Worshipping at Aphrodite's Feet

"Naama, could I speak with you for a minute please?" The High Priestess stood aside to let Naama enter her chamber. "Sit, please." Naama did so, back straight, eyes slightly widened in concern, hands folded in her lap.

"You're not in trouble, Naama, don't look so frightened. I just need your help with one of the girls," the High Priestess said, sitting gracefully amidst the flowing folds of a midnight blue gown that fell and settled softly into order around her.

The Priestess picked up a silver tea pot, her arm perfectly aligned into the graceful curve the girls had to practice over and over until their elbows and wrists cramped. Each movement the High Priestess made as she poured the deep amber liquid was part of the one before and the one after such that each was part of a long, smooth wave of motion. She poured the spicy scented tea into two delicate china cups without a ripple or so much as a single drop spilled. Then motioning to the cup closest to Naama in invitation she picked up her own cup cradling it between her hands.

Picking up the cup carefully, as she'd been taught, Naama thought about her place in the inner courtyard. She knew she was an anomaly having had only two lovers and a handful of other experiences to date. There might have been a third, someone she had liked very much, but he'd been killed in the outer sector where the war was still being fought.

She'd met with him in one of the private pavilions along the waterfront the last time she'd seen him and while she wasn't ready to decide on whether to take him as her third taimirah, she had let him go farther than she'd allowed the other two prior to taking her fully. With the first it was expected that no serious sexual contact occurred prior to the ceremony, though some girls preferred some experience before their actual ceremony night.

Although not permitted to complete the act, they could do just about everything else as long as they were discrete about it. They were also not permitted to have anal relations or to take the boy into their mouths. While the latter was a deserved right of all men, the former was a deserved right of women, at least those chosen to be trained within the center courtyard. That meant that anal relations were under the prerogative of the woman and she could refuse should she choose to do so.

Naama had refused both her first lovers in this. While she wasn't opposed completely to sexual pain, having a romantic attraction to showing the man she was with her commitment to his pleasure, anal relations was a type and level of pain she did not feel she would be able to tolerate. Each of the girls was required to be tested in all manner of the arts from the most basic - touching of the lips and having a finger gently inserted into their mouths to suck on, to tastes of the most exotic, involving bondage and having a variety of object placed at the entrances to both lower openings without being told ahead of time that none would actually be inserted.

Not knowing if any of the large, rough or electrified objects might be inserted, tested the ratio involving the girls fantasies compared to her readiness to experiment where pain was involved. This served to help instruct the girls prior to obtaining a long term or permanent patron who might rightfully make such demands of them depending on the largesse of his Patron fee.

The men who became patrons were not the same boys who the girls first explored their sexuality with in the inner courtyard. These men were from the next ring out and while they had not been trained as the boys of the inner courtyard had been, they had received training in allowing their full male constitution to determine their sexual desires without guild, shame or regret. Many of those desires had been experienced and honed with sexual slaves when the men went on Adventure Recreations Departures in the slaves sector. This provided them with the knowledge to pursue hard and rough play with their subjugates, while also further educating them on how to carry out extreme forms of numerous sexual acts giving them the confidence to pursue them.

Patron's became a girl's lord-master, and protector, and she was expected to show her appreciation, fealty and dedication to her patron in whatever it was he wished, provided it did not fully overstep the acts listed as hard refusal's in her contract.The girls had been told that the most serious experimentation was under the category of deserved rights for them. However, the High Priestess had also stated that at some point a patron would likely expect that they choose at least one thing from the category on their hard refusal list as an indication of willingness to accept the male's right to dominance. Naama knew that many Patron's insisting on at least attempting a variety of acts on their hard refusal list.

This was the natural social order of the new world society, though what a male's right to dominance meant differed in terms of remaining rights for women, depending on where the women found herself. The further out from the center courtyard one went the more a woman's rights decreased. No women were normally allowed in the outer three rings. The first of these was where the medical services for their soldiers was located, while the second was a staging area for those fighting where they either entered or exited the active war zone. The outer most ring was the actual combat theater where the war was taking place.

The reason women weren't permitted in those zones was that first, as you got further away from the center the deserved rights of women were respected less and less. Sexual slaves, who had no deserved rights at all served in the zone just inside the soldier's medical zone. Sexual slaves were the lowest status in the new world. Naama didn't know what was less than no rights but she really didn't want to find out.

The second reason women were banned from the outer three rings was that the men there were given implants that blocked much of the impulse control governed by the frontal lobe of the brain. This part of the brain led to behavioral disinhibition in terms of violence. Without it, well, things must have gotten exceedingly frightening. The men were also regularly dosed with testosterone such that their levels were constantly kept extremely high, another measure intended to increase their willingness to commit violence against the enemy. While an agent was included that prohibited them from feeling violent urges towards their fellow soldiers, this did not extend to women as no women served in the military.

