The Fulfillment

He found her lying in the meadow by the river. He was a man of middle years, his beard not yet fully grey but striving toward it. His face had been scorched by the sun and carved up by the wind, and his hands were workman's hands; woodcutting, stonecutting, bricklaying, whatever needed doing and building.

He sat with Aris and murmured a word of greeting. He told her his name was Berec, then he sat quietly for a time, looking out at the clean and clear waters of the Vannon. Aris waited patiently. Men like Berec went through repeated cycles of self-justification and guilt, she knew. He was calculating the sum of his domestic grievances and comparing it to the intransigent demands of honor and duty. He had done this many times before, and would do so again.

"I've... heard things about you, Aris," Berec said in his low, desperate voice. He eyed her legs which were splayed out lazily upon the grass. The black wool stockings she wore offered no glimpse of the pale limbs underneath. His eyes trailed up beyond her white tunic to the soft flesh of her neck, to her marmoreal face and blue eyes.

"Yes, it does seem that I have inspired a few wagging tongues," Aris replied. She smiled at Berec with sweet amusement. Her eyes were light and guileless. "But what do you say, Berec?"

Berec told her of his harridan of a wife, of her scowls and sneers and insults. He told Aris that his bed had not been warmed by his wife's body for over a decade, and even then she had submitted to his needs begrudgingly and without joy. With the birth of their fourth child, she had apparently gotten what she wanted out of her husband and saw no reason to continue the conjugal visits.

"I am not a whore, to be used for the quenching of your godless lust." Berec shook his head and clenched his fist. A soft wind ran its fingers through his hair. "That's what she said to me. As if I were nothing but a dumb, starving beast."

Aris listened. Her empathy for him was genuine, as she had heard similar stories from other men. The women of the Church of the Wise guarded their cunts jealously, and the Church reinforced this attitude by assuring women that their bodies were divine artifacts which must be vouchsafed from the lusts of men.

"What do you wish of me, Berec?" Aris asked. She swept aside the long strands of her raven hair which had been picked up by the wind.

"You have... done things," he answered haltingly, unable to look at her. "With other men. For other men."

"With and for other men, yes," Aris said. She shifted closer to Berec, but did not touch him. Not yet. "And you want me to do those things for you."

"I just want to feel like a man again," Berec looked Aris in the eye this time. "A man, not a beast of burden." He reached out, his hand hovering near her cheek. Aris watched and waited. Berec allowed himself to stroke her face with the backs of his fingers, and Aris leaned into it like a cat receiving a chin scratch. Berec breathed in sharply and closed his eyes.

"There is nothing wrong with that," Aris assured him, taking his laborer's hand into her own small and smooth one. "And there is nothing wrong with you. Those who say otherwise are the ones who are wrong, whether it be your wife or the Church."

Berec smiled like a boy who had just discovered a salacious secret. "So it's true that you speak blasphemy."

Aris tightened her grip on his hand. "I'll show you all the blasphemy you like, sweet Berec," she whispered. The wind picked up again and flung her long hair of starless night away from her. It rode the gust as a raven rides the air.

***

Aris stepped into the old, abandoned barn and shut the door. She had told Berec to meet her here at noon on the morrow. The building had fallen out of use ever since Linos progressed from a pastoral village to a proper town, and its location outside the town walls beyond a small copse made it Aris' preferred meeting place, away from the prying eyes of the frigid housewives and the chattering church mice.

Berec was nowhere in sight, however. Aris stepped deeper into the enshadowed dwelling as bits of hay and other debris crunched under her boots. The narrow shaft of light which shone from the window above the hayloft only served to emphasize the gloom. "Berec?" she called out.

"Berec is not here, thank the Wise," intoned an imperious voice. From around a corner came a tall, grey-bearded man wearing black vestments and bedecked with the chain eagle pendant of the Wise Priesthood. He loomed over Aris, as solid and immobile as a mountain.

"You are Aris," he stated grimly, his eyes boring into hers.

"So I am," she replied, holding his gaze. "And your pendant marks you as a lector of the Church, though I don't believe I've seen you before."

"I am Lector Gerorn," the clergyman said in his domineering baritone. "I have been told much of you and your... activities."

Aris turned away from his gaze and stared at the wall, her mouth set in a petulant frown. One of the church mice must have been eavesdropping on her little discussion with Berec the day before; how else could the lector have known she would be here?

"Do you deny that you planned to meet Berec here in order to indulge in an adulterous affair?" Gerorn demanded.

"I don't deny it," Aris answered, still staring at the wall. There was no use in arguing with him. Aris considered simply running away, but that would only earn her a banishment from Linos. Not a catastrophic situation, as she did not live in town, but it would certainly make her life more difficult, and her mother would never let her hear the end of it.

