The Dragon and the Dove: first excerpt.
Title: The Dragon and the Dove: a novel in three parts
Author: pax_morgana
Chapter: One
Words: 1,804
Notes/Warnings: The first portion of part one of Dragon and Dove, "Eidolon". The following excerpt contains material not suitable for those under eighteen (twenty-one in some areas) as well as material some may find disturbing. Please proceed with caution, and don't bitch at me if you come away scarred. Otherwise, enjoy!
Summary: The introductory passage. (Cross-posted to the NaNo site.)
When I was an infant, my father wanted me dead. He murdered many as a means to this end, yet it was an end he did not meet. I am alive, grown full into manhood. I have been raised to hate him and all that he stands for, by my mother who was a victim of his lusts - lusts that produced me. My mother is Queen Morgause of Orkney, wife of King Lot of the same. She is mother of my four half-brothers, and daughter of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall and his lady Ygraine. She serves the Mother Goddess, and she holds the power of the Sight and knowledge of herb-lore. Many Christians call her a witch, but I believe that she is the most beautiful and amazing woman in all of Britain.
King Lot is not my father. I am my mother's bastard and a child of rape. My father is Arthur, High King of the Britons and the son of King Uther Pendragon and Ygraine of Cornwall, once Duchess of Cornwall and after, High Queen of Britain. My father is also my uncle, and he does not know I yet live. He is content to sit in his castle with his child-bride and bask in the false-gained adoration of his so-called "fellow Britons". Up in the north, in the craggy and barren isles of Orkney, my mother sits her throne and plots the redress for the wrongs done her. I will all too willingly aid her in this, for Arthur has condemned my very existence. He destroyed my mother, and robbed me of my humanity. For this, I will see to it that he dies upon no Saxon blade, or indeed, no blade but my own.
On the very day that I reached my seventeenth year, my mother called for me to come to her chambers alone after supper. My half-brothers I left to their chatter and their games - all of them were younger than me by some measure. I was a child of six when the eldest, Gawaine, was born. He is Lot's son in full, and the old king's pride. I hate him almost as much as I hate that brute Lot, for neither of them take any care with women. If there is one thing that my mother has taught me, it is to honor women above all, for the Goddess has the aspect of such a one, and to do her daughters disrespect is to disrespect herself. A woman holds the power of Creation, the giving of Life; her body is the vessel in which the seeds of all that are come into sprout. Without a woman, there would be no man. This she taught me, and this I live by. When I entered my mother's innermost room, she sat upon her bed, which was dressed in beautiful plum linens and velvets. It was the bed in which I had been born. Only I, and not my brothers, for she said that only I deserved to come into this world in such comfort. I, who had been stolen from even before I was made. She was completely nude, save a necklace of polished obsidian that she never removed. The anchor of her Power, she said of it, and I believed her.
With a thin smile, she patted the space on the bed beside her. Toeing off my thin leather shoes, I climbed onto the velvet-robed mattress and promptly settled my head upon her pale breast. Her long, slender fingers combed through my hair, which she had bidden I grow long and leave unbound outside of my sword lessons. It was as black as hers, shining bluish in the sunlight where hers shone red. Closing my eyes and sighing, I relaxed my body; she kissed the crown of my head. "Mordred, my sweet," she purred into my ear, the syllables of my name flowing like cream over her tongue, "My beauty, my heart. Come to me, for I feel the Goddess in me now."
"As you will, my queen," came my oft-recited reply, sitting up to discard my drab homespun shirt and trousers. I was naked before her, as she was naked before me. Many times, we had performed this sacred ritual - often when the moon was full or maiden, rarely in between. She bent over me to kiss my lips and gently run her fingers down my chest. I was not yet old enough to receive the markings that would brand me a servant of the Goddess. I had one year yet before the first of these would be etched upon my skin. Her hand came down to the dark hair that curled about my organ, and she stroked this as she had the hair upon my head. Just a fraction lower, and my phallus was in her hand, stiffening with even this barest of actions. My breathing quickened as I felt the God stirring within me. I glanced up at her, and she nodded once, taking my hand in her empty one and guiding it to her womanhood. Even after many times, I was still sheepish when touching her - not because she was my mother, but because she had Power and I did not. I did not want to go awry with my inexperience and cause her displeasure. With some trepidation, I traced one finger along the crease between her thighs, and when she purred her approval, I delicately began to probe inside.