Only women convicted of the most heinous crimes ever spent time in the outer three zones and then only as punishment for their crimes. Some of the possible sexual acts that such a woman might find herself forced to endure had been described to them by the High Priestess in an effort to encourage them to live on the right side of the law. Yet there were countless others that were either only hinted at or left entirely to the girl's imaginations as judged too disturbing to share with them. Given what had been described, Naama could only imagine what had been withheld, and she was determined that such a fate would never befall her.

Naama knew what she could likely tolerate and what she likely could not. This was based on the testing that occurred throughout their education. They tested t a girl's tolerance for anal relations by inserting a probe into her anus. Since this was related to a deserved right for the girl she was permitted to ask that the insertion be stopped if it became too painful for her. The probe started out thin, about half the circumference of her pinky and slowly thickened by "joints" like the ones in a finger. At the end of each "joint" the insertion was paused so the girl could try to acclimate to the sensation and level of pain or to allow her to say" stop". As soon as the second pause began, with the probe inserted barely an inch, Naama had quickly said stop.

Naama silently sipped her tea, lowering it to admire the design and how thin the china was. You could see the rich color of the tea through the wafer thin porcelain on which was painted the palest pink roses held aloft by pastel mint green leaves. No one knew from where the High Priestess had gotten the china service as it was thought all such things of beauty had been destroyed in the wars many ages past. The service was truly a treasure, one of many that belonged to the High Priestess it was rumored. Most believed the objects were gifts from patrons from an earlier time in her life.

Her famed Fabergé Egg, the Rosebud Egg, sat in its place of honor on the high alter of sacrifice. The egg was given by Tzar Nicholas II to his new wife in 1894 of the old calendar. The egg was not a favorite of the Tzarina since its blood red enamel reminded her of the fact her son suffered from hemophilia, a bleeding disorder without apparent cure. The color, of course, held positive significance for the girls ceremony for bleeding during the ritual was believed to be a sign of pleasing the spirits of motu corporum in gyrum.

The alter held items that were related to the girls' Claret Tantra ceremony, items they were loaned so as to look radiant, and innocent yet knowing , a phrase that was embedded within them from shortly after being selected to follow the path of the chosen. The night of a girl's ceremony would be preceded by a full day of preparation by the other priestess acting almost like ladies in waiting, helping her bath, dress in her undergarments of silk and linen, and accompany her to the chamber of the High Priestess. The High Priestess would greet the girl and her entourage and vacate the premises for the day while the other priestess helped the girl use items that had been arrayed upon the high alter for her use this night.

The final contracts would have already been signed by the High Priestess and the High Priest of Dagon, the leader of the Dagonian establishment and the male equivalent of the High Priestess. Yet whereas the girls of the inner courtyard were taught the art of the science of love, a serious discipline that must be practices and learned over much of a young woman's lifetime, the boys were taught quite differently.

Given the nature of the male dominated society, the boys were taught how to access their inner most desires and come to accept them as part of who they were, learning to believe that those things which they wanted and originally believed they should be ashamed of wanting was the opposite. These desires were what made them men. Embracing these desires even if all of the girls and later women they came into contact with would not abide by some of these desires, they were also taught ways to convince women that their desires were good and wholesome, that for the woman to truly serve him as she was expected to meant allowing at least some of these desires to be acted out.

Many of the girls had a difficult time understanding these ways and paths of instruction since women had deserved rights so how could these rights exist when men had base desires they were encouraged to give into, even the first time. Patrons were said to have the right to ask for things which a girl had been taught she could refuse but actually couldn't. There were many group discussions about this and over time the girls were able to hold the competing ideas together, at least as long as they remained within the inner courtyard which was encircled by the outer courtyard and then the walls of the outer court which were huge and within which the boys lived and learned.

Naama took another sip of her tea carefully raising it, bringing it to mouth and slightly tilting it just enough for a swallow of the honey sweetened heated liquid to be gathered into her mouth. For a moment she thought there was the taste of peach blossoms, though how she knew from those she was unsure. Placing her cup on its matching saucer, and balancing it perfectly upon her knee as she had been taught, she waited for the High Priestess to inform her of her task.

After, another moment of companionable silence, the Priestess said, "The girl's name is Emerald. She should have selected a lover last month and still is no closer to doing so now. She reminds me of you , her stubbornness, her refusal to choose."

"But what good would I be," Naama asked, confused. " I was the exact same way. How could that possibly help her?"

"I don't think you are giving yourself enough credit, Naama. Consider perhapst explaining how your beliefs came about and how these beliefs colored your willingness to take your first lover. You are free to tell her as much or as little as you want so long as you think before speaking and determine the reason you a sharing something. Whatever you choose to tell her is up to you. I only ask that you give great consideration to everything that you intend to say. Impress upon her how it was that you were finally able to make the choice and how relieved you were to finally have turned that corner just as she will be. She simply has to choose.

"

Not so simple for some of us

," Naama thought. But if the High Priestess wanted Naama to try to explain what came to pass leading up to her own Claret Tantra ceremony to the girl she would do so. She gave the High Priestess a slight nod of acquiescence and lifted the light porcelain cup to her mouth once more, her movement calm and flowing, so as not to give away her discomfort at sharing her reasoning, desires, hopes, dreams and fears.