Disclaimers:
Summary:
Warnings:
Notes:
|
"
by
She was working out a particularly devious charm involving herbs gathered in the dark of a lunar eclipse when his piercing, derisive laughter disturbed her yet again. She quickly and deliberately smoothed away the angry frown of frustration that had rippled across her face and wreathed her lips in the blandly pleasant simper that seemed to please him.
"It's no use your trying to dissemble, my dear," the Ancient One cackled dryly in his characteristic washerwoman's screech. "I can tell I've interrupted your work one too many times today. If I were any less than the omnipotent being that I am, I might need to apologize, lest I found I had trespassed upon your hospitality one too many times. As it is ... you're stuck with me, like it or not."
"Don't be silly," she murmured, involuntarily splitting the bit of bark she held between carmine-lacquered nails into a thousand sharp fragments that went spraying all over the floor of the cave. "I live for your visits ... for your instruction." She felt her cheeks scald with the blood of barely suppressed fury, and hoped he would take it for a demurely blushing humility of the student awaiting enlightenment.
"Do you, my dear," he said casually, then turned to grip her chin with two fingers that seemed as cold and ruthless and forged steel, as he pulled her lowered face upwards, so that her eyes bored directly into his own-cold, critical, shrewdly appraising. "Well, well. So THAT'S the lay of the land. I knew that when I returned your memories to you, you would find some difficult lessons. Mind you don't make me consider OTHER methods of tuition ... ones that would make the disciplines I have already imposed upon you seem as gracious as a mead of milk and honey."
Despite her better sense, despite her awareness of her own weakened position before his mocking authority, she could not resist putting her own scarlet-nailed hand over his and, with one taut, cat-like movement, shoving him aside. His look, in response, was one of surprise. She turned away, expecting to be blasted on the spot, and was alarmed to feel two tears streaking her cheeks with hot shame.
"Yes ..." She heard his voice speaking behind her, no longer disdainful, but now calmly considering. "Difficult lessons indeed. You're quite at sea, aren't you my dear? No longer able to focus upon your work with the same quiet ruthlessness you had before? You find yourself ... beleaguered by emotions that overwhelm you. For all your powers, you've never felt so helpless before in your life."
"There's no need to gloat," she snapped, moving back to her work table, no longer even attempting to conceal the scowl that twisted her features. "If you wanted to retard my progress in my studies, you couldn't have done a better job. I hope you're pleased."
"Pleased? My dear," he cooed, apparently all mollifying concern. She twitched away from his soothing touch, knowing the perverse pleasure he took in her torment. He'd probably even spied on her writhing in the middle of the night, her body wracked with sobs as she lay on her mat, unable to rest, unable to do anything except weep. Seeing HIS sweet soulful face ... the face of her lover, his darkly passionate eyes and warm lips again and again descending towards her ... only to reach out and feel ... nothing. The nothingness that left her heart a wintery desert. Empty of life.
"I know you think I'm just an annoying old meddler," she heard him ramble on, speaking to her as if from a great height. She felt the tears swimming in her eyes again. Why did these feelings have to overwhelm her? Why NOW? She shut her eyes intently, trying to black it all out. "But I do understand," he continued. "This period of your training was once called (by sages in another world you'll never know) the dark night of the soul. It is a time of yet another degree of initiation ... and, though the ordeal takes place on the internal level, it is no less harrowing than the trials you have already known in your journey. To help you understand I grant you a vision ... a vignette from the life of your favorite pet, the Beastmaster. To help you know the meaning of a love that asks for nothing in return ... and the unexpected rewards it sometimes brings ... a love quite beyond the childish weltering in ego-attachment that has been all you've known thus far in your short life, my dear ..."
She heard his voice droning away into a buzz, and opened her eyes to find herself ... nowhere. Out of the darkness she saw something, spinning towards her ... a glade in the forest ... near the Beastmaster's cave ...
Tao looked up at the sky. The light had been slanting for some time now, but had yet to make that dramatic shift to violet-gray that always signaled the onset of dusk. Dar had been out gathering food for the better part of the afternoon, and the Eiron knew that his companion was due back any moment. Fortunately, he knew that Ruh's very vocal purring would alert him to the return of the Beastmaster, so he could continue with his work for a little longer. He was almost finished now.
The cloak lay spread before him over the grassy floor of the glade. Its earthy brown color disguised the fact that the cloth was of the finest, most durable quality. In full sunlight the brown shimmered with discreet hints of green that gave a serene pleasure to the eye and did not detract from the cloak's natural coloring, that blended in to the pervading greens and browns around him so well. It seemed an appropriate garment for one who spent his life foraging for food in the woodlands, communing with animals who were as his own flesh and blood, and who had many enemies among the Terrons and even stranger creatures beyond the imagination of most.
Tao frowned with concentration as he worked on the final touch he had planned for the cloak: a small bronze badge in the form of a tiger's face he was slowly and laboriously sewing next to the clasp at the throat. He had had the needle and thread put by for the longest time, not knowing for what precise purpose they would be used. To serve in aiding an adornment for a very special gift for Dar seemed an unexpected bit of serendipity for such trifling articles, relics of a past that seemed increasingly remote.
