The Sighs of the Priestess Ch. 09

Just as she'd been coached by Besha, Yanna asked him nothing about the trip. She only did her best to hug him until he showed her that he was ready to make love with her.

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Illya wanted it to be him.

Ten days earlier, when the wise ones had convened at the request of the Priestess so that they might see what might be done to help Yanna's return to a human shape, there had been long discussions. It had actually taken days. No one was certain how to help, not knowing the exact way that she'd been transformed in the first place from a young human woman to a walking two-legged feline.

Illya had never told anyone, but over the time that they'd been together, he actually preferred Yanna the way that she was, as a cat-girl. He knew that it had to do with how he felt for her sexually and he was a little ashamed over it, and so he'd held his tongue on the subject. He loved Yanna deeply, no matter what, and when he thought about it to himself, he knew that he'd have been happy with her as a human again if it could be done for her. He knew that it was what she wanted. There was just a very tiny preference in him for the cat.

But now, she'd been in such agony for hours, it seemed. He felt so guilty for this. It was his fault, after all.

As everyone had spoken to her, and asked things of her, and poked, and prodded his poor wife, it had seemed that no one could or would step up and make a pronouncement. They all seemed to have missed a detail that had become obvious to Illya, since he loved Yanna much more than he loved his own life. So in the middle of the fourth day of the discussions, Illya had offered the one observation that everyone had missed.

"Yanna lives inside herself as a woman. This cat that everyone sees is not real. This is all an illusion which follows her movements like a glove follows the hand inside of it."

They all looked at him. Some looked as though they'd have dismissed his thoughts out of hand. A few looked as though they wanted to hit their own foreheads for the obviousness of it. All of them sought an answer for the two young people.

Nisi-ini-su held up her hand to stave off the comments and arguments which she felt would come forth in only another second. "Why do you say this, Illya?"

He felt embarrassed for his wife, and ashamed for himself, but he just shrugged and said it.

"She does not bleed."

An old man stood up out of his chair, "Go on," he said, listening intently as he leaned on his staff.

"Yanna began as a girl," Illya said, "She grew to be a woman. I saw her that way the first time that I set my eyes on her. Like that, she was as any woman, and for her to be that, she had to have her time to bleed, as any woman does. She told me that she did."

Yanna nodded, "It is so."

Illya continued, "But since she has worn this curse on her, she has not bled once. She wears this as one would wear a coat. It is as though she is hidden within another creature's body. I am not wise, but I know this. I have watched her sleep with her head on my chest for half of a year now, since Khamazi," he said, "and I have had a lot of time to think and worry for my poor wife. I see her face as she sleeps and since I know how she looked before, I can still see her face within her face as it is here."

"But this is no coat in truth, Illya." The Priestess said.

"No," he replied, "I did not say that. I said that it is like a coat. Inside, Yanna feels just as she did before. Everything that she had before she has now, but it is inside. Everything matches -- as much as it is possible to match from one to the other, but if she was complete in this shape, then she would bleed as a cat. Even cats have their time. Yanna does not have anything at all. I think that this is something that she wears and everything about the woman inside is hidden from our eyes, and even from hers."

He looked down, feeling more than a little foolish for having interrupted the discussions of the wise ones, and he thought for a moment. When he looked back up, he finished his theory so that he could sit down and resume his role as nothing more than a worried husband. "This is not real in some way, and Yanna lives inside. I think that some things are kept still in her, as though they only wait -- like her time of women."

It caused them to throw other theories away just like that, and they began earnest discussions in the new direction. A day later, they had all agreed. Two days after that, they had ideas concerning how she might be brought back to her original form. A week after that, they told Yanna that they were as ready as they could ever be, but that they could not be certain of any risks to her. They even told her that she might find that what they might do for her might not be permanent. The decision was hers.

Now she was suffering in pain and Illya was in anguish as mages and others worked over her.

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Yanna suddenly found that she couldn't bear the abrupt and rapidly moving intense pain which overtook her one wave after another. She inhaled and just gave in to it, throwing her head forward to scream as she writhed on the floor, surrounded by chanting mages and priestesses. Their glowing hands appeared to her as a ring that encircled her.

"ILLYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" She fell into her sobs and groaned. A few seconds later, she threw back her head and screamed again as she rolled onto her back.

Illya had been sitting with his head in his hands, listening. At the sound of her anguished screams, he looked up and Yanna saw that his face ran with his tears for her. He felt lost in his own agony, overcome with the guilt for what he had caused her to suffer. He wished more than anything that he'd kept his mouth shut. He wished that it was him there in her place.

She reached for him and he came to her. Finding a spot where he wouldn't intrude of impede the others, he sank to his knees and took her outstretched paw. "I'm so sorry, Yanna."

For a long moment, she looked at him, straining to speak. Her eyes opened wide and she then was still, her body rolling slowly onto her side by gravity as her muscles went slack.

Illya waited, but nothing happened. The thing that he feared the most had come to pass. Her amber eyes were open and he knew that he'd be haunted by them forever.

He stared for a moment, and as hard as he looked for it, he saw no sign that she was breathing anymore.

Illya's young heart felt as though it had been torn in two. Her paw was limp in his hand. He looked down, oblivious to the gasps of those around him. He opened his hand and saw that her hand was changing. As he stared, the claws and pads disappeared, the fur faded from view and he was holding the lovely hand of a beautiful woman.

So he'd been correct, for all the good that it had done. The one that he loved had changed back once so that he could bury her as the woman that she'd been born as.

He collapsed in a heap and wept as he kissed that hand. If he'd only kept his mouth shut, he'd still have the love of his life.

