StoneHeart and FlameTongue

~~~ Series Notes ~~~

As with all of my recent offerings, every chapter in this story series has been written before you see the first one appear. The collection of episodes is complete. All of them have been posted *en masse* to Literotica. If things work correctly - and the admins smile favorably down upon us - they should release a new episode each day or so. Thanks for reading.

~~~ Prologue ~~~

I promised myself that - when I got married - I would choose a mate that wouldn't let me put my family through the various kinds of abuse that my father did to us as we were growing up. I had resented my mother's quiet refusal to address dad's issues. I thought I wanted a wife that would hold me accountable. Instead, I ended up in another abusive relationship. After five years of watching me suffer through her tirades and recriminations, my friends finally convinced me to end the marriage.

Though I was then free to choose my own course without someone second-guessing me, I lacked the energy to start dating again. My one foray into paying a professional for intimacy resulted in my wallet being stolen. That was yet another learning experience... calling the credit card companies and the police to report the incident - and then making even more calls to replace my IDs!

I considered my life happy enough - as short as it was. Though - as I hovered above the graveside gathering - I realized that I really didn't have that many people who cared about me. As I reflected on my life, there weren't many people that I have ventured to open myself up to. Only in hindsight did I realize what it cost me.

The last thing I saw - before my spirit faded from the Earth - was my mother standing over my grave as they lowered the casket into the ground.

~~~ StoneHeart and FlameTongue ~~~

When I died, I became some kind of ghostly spirit. Once the ceremony ended, I didn't go to Heaven - or Hell - or someplace in between.

Like vapor, I floated into the air - traveling higher and higher - moving more and more quickly. Soon, I was traveling faster than a meteor. Moments later, I left Earth far behind and sped up even more - until I was moving faster than thought.

The planet I arrived at reminded me a lot of my home one. Its surface was largely covered in water. Its terrain varied from dry desserts to fertile valleys to whole ranges of magnificent mountains that pierced the clouds with their stony peaks.

The area I came down in brought back memories of Scotland - specifically of the Isle of Lewis. There is an arrangement of standing stones there, called the Callanish Stones. They are believed to have been erected in the late Neolithic era. Near the center of the area, there lies a grave.

That is about as close as I can get to describing for you the place where my spirit came to rest.

Even in this new world, I had no corporeal body. I was invisible to visitors to the sacred site. Many came, placed offerings on the hand-carved stone table or altar that sat at the center of the loose ring of standing stones.

Years passed. They all began to look the same. I had decades to study the place where my soul had come to rest. My spirit was trapped within the stones like a hog in a pen. No amount of cursing, screaming, or digging my fingernails into the dirt to try to crawl free would allow me to escape.

Behind the table sat a huge virgin stone that resembled a giant of a man - though it was obvious that the shape was natural. It had never been touched by a tool's edge. It was ten feet tall and so big around that it would take more than two people, touching hands together, to reach around it.

I was not the only one that thought of the oddly-shaped monolith as being a person. Visitors to the place looked into the thing's face as they spoke their prayers. The stoic stone man appeared to be bowing his head slightly - staring at the table.

A massive stone table in the center of a ring of standing stones would have attracted attention in and of itself. A stony giant - standing endlessly - staring at that table... well... even unbelievers left tokens, gifts, or a drop of blood upon that sacred altar.

Most who left an offering uttered a prayer of some kind. A few simply spoke a word of thanks to the solemn guardian - or to the god who placed him there.

There was no tether between me and this rugged figure that barely resembled a man. Yet, somehow, I came to believe that he was me and I was him. I did not know if the featureless man-shaped monolith had been here before I came - or if it only appeared when I did. I only knew that it was here when I first laid my eyes upon it.

I watched visitors come - some at morning's light, some when the sun was high in the sky, some just as its last rays gave their light at the end of the day, and some at what we would have called the witching hour.

If a visitor to the place came and found another already there, they simply waited their turn. There were no signs or instruction manuals. The simple weight of the place on one's soul was enough to forbid barging in on another's moment of worship.

The first year I stood watch over the place, I simply watched the people. Sometimes, groups came to offer their tithe or prayers. Sometimes, two men came and stood before the table to make a covenant between them - vowing that the guardian should crush their soul should they break their bargain.

I came to think of the place far more reverently than I had held sacred anything on Earth. I didn't feel spiritual or powerful; in fact, I was somewhat angry at being caged inside of the place. My anger abated the longer I sat, stood, or wandered around as visitors came and went. I listened to their prayers and appraised their offerings - though I had no part in the exchange.

The most curious thing to me was that I never saw those gifts disappear but, somehow, the moment my attention wavered, they were gone. I don't know that any of the petitioners came to see if their offering had been accepted or not but I knew that some... thing... was collecting them.

I had been watching people come and go for probably at least three decades when a young man brought a woman by the hand to the table. He bent his knee, professed his love for her, and told her that - if she accepted him - he would go and speak to her father. She kissed him hard and told him that she would be delighted for him to do so.

The young man left a single silver coin on the altar. I stared at it for days - waiting to see the hand of the spirit come to claim the tithe. A week later, I blinked. When I shook myself awake again, the coin was gone.

The couple reminded me of the classic image of a young Scot and his beloved. Both had red-tinted hair. His was browner - but the undertone was evident. Her hair was an untamed mass of fiery locks that - even to a man who preferred women with long, fine black hair - I had to admit that she was gorgeous.

