Weiss Kreuz - slash_me_twice - 059. Sculpture
059. Sculpture
Notes: Rosalyn_Angel is playing FFXII. I am making myself write even though I was tired when I started. Ah, life is good when you’re exercising your imagination. Inspiration was a Tori Amos song, which was playing when this story began.
*
What I want is not to want what isn’t mine
But I am desire
~Tori Amos, ‘Another Girl’s Paradise’
“Go see Him,” Crawford ordered. “This infatuation is disgusting.”
“With all due respect, sir, go fuck yourself and leave me alone.” Schuldig pulled the last petal from the flower in his hand and threw it and the stem out the low window.
Crawford adjusted his collar, metal stars declaring his commander status apparently not enough to cow his best soldier into some kind of submission. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Schuldig yanked his third rose from the bouquet at his feet and started ripping it apart over the ground below his perch.
A gloved hand took the remains of the unwanted bouquet. Schuldig reached for it, but Crawford held it just a touch out of grabbing distance. “I have an idea,” he said.
Schuldig scowled, snapping fiery orange hair out of his stormy blue eyes. “What’s your idea, oh illustrious leader?” He reached for the roses again, and this time managed to swipe them. He lowered himself back onto the window ledge and started pulling another from the bouquet.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Crawford said mysteriously.
Schuldig pulled out the rose defiantly and waved it under Crawford’s glasses. Crawford grabbed it, thorns digging into his white gloves but not quite piercing through. “I hear Desire doesn’t take kindly to those who…damage his property.”
He handed the rose back to Schuldig, who took it with cautious fingers. “Desire?”
“His temple’s just an hour’s ride away. I think it is time you asked Him to relieve you of your burden.”
“But-you can’t just go to the god and tell Him-what, that I refuse to serve Him anymore? Even I’m not that stupid.”
“Then trick Him.”
Schuldig pursed his lips and eyed Crawford like he’d finally gone off the deep end. “You want me to trick a god.”
Crawford stepped up to the window beside Schuldig and looked out. “Or you could tell him the truth. That you’re…” He smirked. “In love with a girl you can’t have. And that you want her only so you can deflower her and leave her wishing she’d never turned you down.”
Schuldig scowled. The sudden pain in his palm that alerted him to the squeezing of his fists was not at all a welcome distraction. He threw the rose to the stone floor in disgust and looked out into the brightening day. “So,” he said testily, “how do you trick a god?”
“Simple,” Crawford said. “You lie.”
*
The columns of Desire’s temple stretched up to the afternoon sky, daring clouds to threaten the painted serenity of its hilltop perch. Wildflowers were a pinpricked wash of color across the hillside, and the dirt road Schuldig’s horse trotted up on kicked up dust that glittered gold in the sunlight and disappeared like mist behind them. Beautiful as it looked, however, it still caked his once-black boots and navy uniform slacks, and smelled like the sweat and horse of the temple stables despite the work of the constant breeze.
He reigned in his horse and dismounted about twenty yards from the temple, as was customary, and passed off his horse to attendants who would take it to the stables to be cared for while he made his prayers. Removing his cap and squinting up at the steps, he made his way there as the sun slowly reached its peak in the sky. He didn’t sweat as he climbed the wide staircase. The builders of such staircases liked to boast to one another that theirs reached closer to heaven than the next temple, or so Schuldig suspected as he climbed. It was annoying, to say the least. The only thing that kept him from turning around in indignation was that stupid girl, and his imagination.
After all, the elderly surely came to Desire’s temple on behalf of loved ones, and even themselves. What must they go through to climb these steps? Schuldig grinned, but hadn’t the energy for a full-blown snicker. He could just picture them wobbling up the steps, canes digging into the stone, and stopping to bake in the sun as they gulped down water that would weigh down their bellies, and ate their lunches to regain the energy the sun was sapping from their bones even as they waited for strength to return.
He reached the top with a sigh of relief; even with his hair pulled back, his face and the back of his neck were uncomfortably hot.
It was dimmer inside than outside, which was to be expected. Smoky incense and dim lamps gave the place a feeling of sensuality amid lazy days. Priestesses in gauzy silks that slid enticingly over plump bottoms and firm bouncing breasts bent over couches and lit candles and giggled together in the corners. It reminded him of a brothel. The priests must love this place, he thought. He’d heard of the sacrificial orgies to Desire. And there were never more than five priests in the temple-the rest were priestesses.
Some days, Schuldig really thought he’d gone into the wrong profession.
But he was here to get rid of his desire, not plumb its depths. He stepped further into the dim room and felt a shiver run down his spine. It seemed the sunlight only stretched so far into this place before it was rebuffed. He had crossed that threshold.
At once, the people in the room seemed to notice him. Conversation died, however, when a priestess with black pigtails down her back floated gracefully forward from a darkened corridor. She smiled sweetly, knowingly, at Schuldig and inclined her head slightly-as much as a priestess ever did to a soldier, or anyone not directly in the service of a god. “Welcome,” she said.
Schuldig bowed slightly, cap clutched firmly under his arm and opposite fingers digging into its visor. “Thank you,” he said with more respect than he’d thought he would feel. “I’m here to-”
“We’ve been expecting you,” the priestess said. “Follow me.”
She turned with no further explanation, bare feet soundless on the stone floor, and started walking past the golden altar in the center of the room toward the dark corridor from which she’d come. Schuldig eyed the rest of the atrium’s occupants with suspicion, but followed when he realized all eyes of the priestesses were on him and the woman leading him.
