fandomania | The Adventure continues... (Reply)

Our eggs:

Our hatchlings:

Our Story:

I was not left alone for one minute for the rest of the day until my bedtime. The Abbess spent time talking to me, gaining information as to what I thought my needs would be. She was quite scandalized that I had had neither religious training nor was I a regular worshiper. She was equally scandalized when she found out that I had had no schooling after my grandmother died, when I was eleven. She then gave me a complete tour of the retreat and introduced me to most of the nuns who helped run the place. After giving me a baby break to care for my sons, I was introduced to the two nuns who would do the physical caring for my babies; i.e. diapering, bathing, etc. Both of them were in their late fifties and had been married with grown children and grandchildren. They had chosen the religious life after being widowed. Sister Berte and Sister Halde were kind-hearted, loving women who were very experienced with babies and with whom I quickly grew to depend on and knew that I could entrust my children to their care.

During lunch in the refectory, I was introduced to the other inmates of the retreat. There were twenty other women being cared for. Most were abuse victims, suffering at the hands of their husbands or fathers. One woman had been the only survivor of a murder/suicide, where her husband, after losing his employment, stabbed her and all of their children, before slitting his own throat. One young girl, only fourteen years old, had been the victim of a gang rape. But the worst was poor Nika. She had been a student magic user. She had been headed for a brilliant career when, one day, she had disobeyed the rules of the school and had left the school to practice her art alone on a nearby hill. She had been working with fire elementals and lost control of them only to watch them land on a nearby school, where thirty children and five teachers burned to death. While the court had ruled the incident an accident, several of the fathers of the dead children took their revenge upon her by raping her, sodomizing her with knives and mutilating her terribly, before leaving her for dead. Her body survived the attack, but her mind never completely did. I was told that her family abandoned her and that she was the longest staying inmate at the retreat, having lived there for ten years.

After lunch, Uncle Haral came by to see me. It was technically a violation of the court order, but as Head of the Temple, he was allowed anywhere on temple property, even a convent. He told me that he would come by to see me several times a week to see how I was doing and to give me news of the family. He also told me that he would take messages to anyone that I wished to send messages to. I asked him to get me some paper and a pen, which he did. I wrote a note to Donal, which read simply, “I love you. I miss you terribly. I only hope that you will forgive me for all that I am putting you through. Please kiss my children and tell them that I love them and miss them also? Your miserably lonely wife, Patra.” Haral took the note, unread and placed into an envelope and sealed it. He promised that Donal would have it that afternoon.

“How is he doing?”

“Very unhappy. Very worried about you. Piatrus is keeping an eye on him and has promised to keep him occupied so that he doesn’t do anything rash or illegal.”

“Thank you. Give Piatrus my love and thanks.”

“I will.”

“How are my children handling this?”

“Well. Very well.”

I looked at him very closely as he said this and I knew that he was hiding something. “Please, Uncle Haral, don’t protect me from the truth. Please tell me what is going on?”

“And have you become hysterical again and do your magic vanishing act again? Just let’s leave it that they are fine. Donal is coping with your children. It gives him something to do.”

I started to cry and Uncle Haral started cursing under his breath. “From what I have been told, your children are acting normally for children in this situation. They are not in any danger, but they are very fearful and worried about you. Trust me when I say that they are being cared for, not only by Donal, but also by the family. They are in good hands. Your job right now is to work hard at getting better so that you can return to them a healthy, happy mother. If you fall apart at every little thing, how are you going to cope in life? You have to trust us to help you while you are here.”

“I just feel like I am being a bad mother to my children. I am afraid that they will think that I am abandoning them.”

“I understand. But this kind of thinking is what got you here in the first place. You need to bring this up to your counselors and let them help you overcome these feelings of unworthiness. Will you do that, my dear?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl! I have to leave now, but I will give your note to Donal and I will return in a couple of days to check up on you. Be a good girl and do as you are instructed and you will be out of here in no time at all.”

After Haral left, the Abbess introduced me to my counselors; neither were from religious orders but appeared to be doctors. They seemed to be pleasant people. The three of them then went over my daily schedule. They had me doing something almost every minute of the day from 5 am until 9 pm. I was to have two counseling sessions every day, meditation, yoga and religious classes, along with regular exercise, tutoring to improve my education and breast feeding the twins. They were going to keep me very busy.

The first month passed in a whirl. But just as I began to find my way, I started having very intense longings for Donal and very erotic dreams. These feelings were starting to interfere with my concentration and no amount of self stimulation effectively helped me. One night, as I awoke from one of my dreams, I found Nika by my bed. She giggled. “You need to worship Varpa-Makštis. He will help you through this.”

“Who? I don’t remember a ghod by that name.”

“No, she is forgotten. They consider him to be too profane to worship nowadays. Do you want to see her?”

I wasn’t sure how tight a grasp of reality Nika was having, but I somehow felt that I had to follow her lead in this. I told her okay and put on a habit. She led me around by a circuitous route to an outdoor area not well kept up. There she showed me a stoa that looked very neglected on the outside. Once inside, it was lit by many candles and looked like it had been carefully cleaned. In the center was a life-sized statue of a man with huge breasts and both male and female genitalia. The male part was huge and erect; the female part was anatomically correct and looked like it would allow a man to find pleasure there. Something wild called me and my longings increased to the point where I shed my clothing and climbed onto the statue and took the male part of it inside me. Within minutes, my pleasure came and soon increased to ecstasy, and the ecstasy soon came quicker and quicker until I lost all sense of the world and felt shattered into bits.