~~~

Time passed once again and the pair returned. Each had a ring of silver on their left hand. The young man kissed his bride and then lifted her and set her on the table. She didn't want to be sitting there - but he quickly ducked his head under her skirts.

Based on her reaction, he did things that she had never dreamed of before. When he pulled his face out to grin at her, it was wet with her dew. She kissed him hard anyway. She unbuckled his belt, he shoved his pants to his ankles, she raised her skirt enough to give him access, and he took her there - sitting on the edge of the great stone table. When they had finished their joining, he kissed her once again and lifted her down. He cut his palm and gave her the blade. She cut hers as well. They held a coin of gold between their clasped hands and let the strength of their hearts mingle together and surround it.

They laid the coin on the altar, bandaged their hands, and slipped away.

For the first time in decades, I actually saw the coin disappear. It glowed with silver light and then vanished. The blood hovered there for a heartbeat longer - defying time and gravity - and then it disappeared as well.

I would have remembered the couple regardless - but that moment was imprinted in my mind because it was the first time that I knew beyond any doubt that some invisible being was watching - and collecting the tithes and offerings that the people presented. I had no offering to give but I gave my petition nevertheless. I begged the spirit, god, or demon to talk to me - to tell me why I was here. I received no response.

I tried biting a hole in my wrist and bleeding onto the stone table to give my offering. I found that I couldn't even touch myself. I wondered if I had ever tried before.

~~~

I sat there, upon the table, and moped for a year or two - largely ignoring those who came and went. I was still too angry that the spirit would listen to others - but not to me.

I nearly pissed myself when I finally heard my answer - well - not an answer exactly.

"Pay attention, Stone Heart," the voice said.

I was distracted by the power and tone of the voice. My distraction disappeared as I watched the man and woman approach. She was very pregnant.

I would have assisted the man as he helped his wife onto the table but I had long ago discovered that I could not touch these people. They walked through me as if I did not exist. They did not react when I walked through - or punched - or spit on - them.

Almost as soon as the woman settled onto the table, she began to cry out. The man lifted her skirts, set the soles of her feet on his shoulders, and took his place at the doorway through which his child would enter the world. He took a blade, wrapped in clean linen, and set it beside her ass.

In moments, it seemed, the baby arrived. I stood behind him and watched her appear.

"A girl!" he called to his wife, though I'm not sure she heard him. "She's gorgeous, my love."

The words weren't English - not even close. I had long since learned the local language from listening to visitors speak. I'd even tried speaking it - though no one heard me to tell me whether or not I was doing it well.

The man unwrapped the blade, grabbed it up, gripped it firmly in his fist, and separated the tiny flame-haired newborn from her mother. I had never seen an umbilical cord before. Based on the difficulty he had cutting it, the thing must have been made of stern stuff. I had never thought about it before - but I guess that makes a good bit of sense - considering the purpose of the connection between the two bodies.

He carried the child to where her mother could see her, pulled a clean linen blanket from his satchel, wrapped the baby up, and placed it in her arms. Then he went back to his doctorly duties. She complained as he told her to push out the afterbirth, but she complied. Eventually, he got her cleaned up. I don't know how he knew what to do but I can tell you that I learned a fair amount about childbirth that day.

I walked around to study mother and child. The woman was obviously tired but even more obviously delighted. She could not stop kissing the newborn baby.

The man brought the knife - the blade of which was already covered in blood from both mother and child. He slit the side of his wrist, dripped his own blood onto the handle, and set it on the altar. Beside it, he set another gold coin.

The man helped his wife off of the stone table and walked with her just past the outer perimeter of the sacred circle - where he had a tent set up and waiting. I stood between two of the twelve-foot-tall monoliths - at the outer edge of my invisible prison - and watched as they entered the shelter.

I stood there watching over them through the night - like a guard dog at the end of its chain. I could not go to them - but I would watch over them.

They stayed for two days and then the man brought the woman and the child out, took down the tent, and they set off. A mule carried the woman and the baby. The tent was tied onto a travois - which the mule dragged behind it - along with a bundle of provisions.

~~~

I was sitting on the stone table late one night - two or three years after watching the woman give birth. As I replayed those memories once again, I realized something that had not occurred to me before. That night, the god of this place had given me a name.

He had called me Stone Heart.

I looked at the man-shaped guardian behind me. I studied the thing for a long moment before turning and looking out across the rocky rolling landscape that surrounded the stone circle.

Suddenly, I realized another thing that I had not recognized before.

I could not touch people, I could not touch myself, but I was sitting on the stone table. I could also walk on the ground.

I decided to see if I could push the stone guardian over.

Instead, what I discovered was that touching the monolithic man was like touching metal to a magnet. I found myself being sucked inside of the stone giant. When I blinked, I felt like the stone man was blinking. I was looking through his eyes.

