Athaniel's Libation Ch. 01

And so a day came, when Lethiana decided we would make another pilgrimage to the springs of Zintha. And that we take Elliana with us.

It is uncommon, but not unheard of, to take to the waters of Zintha with someone you never mated with before. People joke of it with hushed reverence, something too intense to endure. It is a story worth telling, for sure. And one that would no doubt be on my mind on many a lonely night, in the desolate future that was now my own.

"You cannot go without climax, not without the fevers overcoming you." Lethiana had observed before, when we were still gathered in her tree. "What will you do with your moullin?" It seemed a matter of great importance to her, even though I couldn't feasibly give her an answer. I did not know what my life there would look like.

"They are humans," Elliana, draped over my lap, chimed in. "They have servants for that."

Lethiana went pale. "Are you suggesting...?"

"No no." Elliana shook her head quickly. "They live in stone buildings so large that they have to pee in pots, and they have servants to carry it away. I have heard it told."

"You want him to... in a pot... to be carried away by a servant?" Lethiana looked even more aghast now.

"He'll just have to ask for a bigger pot," Elliana said in a deadpan voice, even though she was clearly enjoying riling Lethiana. "Or he can feed it to the cows." She carried on. "I hear their men take quite a liking to the beasts." Elliana cast her eyes to me and winked. "Might as well enjoy yourself."

Lethiana's face contorted in anger, Isani turned her head in Sarlai's lap, casting her a questioning look as if to urge her to intervene.

"Elliana..." I said, moving a hand to rest on her hair. "I don't think anyone is in the mood for jokes right now."

She went quiet and looked up at me. Her eyes wide. "I'm just trying to..." She trailed off.

"I know, Immoula." I stroked her hair. "I know."

"If I don't joke, I'll cry," she said in a shaky voice, her eyes flooding rapidly.

I nodded gently. "Sometimes it's better to cry."

Her lip tremored. And then the tears broke free, rolling down on either side of her face, to soak into the soft fabric of my breeches. While she sobbed quietly in my lap, the other three had looked on in wordless dread.

"It is not forever," I'd' said eventually, when Elliana's sobs had quieted. "Nothing is. If there is anything we have learned these past months, it is that."

They felt like empty words. Empty words meant only for their consolation. Or my own. But they were worth saying. And I repeated them like a mantra. Even now, while we climbed the steps to the moon pool.

That night, we were still together. And we should make it count, for it was all that we had left. I shook my head to banish all thoughts of the future and forced my mind into the present.

Walking through the clouds, tiny droplets were forming on my hair, my face and my clothes. I blinked, and they fell from my eyelashes, rolling down my cheeks. I took a deep breath and drank in the sensation.

The cloud thinned, revealing the lush forest around us. A red sparrow started its song and was immediately answered by another, further from us. More songs erupted just as the moon revealed itself. She hung low and fat, but was still peeking out above the rocky bluffs that rose on either side of us. The calm tinkling of the stream we had followed up was became clear, rather than muffled by the fog.

The four women in front of me climbed silently. A solemn procession of such beauty that it made my breath catch. Solemn, except maybe, for Elliana, who had of course made sure she was right in front of me. She knew exactly how her body affected me, and she swished and swayed it artfully while she climbed. That I had only just noticed was a testament to my weariness. But now that I had, it was hard to look at anything else. I smiled and feasted my eyes, letting her hypnotize me. The tiredness left me, to make space for the desire that was so much a part of me. I breathed deeply and let the burning suffuse me, feeling at home once again.

Rocky walls on either side of us encroached until they were close enough that if you spread your arms, you could touch both. The river now flowed around the steps and we had to pick our way carefully over the mossy stones. Only the tops were worn smooth by the feet that trod them daily.

Then the walls receded sharply to reveal a clearing.

The moon pools lay empty, deserted, each feeding the other with a slow bubbling waterfall, each surrounded by plush, mossy banks, and further, a riot of ferns and low brush up to the rock face that surrounded the clearing. How long had it been since I had last seen this place alive with Fadal, bathing, relaxing and mating on a cool moonlit night?

I banished that thought to where I kept all the others and instead focused my eyes on the beautiful procession in front of me. Lethiana led us to the top pool, the one right beneath the rock where a multitude of thin streams trickled down from the mossy heights.

