A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 01

When she had all that he could give to her one evening, she rose up and looked down on him.

"I have what I sought," she said, "I give you my thanks, lord. What will you do now?"

"I will go to where we all came from and go to my reward there, whatever it may be. You said that you had wishes. I have armed you with weapons which cannot be bested if you choose wisely. I have filled you over and over and even you have finally said that it is enough."

He looked at her curiously, "What else is there?"

"Three things, "she smiled affectionately at him, "Firstly, I have forgotten my name. Tell it to me if you can, or give me another so that I can add it to whatever sense of purpose that I find in me."

"You have had several names and were known by many more," he said. "I give you one which you should already have heard. I call you Dhakhete."

Her eyes opened wide at the sound of it. "Dhakhete? I am Dhakhete?" she thought for a moment, "I was a queen for a time, was I not?"

"A great warrior queen," he smiled, "The most mighty ruling queen of the Kingdom of Armak, as it was known to its people. Like only a few before you, you ruled alone, taking many consorts. It was a time when your efforts were not required singly, but as a ruler, before you were brought by us. They never knew, these humans, who it was, and they never settled the truth between them, spinning legends over half a dozen civilizations and weaving you into them to give their kings more credence of greatness. If all of the kings who wanted to prove their greatness with their lies had ever known you as a wife, you would have had a hundred husbands."

"No," she smiled, "I would have killed each liar as soon as I learned of it."

"You faded after that when you left it all behind you because we needed for you to be elsewhere then, but while you ruled, you took the teeth of many wars to your enemies and settled all disputes to the favor of your land and its people. Your name was known by all, and any who saw you leading you army into battle never forgot the sight of it, neither friend nor foe."

"I ruled a great city," she said, "I ruled an empire. Small, but still it was mighty."

She smiled a little proudly as the memories returned to her, "My armies were vast."

"You were the Kandake," he nodded, "And you ruled Armak from your seat at the Island of Meroe, another legend which they have not really fully found yet, and given the way that they themselves are diminished now, I doubt that they ever will. What else do you wish to know?"

She leaned down and kissed him softly before she eased herself backward and lay beside him again. She reached over and took the wondrous maleness there into her hand after a gentle caress and squeeze of the testicles which had pleased her so much as they'd supplied what she'd been filled with over and over. She lowered her head and opened her mouth to take him in.

She sighed to herself in dreamy pleasure, enjoying this so much.

She was going to miss this.

It took a little while, but he responded and she made love to him with her mouth, determined to get one last gush from him and to worship him a little more.

When she had the last of it, she licked everything that she could find and asked something which she'd held in her heart for so long.

"I am a female," she said a little humbly, though she had no reason to take that tone, "Is there no way that you might feel a little love for me in your great heart, lord? You tell me to seek for one for myself, yet I lie here with all that I could ever want or need. If it is your wish, you could rule here and I would find happiness as well as joy -- all the reward that I would ever want for everything that I have ever done for you all. We could grow to love each other, even if you had no want to rule.

Rule me, Lord," she said earnestly, "If you could love me, I would be happy and do anything for you. Please think on this for a moment."

It hurt her when he shook his head, though to his credit, he did manage to look at least a little regretful. "Such a thing would bring me great pleasure and joy, I think," he said, "but it would prevent me from going back to where I belong. If I stayed, I would never know what waits for me there."

"But," she said, "think of me. I have no such place for me. I am not needed, you said, and so I am to wander, am I not? Come and rule me," she said seriously, "All that I am is yours forever."

"I cannot, "he said.

"No," she said, "you only will not. Am I not enough for you that you'd leave me here? In all of the time that I have done the bidding of you all, not one of you has thought me worthy of your love. You have all had me for your pleasure, and not one has bitten me to allow me inside your circle, why?"

"What you are cannot be brought into our realm. It was decided long ago," he said, "I waited only long enough to be sure that this fall would not pass soon. Four centuries and more is enough for me to tell. I must go, or --"

"Or what?" she asked, "You would be trapped here with the djinn that you all took as your servant and weapon for all of this time? Did you not think that I might find happiness all by myself, and seek out a djinn for my heart, as should have happened?

Instead, I fought for you, killed countless thousands for you and worked tirelessly in my tasks. Did you all think that I would labor for you only for the teaching and nothing more? You offer only bones to me with no meat left on them by the time that I stand with my hand out."

Her eyes narrowed, "You led them all and I changed a world for you."

He looked a little nervous for a moment, knowing that he didn't have enough of his strength to leave now. He needed another few moments before he'd have that back.

She nodded, sensing his thoughts, "I knew this," she said, "That was another reason why I suckled you. I wanted to be sure that I took the last for a while, so that we could have this talk between us. You have answered the second thing and you refuse my heart.

It is a dangerous thing to do to a female who offers all that she has, though it means nothing to you. This brings us to the last thing."

She smiled, "You all used me and thought that more power was what I craved. I needed it, but only to do more for you. I have wanted to have one of you for my own for all of this time. Which one was not of importance to me for I knew that I could come to love any of you.

But you no longer have need of me," she nodded as she rose above him and saw the beginning of his fear.

