Drums

Slow, methodical the vibrations of sound echo down into the channel of my ear.

Plumes of smoke twist and dance skyward as if they are making love to the other. The heavy scent of sage clings to the air, seeping into every crevice the surrounding holds.

Chimes are everywhere, soft tinkling of sound complementing the percussion of the drums.

The path Odin's carrying me on follows the edge of a rushing stream. A dense structure has been set up, furs stretched across the outer shell of it while large rocks make the base. A few female faces glance up briefly from their squatting position as we pass by before returning to their bowls of colorful paste. Smiles held on their faces, fingertips stained with color - all heads are bow low to Odin.

The flap of the structure is pulled to the side, there are no rays from the sun that penetrates the draped interior. Low light from the rock-rimmed coal fire is the only thing that can be seen inside this darkened space.

Choking hot steam infused with sage is inhaled in and coughed out.

I'm set down in a sitting position beside the embers that glow - my attention captured momentarily. Unable to pull my eyes away until a hiss of water hitting the hot rocks vapor itself into breathing steam that is so hot it hurts my lungs.

"Lift up your arms." Odin's words press into the base of my neck. It's hard to lift up weights that want to just hang limply at my side. The struggle is too great and, in the end, Odin helps each arm come out of the confines of fabric until my upper half is bare to him.

Watching Odin takes off his shirt now, leaving his exposed chest bare to me.

I hum to my self which causes that smile to pull up on those lips that I want to lean in and kiss.

The ink of him is strangely vivid, just a hint of color within the black. Blinking rapidly, his shifting skin has the eyes of animals watching me.

"Odin, they're alive." Trying to reach out to touch his chest he catches my hand, turning my wrist, so the soft inner flesh now presses against his mouth.

A tingle runs down the length of my spine, setting itself between thighs. His skin glistens as sweat starts to drip down the side of his temple.

I feel the motion when he pulls me up into a standing position, he has to bend his head, so it doesn't hit the roof of the structure. His pants come off first, stepping out of them he kicks them to the side. I can feel his hand undoing the button of my pant's, zipper sliding down, fingers hooked into the material before he pulls them down my legs.

A kiss placed on my sternum, before he slides himself lower. A kiss placed on the rise of my mound, his hands taking each pant leg off along with my underwear. Standing on wobbling legs holding onto his shoulder, so I don't fall - a low sound comes from his chest. When he stands ancient forest greens find my eyes, and hold. He walks us backward, furthest away from the flap that could be considered the only door in this domed structure.

My spine hits the softness of furs, another steaming hiss of water sounds out when a liquid turns to vapor much to fast. He places a few dried leaves on the coals, pungent sage encompasses the inside.

Everything melts away in the heat and sweat.

"Odin," drawling out the sound, stretching it to its full lenght of capacity.

"Yes, My Half."

"What is this?" Looking around but not too deep because the shadows start to encroach at the peripheral of my vision...smokey haze of sight plays tricks with the tendrils of vapor, confusing what's real and what's not.

Seeing hollowed faces that when I blink, they are no longer there.

"It's a sweat lodge, we need to clean ourselves." Ancient forest greens that I know are real are now the focus - unable to take my eyes off his because I feel safe when I look at him.

Our connection intensifying.

He lifts my hand, turning to expose the soft inside of my wrist.

Lips touch the pulse of life.

My heart pounds to the steady rhythm of the drums.

His tongue is tasting my flesh before he nips himself away from me. Fingers twine around the braids of his hair, pulling his mouth to mine.

We kiss until his descending teeth butcher my lips raw. The Nature of his Wild is speaking in the language of love that my Wild responds to in heated volumes of sound that shakes the wooden poles. The tone shifts Odin's cocoon of skin, his eyes dilate, pulse with a need, a hunger that I can taste the greed of him.

His weight pushes entirely against my body, I welcome the weight of him openly.

An inhaled breath from him, an exhaled sigh from me.

The world spins while I hold onto My Half, afraid if I let go I might fall away.

"Is this a dream?" asking Odin for guidance.

"Yes," he whispers into my open mouth. "This is only a dream, you'll wake up soon." His words seem to have a shaky vibration, can you feel words against your skin? Another kiss placed on the pulse of life except it's against my neck.

Scorching heat, the sweat of my pores bead out. Lungs fill with thick smoke because Odin has put more leaves over coals.

Closing my eyes again, the fumes hurt, the heat oppressive.

He lets his breath take over my skin.

Minutes or hours pass I'm not sure until movement is felt when I'm pulled to sit up to face Odin who is sitting crossed legged. He helps me cross my own legs, but I sway with how the world is moving.

