Beginnings

About halfway through this chapter is the last of what was written before I began posting Beginnings. I stopped at Vera's oh so shocking words due to giggling at Una's reaction and never seemed to get back to it. Vera has always appeared to be a very motherly (if a little moody) figure. In charge and in command.

Imagine finding out she's just as lecherous and perverted as Una.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




I awoke to Vera sitting in the chair by the door and the young man gone. I realised then that what I had done was nothing special. My stomach twisted in a knot, I felt ill and wanted to hide under the blankets. Vera would allow me my modesty but was not about to wait about for me. She motioned to the flat top chest at the end of the bed.

“Wash your privates, then dress,” Vera said calmly as she stood and left the room.

I rose from the bed, shuffled to the chest and used the cooling water to wash myself as thoroughly as I thought possible. Then I dressed and shuffled out of the room, my head lowered as I had once done whenever I had done something that I knew my mother would cuff me for.

Vera took my hand, a led me out of the stag room. She waited until we were alone, lost in the halls of the temple, before she said anything at all.

“You preformed as I would expect any young man to perform.”

“Poorly.”

“Very. Did you know where to put it?”

“No…” my face burned with embarrassment.

“Well we will have to adjust that. You will have to learn to treat others as you would prefer to be treated,” Vera was silent for a moment as we walked out of the temple and into the front lawns, into the largest gardens of the temple, “my usual method for this is to place you with a giver. But you seem adamant about not laying with a man in such a way. Your wounds are too fresh. Perhaps in time. Though I could give you to Erit. He is the eldest of the stags and has a great deal of experience between the sheets.

“He once took a young man who was frigid and denying his sexuality and seduced him. And pleasured him. He is a very gentle and very thorough lover.”

“I do not want to receive anyone,” I responded, quite upset that Vera would think that she knew what I was wanting when I clearly did not want to do it.

“You. Don’t?” Vera arched an eyebrow, looked me up and down with those red eyes as she stopped walking and made a circle around me, “you would not be interested in a trusted, loved someone. Strong and muscular between your legs, thrusting into you as you moan?” her words sent a shiver through me.

And she was right. When I find someone I trust, wholly and entirely, when he is attractive and strong physically. When he has proved his prowess and his capability to protect me and those I care for, I enjoy taking him to bed and I enjoy being had. Few have measured up to that point, though.

“That is what I thought. Erit will sit in on your lessons.”

“What lessons?”

“The ones we shall begin very shortly. Your strength is back, thus we can begin learning what you can do. Tell me. What have you learned in your life? What can you do? Can you make a statement as per your learning capabilities, to your mind?”

“I…”

“Start with what you know.” Vera said, coming to a stop in front of me.

“I. Can hunt and fish.”

“Most can.”

“My grandfather was, is, a shaman,” I noticed the past tense a moment before Vera did and she was not pleased with it, “I can dance and sing a little and the priest taught me Mother’s language and… my grandmother taught me witchcraft.”

“What counts as witchcraft these days?”

“She once cured a boy of fever with plants.”

That piqued Vera’s curiosity, “how well did you pay attention to these lessons?”

They were not set lessons, my family taught the boys to hunt and fish but that was as much as they really needed. Everything else I learned because I was bored and stumbled upon this one or that one doing various things. Because it was to alleviate my own boredom I paid a great deal of attention to them.

“I paid attention enough to learn.”

“Speak to Mother then.”

“What?” I asked, panicked. I was under the belief that only a sanctioned priest could speak to Mother, one could learn to speak the language without being a priest, but it required certain controls being placed, certain spells being traced to protect Mother from the unsanctioned priest.

“Speak to Mother.”

“Only priests-”

“You are her child,” Vera muttered, “though if that is the belief the common people, it is no wonder that the language of Mother is slowly being forgotten. Shame on them. Denying Mother what she deserves. People should speak to her about everything, she wants to know about their lives. So, I, being older and wiser and more powerful, of higher rank and more beauty than your priests. Am telling you to speak to Mother.”

I sighed out but did as she told me. I closed my eyes clasped my hands before me and bowed my head. I spoke out the prayer whose words have escaped me now. It was meant to be respectful and asked Mother to deliver a bounty and such and such and oh glorious this and oh wonderful that. When I finished, I looked up, quite proud of myself.