Her entrance was moist and warm, pulsing with life even at rest. It granted me some courage, and I found the mound of sensitive flesh that she had taught me gave her most pleasure. Rubbing with my first finger, I pressed my second inside. Her rich voice dropped low, and her hand quickened its pace upon my organ. My fingers found a rhythm of their own - one to match hers - and she was panting as I was. As I continued, her entrance became wetter, hotter; this echoed the hardening of my penis. When I felt that both of us were close to the apex of our shared pleasure, she gently touched my shoulder, a signal to cease. I complied, though I mourned the loss of the friction of her hand upon me. It did not last long, for, purring my name again like a spell, she sheathed herself upon me. Guiding me down onto my back, she straddled me and shifted to gain a more comfortable position. Her hair crowded around me like a sable curtain, and her face was not that of my mother, but the Goddess present in all women as they reached this most natural and primal states of being.
I reached up to cup one of her heavy breasts. Although she had borne five children before her thirtieth year, they were still as plump and round as a maiden's. She moaned as I coasted my thumb over her nipple, and here began to move as I was inside of her. Feeling her walls throbbing around my phallus, I groaned and squeezed her breast in my fingers.
"My queen. My Goddess," I whispered as she rode me, and brought my hips up to meet hers. As before, we moved in time, and our bodies soon became entwined with one another. I was thrusting into her with as much strength as I dared, and she clutched at my hair, kissed the hollow of my throat, my name on her lips.
I felt myself nearing my peak, and she answered my unspoken question with a dark moan: "Inside, Mordred. Inside." Of its own accord, my body quickened its pace as I received permission. No sooner did I achieve my release, and her inner walls tightened around me in her own climax. We rode it out together, finally parting with care. My mind cleared slowly, the fog brought on by the God's passion abating in its own time. When I was again myself, my mother seemed almost a girl again: her eyes, paler a blue than I had ever seen elsewhere in nature, were bright with what appeared to be pure joy; she wore a smile upon her lips that was not, for once, bitter and laced with elegant venom. Always, she was like this after we parted, and it gave me a joy of my own. Her rape at the hands of my father had left her tattered and harsh inside, and to see her free of this, even for a short while, was as looking upon the most beautiful sight in the world.
I knew why we did this. To the Christians, it was an immoral thing for a mother and her son to join as a woman and a man, but there was no such prejudice among the children of the Goddess. Lot was no fond lover, Morgause had confided in me, as he was old and fast losing virility. If she were to bear any further children, she would not want them to be of his stock, and none of the men on the island could stand up to her Power. So she chose me, for I was, she told me, the ideal match to foster beautiful, Powerful offspring. Desperately, she desired a daughter, and she believed that I could be the one to provide it. Of course, I bowed to this task willingly, and her wish had eventually become my own. To see her swell with a child of my making would be nothing less than the greatest gift the Goddess could grant.
"We shall soon see, my sweetling," my mother told me, the smile on her face mirrored in her voice, "I have a good feeling this time. You are becoming ever more a man, and I am certain that your seed has become potent." She gingerly tucked my hair behind my ear and leaned over to kiss my forehead. When we were alone, she was always affectionate with me - so different from the cold and regal Queen of Orkney seen by everyone else. Not even old Lot had earned this near-sacred right to her untempered love.
"I pray the Good Mother sees fit that my seed should take root," I replied quietly, looking up into her maidenly visage not as her son, but as her lover. One might have thought that, given the nature of my lineage, I would not enter into such a relation; however, this was different from the violence that had been my begetting. Arthur had seen no sister, and no woman on that night - only a conquest to be taken. It was for this that I hated him. Morgause was not a thing for the taking, but a woman of Power and a queen. She was my mother and my lady. She was my Goddess.
