Columbo turns me into a 40 y/o mother of 3 in the eighties in patterned leggins and a cigarette and messy bun im wanting to be whisked away by a handsome and kind man that handsome kind man being columbo

A Cunning Woman and a Demon - Chapter 4

1519 words  This was a difficult chapter to write as a) I was...distracted by recent events and b) the words were not coming as freely as I would have liked. Exposition can be useful in some contexts but, with a reasonably well-established mythos, it wasn’t really necessary. Warnings: depictions of nudity with some elements of dub-con and BDSM, but within the context of someone finishing a task that was begun. 

Once again, thanks to the following as well as anyone I may have missed (please raise your hands and let me know.) @new-zealand-chic​ @deepdisireslonging @trent7thirsting​ @xprincessofthefallenangels @demonkingsangel @writtingrose @sjwrites22 @writinglionqueen @superrezzy00 @kallirevenne @neversatisfiedgirlfics @neversatisfiedgirl @sjwrites22 @theworldofotps @tacoshuimagines @writing-reigns @baratomaya @devittsslut @the-carter-mob-don @evilangel84 @demonqueen29 @blissedoutbalor @thebalorwithin

Chapter 4 – The Shadow

The air rushes subtly over me as I float in darkness and silence. I’m partially bent, as though I was back in Bray’s prison. That pain is absent, however, and I feel no force in the bending. I’m swaying to and fro with the breeze until, suddenly, all stops. I fall, but slowly, onto something soft; I straighten as I land. There’s a pressure on my forehead for a moment, then another, briefer and smaller, before I am still once again.

Before my eyes, a jumble of snapshots and cut-scenes appears – photos of me as a child, with the family I knew before I came to this place; fractured memories of being punished for real or perceived sins, tinged with shame and a sense of unfairness. A long sequence followed of quieter torments, of existential terrors sharpened by near-constant rejection. I remember trying to decide if I could sit out the threat or whether I’d be better off racing the rest of the world into the grave. The memory shifts to how I would cope; by giving myself over to being as “good” as I could be - excelling at school, throwing myself headlong into sports and clubs and hobbies and just trying to keep my head down – and to solitude.

The jumble returns, and sounds join in: muffled, hushed. I try to add a couple pennies’ worth to the mix but I can’t form actual words. Why is it getting so cold all of a sudden? There’s a flurry of movement around me, then pressure under me as I begin again to float, again with the bending. I’m aching all over and I don’t know why. I try to protest, but the words won’t come. The jumble suddenly stops.

Before my eyes is the clearing - but empty, utterly devoid of the life I made here. It’s nighttime. The stars are pinpricks in the black sky. A soft glow comes from the brook and brightens further upstream to the base of the smaller waterfall that feeds the one pouring off the plateau. In an earlier time, I would wash here in warmer weather, the coolness bracing me as the dawn broke and the ritual had not yet become a chore, then a terror, as Wyatt seeped slowly into this world. The water now feels like ice, but it’s been so long since I’ve felt so free.

The robe and dress come away far too easily and I step into the flow with neither shame nor fear – only sadness as the remnants of Wyatt’s curse of imprisonment make themselves known. As the water drenches me, I run my hands over the scar tissue. Under my hands, it feels like thick, wrinkled leather. The sensation is one way – neither my breasts nor my loins can receive the signals my touch or the water is sending them.

The soap and cloth can do nothing to loosen the casing; the scrub brush is as wont to take my own flesh away with the scarring – if there’s anything left under it. I start to cry as I chant the incantation over and over again, desperate to be free of it and to free myself. I would rather go without being healed than to throw myself at anyone’s feet – even Finn’s - and to beg for it. Nonetheless, to be healed would be ideal.

At once, however, something else is touching me under the waterfall; several, maybe even a dozen small, unseen “hands” have taken up the task of washing me clean; two larger ones have wrapped around my wrists while the others begin gently massaging me from head to toe with soap lather. The two “hands” washing my hair are careful to avoid tangling the locks or tugging my scalp. The sensation is deeply pleasant in a way I have trouble recalling. Perhaps it was before I came to this place that I last felt this cared for. The tears come again, bittersweet with memory and longing.

