How to Ride a Tikbalang Ch. 04

Well, I finally got this chapter done as I wanted it to come out. Twenty-third is the charm in this case.

I do hope you enjoy reading this chapter as much as I liked writing it, OC tendendies aside. The best things are often difficult to obtain, and so was it with this chapter. Yes, the Diwata is hot in more ways than the obvious, at least in my version of her.

Working on Chapter 5 later, when I've had me some much needed sleep.

I think, at this point, we need to define the Diwatas and their mountains. So I hope I did them justice here. :)

*****

The nap refreshed Jinx and, when she woke up to Cocoy wrapped around her like the banana leaf wrapper on a suman rice cake and Kidlat's face tucked into the hollow of her throat where her hands held him, she was more than ready to tackle the reality of her being a Diwata. Imagine that. A Diwata. Wow. Okay, so maybe she wasn't quite ready for it. She did, however, need to face it.

This was definitely a good time to wake up between two people who were on her side. Especially with this huge thing to wrap her head around. In the five years she'd been without her family, Jinx had found it hard to cope with all the things she'd suddenly had to do alone. It was like she'd never existed in the hearts and minds of her parents, or her brothers and sisters. As if she'd been forgotten.

Oh, she made up so many stories for the why of it. They were busy getting settled in their new home. Her two younger brothers and three sisters were all still in school, after all, and she'd just been handed the reins of the family farm, so she was busy, too. That reason lasted all of a year. Then the first Christmas without them and she didn't even get an email. Not even a card. Hell, not even a tag on her youngest sister's family photo on Facebook with a cheery "Merry Christmas!" splashed across it. And she only saw this through family friends who were her Facebook friends.

On the second year, she excused them with another story, and on and on until five years had come and gone. She kept herself busy with business, with events and parties, with other friends who remembered her, and soldiered on, having faith that her family had all the best reasons in the world for being so distant.

Now she couldn't avoid the truth staring her in the face. She was not part of what used to be her family. She was not one of them. Oh, it had been physically apparent from her infancy: Her features were very different from theirs. Her face was all model bone-structure where theirs was soft and round, like the well-fed people they were. Her body tended to be lean and muscular, rangy and tall where theirs was the lot of those with dominant Indon genetics, to be petite and slightly stocky. Her eyes tilted up sharply at the outside corners where her family's were round and slightly goggled out. She walked with light, lithe grace, they with certain, firm purpose.

I guess I need to stop thinking of them as my family for real now. Jinx fought the sadness welling up in her chest and closed her eyes. Kind of like the Battling Bastards of Bataan, then: No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam. She tried to chuckle, but a sob came out instead. She snuggled back against Cocoy's body and thrust her fingers through Kidlat's curlylocks. At least I have them. For now. For now is better than nothing.

***

Cocoy was walking through dense triple canopy in a bark skirt, his feet bare on the soft leaves and humus of the path he trod with careful steps. It is here, I just know it. Just past that huge balete tree, perhaps even behind it. He pushed the beads and feathers of a headdress out of his eyes. WTF, a headdress? A woman's headdress? Seriously? A skirt? What's with the cross-dressing? Why am I cross-dressed?

He paused for a while, leaning on the rattan walking stick in his hand, the one decorated with pure black chicken feathers, multi-colored stone and seed beads and leather strips to protect the hand gripping it.

I have to find it. The ritual jar. I have to bring it back for Jinx. But where is it? The path vanished from beneath Cocoy's feet. The trees became a solid wall. The balete he was looking at, so distinct just moment before, faded into a copse of other balete and rubber trees.

He tripped over something solid, something that totally wrecked the toe he'd stubbed against it and he looked down, curses at the ready on his lips. It was a squat, unglazed clay pot, its shape reminiscent of a Catholic censer pot, its wide rim emblazoned with black squiggles of Baybayin and another script that could have been even older than the recognizable writing of his ancients.

Cocoy knelt and reached out with his free hand to touch the pot. Is this the ritual jar? This squat, ugly thing is a ritual jar? I can't believe they put the petitions for the gods in this.

Yet so many things that carry power look deceptively ordinary, he reminded himself. So many things that one would miss in one's search for the remarkable are, in fact, magical.

