. 01

THE PRIESTESS MEETS A GENERAL

Part 1: Leaving The Temple

When she awoke in the morning she did not remember what she had dreamed but she felt refreshed. Some priestesses were silently preparing for the day, dressing in gowns, moving out of the dorm to the washrooms and the food room, or leaving for early assignments. Danella remembered that this morning she was assigned to a General of the army whom she had never met or seen before, but at least she was pleased that it was not an early assignment.

Already the calm of the night began to dissipate as she became aware of the next sexual duty. She had no desire for sex this morning. Just a day without duty would have made her feel right, but she had been allotted this duty in the normal way by the High Priestesses and she had no reasonable excuse for not performing it. A general was a very important person, and she felt some pride that she had been selected. For sure she thought it would be more interesting to attend a general than a normal worker. A general led an interesting life. He would have power. He would have travelled. He would have knowledge which would be of interest to Danella. But such people were naturally clever and superior. It was most likely that he would not wish to talk to her much. She would merely be a pleasant distraction for the man in a calm morning in his busy life. The High Priestesses had selected her so that the man might take communion with his Goddess, perhaps before he left the city for distant campaigns.

She was pleased that this was a solo attendance. Often a man of rank would choose two or more priestesses to attend him. Then there would be little chance of an interesting exchange of ideas. She ought to be pleased at today's duty for that reason as well as the status of the man. Normally she was assigned to ordinary men and frequently in groups.

Danella was fully awake now but there was really no hurry to get ready. If the whole day had been her own she might have spring out of bed and done whatever she wanted, but it did not belong to her. It was just another day. She might as well relax while she had the chance. She lay back and tried to block the moving shapes of the other priestesses out of her mind as some of them quietly began to get up for their duties.

What could she think about to take her mind off the ordinary day ahead? She began to think about what the day would be like if she were truly free. For a start she would not share a dorm with the other priestesses, simple and unthinking as she viewed many of them. She would live in a house of her own. There would be tables and shelves in it filled with books which explained the world around her. She loved books. Many of the books she had read while a priestess merely repeated the advice of the High Priests and Priestesses. They explained the ceremonies and gave medical and sexual advice, but they told her nothing of the past which she did not already know. They prepared her appetite for knowledge of distant places but told her less than she wanted to know.

She wanted to appreciate the extent and variety she suspected must be out in the world. She wished to find the books she believed must exist somewhere, which would tell her all the things she wanted to know. She would write some herself, and to do that she would travel to places no priestess had ever seen before and would write down what she found out. She would be respected for what she knew and would be called upon to explain about the world and its history and about the possibilities of life to the other priestesses. She would encourage them to be curious and to know more about the world so that they could think for themselves more and be their own selves.

She would open the door of her house and walk out to the city where people no longer lived in dorms but lived separately and across the fields to other cities, each of which was different from the other. She had read about the sea and mountains and strange animals. She would see them for herself and go to the countries beyond the Empire of the Goddess and find out what they were like.

When it was time Danella rose and went for breakfast. There were few other priestesses there at that time and she avoided conversation with those who were. When she was ready she went to the exercise room for the stretching and weights which helped to keep her body in shape. The priestesses on duty today offered to massage her body, but she declined. She did not need that, and she may well receive some at the hands of the general. Now she felt ready for the day's duty. She chose her purple gown which denoted that she was on the duty of the Goddess and put on her sandals and studied the address of the general before leaving the dorm.

The address of the general was deep in the city, a fair walk, but she would enjoy it, it got her away from the Temple which did not happen every day. The sun was shining and the day was warm, the air fresh. Many agricultural workers in red tunics were standing in the fields by the Temple as twenty priestesses went through a ceremony with them, which involved taking volunteers through public acts of worship. She could hear their cries as they whipped the volunteers into frenzies of devotion.

She walked away disinterested from this everyday occurrence. A party of priests were cleaning one of their dorms. Priestesses carried provisions from the city, and others were washing gowns and hanging them up on lines to dry. Some naked priests and priestesses bathed in the sun near the river. She bypassed more dorms. She passed a small temple, where a queue of soldiers waited outside, where another ceremony was taking place. Soon she was at the end of the Temple grounds. A train carried materials and food on a busy rail. When the train had gone by she crossed over into the city.