"Why do you tempt husbands away from their wives?" Gerorn guilted her. "Why do you corrupt young men by making an unholy temple of your flesh?" The lector extended his big, ringed hand and turned her face toward him. "Well? Do you have an answer?"

"I suppose... I suppose I simply can't help myself," Aris said lamely. She knew that open defiance would only prolong the session; better to be equivocal.

The lector stared at her for a time. His eyes lingered on her ruby lips. "Perhaps that is so," he murmured. Gerorn broke his gaze and briefly turned his back to her. He muttered something, a small prayer perhaps, then he looked upon her again. "Still, that is no excuse. You must apply your passion to those noble and holy tasks which please the Wise, not to debasement and illicit pleasure."

Aris said nothing. The petulant frown returned to her face as she crossed her arms and looked at the earthen floor.

"Look at me, girl," Gerorn reached under her chin and tilted her face upward. Again, his eyes lingered on her lips. There was a strange gleam in those eyes now. The imperious self-righteousness was gone; in its place was a hunger Aris had seen before in other men. Gerorn's fingers slid from under her chin and settled near her mouth. He stroked her face softly. "Even with that willful mouth of yours, you...." Gerorn's words halted as the hunger in his eyes burned hotter. He placed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her downward. Aris did not resist; he lowered her until she was on her knees, the dead hay crushed under her black stockings.

Aris observed him silently. There was no need for words; she could see his desire, could see the ecclesiastical repression that sought to replace the yoke on that desire, but it would not be contained.

"Foolish girl," Gerorn muttered. He placed a finger upon her lips, wriggled it forward until it was inside her mouth. "You foolish, willful tart." His finger was on her tongue. It was dry and tasteless. With his other hand he began unlacing the bodice of her tunic, slowly, tremulously. Aris let him work. When he had finished he pulled the right half of her tunic away from her shoulder and revealed a breast, soft and white as snow, with a pale pink nipple turning stiff upon the alabaster hill of flesh.

Aris watched the lector fall back, his sharp gasp sounding very much like the hiss of a venomous serpent. He fumbled with his robes, and in a blink his manhood was exposed, hard and stiff, bright red and angry. Old and neglected it was, its owner the agent of its repression, and not terribly large even in its agitated state.

Gerorn's hand crept behind Aris' head, and, with a lupine growl, he shoved her into his thigh. The shaft of his phallus was a mere inch from her lips. Aris supposed he wanted her to take him into her mouth, but she could scarcely get it in from this position. Gerorn bent down and grabbed her exposed breast, squeezed it roughly, enthralled with its softness. The lector's other hand kept her face pinned to his thigh, his fingers worming their way into her mouth.

Gerorn growled and his manhood began to twitch violently. His hips bucked and tensed. Aris knew that it would never make it into her mouth. The phallus twitched and seized; Gerorn bellowed as though he had been dealt a mortal blow. His phallus shuddered up and down as the first spurts of his seed dribbled out of it. He cried out again as more of his essence poured from his body, splattering onto the earth like summer rain. Gerorn's grip tightened on Aris' head to the point of pain, but she did not protest.

At last, the lector's paroxysm faded. His phallus began to soften, and he groaned like a man just awakened from a drunken oblivion. He released Aris from his grip, and she began to straighten herself, brushing the hair from her face. She noticed that a drop of seed had managed to land on her breast.

"You... you bewitched me!" screeched the lector. He shoved his manhood back under his robes and pointed an accusatory finger at Aris. "What have you done to me, demon?!"

"I did nothing, Lector Gerorn," Aris answered placidly. Her expression was serene and untroubled. "You came to me." Aris wiped his seed from her breast with her thumb, then tucked the flesh back inside her tunic. She laced the garment and stood, regarding the lector silently.

Gerorn stumbled backward, his finger still pointing. "Leave this town, and never return!" he hissed. "If I see your face again, I shall have you flogged before the town square!" Gerorn went out the barn door and slammed it shut, leaving Aris in solitary silence.

Aris stood there, thinking, wondering. Though she had outwardly kept her composure, in truth the events that had just transpired were a bizarre mystery to her. She had done nothing to entice or seduce the lector, and yet that mannish hunger for a woman's flesh had been summoned in the clergyman like a demon out of the Black Infinite. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in Gerorn's accusation.

Aris was still flushed from the day's excitement. She inhaled deeply, calming the rapid beating of her heart, then opened the heavy oak door of the barn. She looked back at the evidence of Gerorn's lust on the earthen floor, then stepped out. She didn't bother closing the door.