Lethiana stopped on the tiny pebble beach that encircled one side of the pool and disrobed. Each of them followed suit, and I stopped in my tracks to drink in their beauty as they revealed it to me. Oh, how I had missed this simple pleasure. Something that had once been... normal, through all those centuries now in the past.

They each waded into the pool and still I could only watch, even if the desire crashed through me like a river in spate.

Lethiana rose, water dripping down her breasts, taut from the cold. She pulled her wet hair out of her face gave me a crooked smile that only showed a hint of the sadness she hid underneath. "Are you coming? Or have you forgotten what to do?"

I smiled back at her and undid the light tunic I wore. "You may have to remind me."

My breeches followed, making my cock jump when finally released, scattering some of the milky moullin that already oozed from me across the pebbly ground.

They had all come up now, and were watching me. Around them, the surface of the water calmed and the reflection of the moon slowly reformed around them.

"He's already leaking," whispered Elliana.

Isani smirked. "He's always leaking."

Lethiana let her eyes run over my body before they settled once again on mine. "Immoulan, your beauty blinds us. But are you joining us, or are you just going to stand there and show it off?"

I shook my head and smiled, grateful that she could bring lightness to this moment. I waded into the pool, straight towards her. Her eyes, normally a radiant blue, were dark pools of shadow. But still alive somehow, with tenderness. I could still remember the days when it was just us. How she taught me all there was to know about rapture.

Behind her, Sarlai and Isani turned to each other while Elliana hovered next to Lethiana, eyes fixed on the object of her desire bobbing above the surface of the water with my every step. She was never the subtle one.

Lethiana's skin was cold and wet and my breath caught briefly when our bodies met. She wet her lips as mine hovered closer, then wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and pulled me into her. Our mouths merged in an extraordinary softness that made my eyes drift down with bliss, and teased a small groan from my throat. It was all slow. Slow as only Lethiana could be slow, drawing out the pleasure until it was unbearable. And then some more.

Just above the water, we felt a head gently nudge between us. Lethiana chuckled, as did I, our smiles pulling our lips apart for a moment. But then she resumed the slow dance of our lips, just as I felt Elliana's mouth wrap around my cock.

I groaned into Lethiana's mouth and she pulled me tighter, opening her mouth to allow our tongues to meet, just as Elliana hooked her hands around my hips to pull me deeper into her mouth. A jolt burst through me and a muffled but satisfied moan came in answer from down below.

"So much for teasing you." Lethiana whispered when she pulled her lips from mine. I could only gasp in response before she pulled me back in to kiss me with even more passion.

The fighting had put my desires on a slow simmer. But now that they were waking once more, they demanded immediate satisfaction. It wasn't long before Elliana had me grunting in a building crescendo, climax rapidly approaching. Lethiana noticed, of course, and pulled away from me.

"Not in her mouth." She said. Suddenly firm.

Elliana mewled her frustration down below, just before plunging me even deeper into her mouth.

"Even now?" I asked.

"Especially now." Lethiana said, as she wrapped her hands gently around Elliana's forehead and pulled her away from my cock, leaving me hovering right on the precipes. Elliana pouted up at us both, still holding my cock, which jerked and twitched in her hand.

"You'll get your turn, Immoula." Lethiana stroked back Elliana's hair tenderly.

"Lethiana!" I grunted, not needing to say more.

"No!" She said firmly as she put her hand flat on my chest, pushing me back from the edge with a power only she possessed.

"Hold me." She said, loud enough to command everyone's attention, and then floated back into the water.

Sarlai and Isani turned to us, both were panting and flustered, but quickly waded around Lethiana. Together they held her, half floating, but fixed in place. I knew what to do, of course, and waded up to her. Parting her feet with my hands, then letting her legs fold around me as I came closer.

Sarlai wrapped her hand around my tortured flesh to guide me. And even that small touch had me gasp. She bent me down, and I felt the head of my cock lodge into Lethiana's opening. The urge to plunge in and spend myself in a few violent thrusts was overwhelming. But this was not the way.