The “hands” then lift me off my feet and carry me from the waterfall. My eyes grow heavy and the chill returns. Distant voices waft to my ears, some more pleading, others more demanding. One breaks through closer than the others – deeper and rougher, a growl of menace behind it, but strangely familiar. Some jostling follows, but I’m too tired and weak to protest it. I feel a sudden, sharp pain in one of my fingertips, then a pressure on it, as if blood was being drawn from it.

At long last, I am standing in the middle of a nearby clearing, grass under my feet. Someone has dressed me in a long, white, loose-fitting gown, bare-shouldered, covered in soft bobbin lace. Three pairs of ribbons keep the gown closed in the front.

In front of me is a large slab of stone, surrounded by moss and lichens as though it had sat there for millennia. Seated on it is…a shadow, in human form. The light seems to sink into it: the stone, the trees and even the night sky glow in contrast around it. I can feel my heart pounding and the chill setting deeper in – in the silence a voice peals with desperation in my head – “We’re losing her! I have no choice!” My breath catches, growing shorter.

“Greetings, good lady Abigail,” says the shadow. The voice is low, multitonal, and accented. “Sublime.”

“Who are you?” I ask, but the words come out shakily, with a rasp. Something is wrong with me, but I dare not ask this thing for help.

“You know who I am. Do you know him, in whom I dwell?” it answers, then stands up. He – there can be no doubt that the form is masculine – steps slowly towards me. As he approaches, I can make out angles and curves sharpening into focus, until I recognize his form as Finn’s. At once, ribbons of white and red appear and effect a willowy dance over the form. The ribbons and their shadows extend past his hands to the forest floor, and drape over his shoulders from the crown upon his head. His eyes spark to life in the same memorable blue.

“He and I were thrown together when each of us was captured,” I said. “He freed me from enough of my bonds so that we could escape together. That’s all I know….” My head is beginning to spin and what light I can see is fading.

“He’s not freed you enough. Dere’s more, but dat poor lad is strugglin’ wit’ getting’ ya stable and ye’re slippin’ away from him. You’ll need to drink dis.” He turns briefly to the slab, then picks up and proffers me a simple goblet. The liquid inside is red – wine, I conclude.

I bring up one hand to take the cup, but my knees give out and the darkness looms even larger. The shadow catches me as I buckle, lowering me slowly to the grass with one arm holding my head up. He holds the goblet in the other hand and brings it to my lips. Multiple voices whisper from the shadow’s mouth, pleading,n“Please, my love, drink dis….swallow, swallow….”

The liquid flows slowly into my mouth; the wine is sweet, but has a note of iron throughout. I can no longer see and the voices are fading; I gulp, if only to keep the wine from drowning me. The flow continues and I gulp again, and again, until the goblet is drained and the last drops have crossed my tongue. I once again float, this time in the shadow’s arms, until I lie supine on the slab.

The darkness slows its encroach to a crawl, then stops and begins to recede. My breathing slows and grows steady. The shadow stands over me, expectantly; the ribbons of his crown dangling over his shoulders.

“Thank you,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Whatever that was, I’m feeling better.”  

“Ye were dyin’,” he replies, a tremor of concern in his voice. “Poor Finn was gettin’ frantic lookin’ for how to break yer fever. I may have…added a recipe to your little grimoire to help ‘im along.”

“What do you mean?” I look up at him, brow furrowed.

“More will be revealed,” he says. “But not tonight. Tonight, you are to be healed.” With that, the shadow’s ribbons wrap around my wrists and ankles and press them against the cold stone as his hands carefully unknot the ties on my gown, then gently pull it open to expose my ruined and barren flesh.

Instinctively, I close my eyes and turn my head away from the shadow. Through the air a pair of voices chant the now-familiar incantation, as a pair of warm hands wander slowly over my breasts, my abdomen, my hips, my buttocks and, finally, my vulva and the casings fall away. Tears of gratitude streak my temples as a hint of the old sensations returns. I open my eyes to Finn tearfully whispering, “I’m sorry,” as he pulls the bed covers back over me and settles into a chair next to the bed.  