Odin makes sure I don't tip over.

Our knees touch the other. His hands on my shoulders, thumbs tracing my collarbone to the hollow of my neck. A trace of my chin with gentle fingers.

My Half, this male that holds my sight is mine. Am I really his?

"Do you think I am an abomination, a monster, still?" Slurring syllables to my words fall awkwardly from my mouth. The pause that follows stretches itself out, but he doesn't take his eyes off of mine. Maybe he didn't understand me because it seemed that my sound is jumbled up.

He still hasn't answered, so I try to ask the question again, but it's stuttered in the middle of my throat.

"You have always been my monster, and were born an abomination." Odin's voice sounds out after several minutes of waiting silence.

"Can you love a monster?" The speech comes thickly to my mouth. Looking into him, trying to see his soul. The Wild within him shifts himself underneath the trap of skin. There is an abyss to the engorging darkening pupils that pull me towards him...My Half.

"I am in love with my abomination." It's an instant turn up of my lips, the pull so big that there is no hiding it. His lips pull up in his own way, the way I love to see.

The pounding of my heart is heard in a chorus of thundering rushing blood in my ears. It sways me to the left to the point of tipping over. Odin catches me, with a hand on my shoulder he extends a wooden cup towards me that's been kept warm by the rocks.

The world spins.

"Drink this My Half." Odin's voice ghosts itself in my ears, the cup placed against half-open lips.

"What is it?" Barely able to get the words out, there seems an inability for my tongue to create long trails of speech.

"Thistle milk." He sounds far away, but his eyes are right in front of me.

"What?"

"We will drink this together." He tips the cup to his lips first and takes the smallest of sips before the container is placed against my mouth.

The vibrations of the drums become

Hypnotic

Pulsing

Paralyzing

The liquid tips down my throat, vibrations of the drums are all I can focus on. Another cup touches my bottom lip, thick white fluid drips on my thigh that escapes my mouth, one more cup that I drink down in a stomach heaving revolt.

Fur hits my spine again, and I close my eyes...

A deep cramp catches me off guard, clarifying the surroundings momentarily while I feel the urgent need to defecate.

Another cramp pulls me into a fetal position, moaning long agony as the cramps hit low in pulsing waves. Strong arms lift me up, the opening of the dome brings the harsh afternoon light stinging my eyes, closed.

There is a new onslaught to the billowing breaths of sage from the fires that have been started all around the perimeters. Grey smoke creates a world where shadows are dancing into one another. I can't help what is being released out of me when we get near a stream of running water. I defile Odin as liquid waste pulses out without any ability to stop it.

Getting into the fast-moving stream, he holds me in the water while it washes away my excrements.

"What's happening?" Looking at Odin as the water gets deeper and more profound along his chest line.

"This is our cleansing."

Violent spasms harness all my concentration as I expel everything inside of me. Odin holds me through it all, pressed against his bare chest, while the rolling, flowing water cleans away the refuge instantly. It takes several hours with us in the stream holding one another for this to stop, and even when I think the thistle has done its job - a renewed much more vicious set of cramping carry on until nothing is left inside me.

An internal promise is made to myself, I will never use thistle on anyone again, no matter what they do to me.

Getting close to the edge of the water, I'm placed on a protruding bolder that only has it's surface showing, the rest of it is buried in the ground. Odin takes a cloth dipping it into a paste that's the color of moss. He lathers it underneath my armpits, down my arms, my legs are next.

A white burning heat starts eating corrosively, no it's burning my skin.

"Odin it's too hot."

"It won't last long, I promise." He's going faster now, scouring my skin raw with this paste before he touches between my legs.

"Odin," trying to pull away from the pain of this. I smell the singe of hair off the body. He starts at my mound, making sure to get all around my sex including anus.

Again I am dipped in the water until the sensation of being burned alive passes and I can focus again. He gives me tea to drink, and I greedily gulp it down two of the wooden cups. Odin takes a small sip himself, his hands shake slightly.

It's my turn to watch Odin, he takes the same paste, but it looks diluted green instead of the color my paste was. He starts with his arms, his chest, his legs. His armpits are next until my eyes watch him scrub between his legs, his balls are handled by him with care. A grimace on Odin's face is the only thing that tells me he feels what I just felt.

When he comes out of the water, he's without hair from the neck down. He's smooth and bare just like me.

The canvas of his skin shines pulling my eyes to him.

Odin's hand touches the apex of my legs, his finger smoothes over the clean surface to trace along my outer folds. His mouth at my neck, that finger pressing into my inner folds at my dampening entrance before pulling it away.

