Conception
We stood for a moment, facing each other, reveling in the sight. Then Aruni let her robe fall to the ground. It rustled softly, and I could see a myriad shadows in its delicate folds as the gray silk lay at her feet. I followed Aruni’s lead and released my own robe. I did not see it fall, unable to take my eyes off the naked beauty in front of me. We have lived together for five years, as required by our traditions, before we could participate in the Ceremony. Surely, in that time I have had thousands of opportunities to see Aruni naked, but in this foreign light, her body looked as enigmatic, as unfathomable as if I was seeing it for the first time. The full Moon lost the reddish-gold hue of its young, rising self and now glowed with all imaginable shades of white. As white light hits a prism, it separates onto constituent colors, revealing infinite possibilities hidden in its seeming emptiness. So the white of the moon was comprised of silver, yellow, green, lavender, blue, and Aruni’s pale skin reflected all of these colors. It seemed to glow with a light of its own, as Goddess Lelerei must have glowed while her own reflection, the Moon, presided over the Ceremony.
“Bia,” Aruni whispered. “It is time.” Yet I was still unable to move. Aruni was always beautiful. Her sapphire blue eyes captivated the hearts of many, but finally—wonder of wonders—settled on me. Staring now at the slender body framed my long silvery hair, which was released from its usual braid for the sake of the Ceremony, I marveled at how little I knew of her, this incredible creature who shared my life all these years. Aruni’s soul was an ever-lasting mystery, which was especially clear in the alien light of the Moon. It was a wonderful code, but it was meant for me to decipher. We were separate beings, and yet we were one.
Aruni fell to her knees in front of the arched window, and I again mirrored her motions. The stone floor was hard under my knees, the thin material of the discarded robe barely protecting me against its coldness. Not a cloud dared to cover Lelerei’s mirror glass, as the Moon shown brightly over the Goddess’s realm. In this eerie light, gray stone towers with arched windows rose darkly out of the gleaming sands, as if the earth itself were raising its arms, blessing the name of the One who saved it from absolute darkness on this holy night. As Aruni and I prayed, I was conscious of those who I knew must be doing the same in all of those towers, all of those windows. Solidarity is being an individual part of a greater whole.
Finally, Aruni stood, and a small silver dagger glistened in her hands. She took a step forward and knelt in front of me. I shifted a little in order to face her once again. Aruni raised my right arm with her hand. Her fingers were gentle and soft, as if she were afraid that one crude motion might shatter me into an infinite number of tiny shards, from which she could never hope to rebuild the whole. The dagger glistened again as Aruni slowly drew its sharp blade around my forearm. She was careful to break only the skin and not to go any deeper. Once again, I marveled at her confidence. Even knowing the reason for this sacred rite and fully understanding that joy is always entwined with pain, I was sure that my hands would tremble if it were I cutting into her flesh. Aruni was a separate person, and yet she was an irremovable part of me.
A bracelet of blood formed around my forearm, and Aruni raised a tiny bowl of a gooey cream-colored ointment to allow a few bright red drops of my life force to fall inside. She swirled the ceramic vessel, and the potion turned bright blue in color. When I was little, I imagined this to be the exact shade of the sky, but as years passed, I was never able to recapture the hue, and only rarely did I catch glimpses of it in Aruni’s eyes. It was marvelous and inexplicable how the red of my blood and the dirty white of the ointment somehow recreated it.
Aruni placed the dagger in my fingers and reached out to me with her own arm. Praying for my hand to be steady, I drew the blade still wet with my blood across her skin. Aruni gently smiled, giving me the strength to complete the smooth motion around her arm. I held out the bowl, and as her blood blended with mine, the mixture turned pale green, the green of the nether side of sylvanium leaves. Did this mean that Aruni’s essence was yellow? It seemed fitting for her to be bright, like a ray of sunshine.
Aruni got up and circled around me, kneeling at my back. I could sense the heat of her body without touching it, so sharp was the contrast between her warmth and the cool midnight breeze. I felt Aruni’s wet, greenish hands embracing me from behind and drawing me against her chest. Her fingers circled my breasts, leaving luminous rings of ointment in their wake. The paint was cool on my skin, but Aruni’s warm breath gently, rhythmically, insistently brushed my neck. As her fingers placed a drop of ointment on each of my nipples, I shuddered slightly, feeling the sensation go lower and deeper. With her touch light as a feather and as intent as a river floating to meet the sea, Aruni drew another circle around my stomach. The heat flared up in my body as I felt the paint harden upon my nipples and breasts, and at the same time, the hot wetness of Aruni’s tongue touched my neck as she began kissing me there.
She raised the bowl in front of me and, opening my eyes, which I was not aware of closing, I saw that there was a little ointment still left. Aruni’s hand scooped up its remnants, and I nearly instinctively opened my legs to allow her an easy entry. Her left hand rested for a second upon my clitoris, feeling it pulse wildly, before the first stroke sent a jolt through my body. Slowly and methodically, Aruni’s fingers tugged and teased me. One moment, her touch was gentle and light, and I felt myself reaching out for more; the next moment, she threaded my clitoris and I felt my flesh as anxious between her fingers as river water floating through them under the powerful pull of gravity.
Meanwhile, reaching around my right leg, her other green hand stroked my labia. One curious finger entered, circled around, feeling the hot, wet, uneven terrain of my body, and pulled back out. I whimpered slightly in protest, but the first finger was soon joined by another, and as the two of them took another tour around my inside, it was all I could do not to cry out. Then came the third and the fourth fingers. They filled me up so completely, moving and stroking inside of me, that they seemed like a key perfectly shaped to unlock my soul. And all the while, her other hand kept patting, kept tugging, kept circling, pulling me higher and higher until I felt my whole body perch at the apex and fall thunderously in a wave of ecstatic spasms. But Aruni did not stop. She resumed as soon as my body once again came to rest against hers. I was tired and faint, my head slightly spinning, and yet her hands were even more insistent than the first time, and feeling her fingers pierce me again and again, I surrendered to their gentle power, my body again rushing off the cliff into abyss. This time, Aruni trembled beneath me, and I realized that this power to give me pleasure filled her up as much as it filled me.
We lay silently in each other’s arms. Aruni’s face shone in the silvery light of the moon. She pulled up one of our robes to shelter us against the cold. Our breathing gradually slowed down, and we fell asleep.
Our horses were waiting for us at the gate of the tower as we prepared to depart. In the light of the morning sun, Aruni was her usual bright, familiar self, and only the bracelet of dried blood around her arm served as a reminder of her inherent power and mystery. We were going home to the little green house where we lived for five years contently alone.
“Aruni,” I said, surprised at how loudly my voice rang in the surrounding silence. “When is she going to be here?”
Aruni wrapped her arms around me and placed a tender kiss on my lips. “In nine months,” she smiled, “Lelerei willing.”
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