Vera looked like she was going to fall asleep.

“Well, you speak quite fluently,” She said as if that was the only good thing about it. Then she turned away from me and walked slowly towards a birch tree, growing tall, a seedling sprouting by its trunk, “Dear Mother, hear me, I wish to tell you about my seven day. I have not had sex since taking on your son, since carrying on the burden of others. I have not been ravished in half a moon! Though I was sorely tempted to slip into the hawk room and have someone please me with their mouth… but I stayed the course and guarded your new child. I did, however, have two stags perform for me and what a glorious performance it was.”

My mouth dropped open at what Vera was saying to Mother. Oh, to the ears of a people it sounded marvellous, sounded like singing, like Vera was laying out the most beautiful verses for our Mother. Yet it was all perversion. Sex and debauchery.

It’s not always perversion, but Mother reacts better to sexual context than she does the prayers of followers. As Vera spoke, I followed along behind in shock, horrified that Vera would speak to Mother in such a way. Vera went on to describe how the two stags coupled and how they had moaned and it had been wonderful and how others had slid off their rooms, paired off after the show.

And all around her, the world reacted. The blades of grass seemed to sigh out, flowers blossomed around her feet and the tree. I swear the attention of the tree turned towards her. For Mother reacts to her children.

Civilizations put a term to it that explains Mother’s obsession with sex. Biological imperative, they call it. Everything on Mother need reproduce for the species, race, peoples, to continue on. Reproduction, to the people, involved sex and sex happened more often when one or both parties was pleasured. Thus there was more of a chance that children would be begotten if there was pleasure.

Though I have never quite found out why Mother reacted with so much interest to the going ons between a male and a male. Yes, she showed interest in male pairs and female pairs and male-female pairs and hermaphroditic pairs. All her people were important to her and all things reproduce in different manners.

But any time Vera described male pairs, Mother reacted more keenly. Perhaps it is simple interest in an odd phenomenon.

By the time Vera was done her tale, she stood under the shade of the birch tree. She turned to me and smiled. Sweetly, innocently.

“How much of that did you follow?”

“I. Filled in the gaps, but… all of it.” I replied, feeling my face heat once more.

“Mm, we shall have to expand your vocabulary. Tell me,” Vera turned away from me and motioned towards the sky, “do you know the constellations?”

“I know the northern most star, that one which only spirals in a circle in the sky instead of moving, east to west like the others.” I responded. Stars were not a strong subject of mine.

“Can you read?”

“What?”

“Read, ink on paper.”

I shook my head, having never heard of reading before. Books were not common place and were quite expensive. Inks were used, more often than not, to create illustrations. The written word had not been so popular as to be known to such a village as the one I grew up in.

“No.” was the only answer I could offer Vera for I had no idea what she meant.

“That will need to be remedied. Well, knowledge wise, you know about as little as a lord’s child but more than I would expect from someone with your background. Now, you’ve no idea what power is.”

“No.”

“Touch the tree,” Vera motioned to the birch tree she stood by and stepped aside, “place your palm on it and… tell it to do something.”

“Do…”

“Grow. Burn, anything.”

I stepped up to the tree and placed my palm flat against it, closed my eyes and willed the tree to do something. Nothing in particular, just something. When I opened my eyes, how foolish did I feel to see that nothing had changed. But power was a fairly new concept, even to Vera. Only a person with a soul can use power, so while it is common knowledge how to instruct one in the use of power, or how to test or check for power, at that point in history the best teaching that could be offered was

“Try again.”

I sighed, looked at Vera, “this is foolish. The tree deserves none of this at all.”

“And the men who raped you?”

I went cold then hot. Horror and then anger that Vera had pried enough to know what had happened, that she had known and still made me go through with being with the young man. Then an unsettling grief fell over me. Fear clawed at my belly, my chest tightened.

Vera looked at the tree and upward, “Power.”

I, still with my hand against the tree, looked upward. The bark of the tree bubbled and oozed, where the papery stuff came away from the trunk was singed from an unseen fire. Far above my head the leaves had turned gray and began dropping from their branches.

I had used power.


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