A different kind of heat rages inside me now. A temperature that wants to burn hotter - wants to feast on what Odin can give me. But before that can happen, Odin pulls his finger away, leaving my needful sex begging for that digit's return.

"It's time to start painting you, Charlie." It's just Odin and I, in the middle of a clearing, with a fog of sage veiling the rest of the world out.

The drums can still be heard not far away in the distance, they seem to have gotten closer.

Odin carries me to a fur that's laying on the ground; torches flames dance high in the sky.

Drums are sounding louder and louder, a low chanting has started.

Odin dips the most beautiful ivory handled paintbrush into a bowl; it comes out with black.

He touches the tip to my hair free mound. He starts with a stroke upwards into my lower abdomen that holds a slight tickle of touch.

"What kind of paint is that?"

"Squid ink, it will put a stain on your body so it can't be washed off easily, it should last a week. I won't use paint on you, only stain. It will soak in the layering of your skin." His knee pushes into my inner thighs apart spreading my legs more for him.

"What are you drawing?" Looking at the concentration of his eyes, they are focused without a blink.

"I'm painting you in my image, this is the first symbol to stain your body."

"What's the symbol?" Blinking my eyes because I can see all the particles of air around us, they move when I breathe out.

"Fertility." Another stroke of the brush before being dipped back in the ink that feels cool against my skin. Closing my eyes, the goosebumps start with every glide of the bristles. He's covering my entire sex. My legs are spread more as the cold ink touches my outer lips. His finger takes a liberal stoke to feel around my other hole. A sensitive spot that clenches when touched.

I shiver and squirm, pulsing, surging with a desire.

Long gliding strokes of the brush melt the bones inside my body, liquifying my marrow.

The ink saturating into my skin like a canvas.

He brings living art to flesh with his skilled hands.

When he inspects his work, I let my fingertip run over his shaft. I get to watch it grow in my hand.

Firm

Hard

Erect.

Odin stills, looking down at me, shaking his head...no. My hand is removed from his appendage.

I get to see the image he just painted on me.

The palm of his hand runs over my right breast, he's so close to me that the oxygen in my body seems to be abducted.

"Breathe, Charlie." Ancient forest greens capture me. Lips touch mine, "it will be over soon." He begins to paint my chest in the colors of him.

An arch of my back because this feels good, the glide, the stroke of paintbrush around my nipple hardens it to the sensation of being teased stiff.

The breath escapes out in a slow push past parted lips in a recess of a raw moan.

The flesh of his tongue tastes mine before pulling away to keep working on his art.

His brushstrokes

Intice

Excite

Claim my skin.

The scent of the deep fertile soil overpowers the sage so I can breathe fully again.

It feels good to breathe him in, only him, only My Half.

The day is giving up it's rights to the night.

The low hues of dusk threatening the illusion of sight.

Closing my eyes because in the shadows I see the Moon in eyes that hold her color. A whine of a hurt pup creeps into the surrounds, Odin's hands shake now. He's looking around, but not where I am looking.

I see those eyes; they are on me. I can't look away as the vision of white turn the color of Grey and Gold. A face of a male focuses before it's lost in the blink of my eyes.

The fullness of the Moon shines down in a glow of energy, along with a converging mass of color that collides with one another before separating apart in a kaleidoscope of movement.

White energy forms a body, not to be outmatched - the colors of the spectrum shape a body as well.

Blue eyes match both of their bodies.

"Charlie..." The wind whispers around to flicker the torch flames flat before they rise again.

"Odin, I'm afraid." He's already picked me up, running...

"Can you see them, Odin?" Panicked sound escaping as a small scream.

"See who, Charlie?"

"I'm not sure, but they look to be the same except one holds the color of the Moon and the other holds the color of the World. But they have the exact same eyes."

"You've had a lot of mushrooms, Charlie. I don't see anything, but I hear the Night coming. We need to get inside; It's been saged fully, nothing can get in."

When looking out of the opening right before Odin closes the flap, I see the Night, his golden eye, and grey eye staring at the body of the Moon; a long slender arm reaches out to try and touch her. It doesn't make contact the Moon shedding her energy; her face comes into focus with a blink, she has diamond tears dripping down her cheek before she vanishes in a fury of particles scattering themselves away. The Night is left standing by himself for Nature's arm to reach out to him before he pulls himself away with a long mournful cry.

He prowls around with his nose up, flaring before those eyes focus solely on me. The tent flap shuts right before he leaps at the entrance. Clawing, scratching is heard, a shake of the shelter, sage put on the fire.

The Night wants inside.