So he touched the pot-bellied jar, so similar yet so different from the ordinary cooking palayok of yesteryear. He grasped it from bottom to just under its lip with his hand and felt a surge of divine power throb through the clay and up his fingers, course through vein and nerve and over his skin until his body hummed like a too-tight guitar string plucked by a tone deaf player.

Holding the pot securely in hand, he reached for the opening of the bag of red and black tubao fabric and fine abaca weaving slung across his body. Then he looked around for a way out.

Ye gods, I could use a Tikbalang just about now, Cocoy thought in dismay as he found that there was no longer any forest around him, nor ground beneath his feet.

He was in a void, where nothing but blackness and stars glistened coldly in a swath his eyes could not penetrate. Crapola. The headdress' feathers and beads fell into his face again and Cocoy blew hard to shoo the offending objects away from his line of sight, his mind working furiously hard on the problem of how the heck to get back to Jinx and Kidlat. Kidlat, you have to find me, dude. You have to. Freaking out now. Quietly, internally melting down now.

***

Kidlat's body twitched in sleep and Jinx watched him clench and unclench his quadriceps and triceps, his biceps and the muscles running from the small of his back to his deltoids. I wonder what dreams come to sleeping Tikbalangs, she thought on a smile, holding her self-pitying tears back with a bit of humor. She brushed a curl that strayed to Kidlat's forehead and he frowned.

Where on this gods-forsaken plane is Cocoy? Kidlat could feel the thunder under his hooves as he galloped in full roan warhorse form across the strange, changing forest with its precarious dips and rises. The terrain was rough, unfamiliar and totally hostile to him.

He slowed to a stop at the foot of a hillock of bare earth and called softly out to the Nuno within. "I need help, friend Nuno, I ask of you a boon." If his Inay had it right, the earth-dwelling Nuno would know how to find any being that touched the ground. Cocoy had feet. He was probably touching the ground right now.

Out came the Nuno, from the top of his punso. He folded his long angular, earth-brown body into an open-legged squat upon the hillock peak and looked down at the Tikbalang prince. "What help is it you need, Son of Ulap? What boon do you offer in exchange for the one you seek of me?" His catlike eyes glowed hot and icy, unearthly blue on green as he uttered his questions with deliberate caution. The Nuno cupped his pointy chin in a long, leathery hand as he awaited Kidlat's answer.

"I seek the whereabouts of a Bayot," Kidlat said simply, keeping his eyes level with the Nuno's chest as was proper. "I can sense him close by, yet I cannot see him. I offer a boon of service to you, to be fulfilled after I find the Bayot I seek."

"Ah, yes, the boon of service. I accept this, then. Know I will summon you when the time comes." The Nuno raised a long index finger and wagged it from side to side. His narrow face was intent, his wide, thick lips pursed sternly and his pointy chin jutted out in slight challenge. "Know that I, Bagtas, will have my due when I call you."

"Within the laws of the Tikbalang, honored Bagtas. Within the laws of Lupa and this world. Within my capabilities and as the SkyFather and EarthMother permit, yes, I will give you my service for a task that is important to you. This is my word and I give it freely." Kidlat answered with measured words. He remembered his father cautioning him to be mindful of each word spoken before and to a Nuno, for they were wont to hold people to the exact words they spoke, intents and all.

"Then I will tell you this," the Nuno said as he laid a hand on his bare chest. "You need to look with more than your eyes. The Bayot seeks a precious thing, something that once was common and is now rare. He will find it and be lost. He will be lost forever unless you can find him with your eyes closed. You must find him not in this form, but in your most vulnerable form. Then you will find him and bring him home to Lupa."

With that, the Nuno bowed his head and arose just long enough to re-enter his punso, leaving a disgruntled Kidlat hanging his head.

"Anak ng patola naman," Kidlat uttered, (despite the fact that the fruiting vine that bore such gourds could not possibly bear progeny as sentient beings define the term). "I can't believe I have to do this buck-naked. Fuckitall."

The Tikbalang willed himself back into his human form and closed his eyes. "Here's hoping this works," he muttered to himself as he tried not to feel the soft, cool wind on his gonads and sex. Focus on Cocoy, you jackass, not your cooling family jewels. He called the image of Cocoy's face to mind and let the energies of his Bayot guide him.

When he felt the slightest tug, almost like a whispered "where the shit am I?" query in Cocoy's panicked voice, he followed it, his eyes still shut as he let his feet and his innately phenomenal sense of direction guide him. No distractions, Kidlat. Just follow the pull. So he did just that, walking in measured steps for what felt like forever until he heard Cocoy calling his name like a mantra in that gorgeous baritone voice of his.