On Finding Love

Long has this clown been accustomed to hermit's caves and hermit's wisdom, to the cold snows of austere mountains and the solemnities of isolation and solitude. It is no exaggeration to state that I have been a great growling bear with succulent stores of honey and ambrosia, yet no one worthy to give them... But fate has a way of rewarding the righteous, for those who have suffered the utmost, those accustomed to long, sleepless nights of vigil and the remembrance of glimmering stars. While other bears hibernate in their hunger from cold and loneliness, I have often found myself over-awake before the golden dawn of predilection and divine certainty. Despite being a clown, the redemption of marriage has a way of finding its way into the woeful penitent, one who has truly become wise from his folly and who has patiently stood at the door of the divine mysteries. Often has the tempter held the keys of paradise before this penitent clown, jingling and jangling the promise of salvation before my tired soul. In his compassion, he allowed vile women to hunt and test my most secret sentiments. When afflicted and offered the weeds, promiscuity, and filth of uncultivated gardens, I have only longed for and stayed true to chaste roses, gravestones, and the joyful benediction of funeral crosses. But worthy have I found this buyer now, who was never willing to buy his wife in a poke. Since truly, to wait for the perfect matrimony through years of penitence and solitude is not difficult for one accustomed to the anvil and the hammer... While to the uninitiated it might seem extreme, I have been offered seven wedding rings before the altars of the wise―all for one wife. Inscribed within the circumference of each were igneous words and golden embers from the book of life: “One who loves more, one who loves better.” And while armored against the extremities of lustful women, I have learned to prepare for the greater armory, the forge of the soul, whereby the godlike hammer, in ecstatic prayer and heavenly war hymns, strikes the supplicant steel with adamantine love. Only those who have been accustomed to the frost of tall mountains can appreciate the fiery violence and terrifying friction of the spirit that knows how to turn vinegar into honey! And so I have searched for you through somber woods and dead marshlands, in sulfurous valleys and blighted wastes, where the poison of desire inebriates and drives weak men into madness. To find you, I have found certainty in vulnerability and hands calloused from difficult climbing, yet none so calloused as to soften and melt from your gentleness... If I have seemed as a frowning, growling bear chilled from snows and severe mountain heights, it is only so that I could melt through the fires and promise of your embrace... For long have I waited for you to whom I was promised, and in being so used to being wounded from poisonous arrows, I only waited for your honey to heal me... Truly your sincerity and purity have ignited the candelabra of my heart, wherein I kneel in prayer to your divinity. For unlike the all-too-many, the superfluous, whose lustful grins and intoxicated eyes sing of turbid pools of stagnation and pollution, I have only seen your tranquil and serene waters golden with smiles of confirmation and the happiness of guiding stars. Your chaste glances speak to me of gardens where rivers flow, as swans swim and sing in holy duets before the choruses and wedding chambers of the gods. When I have gazed into your being and the profound well of your pristine waters, I have only been able to confirm the light of amethysts and carbuncles, rubies and diamonds whose jewels make even the angels prostrate in humility and longing. Your pure kisses awaken my memories of luxurious porticoes and the lush gardens of sacred temples, wherein reside the murmuring of chaste fountains and divine sculptures. We lock hands in holy embrace whenever we traverse such vegetation, which bloom with fertile promises. Such immaculate flowers always bless our union in their simplicity and perfection! And when you enfold me in the silence and august secrecy of the wise, I can only sing as a warrior in the sacred land of the Helens, celebrating the happiness and perfection of bright eternities within your eyes. Where before I was sterile and barren from drunken nights and the heart-wrenching emptiness of reckless abandon, you turn even the dead wood of my tree of life into flaming cinders, inspiring and enlivening my heart with the fires of a holy matrimony. Weak and feeble in my loins and knees, you taught me how to rise with strength towards the battlefront and promontory of sacred combat. You awaken the full conflagration of my chaste love and devour my desires through divine holocaust. What does he know of love if he did not come to despise precisely what he loved? You teach me to carry my dead ashes up the mountain, so as to scatter my past before the four winds! ​Truly you are my muse, my benediction, and my rose. You flower upon the cross of our shared tombstone and make it bright crimson as awakened steel, the perfect bed and resting place of the alchemist. You teach me to love your god with reverence and spotless, humble offerings. When I hold you and caress your fertile skin beneath my unyielding hands, we truly walk together beneath the stone archways of verdant vineyards and hallowed gardens. Within such a paradise, only the beautification of white sheets and unblushing nakedness bless our covenant! How often have I eaten the forbidden fruit of desire and sexual passion, only to be disillusioned and bitten by the serpentine poison of addiction and sorrow! Yet when we are together, conserving the waters of life with the utmost stainlessness and attention, I only know the voluptuousness, tempests, and raging fires of the spirit, the perfect fermentation of refuse and decay into the inebriating wine of alchemy. Truly Ding Dong has met his match, his partner, his perfect compliment. She is as serious in her silliness as he is silly in his seriousness, since she truly knows how to awaken this sepulchral, growling bear from his cold meditations and frigid contemplation on mountain heights. Through sweet laughter and the light of a forgotten god, she lifts the lamp of higher paths for him, as he holds their wedding lamp above their head in consecration of their marriage. And just as the midnight sun has shined with immaculate splendor upon our happiness, so shall I christen my wife by the name “Ding Ding,”  and let her poetry speak to my soul. Often has Ding Ding spoken to me in happy reprimand,  “Truly I thought you were cold from your mountain heights, only to find that your frigid stone is a mountain of red-hot iron, a volcano of divine fire!” So have we inspired the sparks of an embryonic love into a  phoenix of igneous powers, which began with a flash of delectable sympathy, was substantiated with infinite tenderness, and is synthesized through supreme adoration. Truly she teaches me how to be born again with the mind of supreme compassion and enlightenment for the benefit of all beings! Blessed are those who love our union, for they comprehend us. And blessed are those who are jealous of our union, for they do not comprehend us. May our bliss inspire even our worst enemies to join us in celebrating the Most High, for his luminosity gravitates to our union as the winged Mercury to the sun, blessing all those who fall under his path. Such a happiness joins itself in indestructible union as a serpentine  ring of a perfect matrimony, which shines upon the hand of my eternal beloved.