He smiled as he recalled the encounter with the itinerant trader from whom he had procured the cloak. It had been one of those late summer afternoons when Dar had been off foraging for a full day. The young Eiron had been strolling through the woods, studying the various plants that dotted the sheltered places where the trees grew thick off the accustomed pathways used by most. He had been trained in how to discern plants that could heal from those that would kill; there were various simple tests that could be performed to determine an herb's basic properties. Those that seemed of value he was carefully collecting in a small bag which he hung from his belt. The last thing he had ever expected was to stumble upon a lone traveler's makeshift camp. Of course he had had to know all about the stranger, where he came from, what lands and peoples he had met in his travels. They had talked, and the man had shown him some of the goods he bartered and sold in the villages of the Mydlands. Tao's eye had lighted upon the cloak - a thing more useful and more precious than he had ever hoped to find. The leaves were turning, fruits were falling, and he knew that colder weather was on its way. He had never seen his friend Dar wear anything but the simple breech-clout he wore evidently more for modesty and because it would not impede his swift silent flights through the forest. And he had found himself worrying how Dar would be able to survive the cold season without protective clothing of some sort.
Of course, he had nothing to offer in payment for such a wondrous garment as the cloak ... and it had come as a surprise when the stranger had offered to present it to him as a gift ... in exchange for one evening spent as his guest in his tent ...
The stranger was not a tall man; he stood perhaps an inch taller than Tao, if that much. His cool gray eyes sparkled appreciatively as he met Tao's answering smile with a shy, sexy grin of his own. His dark brown hair, lean aquiline features, pale smooth skin, and soft manicured hands were about as far away from Dar as one could get. Yet the Eiron could not deny his host's charm. And he needed that cloak - for Dar.
"Persuade me," he had murmured, as his new friend pulled him close, and with hands firm yet respectful began a very special dance all over the Eiron's body. Soon they were kissing, just lightly tasting one another's lips, then plundering each other's mouths. Tao had been surprised at the hint of violence in the sudden fervor with which the man had moved to possess him - and surprised, too, at the taut readiness of his own body to join with the pale, lean limbs of this wanderer of the forest paths.
Gently, yet fiercely, the man had undressed him. He had paused lovingly over Tao's nipples, taking each swelling berry in his mouth with delicate care, lapping it with his tongue, teasing it, nipping it provocatively with his teeth, till Tao groaned and felt the screams of pleasure barely remaining trapped within his throat.
Grinning at the delicious spectacle of a hard, squirming, half-delirious Tao completely at his mercy, the stranger quickly got rid of his own clothes. The feeling of his skin over Tao's chest and thighs as he drew him into a tight, hot embrace and ravished his mouth with more kisses drove the Eiron into an even greater frenzy. The memory of the remainder of the evening was a blur - he recalled screaming near the end as the amazing mystery man impaled himself upon Tao's huge engorged cock, the dark moist sweetness of the stranger's tightly muscled buns squeezing upon his own dick with a rhythmic splendor that had him on the verge of swooning when both men finally, devastatingly came and he filled that glorious hole with wave upon wave of rampant Eiron spunk. The fitting tribute of generations of scholarly zeal.
Tao sighed, memories flooding him with far more plangent poignancy than even the sensation of his own seed flooding the stranger's guts with mind-zapping bliss. Afterwards, as he had been groggily dropping off to sleep, the stranger's hands tracing a slow thoughtful dream tapestry over his back, he heard his companion ask: "Who is Dar?"
"Dar? Why do you ask?" He was soooo sleepy, he could barely make his lips frame the question.
"Oh, just that you must love him very much. You nearly deafened me, shouting his name back there."
"Did I?" Darkness was swallowing him ... exhaustion a vast cloud upon whose bosom he drifted gratefully.
"Yes. He must be far away. If I heard a man calling my name like that ... well, I would make it a point to be there. Permanently."
He couldn't remember what the stranger said after that. When he woke up the next morning, he had been wrapped up in the cloak, and the traveler had gone. He had left a small, intensely fragrant blossom next to Tao's cheek, as if to say: Remember me.
There! The tiger brooch had been stitched successfully to the bit of fabric below the clasp. He hoped Dar would like it. Perhaps he would simply laugh. Or just stare at it with that expression of puzzled bafflement with which he so frequently greeted Tao's inventions and experiments. Odd how, though they looked at life and the world so differently, he felt a closeness to Dar he had never felt to any other being - female or male...
Ruh's growling, insistent purr interrupted his reverie, and he quickly began folding the cloak up to bundle it up and hide it in his traveling bag, where he had kept it carefully concealed.
"Beastmaster: The Legend Continues" is the property of Tribune Entertainment Co.
All series, movies and characters are the properties of their respective owners. No infringement of those rights is intended. All fics on this site are the copyrighted property of their respective authors.
Site and design copyright © the other g.m.
All Rights Reserved.