Author: pax_morgana
Chapter: One
Words: 1,804
Notes/Warnings: The first portion of part one of Dragon and Dove, "Eidolon". The following excerpt contains material not suitable for those under eighteen (twenty-one in some areas) as well as material some may find disturbing. Please proceed with caution, and don't bitch at me if you come away scarred. Otherwise, enjoy!
Summary: The introductory passage. (Cross-posted to the NaNo site.)
When I was an infant, my father wanted me dead. He murdered many as a means to this end, yet it was an end he did not meet. I am alive, grown full into manhood. I have been raised to hate him and all that he stands for, by my mother who was a victim of his lusts - lusts that produced me. My mother is Queen Morgause of Orkney, wife of King Lot of the same. She is mother of my four half-brothers, and daughter of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall and his lady Ygraine. She serves the Mother Goddess, and she holds the power of the Sight and knowledge of herb-lore. Many Christians call her a witch, but I believe that she is the most beautiful and amazing woman in all of Britain.
King Lot is not my father. I am my mother's bastard and a child of rape. My father is Arthur, High King of the Britons and the son of King Uther Pendragon and Ygraine of Cornwall, once Duchess of Cornwall and after, High Queen of Britain. My father is also my uncle, and he does not know I yet live. He is content to sit in his castle with his child-bride and bask in the false-gained adoration of his so-called "fellow Britons". Up in the north, in the craggy and barren isles of Orkney, my mother sits her throne and plots the redress for the wrongs done her. I will all too willingly aid her in this, for Arthur has condemned my very existence. He destroyed my mother, and robbed me of my humanity. For this, I will see to it that he dies upon no Saxon blade, or indeed, no blade but my own.
On the very day that I reached my seventeenth year, my mother called for me to come to her chambers alone after supper. My half-brothers I left to their chatter and their games - all of them were younger than me by some measure. I was a child of six when the eldest, Gawaine, was born. He is Lot's son in full, and the old king's pride. I hate him almost as much as I hate that brute Lot, for neither of them take any care with women. If there is one thing that my mother has taught me, it is to honor women above all, for the Goddess has the aspect of such a one, and to do her daughters disrespect is to disrespect herself. A woman holds the power of Creation, the giving of Life; her body is the vessel in which the seeds of all that are come into sprout. Without a woman, there would be no man. This she taught me, and this I live by. When I entered my mother's innermost room, she sat upon her bed, which was dressed in beautiful plum linens and velvets. It was the bed in which I had been born. Only I, and not my brothers, for she said that only I deserved to come into this world in such comfort. I, who had been stolen from even before I was made. She was completely nude, save a necklace of polished obsidian that she never removed. The anchor of her Power, she said of it, and I believed her.
With a thin smile, she patted the space on the bed beside her. Toeing off my thin leather shoes, I climbed onto the velvet-robed mattress and promptly settled my head upon her pale breast. Her long, slender fingers combed through my hair, which she had bidden I grow long and leave unbound outside of my sword lessons. It was as black as hers, shining bluish in the sunlight where hers shone red. Closing my eyes and sighing, I relaxed my body; she kissed the crown of my head. "Mordred, my sweet," she purred into my ear, the syllables of my name flowing like cream over her tongue, "My beauty, my heart. Come to me, for I feel the Goddess in me now."
"As you will, my queen," came my oft-recited reply, sitting up to discard my drab homespun shirt and trousers. I was naked before her, as she was naked before me. Many times, we had performed this sacred ritual - often when the moon was full or maiden, rarely in between. She bent over me to kiss my lips and gently run her fingers down my chest. I was not yet old enough to receive the markings that would brand me a servant of the Goddess. I had one year yet before the first of these would be etched upon my skin. Her hand came down to the dark hair that curled about my organ, and she stroked this as she had the hair upon my head. Just a fraction lower, and my phallus was in her hand, stiffening with even this barest of actions. My breathing quickened as I felt the God stirring within me. I glanced up at her, and she nodded once, taking my hand in her empty one and guiding it to her womanhood. Even after many times, I was still sheepish when touching her - not because she was my mother, but because she had Power and I did not. I did not want to go awry with my inexperience and cause her displeasure. With some trepidation, I traced one finger along the crease between her thighs, and when she purred her approval, I delicately began to probe inside.