He found Cocoy crouched into a ball, his toes clenching and unclenching as if he were seeking ground to anchor himself to. Mindful of the Bayot, the Tikbalang spoke softly before touching his shoulder.

"Cocoy, you called me," Kidlat said. "I'm here."

"Holyfuckingshit!" Cocoy gasped in a rush, as if he'd been holding his breath way too long. "Thank goodness you're there. Where in the world are we and can you take this craptastic feather and bead beanie off me? As if being lost wasn't bad enough, I had to get lost in this and a fucking tapis skirt. Dammit. It's enough to make a grown man cry."

Kidlat shook his head, trying not to laugh out loud in relief. Trying not to cry because he did not understand what the hell this dreamwalk was all about.

"Just hold still. I'm bringing us out of this dreamwalk, okay, buddy?" The Tikbalang kept his voice as even as he could, trying to sound like this was no big deal. At all. Hopefully, he was succeeding.

Cocoy shut his eyes and kept them shut as Kidlat embraced him fully and began a low chant that, if he ever got back to the real world would become a song. Because, yeah, that was comforting in all this strangeness, dammit.

***

Both Cocoy and Kidlat awoke with a start, as if they'd been dreaming they had fallen suddenly and alarmingly from a great height and landed on the bed with a thud. They both sat bolt upright on either side of Jinx, who was slower to rise.

Kidlat's forehead clipped Jinx's chin and Jinx laid her hands on their chests as gently as she could while evading Kidlat's head and trying not to knock her noggin on Cocoy's face.

"Oh, hey, boys," Jinx said with concern threading through her softly-spoken words and a furrow bringing her arched eyebrows together. "That was just a dream."

Cocoy's hand shot to the top of his head, searching for something just before he sighed and fell back against the heap of pillows that had been their bodies' nest.

"Thank goodness that beanie isn't real," Cocoy said with relief. "It was just a dream."

"Not just a dream, Cocoy," Kidlat countered as evenly as he could while he took Jinx into a hug, perched his chin on her bare shoulder and leaned toward his other lover. "It was a dreamwalk. What were you thinking as you fell asleep? You have to know that Babaylan and Bayot dream true when they manifest what they want before falling asleep. We damn nearly lost you in that dream."

"Hey, I'm new to all this, Kid," Cocoy took hold of the anger that did not fade with wakefulness and which lent sarcastic sharpness to his words. "I have about zero knowledge of what the pagan priests and priestesses of old did, okay? I was raised Catholic."

"Well now you know. So deal with it." Kidlat's words were no less cutting, his earlier panic also flowing out into the words he spoke as his eyes flashed dark sparks at the man he'd so recently ridden to a screaming orgasm.

Putting her hands and body between the two males, Jinx felt an inexplicable surge of heat—not the sexual kind, rats—rise up like billowing steam and hot ash through her body. "You will both stop arguing or I will knock your heads together."

Jinx's voice came out in multiple tones—mezzo, alto and contralto—like several people were all speaking the same words in a synchronized speech choir kind of way. Her skin began to glow again and the bedding began to smoke under her splendidly rounded hindquarters.

Thinking quickly, Kidlat scooped Jinx up and set her on her feet on the cool terracotta tile beside the bed before her body's rapidly-rising temperature flayed the hide from his flesh.

"Speak to me, Cocoy," Jinx demanded as she glowed anew with intense white light pouring out of her mouth, eyes and ears. "Answer Kidlat's question before I lose patience with you both."

Cocoy's mouth worked open and closed repeatedly, but no words came out. He cleared his throat, closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he found the words to answer his lovers.

"Okay, I was dreaming," he started, giving both the changeling and the Tikbalang the details he remembered of the dream. "But it was a dream, okay? We all know dreams can be strange, but that they really aren't anything to worry or get upset about. I was thinking of a ritual jar before I fell asleep. About how great it would be to have a direct line to the heavens. How much it would help you, Jinx."

Jinx nodded at Cocoy's words, then threw her head back. "I could use a ritual jar. If only to ask what the hell to do with this... this whaever it is I am going through."