As I slowly returned to my senses, I heard a voice inside me saying, “Thank you, my child. It has been too long since one of your kind has worshipped me so. I accept your tithe and give you this blessing in return: you will never lose your beauty all the days of your life and any man who sees your nakedness will desire you and seek to possess you.”

I realized that I had done something more than just find relief and it occurred to me that the ‘blessing’ might somehow turn into a curse. I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did. I quickly got dressed. When I looked for Nika, she was no where to be found. I went back to my room and to bed. In the morning, I was starting to think that this had been all an erotic dream. I went outside and tried to follow the route that I remembered, but I could not find the stoa again. It must have been just a dream.

The rest of the month passed uneventfully and my distraction disappeared. At the end of the month, I turned twenty-five. Not that I had ever celebrated my natal day, but I felt sad somehow. I didn’t mention this to anyone. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was slipping into a depression. But I missed my husband and worried a lot about my children. I had been getting reports from Uncle Haral about them. I know that they were being cared for, but somehow I was becoming afraid that they would forget me while I was stuck here at the convent.

In my religion class, we studied many ghods and ghoddesses. When we came to Dailė, the ghoddess of the arts and artists, I felt an affinity towards her. The class detailed how she was to be worshipped. All through the class, all I could think about was Donal. I knew that he was having a tough time finding his artistic voice and I started to wonder if worshipping her would help him. All that I read seemed to suggest that making a sacrifice would help gain the interest the ghods and help towards granting your petition. But what did I have to sacrifice? While thinking about it, I overheard the Abbess talking to a new group of postulants and she told them that the shaving of their hair was a sacrifice that showed the world their commitment to their calling.

The next morning, I got up early and went to the stoa for Dailė, which was in a courtyard area with many other stoas. When I got there, I followed the rituals written in my text. I believed with all my heart and prayed sincerely for her to bless Donal and help him find inspiration. I then brought out the scissors I took and cut off as much of my hair as I could. I then threw my hair into the sacrificial fire and prayed as it burned. When I had done all that I could do, I returned to my room. My shorn hair created a bit of a stir but I told them why. I, then, asked to have my hair cut better, even if it was going to be very short. I felt that everyone understood my reasons. The matter wasn’t brought up again.

The second month passed as the first had. Every day, I felt that I was improving and getting a better handle on myself and my past. The last day of the second month arrived and I was eagerly anticipating seeing Donal the next day. It had been hard to be apart from him so long, but tomorrow would be my reward for being so good. At noon, instead of going to the refectory for lunch, the Abbess called me into her office.

“Patra, I want you to know that I have seen much improvement in you these past two months. However, there has been some very disturbing erratic behavior that leads me to believe that you are not ready for any visitors yet. Your counselors and I feel that you need more time and growth before we reintroduce you to any family stressors. We are going to postpone your visitation day until next month and hope that you will, by then, have improved your behavior and show us some real improvement.”

“But what erratic behavior have I done? I have been doing everything that I have asked to. I am trying very hard to get better. Why are you doing this to me?” I was working very hard trying to keep my emotions under control.

“The worst one was the hair cutting incident. It was a sign of self-mutilation, albeit a mild form. But disturbing nonetheless.”

“But I told you why I did it. I wished to make a sacrifice to the ghoddess Dailė. I thought you understood that.”

“You are having delusions. No right minded person would think that cutting one’s hair would be a sacrifice that a ghod would accept. You are dismissed, Patra. My decision is final. And any more outbursts like this and your visitation will be put off even longer.”

I was shocked and stunned. My heart was breaking and I could do nothing about it. I wanted to scream and rant and rave, but I didn’t, because I knew that that would just give her more to accuse me of.

I felt numb for the rest of the day. I had a hard time concentrating. My loneliness and need for Donal was almost overwhelming. I skipped dinner, fed the babies and went to bed early, where I cried myself to sleep.

Groggy and feeling half asleep, I woke up to find Nika in my room again. “Varpa-Makštis has sent me. She wants you to come worship him again.”

I didn’t want to go. It was one thing to seek one’s pleasures with an inanimate object. It was another thing to screw with a ghod. I told Nika that I wasn’t feeling well and that I wasn’t able to go anywhere with her. She leaned over me and whispered in my ear, “Reikalavimas”. A surge of power washed over me and I felt unable to resist. I soon found myself back inside the stoa, naked and mounted on the statue. I tried to fight the spell but nothing I did would break it. Before I knew it, wave after wave of ecstasy overcame me.

Just before I lost consciousness, I heard inside my head. “While I am pleased with your tithe, I am displeased with your reluctance to give it. I am giving you the gift of earth-motherhood, so that your womb will be always fertile. You shall bear more children, and your burden with them shall be light, although none shall be as you planned and not all will be sired by the same man.”

I came to in my bed, where I was clothed in my nightgown, although my body was sore between my legs. I was so confused. Was it a dream? Did it really happen? Was I losing my grip on reality? I spent the rest of the night crying. I felt so overwhelmed.