Author's Note: Hey lovelies! What's coming up is more of a mini-chapter than a full-length one. It just made more sense tonally for it to be its own thing since it's mainly backstory with more of a mild horror vibe than an erotic one and squishing it into the rest of the chapter I've been writing felt uncomfortable and has been delaying my posting anything at all.
I really don't recommend here as a place to jump in if you're new to the story or just here for sexy time. Chapter one is always the ideal place to begin! (Unless you only want a very short hit to find out if you can stand my writing style.)
Enough preamble. Let's do this.
Chapter Six: Kasita's Summoning
Kasita once told me about her first love. A nun by the name of Marianne.
Like I, Kasita had once been pious and had sort for herself a life of devoted sisterhood within the convent. However, while I had never made it so far as to cross the Abbey threshold, Kasita had lived in the Lord's service for at least decade past her sixteenth birthday.
She was a certain kind of content in that life. Her imagination of what a happy life should be was limited to the life that she was living, and so by that logic, she thought herself to be living well and joyously.
And yet, she felt a craving. Not articulated in the language of her thoughts but somehow present in the constitution of her body. An itch, or a whisper, or a want on the inside of her wrist or the within pulse of her throat. She could not even think to place it elsewhere in her body. She was too ignorant of what women were capable of.
Kasita had always noticed a beautiful woman's hair or fine eyelashes. She thought her friend Charity had lovely delicate hands. She sometimes noted that the Mother Superior had a very elegant way of walking.
But when Marianne arrived at the nunnery, Kasita experienced a revelation. She was instantly, utterly, and uncontrollably in love.
Marianne had hazy origins. She did not like to talk of from where she had come. She was not specific about her age or the number of her siblings. Kasita was curious, but ultimately chose to be content with not knowing. If Marianne's past was full of sins, well, she was making atonement for them now, was she not?
Marianne had a sun-kissed complexion; eyebrows that suggested her hair might be honey-blonde beneath her habit, and rich brown eyes that seemed to betray knowledge of luxury and pleasure.
And when Marianne declared, in a letter inked upon her own wrist (lest the evidence of parchment see her excommunicated) that she loved Kasita with all the ecstasy of a saint: well, the two women became lovers immediately...
When Kasita got to this part of the story, I wanted to beg her not to tell me a word more. My jealousy bubbled under my skin. She was my first love, and I could hardly bear not to be hers. But I had told her that I would listen, and so I did.
It was a chaste affair by Kasita's account. They held hands and each other when they could. They touched the tips of their noses. They washed each other's feet. Their love existed in an intense silence and was known only through actions that could be read at a glance as mere sisterhood. But they knew that they wanted each other and that was almost enough.
Marianne drew as well as wrote. Usually it was flowers, or birds or angels. She had a gift for both style and likeness, adorning Kasita's skin in beautiful illustrations that stayed hidden beneath long black sleeves, until night came and they were scrubbed away with a brick of soap...
***
The first winter of their love brought with it a terrible amount of sickness. Many women in the convent died of fevers. And so in these sorrowful circumstances, Kasita and Marianne came to be digging in the churchyard.
I do not know whose spade struck it, but festering in the ground was a leather-bound book. Beneath the soil, the colours were strange, turquoise and orange and thistle pink. It was full of unreadable language and odd pictures. Constellations and candles and beings who were not our folk.
The book made Kasita uneasy.
"Let's put it back, or burn it. Or at least if we are to keep it show it to the Mother Superior and get permission-"
Marianne put a finger to her paramour's lips. She wanted only to study the illustrations. Perhaps attempt to mix some of the unusual inks. What harm could possibly come of it? With a reassuring smile, she hoisted the book easily from Kasita's hands.
For some weeks, they did not talk about the book. There was too much grief and caretaking to be done in the convent. But Marianne did study the illustrations. She drew them, practised them again and again on the inside of her forearm. Until one day she decided that she had mastered the symbols...
She woke Kasita in the middle of the night.
"We need to go,"
"Go where?"
No answer.