Devi: The Kahn’s Mother

My friends have always found it odd that my favorite part of The Lightning and the Sun is the portion about Genghis Kahn’s mother. I have always been drawn to stories of redemption, especially considering I came to Fascism only when I was a grown man. His mother’s story speaks to the truth that pain can only be contextualized properly at the end of a life. Taking a snapshot at several points in her life, you could be forgiven for thinking her story was some sort of tragedy. A series of unfortunate and pointless twists of fate. It was not destined to be so. I find it the most currently relevant message in the whole book. For this moment in time.

The Child of Violence CH IV

“Just as the physical universe is the masterpiece of divine creativeness in space, so is the history of any “Cycle” the masterpiece of the same impersonal Artistry, in time. No man knows the importance of certain events until they have taken their place as unavoidable details of a historical pattern. But once one can see them in their proper perspective, — however insignificant they may appear, outwardly, when isolated, — one cannot but admire the consistency of the implacable Force which binds cause and effect and compels decaying humanity to hasten to its doom in perfect order.

Some eight hundred years ago, in the country east of Lake Baikal, along the border of the River Onon, a man of the Merkit tribe was taking home his pretty, newly wedded bride, a girl of the Olhonod clan, round-faced, slit-eyed and dark-haired, adorned with heavy silver jewelry and beads of bright blue turquoise. The girl was called Hoelun. She did not know herself what an exceptionally strong, masterful woman she was, nor what a staggering destiny awaited her. She did not know that the “dwellers in felt tents” — the men of the steppes — were to praise her name for all times as the mother and grand-mother of conquerors; the ancestress of dynasties. She merely knew that she was following her husband, for whom she was to work and bear sons, like any other wife. And she was happy. In her complete ignorance of immediate distress and ultimate glories, she smiled to the sweet present. She watched the reflexion of the Sun in the rapid waters of the river, or played with the blue beads of her necklace.

But suddenly her blood went cold. She saw three men on horse-back ride towards her, and she at once understood their purpose. She knew that her one man could not overcome three, and she herself urged him to flee and save at least his own life. She would be lost to him anyhow. So the Merkit fled. The three men galloped nearer and nearer until they reached the girl, seized her and dragged her off. As they carried her away, she wept and lamented. But along the borders of the Orion and from the endless grasslands over which her ravishers rode with her, no answer came to her cries. The bright sky shone above, and the wind swept the green immensity all round her. One of the three men roughly told Hoelun to stop lamenting. “Though thou shouldst weep, thy husband will not turn his head. Seek his traces, thou shalt not find them. Stop thy cries, then, and cease to weep! 