Her entrance was moist and warm, pulsing with life even at rest. It granted me some courage, and I found the mound of sensitive flesh that she had taught me gave her most pleasure. Rubbing with my first finger, I pressed my second inside. Her rich voice dropped low, and her hand quickened its pace upon my organ. My fingers found a rhythm of their own - one to match hers - and she was panting as I was. As I continued, her entrance became wetter, hotter; this echoed the hardening of my penis. When I felt that both of us were close to the apex of our shared pleasure, she gently touched my shoulder, a signal to cease. I complied, though I mourned the loss of the friction of her hand upon me. It did not last long, for, purring my name again like a spell, she sheathed herself upon me. Guiding me down onto my back, she straddled me and shifted to gain a more comfortable position. Her hair crowded around me like a sable curtain, and her face was not that of my mother, but the Goddess present in all women as they reached this most natural and primal states of being.
I reached up to cup one of her heavy breasts. Although she had borne five children before her thirtieth year, they were still as plump and round as a maiden's. She moaned as I coasted my thumb over her nipple, and here began to move as I was inside of her. Feeling her walls throbbing around my phallus, I groaned and squeezed her breast in my fingers.
"My queen. My Goddess," I whispered as she rode me, and brought my hips up to meet hers. As before, we moved in time, and our bodies soon became entwined with one another. I was thrusting into her with as much strength as I dared, and she clutched at my hair, kissed the hollow of my throat, my name on her lips.
I felt myself nearing my peak, and she answered my unspoken question with a dark moan: "Inside, Mordred. Inside." Of its own accord, my body quickened its pace as I received permission. No sooner did I achieve my release, and her inner walls tightened around me in her own climax. We rode it out together, finally parting with care. My mind cleared slowly, the fog brought on by the God's passion abating in its own time. When I was again myself, my mother seemed almost a girl again: her eyes, paler a blue than I had ever seen elsewhere in nature, were bright with what appeared to be pure joy; she wore a smile upon her lips that was not, for once, bitter and laced with elegant venom. Always, she was like this after we parted, and it gave me a joy of my own. Her rape at the hands of my father had left her tattered and harsh inside, and to see her free of this, even for a short while, was as looking upon the most beautiful sight in the world.
I knew why we did this. To the Christians, it was an immoral thing for a mother and her son to join as a woman and a man, but there was no such prejudice among the children of the Goddess. Lot was no fond lover, Morgause had confided in me, as he was old and fast losing virility. If she were to bear any further children, she would not want them to be of his stock, and none of the men on the island could stand up to her Power. So she chose me, for I was, she told me, the ideal match to foster beautiful, Powerful offspring. Desperately, she desired a daughter, and she believed that I could be the one to provide it. Of course, I bowed to this task willingly, and her wish had eventually become my own. To see her swell with a child of my making would be nothing less than the greatest gift the Goddess could grant.
"We shall soon see, my sweetling," my mother told me, the smile on her face mirrored in her voice, "I have a good feeling this time. You are becoming ever more a man, and I am certain that your seed has become potent." She gingerly tucked my hair behind my ear and leaned over to kiss my forehead. When we were alone, she was always affectionate with me - so different from the cold and regal Queen of Orkney seen by everyone else. Not even old Lot had earned this near-sacred right to her untempered love.
"I pray the Good Mother sees fit that my seed should take root," I replied quietly, looking up into her maidenly visage not as her son, but as her lover. One might have thought that, given the nature of my lineage, I would not enter into such a relation; however, this was different from the violence that had been my begetting. Arthur had seen no sister, and no woman on that night - only a conquest to be taken. It was for this that I hated him. Morgause was not a thing for the taking, but a woman of Power and a queen. She was my mother and my lady. She was my Goddess.