Lethiana let out a long, almost even, breath as she spread her arms and curled them around Sarlai's and Elliana's hips. Her white hair fanned out on the surface of the water, mixing with the moon's reflection. I tried to match her breath with mine as I looked up at the moon, finding all the stillness I could muster. I relaxed every muscle I could think of and waited.

Then they pushed her towards me. Agonizingly slow, maddeningly smooth.

My eyes, now half lidded, fell on the women in front of me. Each of them reverently gazing down at Lethiana, even Elliana was absorbed in the moment's sacredness.

They rocked her back, and again, forth. Another breath, more ragged this time, and repeat. Despite my efforts to calm myself, I was unerringly hovering towards the point of no return. Random muscles all over my body twitched. I willed them to relax, over and over. But I knew I had little chance of holding back much longer. I gasped when they rocked her back down on me again, and a clenching started deep in the bottom of my belly.

"No." Lethiana whispered. And somehow I wrenched myself back under control.

I don't know how, but I held out there on the edge, by sheer force of will. Mine or hers, I could not tell.

I always hated her for it. Until that glorious ending came, and then I loved her. And this was how it happened now.

Slowly, she rode the wave of pleasure, pushed deeper and deeper into her own trance by the intoxicating milk I was oozing into her. The nectar that bound us, held us, made us one.

Her breathing was now as ragged and halted as mine, as both of us endured the movements that were dictated by the other three women. She squinted up at me, her eyes wild, nodding in small frantic movements, to show me she was fracturing. The wait was over.

"Yes!" She gasped, and again, louder. "Yes! Now!"

The three let her go and stepped back, and I fell forward, into her, bearing us down into the moonlit pool. I wrapped my arms around her and bucked against her with all the force I could muster, pouring all I had into her as we sank and drowned. The last thing I heard was her scream, muffled by the water.

-

Elliana held me, planting small kisses all over my face.

"Well done, Immoulan," she whispered. "Although I think you may have broken her."

They'd dragged me, only half conscious, onto the pebbled beach of the moon pool. Next to me, Lethiana gasped for breath, tended to by Isani and Sarlai. Then I heard her sob.

"Yup," Elliana whispered into my ear between kisses. "She's crying. Must have been good."

I nodded. "It was." Lethiana's sobs weren't completely out of the ordinary after a climax like that. But on this day, they wrenched my heart anew.

When I turned onto my elbow, wanting to check on Lethiana, Elliana's hand snaked down to find me still hard. "Tell me when you're ready," she whispered, stroking me slowly.

I found Lethiana looking at me from behind Isani's back. She was breathing hard, tears were streaming down her face, but her rueful smile told me all I needed to know. She reached out her hand to me and I did the same. Our hands touched for a moment and her smile deepened.

"Immoulan," she whispered, then nodded to Elliana, "don't keep your lover waiting."

Until the pale moon dipped below the ancient cliffs of stone and the crimson fires of dawn lit the sky, we clung there to one another. We drank deep of Zintha's passion, determined to wring every sweet drop from our fleeting time we had as a zinthrasa. When at last the sun crested the horizon, we rose on unsteady legs and sought the winding steps that would take us down.

Down to the future that waited to claim us.

-

Climbing the stairs up the central tree had been a slow, painstaking affair now that all of us were thoroughly sated, and beyond exhaustion.

A promise had been made. Today we would ride out to an agreed place to meet a group of Waentsins's men, who would escort me to Kinborg, the seat of their actual king. Who was not, as we had found, their general Waentsin, who had sneered at our queen like she was one of his servant girls.

But no time was agreed. And we decided the humans could wait. We all filed into the covered sleeping den and there, under the thick canopy of our home tree, we collapsed onto the bed and curled up into a tangle of limp bodies. Sleep cloaked us instantly with blissful ambiguity.

I slept too, for a time, with Elliana's head on my chest, rising gently with every breath.

But it wasn't long before the kindness of sleep abandoned me, and I lay awake, staring at the rafters that radiated out from the trunk of Lethiana's tree.

As a firstborn son, I held no more value to the crown than any other Fadal man. No male would ever rule our lands. When my mother finally ceded the throne, that honor would go to one of my sisters, or more likely, their daughters or granddaughters. All of whom were safe, hidden in the vast rainforests that lay beyond the broken crags.

