The Grove

Tomorrow he was expected back, a hard day's walk. His spirit was officially healed, and everyone would help maintain that lie until it was true. He'd been one of those helpers before, when his grandfather died, hiding his own hurt upon his father's return, speaking of grandfather as one long departed, missed but remembered fondly. Grandfather always loved that axe, didn't he. Oh, I think I remember this story grandfather once told.

He would slap the first man who talked of Mat'yana that way. And now he'd be expected to marry her younger sister. Ser'yana was beautiful, certainly more skilled in the practical than her ethereal sister, and it would break him apart to begin courting her.

What would one more day heal? He could walk away, abandon all he knew, or he could begin the lying. His manhood was ready for the lie, after all. He'd dreamed of Ser'yana again. In truth sometimes he'd dreamed of her even before he'd lost his wife, but that was nothing so shameful. Nothing like the dreams that now tried to steal Mat'yana's memory.

Ahead was a clearing in the woods, and he could see the great mother in its center, shading a beautiful bed of moss. He'd first made love to Mat'yana in a similar bed, and they'd repeated it on special occasions. Dropping his bundle, Ken'asa stumbled forward. The smell struck him, a mossy freshness that was forever mixed up with Mat'yana's secret scent. But it was more than that: he was sure she was here, Mat'yana herself. Well, not her, exactly, but at least a fragment. Death scattered such fragments across the world, into the past and the future, and he was blessed to have found even this much.

This fragment reached straight for his manhood, which stood to reason, because that was ever her first move. Mat'yana's cool fingers, so clumsy that first time, but so much bolder than he'd expected. And oh, how quickly she'd learned. He unlaced, wandering forward in a daze, stroking himself and wondering where Mat'yana was closest. A gift, to make love to her again.

He laughed when he found it: a perfect, moss-covered slit, in the side of the tree. More literal than he could have imagined. He felt Mat'yana's smile, the unending lightness that always accompanied their lovemaking, no matter how furious their motions. Striding forward, he stepped on the roots, guiding himself to the slit. It was surrounded by darker, springy moss, realistic enough to take his breath away. Though in truth Mat'yana had never been quite so hairy as that. And when he entered her, the mossy tunnel wasn't quite right either. Even accounting for it being a mossy slit in a tree. It was too tight, more like one with little experience of men. Like Ser'yana.

He swallowed, but after all it was only a fragment of his beloved. These fragments sometimes mixed, parts of far-flung souls joining in new ways. Pieces merging to new lives, a blessing for Mat'yana, who'd died before bearing a live child. The thought comforted him, and Ken'asa closed his eyes, making desperate love to Mat'yana, stroke after stroke, with this body that already dreamed of her beautiful sister. Ser'yana had followed him into the grove, and Mat'yana nodded softly as her sister's presence moved behind him. Ser'yana's hand pressing forward between his legs, fingernails scratching gently along his hanging sack, matching their rhythm as he coupled with his wife. Breasts settling against his back. Larger than his wife's, and hips a little wider. Easier to bear children.

He sobbed, even as his body shook with excitement. He wasn't ready for the healing falsehoods, and he hoped Ser'yana would be patient. In secret, he would ask her not to pretend. Not until it was true. To allow him his grief, and her sister's memory.

Ken'asa finally spent himself inside Mat'yana, and perhaps whatever lost fragments shared this place. For a time he lay on the moss, watching the sky, until his eyelids drooped. He would dream of his beloved, and then he would make love one last time. Ser'yana had understood, her spirit quietly retreating, leaving a grove smelling only of moss and Mat'yana.

It would be a hard walk home.