I could not make him stand up and I could not make him move - but I felt like I was him and he was me. When I tried hard enough, I could escape - like pulling your foot from a miry pit in a muddy pasture. In the same way that you have to be careful not to leave your boot in the mud when you lift your foot, I felt like I had to work to keep myself together as I escaped the crude statue.

~~~

I spent the next decade and a half trying to figure out how the stone man and I could interact. I was in the middle of yet another experiment when I heard the god call my name again.

"Stone Heart," he said.

I spun and looked around. By default, I now always chose the direction that the man and woman had traveled as the start of my search. Immediately, I knew what the god wanted me to see.

The girl - the child - she was almost a woman now. She was returning. She looked so much like her mother.

There were signs there, in her features and in her bearing, of her father as well but - even without the god calling my attention to her - I would have known that it was her.

"Great spirit," she said, as she knelt before the table. "A rival clan threatens my own. We are too small to fight. They want my hand to seal the peace."

She stopped speaking and was quiet. I saw her body trembling and I realized that she was sobbing.

"They are bloodthirsty men," she said quietly. "Though they told Father that my agreement would buy peace for our people, I don't believe that my sacrifice would be enough. I believe that I will be dragged into war against my own kin."

She pulled a dagger, stuck out her tongue, leaned over the altar, laid her tongue on the stone surface, stabbed the blade through her tongue into the stone, and then yanked her head back - bisecting the last two inches of her oral muscle. Her words were still understandable - but somewhat muddled now as she remastered the use of her tongue.

She never cried - or cried out - though the pain was evident on her face.

"I neeth yo helfff," she said.

She dug out a coin purse, started to dig around inside of it, and then just set the whole thing on the table. She looked into the face of the stone giant.

"Pweath helff meh..."

The injured redhead was still entreating the statue when the sounds of leather armor and weapons could be heard approaching. The young woman clenched her fists and turned to face the intruders.

A band of dirty, bloodied men paused at the edge of the circle for only a moment before the big one at the front gave an evil grin of triumph and strode forward until he was a dozen paces from the redheaded girl.

"I came to get your answer," the man said.

His smile was missing a few teeth. I swore that I could smell his acrid breath from where I was standing, beside the young woman.

I saw something glowing out of the corner of my right eye and turned my head to see that the crude stone figure had a subtle luminance to it. Almost as soon as I realize that, I felt my feet sliding across the gravel and grass - pulling me into the monolith.

"I told you that I needed a night and a day," she answered him.

"My scouts saw you leaving and I got worried that you were running off."

"I needed some time to my thoughts," she replied.

He glanced around at the place.

"You thought to plead with your worthless god to barter for your life, no doubt," he said, grinning evilly. "Regardless, I decided that I needed a bit of insurance that you would return - so I took some captives from your village."