There was a lovely woman who suddenly found herself naked on some skins on the floor of a chamber in a castle keep. She knew what had happened to her, and for the first time in a long while, she felt shame at not having a thing on as she blinked and looked around herself.

But all of that passed in an instant when she heard the sobs of the man who meant the world to her. Underneath the consternation in the voices around her, she heard the pain clearly and saw Illya as he wept.

"Illya? Illya, what is wrong?"

He looked up, afraid that he was imagining the voice that he needed to hear, and not believing. He blinked and wiped his eyes as best he could with one hand, terrified now that if he let go with the other, that she'd disappear. "Yanna?"

It took a matter of only a few seconds and they were wrapped together as closely as two people in love can possibly be.

"We must see if she is well," one of the priestesses said.

"Will she remain like this or not?" a mage asked, "I wish to ask what she feels and other things."

Nisi-ini-su shook her head as she grimaced with the effort of getting herself and her swollen belly out of the chair that she'd been in, "We need to ask nothing for the moment, and Yanna is quite obviously well. Come," she said, "they need some time."

Every one of them nodded and they filed out of the room.

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But it was not as definite as all that. Yanna was now capable of both forms. The conclusion a week later was that she had not been turned into a cat after all, no matter what she or anyone else had thought. She had been changed, quite obviously, but it had not been completed somehow.

Yanna was, to the surprise and amazement of everyone -- not least herself -- a changeling. She found, not long after, that she could alternate the way that she was with ease. It brought even more changes.

While she was comfortable wearing nothing or next to it as a cat, Yanna the woman now needed clothes.

While she'd been capable of eating meals with utensils or not, depending on the company, she'd always preferred a fair amount of meat in her diet. As a woman, she wanted much less meat.

While she'd been stuck in the form of a cat, she was quick and powerful. She lacked much of that as a human. But she found that she'd been given a few gifts in all of this.

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Illya finished another day where he'd been drilled and taught and drilled again in the way of silent death by Sorn in the morning, and then he'd dragged his beaten and already sore body to the forge, where he continued his learning of the crafting of weaponry at the hands of the weaponsmiths. Most of that was pounded into him as he worked.

He walked stiff and numb to the baths and scrubbed his poor body until his skin tingled. While he was there, he had a hooded visitor who only stood in silence watching him until he noticed her.

Besha stepped forward then after removing her cloak. Her dress came off a few seconds later as he stared at her.

She smiled, "Today is a bit if a special one for some of us," she said. "Stand still, and I will wash you," she whispered to him after her soft kiss.

"Do you want me to ..."

She shook her head, "Shh, I want you to hold still, Illya. I will admit to much temptation, but that is not why I have come to you here. Calm yourself, Sorn knows what I am here to do. We agreed that I am the better one between us to do this for you so that you make seed in a hurry."

Besha told him that Yanna wished to meet him in the old apple orchard, the seventh row from the right, about three quarters of the way in and next to the stone arch. She explained that in that small sheltered space, no cold wind came and it was very warm in the sunshine, even at this time of year.

"You need to be made ready," she smiled as she stroked him gently. Before he knew it, she was on her knees and suckling him, but before he really had a chance to understand it all, she stopped and stood up with a grin. "Now you are ready. Go to the orchard now."

He was a little confused, but he was happy to meet Yanna there. He joked that he thought they might sit and talk as they ate a few apples. Besha grinned and nodded, perhaps.

As he approached the orchard, Yanna saw him come and pulled her dress off as she began to call to him in a way that she was certain that he'd remember. Her voice came to him as quiet little cries. He stopped and listened with a slow smile beginning on his young face.

When he found her, he sank down to sit with his back against an ancient apple tree to watch as his beautiful young wife fulfilled her promise by slowly masturbating for him in the sunshine, just as she'd done over the two days that she'd watched him as he'd worked to clean her father's stables.

When she was like this, she lacked the pronounced mound and the clitoris that was capable of protruding -- but she did have fingers without claws again and that made this all so easy and enjoyable for her.

He listened spellbound to the sounds that she made which he'd loved so much to hear, and she added to them the sounds that she could only make as a human woman until at last, she beckoned him to love her.

Her husband still loved her more than he loved to draw breath and their desire for each other had not changed. Now she had to go back to the discomfort and cramps of having a menstrual cycle. But it didn't bother her for long. She was given a reprieve after only one period when she found that she was with child.

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There were two well-known births at Jebel Bidhri over the next months; a boy was born in May to Nisi-ini-su and Lugalbanda, the first of two male children, and a girl was born in December to Yanna and Illya, the first of four girls and three boys.

Ur-Nammu was a rather quiet baby who had two proud mothers between Nisi-ini-su and Anat and he seemed to be fascinated with the world around him.

Dimme arrived squalling and furious, a changeling like her mother. She appeared not to be so much fascinated with the world so much as she looked to be wanting to tear it apart.

The girl was given several names, one of which was to reflect her beauty, for if it might be said, she was lovely from birth.

But there was another side to her which could be brought out under the right circumstances, and this side earned her the name that she was known by most often. It had been given in the hope that Sumerians and Akkadians would fear her and leave her alone and it had nothing to do with her Martu heritage.

To Sumerians, her name was Dimme.

To Akkadians, her name was Lamashtu.

They meant the same thing and translated to one of a trio of female demons feared by both peoples.

As a child, she'd been taken by her parents when they traveled and always found that many people liked her instantly. She easily made friends with other children. But there were times on subsequent trips when all that they found were burnt-out dwellings and long-dead corpses. It caused her to come to a conclusion about both Sumerians and Akkadians.

Dimme vowed quietly that when she was older, she'd do her best to live up to her names.