Her eyes began to roll back into her head as her knees gave way. Kidlat caught her, but grimaced in pain as the heat of her skin began to burn his. Thank goodness Tikablang heal quickly, he thought as he bore the pain of the burns on his flesh. All I need is to get these in cool water and I'll be fine.

The tile beneath Jinx began to warp and crack from the heat of her feet and Kidlat cast a worried look at Cocoy. "We need to get her into the shower or bathtub, 'Coy. Move. Now."

***

Jinx did not recall losing consciousness. She did remember almost setting the bed on fire. With her molten ass. And being pissed that Cocoy and Kidlat were venting spleen on each other just before her body began to heat up all over again, worse than the last two 'hot zone' episodes.

She remembered Cocoy's story about the dream and what he'd been thinking just before it. She remembered the sensation of being on fire from the inside out, intense fire, like that massive wave of of pyroclastic ash that swept down the flanks of Mt. Pinatubo on June 15, 1991, vaporizing everything in its path.

Funny how that's the exact date of my birthday, too, she thought to herself in a non sequitur to the monsoon-like dousing she was getting from several showerheads as somebody held her up against cool, white marble.

The cascading water felt so good on her molten flesh and, thankfully, the steam in the huge shower stall began to dissipate as her temperature returned to what could be called normal for a human.

"Your birthday is on the same day Pinatubo blew its stack?" Cocoy's question brought Jinx back to the real world right quick, especially since she realized that her internal dialogue was not so internal after all.

"Yeah, why do you ask?" She countered with a question of her own as Kidlat ran his hands over her shoulders and back, perhaps testing her temperature to see if they needed to keep the shower going. Jinx worked to regain her focus as the water cooled her down.

"That's a clue. You were born as Mt. Pinatubo erupted. We need to seek Maria Sinukuan, the Diwata of Mt. Arayat, which is close to Mt. Pinatubo, " a dripping wet (and exceedingly gorgeous and very edibly naked) Cocoy said, ticking each clue off his fingers as he looked into her eyes, then Kidlat's. "We're getting warmer."

"Actually, we almost went up in flames," Kidlat joked, canting his head toward Jinx. "But I get what you're trying to say. If we're seeking a Diwata, mayhap we should pay Pepe's Pole another visit, talk to that Diwata whose skirt you were trying to get under before you found yourself in a manwich, Jinx."

"Perhaps." Jinx's answer was unsure, but, hey, Kidlat at least had a plan. "It's worth trying."

"Before we do that, we're gonna need to institute, ahem, containment measures," Cocoy said, waggling naughty brows at both of his erstwhile bedmates (and couch-mates, and shower-mates...) as he lowered his head to lick water off the curve of Jinx's right shoulder. "Just to be on the safe side."

"I see the sense in what you're saying, Cocoy," Kidlat's voice lowered as the two men locked eyes and then began to caress Jinx's thighs, hips, flanks and breasts. "I also see the sensuality in what you're saying. Yes. Let's contain our changeling girl, shall we? Bend over, sweetness," he addressed Jinx with a wicked look in his eyes, "let me at that beautiful puki. We need to get you hot before we can cool you down."

"Yes, Diwata, we need to prepare you for the outside world before we step out into the early evening air," Cocoy said between ravaging Jinx's mouth with his and gently but firmly pushing her shoulders down so she was looking straight at his rampant tarugo.

Out of the corner of one eye, Jinx could see the full wall of mirror opposite the shower stall. She could see herself bent forward, about to take Cocoy into her mouth as he fondled her breasts, cupping them and squeezing the tight peaks of her nipples between his fingers. She could see Kidlat fingering her slit under the deluge of cool water as she felt him rubbing up and down and around her most sensitive places with one hand and cupping and squeezing one of her firm, round buttock cheeks with the other.

The men were crooning filthy, sweet words into the shower spray, Cocoy throwing his head back and hissing curt cusswords in Tagalog as her hot mouth sucked him in. Kidlat invading her body with two, then three twisting fingers as her thighs shook from the pleasure of him curling those same fingers against the sweet spot deep inside her, the pace of his finger-fucking moving faster and faster as he thumbed her erect clit.

Just as Kidlat thrust his huge, heavy battering-ram of a cock into her, Jinx saw him reach out and take Cocoy's hair in a firm grip. She saw Cocoy mimic Kidlat's move and watched the men kiss as if they were doing battle with one another. Then Kidlat thrust into her hard, pushing Cocoy farther down her throat.