The Bells That Toil Part 2

The sunlight, a welcome occurrence in the deepest winters, stirs Pyotr awake. Under the heavy bearskin covers, he gradually becomes aware of another body beside him. This is not especially strange to him. He often has a pliable woman beside him after a night of emptying his seed over and over into a willing soft vessel.

This morning, something feels different. The body is tentative, shy, velveteen softness. He opens his eyes, and consciousness not returns to him fully, and Bethesda lies pinioned by his heavy arms. She is awake, rosy cheeks indicate her rising embarrassment now that Pyotr is awake. She smiles, a mixture of tenderness, fear, and vulnerability. It is clear she is unaccustomed to a man's body, unaccustomed to her own nakedness.

Pyotr is unable to ascertain if she has enjoyed the night. All he knows is that she came twice under his forceful ministrations, pounding her relentlessly from behind, as she grunted and absorbed his thrusts.

He grunts at the thought of this, and the sensations of his member deep in her, her flesh tight and restrictive around his girth, give him the pleasure conquering warriors have when they slide their steel into the shoulders of their enemies, deep down in the cavity of the heart.

He is about to release her, to tell her to return home, when another thought, intrusive, makes itself apparent. It is the image of the kneeling Gergiuze, her mocking smile, her mocking sex, her mocking arrogance.

The calmness of his morning now dissipates, and rage fills his soul. Gergiuze has turned their victory into a mockery, and he cannot bear this. Bethesda, her body freed from his pinioning arms, moves aside, and prepares to rise, shy, timid, as if she knows his eyes will be devouring her naked form in the soft light of the morning sun.

His rage blinds him. And in one swift gesture, he grabs hold of Bethesda's long, silken hair, and yanks her backwards into bed, his body is tremulous in its rising rage. He pins her to the bed, rising over her, his heavy thighs straddling her svelte shuddering form. She sees his desire, and she trembles, and soon, she senses the rising heat, between his thighs, the member, with its thick girth pressing against her belly, its heat palpable, its intent clear.

She remembers her initial shock at the sight of his sex, her first sight of anything so threatening, so incomprehensible. But the second its engorged purple head parts her petals, she loses all sense of meaning, all notions of order, and her body splits in two. She remembers him entering deep into her. It seemed he went in so deep, her heart was pierced.

Now, she knows this is a fate she cannot avoid, she parts her thighs, her eyes on him. She knows what he wants, needs. His eyes have the same fiery blaze from last night. It terrifies her, this look, but her terror is also comforting -- submit to the terror, and the terror is no more, submit, and you become part of the terror, part of the universe that swirls around it.

Mixed with the fear and anticipation of the pain she will suffer again is the feeling of being blessed, the feeling of being one with him, the Saviour of her people, the sense of being conjoined, and made whole. She has the sense of floating, transcendent, as he rams himself into her. His girth stings, tears open her pink gateway, in the tearing, she feels a kind of complete loss of thought, her mind enters a dark space, a subterranean cave. She arches her back, as if doing so could alleviate the raw sting of his Godhead into her.

He slides in. No. Crashes in. She can feel its heat surging through her, up her belly, every part of her, parting like the red sea.

Her whole being is consumed, she feels his arrow shoot right through her, parting her insides, landing in her heart. Her breath comes fast, a suffocation, and she no longer thinks, she is mere sensation. Darkness begins to cloud her vision, and it is as if she has stepped into a room with no windows and no doors, a room where the walls are lined with the deepest black velvet. There she remains in this darkened room, sensing his hot breath, his musky manliness, his savage grunting, the hot prong of his lust moving rapidly, in and out, and she floats, weeps, in joy and confusion.

She wants this to carry on. A peace descends upon her, a peace that mingles with the pain, which courses through her viscera, and soothes, comforts, eases, it's as if she has trulky found her place in the world, her feet plamted firmly on his soil.

His rising rage tumbles her, she is buffeted by the winds of his passion, her hands reaching for his shoulders, to steady herself as she is buffeted. She has a distant sensation of drowning, how, where, she has no clue, but she drowns, waves sweeping around her, in her, through her, and in some dream, she hears her cry out, a long drawn out howl. Her body burns, outside and in, and something explodes in her, hot lava, flooding her, washing over her.

Then there is stillness. He is here somewhere, around her, somewhere. Then his voice.

Go, he says. Go now.

Somehow, she leaves his chambers, her legs unsteady, her head dizzy, and some women, their voices swimming around her, hastily clothe her, till she is out in the day.

Strangely, the day is warm, despite the frost, despite the bit frost-bitten air, and the bells toil, as they do when the day awakens. She is burning up, tied to a stake where the fires of his lust become the fires that keep her upright. She feels consumed by some higher force, his higher force, and yet, she feels disoriented by her surroundings, a surreal alienation from the world, forged by an unimaginable connection with the man whose very presence feeds the tribe. She knows she will never be herself, never be the Bethesda of her mother's making. She is the child of his fire, his crucible enraged eroticism.

She is guided back to her mother's home, the voices of the women joyful, proud, exuberant. Yet, she suddenly feels so far from home.