassir’s face for a moment, his expression guarded. Nassir followed his gaze, “Ah, Dr Whetstone! Your husband--Dr Ophiuchus, isn’t it?--he has finally arrived to help us with those petroglyphs. It is such an honour to meet you, sir.” Nassir rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation before he added, “Your wife has been such a bold leader on this dig. I must say, I can’t get over my pride at having backed her on this expedition.”“M-my husband?” She felt rooted to the spot. “I-I… yes, of course…I must have dreamed… heavily.”She stepped down the path, taking her dream lover’s outstretched hand. Dr Nassir moved quickly and excitedly ahead of them.Her putative husband lowered his mouth to her ear murmuring, “Dreams are fabulous things, are they not, my lotus blossom? They grant all sorts of wishes, even ones we didn’t know we had until we wished them.”He lowered his free hand to her abdomen, and she gasped as an answering flutter moved under his hand. “Tiamat has granted us great joy, my fire-haired wife. Let’s not waste any more time on defining what is and isn’t reality.”Ophiuchus is a Constellation name, depicted as a man supporting a serpent, meaning serpent bearer. Ophiuchus, the man depicted in the constellation is thought by some to actually be the demigod Asclepius, who learned the secret of life and death from a serpent and was killed by Zeus to prevent him from sharing his knowledge with mankind.
While I’ve chosen to butcher the ancient Babylonian pantheon’s story to write this little plot, many of the gods mentioned were worshipped in Babylon, although probably more piously than I treated them in the story. Marduk did use treachery to defeat the underworld Dragon Lord Qingu/Kingu, and Tiamat, the primordial dragon goddess, did sew the tablets that conveyed creation onto Marduk’s chest to make him her consort.No gods, ancient or otherwise, were harmed in the writing of this story.