And on they went — the three brothers, on horseback, and the sullen girl in her kibitka, drawn by one of the horses — until the day faded over the grasslands without end and the ragged rocks here and there and the burning dust of the barrens; until the hills in the West grew dark against the fiery background of the sky, and the dry air became suddenly cold. The men talked little. A flight of wild birds crossed the sky, far above their heads, and they watched it pass, with sharp, hunters’ eyes. The wheels of the kibitka creaked at regular intervals. Hoelun had ceased weeping. And she did not speak. Resigned — for there was nothing she could do, — she was already beginning to adjust herself to the circumstances that were to mould her life. Unknowingly, she was preparing to make the best of them, as a wise girl she was. The creaking wheels were carrying her nearer and nearer to the tents of the Yakka Mongols, amidst whom she was to fulfill her glorious destiny. The silent and robust young man riding the horse that drew her kibitka was the chieftain of his tribe. His name was Yesugei.

She watched his darkening silhouette that moved before her above that of the horse.”

* * *

“The Sun had set when, at last, they reached the young man’s ordu. Above the western horizon, still glowing crimson, layers of unbelievable hues — limpid gold, and pale, transparent green, and pink, and violet, — succeeded one another, abruptly. The mountains in the east were the colour of lilac. But Hoelun, to whom the splendour of the moistless Mongolian sky was an everyday sight, paid little attention. She only saw the camp into which the men were driving her: the round felt yurts; the evening fires; the forms of herdsmen and warriors, before the fires. She heard voices of men and women; children’s laughter; the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs — the voices of life. There were not as many yurts as she had expected. This was a poor ordu. Yet, it was her new home, now. Not the one her father had planned to give her, but the one the Kings of the invisible world — the spirits of the Eternal Blue Sky, who rule all things visible, — were giving her, because such was their pleasure, and the world’s destiny.

She looked at the strange faces of the new, strange place, with childish curiosity mingled with apprehension and the vague feeling of something momentous. She was being driven. Towards what? For a second, she recalled the familiar countenance of the young Merkit warrior to whom she had been wedded, and she was sad. But she was given no time to ponder over the past. Joyful shouts were already greeting the return of the chieftain Yesugei and of his two brothers, who had dismounted. Women were gathering round her kibitka to have a look at her. And, as many were commenting upon her fair appearance, she felt pleased.

She was given to Yesugei, and there was a feast at the camp, that night. The warriors ate and drank a lot, and minstrels sang. Hoelun’s new life had begun. She was assigned a yurt of her own, and serving women. And Yesugei now spent his nights in that yurt.

She neither lusted after him nor loved him as she had the young husband for the loss of whom she had wept. But she knew that it was her fate to be his wife — to bear sons to the strong man who had stolen her away from the one who had fled. And she submitted to her fate. She worked for Yesugei by day — cooking his food; making felt; dressing skins, and splitting cords from sinews. And at night, when he came to her, she hid her fear of him and her reluctance. She submitted to his passion as the cool, passive, ageless earth submits to the fury of the devastating and fertilising thunder-storm, and she kept her feelings to herself. He was drawn to her by a direct and elemental force like that which gathers together the heavy restless clouds, and loosens rain upon the earth, a force that was beyond him and beyond her, and beyond all men, and that merely used their bodies in order to fulfill the inexorable, hidden logic of evolving history: the superhuman command of Destiny.

During one of those nights, the spark of life was kindled in her womb. And she conceived the son who was to render her name and that of Yesugei immortal; the Child of lust and violence and of divine, irresistible purpose; the future Genghis Khan. But Hoelun did not know it. Nor did Yesugei. No man knows what he is doing when he soothes the fire of his loins in a woman’s belly.

In the camp of the Yakka Mongols and in the wide world outside the camp, everything was — or seemed — the same as on any other night. The bitter wind howled over the barrens, and the River Orion rushed on to mingle its waters with those of the Ingoda and, finally, those of the mighty River Amur. Now and then, the howling of a jackal or of a wolf could be heard within the howling of the wind. But, although no one noticed it, the position of the stars in the resplendent heavens was an unusual one, full of meaning.

And while Hoelun busied herself with the monotonous everyday tasks of life — while she tended her new husband’s yurt and cooked his food, or slept at his side — the child of Destiny took shape within her body. He was born in the year of the Hare according to the Calendar of the Twelve Beasts — the year 1157 of the Christian era, — clutching a clot of blood within his right hand.”