AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is a work of fiction, and is not intended to portray individuals of any faith in an unfavorable light. The author was actually married several years ago to a Wiccan High Priestess, and attended one Samhain ceremony, but any factual errors or artistic licenses are his own. Thank you.
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It is exactly one year since the death of my wife, and all I want is to be alone. It was Halloween night when she died, or Samhain, depending on what you believe. She believed in Samhain, and Samhain was what killed her, although somewhat indirectly.
I don't even know why I'm telling you this, since to talk is to indicate a desire for company, and I don't want company, I want to be alone. But I also want something to drink, and since I don't have anything at home, I guess I have to pay the price. My glass is empty, by the way. Thank you.
What's Samhain, you ask? See, you're actually paying attention, and I guess I'm flattered, in a way. Funny, it's the same question I asked my wife, the first time she brought it up. We weren't married at the time, we were in our courtship, which is an old phrase I guess, but it seemed right for us to use it. Anyway, Lyra, that was my wife's name, Lyra - Lyra said one morning that Samhain was coming up, and she showed me a flyer for a meeting of her coven. No, no, I saw the flyer first, it was on the table, and I asked her about it.
- What's sam-hain?
- It's pronounced SOW-en, dear heart, and it's one of the most important holidays ever.
- I notice that this, um, SOW-en meeting is being held on Halloween night. Is it like a costume party?
Lyra laughed her tinkling laugh, the one that told me I was _such_ a silly boy and had _so_ much still to learn.
She explained that Samhain was bastardized by the Catholic church when the first Popes realized that the people were still celebrating the pagan holidays as well as the Christian ones. So they changed Samhain to "All Hallow's Eve" and created a new holiday on November first. Lyra said they did the same thing to Winter Solstice, turning it into Christmas, and Beltane, changing it to Easter.
All of this went straight over my head. I was raised a Lutheran, and Lutherans didn't learn things like that. I am not a Lutheran anymore, and wasn't at the time Lyra was explaining it to me, but I still had quite a bit of Judeo-Christian simmering inside of me.
But I digress. Again, here I am, wanting to be left alone, and talking my head off because you actually seem to be interested in what I have to say. But you will be rewarded for listening, because my tale has sex in it, and who doesn't like a sexy story? My glass is empty. Thank you.
So we went to the Samhain celebration, at which my Lyra was High Priestess, and there was this great bonfire, and quite a bit of dancing, and not a little abandon, and even some nudity. My Lyra - and remember, we weren't married yet, this wasn't the Samhain celebration that killed her - looked glorious, dancing around the bonfire and chanting words that I'd never heard before and couldn't repeat if I tried, her long, black, wavy hair flying all around her face. There was an animalism all around me - a hearkening back to the primitive nature in those who joined in the celebration. And, I must admit, in myself as well, who merely sat on the side and watched. For me, the animalism roused a deep, feral lust in me, so much so that any woman who found herself close at hand might not be safe. I can't say for certain what it did to the others, but I'm willing to guess it was a pretty similar reaction.
Drums were beating, Lyra was dancing around the fire, arms and legs flailing. She hiked up her long skirt so that she could dance with more abandon. Her long, curvy legs gleamed in the firelight, and during one turn she made I noticed that she had gone regimental.
Excuse me? Sorry, I mean she'd either come to the celebration without panties, or she'd taken them off at some time during it. Every few moments her circuit would take her past me, and she'd catch my attention, flashing some message to me with her dark eyes and her white teeth, and then she'd kick one of her legs up high enough to show me her neatly trimmed bush.
My glass is empty. Thank you. It was doing something to me, the drumming, the dancing, the crackling flames, my Lyra's exhibitionism. I sat there squirming with lust, my erection straining against my jeans there in the semi-darkness. It was a chilly October night, but I had to take off the sweatshirt I'd put on before I left home. It was soaked with sweat.
Suddenly, more people, men and women, started dancing with Lyra, around and around and around the fire. The drumming increased in tempo, got louder, more sensual, more animal. My eyes feasted on my Lyra, or tried to, through the growing circle around the fire, frantically trying to glimpse her for the few seconds she'd appear to me before she began her next circuit. Clothes suddenly became redundant to the dancers, and as the garments fell away, so did the final remaining inhibitions.
Suddenly, in the firelight, there was my Lyra, my lovely, exciting Lyra, all of her clothes shed, "sky-clad", as I'd heard her call it. She must have disrobed on the other side of the bonfire, and picked up a sword of some kind at the same time.
Naturally, I had never seen anything like this before in my life. It's not the sort of thing you see on a Sunday in the good old Lutheran church! And while my parents, and my grandparents, and a good amount of other ancestors would have been utterly scandalized, I, on the other hand, was rapt. The message was getting through to me on a very basic level: this was the harvest festival, and the gods were pleased. The gods would be more pleased if there was some additional planting after the fire died down.
Lyra's dancing sped up, if such a thing was possible, and the blade of the sword she now wielded flashed and flickered as it caught the firelight. It soon became too difficult to discern where Lyra left off and the sword began.
Sorry? Oh, the sword - well, it wasn't your standard pirate's cutlass like you see in the movies. More like a long dagger it was, the blade about ten inches, not very ornate from what I could see. Later on, Lyra told me the name of it, but I never could get my tongue around many of the words she would use for things like that - I nicknamed it "Sting", after the Hobbit's blade in _Lord of the Rings_, and for my benefit, sharing the joke you might say, my Lyra would call it that as well, but only in private.
Where was I? Yes. So there she was, dancing with this great abandon, wantonly, the drums keeping up their frenetic thumping, and she'd stop briefly and wave Sting in a specific pattern, sometimes facing the fire, sometimes with her back to the flames. And each time, before she would continue her circuit, her final move with the blade would be a sort of mock-thrust with the point of it towards her vagina. My glass is empty. Thank you.