"You are the only one of them left here," she smiled, "and you will never go to your reward."

She held him down and his famous teeth shattered while he screamed. She slew him then by tearing his throat out and she watched his weak soul leave him as he bled to wander aimlessly in the dust forever.

"You will wander too,"" she smiled, "for I know enough that you cannot ever leave the way that I will when I pass or the way that the humans do."

She set his body alight with a thought to make certain that he would never rise again and laughed as the spirit wailed in despair at how she heated the flames to whiteness. The wondrous body was ash in a minute. She picked up all of the weaponry with a sweep of her arm from across the chamber. A second later, it was with her as she swirled against the flow of oxygen seeking to come in from outside to replace what was being consumed to burn his body as she passed through the stone.

Once outside, she listened for a moment to the first of his soul's impotent sobbing before she turned away. All that he was, was there, inside a crumbling building. Even if nothing happened, it would disperse into the air slowly over time.

She raised her hand and the stones shattered as she completed the ruin that time had begun. She heard only one small cry as the breeze blew the last of him away and the sunlight did the rest. Now he could not even haunt anyone, never mind seek to control them. A fitting end to something worthless.

"Dhakhete," she said to herself, remembering the sound and the way that it felt to her as though she were trying on an old but much-loved coat which she'd just rediscovered. "Dhakhete. ... Dhak-HET-eh."

She tried it a few more times and grinned. She decided that she liked it.

Dhakhete it would be then, she nodded to herself as she walked off into the night.

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Sothern Pacific Coast, North America

Monnie Aldergrove was looking for a man.

It sounded ludicrous in her head when she put it that way, she thought. She hadn't been looking for a man in years.

Raised in the religious conservatism of the prairies, a girl didn't specifically look for a fellow so much as she might hope that one of the local boys that she'd gone to school with might express an interest.

That would please most of the parents in any of the upstanding families in the rather isolated community. It was what they wished for as the 'correct' way, in the narrow view taught by their reverend, who was just the same as the one in the next town and so forth. The only alternative for a girl to hope for was that a suitable boy might come over the low hill from the main road and settle.

The problem with that was that he'd forever be a newcomer and never quite gain the trust of the others around the place. That hypothetical girl might find her heart's delight in that stranger and they could share their lives working some piece of land for themselves to raise a family of their own. But though that man's children would be accepted by everyone there -- since they'd be born there, after all, he never would. He'd be an outsider until the day that he died.

Small places are just like that.

Small places where the people take heed to the minister's sermons teaching distrust of strangers every Sunday are even worse.

And all of that pre-supposes that the girl is upright herself and not a slattern, Monnie thought.

Well, she'd been there -- upright and all. It was where she'd been born. She'd found her man in the stranger who'd ridden toward town one night in a blizzard -- the kind that the prairies have always been a little famous for. He and his horse had been half-dead when he'd ridden up the path from the road. But to Monnie, he'd been a godsend.

And of course, there'd been many reasons for that.

Monnie had always been a little bit different.

Nobody ever said anything about it -- at least not within earshot of her, but Monnie's mother had been a big woman, over six feet tall and built like a Viking -- a male Viking, to be exact. The man that she'd married came from a family in the area, but the truth be told, he was more of an orc than anything, long-armed and pretty rough-looking in a suit as he sat in the family pew on Sundays. That was where Monnie got her slightly greenish skin and a lot of her build. The rest, her size and her immense strength, she'd gotten from her mother -- along with her flaming red hair.

From an early age, she'd noticed that she could influence and even change the things around her in her unimportant little life. Nothing huge back then, she supposed, but she'd been born with some sort of ability. Only her mother knew of it, having made the discovery by accident one day, and she swore her little girl to secrecy out of the rather justified fear that her daughter would be burned as a witch -- especially if Reverend Schottke caught wind of it.

All that Monnie knew was what her mother had told her in a private moment when she was about twelve. There had been others in her mother's line who'd had abilities something like hers. Their way of life precluded any others even hearing of it. Ignorance has always bred fear, and ignorant fear can cause otherwise fine and peaceful folk to require a scapegoat for any of the many possible ills which might befall the community or the members in it. And so Monnie had always done her best to suppress what she'd been given, for fear of being denounced.

Well, that was before her father and brothers had been murdered, only three of the casualties of a long night of horror when a trio of demons had come through. After that, Monnie's mother and her aunt had banded together and they worked the farm as best they could. At first, that left Monnie alone to care for her great-grandmother when her school day was done. The ancient crone had outlived her own children and no one knew what kept the old girl going. Monnie found out though -- or at least, she learned enough to form her own opinion.

Old Hattie took every opportunity to teach Monnie. Coming from where they all had, the old woman was more righteous than anyone herself, but she took what had come to them as a sign from above that the reverend would never understand. That was how Monnie learned. Hattie had warned her that if she was 'true', then she'd better get a move on if she wanted children herself, correctly predicting the way that the women of this family with any of this talent always seemed to 'go dry'. It was her way of telling Monnie that they all lost their ability to conceive at a fairly young age. She told Monnie that it was just the price that had to be paid for the gifts.

That hadn't made things one bit easier for Monnie.