He motioned and two men brought the girl's mother into view. She had been mistreated. There was dried blood caked in the hairline at the side of her skull.

"Your father objected most vigorously to coming along with us," he told her. "By now, I fear he may have succumbed to his injuries. We should hurry home to see if we can save him..."

The girl's fist tightened on the handle of the blade that she held in her hand.

"Now, now," the man said. "I still have a bit of leverage."

He glanced back at her mother.

"Don't give me a reason to tighten the noose any further...," he told the young woman. "Our clans will be stronger together. We've removed a few rebels. The union will go much more smoothly now. My men are eager to join with their new wives."

The girl took a step towards the man. The muscles in her arm were tightening.

The man signaled to his men. Her mother cried out in pain and fear as they pulled her head back by her hair and placed a naked blade to her bare throat.

"You need to learn some temperance, FlameTongue," the man spat. "My wives know their place. You need to learn yours as well."

"Run!" the girl's mother cried out.

The man did not have to give a command to his men. I could see their intent in both their eyes and in the way the muscles in their arms flexed and tightened.

I tried to escape the stone body in which I found myself trapped. I tried to intervene. I tried to scream, to rage, to cry out, to leap, to run, to raise my fist into the air, and...

The sound of stone grinding against stone - a screeching sound that tore at the ears of all who heard it - echoed across the stony ground - bouncing between the standing monoliths that guarded this sacred ground.

The blade that should have ended the widow's life froze, pulled away, and started to turn... towards me.

Stone dragged against stone, the horrendous sound of rocks exploding and screaming as they are pulled across one another, slammed into each other, and broken apart - those sounds brought all eyes to me.

All eyes, except those of FlameTongue - the child that I had watched being born before my very eyes.

She stood and faced her foe as if she already knew what was happening - as if she could see me - busting my way out of the stone cage that held me.

I was no longer trapped in a near shapeless monolith that resembled a man. I was a giant of a man - two heads taller than the man who faced the young woman in front of me. I was a giant of a man who was made of living stone.

I felt powerful. I felt angry.

The men guarding the woman, who I had watched give birth on the stone table, looked at me and then quickly worked to show me that they intended to use their hostage to keep me at bay.

I not only felt powerful and strong; I also felt fast. I judged that I could reach them before they could harm her - even though their blades were mere inches away.

The man of stone and rock took off like a rocket.

I had misjudged. They could have hurt her before I could have arrived. Unfortunately, for them, they were so terrified about how quickly I was coming their way, that they completely forgot that the whole point of holding a hostage is to keep them within your grasp.

The injured woman kicked the one with the blade in the knee and then spun and elbowed the one that was holding her by the hair. His grip lessened enough to allow her to move. Her elbow hit him square in the Adam's apple and he was stunned.