I had, in all truth, had nothing to do with statecraft of any sort. By the time my mother succeeded her great-grandmother, I had been away from my mother's Zinthrasa for so long that we had grown apart. Lethiana's Zintrasa had been my entire world, the contact with my mother reduced to a polite meal once or twice every turn.

Yet suddenly, my family was asked to make the biggest sacrifice of all. Our bodies were mated, and our spirits joined in the pools of Zinth. To be separated was going to be torture beyond imagination.

They'd have each other. And would no doubt take lovers from amongst the younger men, not yet mature enough to interfere with the bonds that bound us. It would offer them some relief, at least. More than I could count on, alone among beasts. A male in his prime, thrice submerged the waters of Zinth. My desires ran deep and urgent. How I would survive without Lethiana's Zinthrasa was not something I could even fully comprehend.

It was an enormous price to pay. And that it was to be paid based on an idiotic human misunderstanding made it even more maddening.

Fists clenched, muscles tense, I knew sleep would not return, and not wanting to wake my sleeping consorts with my restlessness, I extricated myself cautiously from the comforting tangle of bodies.

I would sleep alone soon, anyway.

Light filtered through the surrounding canopy, clear enough still to have a chance of burning off the fog below, even if it was late in the summer. Looking down, I could already see the cloud breaking up, revealing, and then hiding again, the red forest floor, springy with the cover of needles from the home trees. The sight made my heart hurt.

How long would it be before I could stand here again? Would I ever?

"Sleep escaped you?" It was Lethiana's voice behind me.

I nodded numbly, never taking my eyes off the clouds endlessly breaking and reforming below me.

She joined me on the edge of the platform but said nothing more.

"We should have wiped them out when we had the chance," I said, the words sounding trite immediately. They'd been said too many times now. They'd become a mantra of powerlessness and regret.

Lethiana still said nothing.

"But what's the use in dwelling on the past?" I continued. "We are always looking back, as if the past is more important than the future. So scared to lose it. Now... it's all we have left."

"What else would you have us do?" Lethiana said softly. "Without it, we'd be blind, an instant of experience, moving aimlessly through time without beginning or end."

I sighed. I couldn't find fault in her words. And yet...

"They have aim." I said.

"They have greed."

I glanced aside at her and she turned to me in response, to gaze at me with iridescent eyes. The dark rims of exhaustion and grief only made them shine brighter. Such beauty there was in that glint of defiance.

But it felt, for a moment, like all we had built together now lay between us. Change had come, which by its nature, demanded more change. And I wasn't sure if she was capable.

She held my eyes, looking into me like only she could.

"You should speak to old father before you go."

"Old father?" I asked, incredulously. "Why? More dusty tales of a distant past? How is that going to help?"

"I went to him, when the humans marched on us. I asked him why we did nothing when we had the power to do so?"

"And?"

"He refused to answer."

I shrugged. "So... he doesn't know."

She shook her head. "No, he was protecting something." Maybe if you tell him where you're going, it will convince him to tell you."

So it was that I climbed, for the second time, up the mountainside on which our homes were perched, to where the heart trees grew in a secluded grove, protected from the elements by the surrounding crags, high enough that the clouds rarely wrapped them in their water laden embrace.

Here old father dwelled inside the hollow remains of what was said to be the oldest tree on the crags.

It was old, for sure. Older than memory. But not older than Old Father. Rumor had it he planted it himself, when his first son, Razanthel, was born. But there was no one here that could know for sure. He was older than any of us. Older even, than the written records all of us kept to prevent time eating away at our memory.

"What is it, young one?" Old father's voice sounded dry, like falling sand. "What brings you here to disturb my peace?"

More like slumber, I thought. Old father was our oldest, he had been alive for thousands of years before any of us were even born. As the carrier of our history, we kept him out of harm's way, protected, like a precious jewel.

He was also a grumpy bastard.

"I have questions, Old Father. I seek guidance."

He snorted. "Don't you all?"

"The humans. I am to live with them as an emissary."

He turned to me, his face still young, but his eyes so pale a shade of blue that they almost seemed to glow. "An emissary? What nonsense! With the humans? Why?"

"More like a hostage, actually."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "A hostage?" His face wrinkled, making papery folds around his eyes.