She passed the local school on the right where teachers male and female taught the children, together for some classes, separated male and female for others. There were many small houses in this area where the family groups lived, men and women who had decided to commit themselves to living together and raising a small family. The men might be teachers, workers, clerks, even soldiers, although their frequent absence made them less fit to be fathers and most did not. Danella sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a partner and children. She had seen the people here and they seemed happy. Usually the partnerships worked very well. The two partners agreed to have children together and to raise them. Most of the raising was done by the mother while the father worked, but sometimes if the mother chose to work the father might only work part time or not at all when the children were very young and needed attention.

The couple would have a 'special' relationship with each other which was far deeper than anything Danella ever experienced as a priestess. When she had the opportunity to speak to couples she had asked them about their relationship and its benefits. She had frequently done duties to couples in their homes where both partners had been keen to share her body or sometimes when the man wished to have two women attending to him.

Often she had visited just fathers on their own. They usually spoke of the stability of their partnerships, that both their sexual and psychological bonds were close. On occasion however she had attended men who were not happy. The pressures and responsibilities of raising children were too much and couples argued about the limits of each other's responsibilities. Many such relationships did not work and couples went their separate ways. The children would stay with one or other partner, normally keeping some bond with the leaving partner, or in some cases a parent might join a small group family in which children were brought up collectively with a group of mothers and fathers. Sometimes children were brought up by employed carers, who lived with groups of children and became their parents. This occurred when there was no one else. Grandparents often took parental responsibilities when necessary.

Danella had been born into a family herself and had lived with both her parents until joining the priesthood at sixteen. With her sister and her parents she had lived a pleasant childhood. Her parents had loved each other deeply and both had been happy leading their own separate lives also. Priestesses and priests had been frequent visitors to the household as celebrants with both parents or with one. Her parents were still together in the town not far away where she had grown up. She visited them often on her free days.

She wondered whether she would have preferred to find a partner and raise a family. It was not too late, she was young and there was plenty of time to find a partner for raising a family. Her mother had been a priestess while young. She had met her father in a ceremony and he had requested her as a regular attendant. The priesthood was no permanent vocation for those who wished to become something else.

It had occurred to Danella recently that perhaps her growing disinterest in the ceremonies and her duty was a calling to find a partner and settle down. She had never considered having children as a young priestess. She had been too excited by her new life as a priestess. Even now, although she wanted to escape the repetition of her life, she did not feel she had the necessary discipline to raise children. Her family in recent years had been the other priestesses and a "child" like Carel had been her own "child" for a while, but now she was raised and had fled the nest. There would be others like Carel to be a mother to. Some of them would probably remain closer than that 'child', who was living her own life. She could not see herself spending so much time for the benefit of her children. Being a priestess made you selfish in a sense. You worried mainly about yourself and no one else. You took what pleasure you could in the life and the ceremonies.

Besides, Danella wanted to read books about the past and about distant lands, and she wanted to travel. She also wanted to write down her thoughts. One day perhaps she would publish a book. These were not the things you could do while being a mother. Maybe afterwards?

The question of finding a partner was another difficulty. She had met many men at very close quarters. It was the main part of her job. Many men who did wish to find a partner tried to select a priestess. Priestesses were in large supply, often young and attractive, and often suitable to be mothers. Danella had been asked on a few occasions to begin a relationship with a view to the possibility of a partnership, but she had always rejected it. She liked men mainly but she had seen too much of them recently. To a woman who had worshipped the Goddess with many hundreds of men over the years she felt it impossible to begin a selection. Each type of men had their favourable qualities.

Despite her wish to limit the extent of her priestly duties she did believe that worship was good for body and soul, and was pleased to be granted the variety of partners and encounters which being a priestess offered her. Partnership with a man virtually committed a woman to spend a high proportion of her worship with her partner. To do that you would have to be very devoted to someone. Danella had never felt that devoted to anyone before, but of course, being a priestess tended to prevent such a relationship developing.