BRUTUS

Though the storm was finished but the night remained, Gayla kept clinging to the altar. While her cheeks and skin were drying of rain and tears, her body still trembled with fear and exposure.

Her widened, swollen eyes were fixed on him.  

“Caelum?”

As if with deaf ears, he just lay there on his back, so close to her. He was naked as she was, shaking, sweating, and suffering for air. Compared to hers, his skin was even more unblemished. It was pinker and softer wherever it hadn’t been torn when his body had roughly tumbled down onto the stone floor. As her knees had been bloodied, his were too, but blood also came from his elbows, scalp, nose, and mouth. From multiple wounds it dripped, ran, and trickled into crimson puddles beside him. 

“Caelum?”

“Goo goo! Gah gah!” was all he could muster from his throat.

“Caelum?”

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

“Goo goo! Gah gah!”

Was this a test of the gods? She had offered herself to Him. As a result, the storm had subsided and the city had been saved from ruin, but the altar fire and the burning dove had been flung to the cliffs and doused in the sea. And now a man – a god? – Caelum? – had been set down before her. Was he a gift? An answer to her prayers? All of her prayers had been to Caelum, and Caelum was the hand behind all lightning, thunder, and rain. What was she to do? Was this a test?

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists. “Goo goo! Gah gah!”

He is a full-grown man in body, if not in mind, she observed. He’s even more beautiful than the boy from the village I saw bathing in the river before I came here and made my oaths. I felt so naughty crouching amongst the reeds and secretly watching, especially when the passion started in my lungs, burned its way down, and made love’s water flow from me. And seeing Him here, beside me now, makes me feel the same way again.

It has to be Caelum. I have only prayed to Him.

“I have remained a virgin for you, my love.”

He must want me, because he is just as ready as any horse I’ve ever watched mount a mare in my father’s stables, and I have only prayed to Him. I have taken my oaths and have stayed pure for Him. This is my duty, and this is why passions’ waters are swelling inside of me, trickling down my thighs. It is my duty.

He jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists. “Goo goo! Gah gah!”

So Gayla let go of the altar and gingerly crawled to him on hands and bleeding knees. Kneeling in the warm pools of blood at his side, she prayed:

“Caelum,
Lord of the Four Winds, Heaven, and Sky,
Please open your holy mouth,
Inhale the body of the dove for succor…”

When her prayer was finished, though both her and his heart and lungs were racing, she threw her slender thigh over him, captured a deep breath, clenched her teeth, and took him straightaway into her body.

“My Lord!” she screamed as her flesh tore, as her mixed water and blood streaked down over his hips and thighs and pooled with the blood at his sides.

“Caelum, Caelum, my Lord…” she moaned as she rocked her wounded knees in their bodies combined fluids; pools spilled from each of them onto the floor before the altar.

As her supple hips rolled back and forth, he jerkily kicked his feet and clenched fists.

“Caelum, Caelum…” she moaned as she rocked and clinched her ivory buttocks, as her long hair tickled his chest.

“Goo goo! Gah gah!” he erupted.

 “Caelum, Caelum, my love…” she gasped as she swallowed his seed.