When she was a girl, she'd always been a touch on the heavy side. Her mother and any other woman in the community termed it being 'big-boned'. But their way of life had never allowed her to get really large. She was just a bit on the plump side unless one asked Monnie. She called herself fat. As she came into her own, the baby fat had left her to be replaced with the odd way that she was built and the muscle that came along with that. She wasn't fat anymore, though it was still the way that she saw herself.

There was an odd way that men and boys in a farming community had of referring to young females. Monnie knew of it, the same as any girl did, hearing the term now and then. It could be spoken in a tone of admiration for a girl's prettiness and usually was. A lovely young thing would be referred to as "a fine-looking filly".

Nobody ever referred to Monnie in terms like that. She knew why, of course. They meant the word as though the young woman that they might be speaking of was a thoroughbred or a quarter horse, and that was why it was never said of Monnie. She was built more like a Belgian or a Clydesdale. In horse terms. Monnie was one big draft horse, and in a very quiet way, it made her a little proud, since she could work most men into the ground and barely break a sweat.

The downside of that was the huge and very strong heart that drove it all would likely never find many interested stallions. If she could have collected all of the lonely sighs which had come to her when she had the thought, Monnie knew that she'd likely have had a hurricane in her pocket.

When she was old enough for more than the few chores of a child, Monnie became just another female on a farm where the women ran the place alone out of necessity. The years passed and Monnie's hope of a boy expressing some sort of interest began to fade, since none of the boys that she'd grown up with had found enough to base a want on, she surmised. She was heavy and plain, she'd told herself, never mind weird.

The time passed, and the hard, unending labor of doing the regular work of farmwomen as well as that of the men began to kill them off. Monnie's aunt wore out and perished first. It wasn't long afterward that her mother took sick the next winter and died. Finally, Hattie must have decided that it was time for her to release her white-knuckled grip on life as well, but before she'd allow her own spirit to pass, she made certain that her great-granddaughter was fully cognisant of her abilities.

None of that helped Monnie all that much, other than little things here and there. She was all alone on her family's farm at the age of twenty-one.

The arrival of Artemis Jones changed all of that for her. She'd basically dragged the large man in out of the howling wind and snow, setting him in front of the kitchen wood stove while she fought her way back out to get his poor horse into the shelter of the barn. Once she'd gotten a little life back into him, he just stayed.

Art was a cleric, but not anything like the fool reverend. Art had abilities and knowledge of his own. He'd traveled all of his adult life in a wandering way, learning lore to add to his knowledge of what might have happened during and before the dark times of long ago. To hear him talk of it, the human race had once held mastery of this world, but something had happened. He just didn't know what it might have been. They had long and earnest discussions between themselves night after night as they brought that old farm back to life to a point where it could support the two of them. They taught each other every spell and incantation they knew.

Monnie had told Art that she was too old to bear him any children, and anyway, she'd stopped ovulating for some reason. He didn't care, he told her. That he had Monnie was more than enough for him and they almost always managed to share a little love between them most nights, no matter how dog-tired they were.

But that came to an end as well after five years of hard work and joy.

No one in the village knew it, but Artemis Jones had saved most, if not all of their lives. He stood up after dinner one night and told Monnie that there were demons coming. She'd felt it herself after he'd taught her how. As he'd begged her to do, Monnie had waited among the trees in the orchard as he met them head-on. There were seven of them and it took every one of them to lay her man low. Five of them had perished at the hands of Artemis and the last two were injured and weak when she walked out of the orchard and cast her righteous spells to smite them down.

Monnie buried the love of her life there in the orchard. She left the demons to rot.

About a week later, she put the farm up for sale, accepting the first offer that came. With some of the money, she bought a coach which could be drawn by two horses and outfitted it as the mobile home that she now sat on, driving her horses as she searched for one man.

Art had told her of him, calling him the Cold Warrior, though he'd said that the man was more of a wizard than a warrior, and he'd also admitted that he had no idea about the 'cold' part. It had come to him over years of dreams; one man who'd lived a long, long time -- far too long for it to be natural, hundreds of years, in fact.

This man, Artemis had said, was the one responsible for the appearance of the demons. All that he knew was that he lived to the west and made his home inside a large dead bird which never flew. When he wasn't there, he was in a large and ruined city a good distance away.

That was where Monnie Aldergrove was headed now. It had taken her a few years of wayward travel as she'd stopped here and there to heal a child or to help a farmer with a sick horse or cow.

In a community very similar to the one where she'd been born, she's been accused of 'witchery' by the local minister. Unfortunately for him, he'd chosen to use the spectacle of her burning to preach his vapid notions as he threw the first torch onto the kindling at her feet.

At that point, after a lifetime of hearing idiots preach to their faithful, always managing to make them believe that they were needed while doing little real work themselves, Monnie had lost patience for it.

To the amazement of everyone present, she suddenly stood in the minister's place, while he found himself securely bound to the stake in hers with the flames already licking at his clothes. She shouted the minister's own words and thoughts to him, louder than he could manage, and when he pronounced her as 'the devil', she'd called him an idiot and walked off after causing the flames to shoot up high around him.