I hated to see Him go, I really did. It was, however, one of those times when I didn't want Him to stay either. I didn't know the details of what might be pressing with Lei, but I understood the import of it. Yama had told me once, to fall for a man that loved children. I didn't really understand it then, but I think I was beginning to. I always thought it a funny absurd thing to say, reasoning that men, of course, wanted children. What Yama spoke of however, had nothing to do with the urge to sire offspring, and I was starting to see that. I had never seen a man strive so hard to stand above..what? the majority? his peers? No, it was more than that. It was something internal that pushed and pressed him ever upward, instilling His hero status time and again. The importance of a child to Him, told me volumes about the man Himself. It touched a soft spot in my heart that had yet to be even brushed before.
Growing up, I had played with dolls with Etta. We carted our stuffed offspring to the stream, giving them baths and muddy skirts. We set them in the corner of my room to feed them bowls of paper soup and cups of sweet water tea. Thoughts about my own children were a bit more complex. Like every girl, I suppose, I thought of having a boy and girl, a perfect set. One would look like me and the other like him. But there was this other idea that hovered along the edges, like a little purple haze around my ideas. Perhaps it was the loss of my parents at such a young age, or perhaps the childless life of my Aunt and Uncle. Whatever inspired it, I always had the conviction that I could and would love a child not my own with all the passion and heart that Yama had bestowed upon me. I realized, as I sat upon the steps in the dance of moonlight and firelight, that just like my faceless sketches of dreams, my children's faces were as undrawn and uncolored. My fat children. My identity was not predicated on...childbirth.
I finished up the sizzling tabuk slices and puttered around the camp, cleaning up and arranging and rearranging things. I wanted everything to be perfect if He should return. Every conceivable comfort was made available to Him. He was tired when He left, bearing the weight of a day ...and it seemed..the world at times..upon His shoulders. I thought the conversation with Asria must have been difficult, drawing up emotions and feelings that He kept tucked away so well. He was honest, with grace and kindness. He had shouldered the responsibilities of some kind of major ordeal too. And then He went to take care of Lei. Just how much could one day rain down upon a person? I knew better than to ask that.
I had warm water in a basin, soothing herbs steeping and flavoring it. I went for a bowl of fresh milk, just in case. I settled the furs just..so..made for simply crawling within and drowning in comfort. I stood in the middle of the wagon, slowly turning in a circle. Every color of the spectrum shouts at me and I am still fascinated by the changes. No matching of colors seem to make a rhythm, except for the assurance that I will find at least two instances of a shade somewhere. The stark lack of black - that color that had seemed to be His everything - haunts me, even as I carefully fold and put away freshly laundered black tunics and leather. In the warm copper glow of the oil lamp, every thought, word, deed, want, desire mosied through my mind, each seemingly brought to life by a streak of color that catches my eye or a fold in a fur, a captured flame reflected in a pot. There was so much to say.
Night ticks by with uneven calm, marching toward tomorrow with certainty while I..captive..await within the cavernous open space. Dimly aware of the cool paint of air that skirts my flesh, leaving raised evidence of tiny footprints, stark in contrast to His ever present warmth. A midnight sky holds the half eaten slice of moon, hanging low in the cradle of darkened clouds. I am vaguely reminded that i am afraid. Scared and yet excited. Each an escalating sensation that singes through veins thrumming with anticipation. Waiting, as I trace the pattern of nightscape, slipping into the fantasy of unknowns, where anything can happen. Eyes close with the shudder that forms, compounded by the heat that materializes between thighs. Painful curiosity, as uncertain pleasures beckon in alternating passages that crawl through the daydream. The options are many with no set design, save the pure hope and certainty... a faith filled memory not yet tasted.... a knowing..that the end result will be a sated heart. Muscles frozen into expectancy ache, making the impending responses assured, while fevered cheeks bloom in a forever smile. Fickle time, slows to an interminable pace, while hunger slicked passages respond, open, waiting...
as night ticks by with uneven calm.
He returned.
This would be one of those moments where I would grab Dee's hands and clap and dance and tell her in a hundred different giddy ways..that He came back. Later. Right now, I just melted into the dark essence around Him, soaking up the moment. He had just started to emerge from the brooding silence when another voice split the air close to the wagons. It was not Master Fonce Brave Warrior Honest Mature Man that parted the shadows, but a youth with nonchalant air who reminded me an awful lot of Toad and Griff. The second voice, the sudden audience, beckoned to the manipulator of situations, diffusing it with ease.
I could feel the tired wrap around Him and absorb the very life from Him. The few words exchanged between us were low, syllables of thought, that in turn drew out the instincts, reflexes, and emotions of a woman. Care, concern, nurturing, compassion - soft, delicate, female mannerisms intended to help shed the harsh mantle of day. Hoisted to His shoulder, a breathless delight colored in the fantasy, and the lighter sex of my femaleness succumbed to His male dominion, stirring and infusing all those random ideas I had into one significant thought - a certainty that held not one shred of doubt; a conviction that had started as a mere spark and ignited into an inferno.
I whispered into His ear "I do not want to be a slave." Attention gathered like a storm inside of Him, poised and ready to whisk me away on it's turbulent ride. I can just imagine what He might have thought, already building up a hundred reactions, drug from a defenseless half asleep haze. I smiled, knowing this moment would never be lost in time's memory. And thus began my surrender. "I want to be -Your- slave".
The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender."
- Emil Ludwig
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