The priestess led him down a dizzying maze of corridors, red skirts flashing like a lady’s smile behind a fan in the sputtering lamplight. Schuldig knew they had gone down a small ways into the hill, and thought they had perhaps circled the temple twice, though never by the same halls. He wanted to ask where she was leading him, but that would break the strange spell he felt slithering along beneath the cloying floral scent of the hallways.
At long last, the priestess stopped at a bead-curtained doorway and motioned him inside. Schuldig nodded stiffly and put his fingers to the fire-colored beads. “Wh-”
A rush of rose-scented wind from his left, and his companion disappeared in a flutter of soft petals that brushed Schuldig’s cheek and uniform like a caress. Looking back into the dancing shadows of the corridor, Schuldig felt his heart clench. He would be hopelessly lost if he tried to turn back now. Best just get it over with.
All the same, he had never heard of a supplicant being led into the temple. They lit incense at the altar and left sacrifices and prayers. They didn’t venture past the public spaces.
This definitely didn’t feel like a public space.
Fucking Crawford.
Steeling his nerves, Schuldig parted the beads and stepped into the room.
And gasped.
It was empty, but for a statue of the god. He felt sure this was the god, for though no images of the gods and goddesses were ever to be produced, this had the feeling of weight, of power, in the very marble from which it was carved. Pale, lustrous arms, eyes painted sharp violet, hair the color of blood. A violet silk cloth had been draped enticingly over a muscular thigh, and clasped at the hip by a twining pair of ruby-studded gold roses. The god’s carved hands were spread and slightly raised, as if in greeting. A soft expression decorated the aristocratic face rather than one of cruelty, as Desire was often said to have by those spurned by their desired. He seemed almost…soft. Human.
But that was blasphemy, wasn’t it?
Schuldig stepped carefully into the room, fearing even as he did that he would be struck down on the spot. His boots echoed dully in the empty room as he approached the statue. After some moments standing in front of it, Schuldig sighed. Might as well stop acting like an idiot and get this over with.
He knelt at the stone feet and bowed his head. “Our Lord Desire of the flesh and of the soul, I beg of you to hear me now.”
Schuldig could feel an invisible weight pressing on his shoulders, filling his nose and his lungs with pressure. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and dripped onto the low pedestal. He wiped it hastily away and continued.
“The salt of my sweat and tears, I dedicate…” The weight was pressing harder now, squeezing his chest, stopping his breath. “I dedicate…to you.”
His forehead pressed heavily into the stone floor, his bare hands clenching the sharp edge of the pedestal as if it could stop the pain in his chest, his head.
“My…my blood and my b-body, I-” The pedestal felt slick against his hands, aching now like his chest with the throbbing of his blood, but he dared not look up. “I lift up in supplication.”
The pressure squeezed like a vise around him, and he swayed on his knees, head nodding back and forth on the ground, sweat pouring into the cracks of the stone floor. He lifted his head with effort and gazed up into the piercing violet eyes of the stone god and finished the prayer: “Do what you will of me, but heed my prayer, oh Lord of man and beast!”
The pressure tightened impossibly, and Schuldig heard the sonorous voice of the god like a whisper in the mountains. It echoed in the cavern around him, soft and slick as the touch of lips, and as explosive to the body and mind. “And what is your request, Schuldig of the King’s army?”
Schuldig choked on the words Crawford had instructed him to speak, and tears leaked down his face. And yet he could not look away from the piercing gaze of those stone eyes, the unmoving face of the god. “I-” The vise gripped his throat and he sputtered, gasped for breath. He could feel himself growing dizzy, could see the edges of his vision fraying into a black abyss. I want to be free of desire without substance, he heard from somewhere in his mind. It was his own voice, but he was certain he hadn’t spoken. And he was just as certain the voice had spoken truly.
The vise loosened around his throat and Schuldig gulped in air desperately, head falling forward and loose strands whipping into his wet eyes.
“Keep your vow to me,” Schuldig heard echoing around him, “And I will grant you your desire.”
Schuldig nodded clumsily and tried vainly to stand. A flutter of skirts and then hands were gripping his arm and waist, helping him to his feet. It was the priestess from before. She helped him into the room next door and sat him on a plush violet couch. He rested gratefully as he caught his breath. She wiped his face with a damp cloth and hummed a temple song often sung in the streets in praise of Desire. She had a sweet, kind voice. Schuldig rather thought she could have been a good sister to someone, a good daughter, if she hadn’t been consigned to this solitary life. “So,” she said finally, when Schuldig was able to sit up under his own strength. She studied him, hands on her hips and slight smirk on her face. “So,” he said again, “has He explained things to you at all?”
Shaking his head didn’t make him dizzy for more than a moment, and for that Schuldig was grateful.
The priestess sighed and walked over to a chest near the door. Schuldig looked at her pert bottom and felt…nothing. The thought sent a shock through him. He studied her youthful body, freshly that of woman, and tried to imagine having sex with her.
Nothing.
He didn’t want her.
Thinking of the woman who had scorned him, too, brought nothing. Schuldig thought desperately of the women he had bedded; of the men.
And felt nothing of his past desire. Only the dispassionate film of memory floated through his shock to touch his mind. The priestess’s hand waving in front of his face snapped him out of his growing horror. Was this what the god had taken his prayer to mean?
“Take this,” the priestess said firmly. She handed him woven violet belt. Its clasp was a pair of ruby and gold entwined roses. “Keep this with you at all times,” she said solemnly. “It is to remind you of your sacrifice.”
Schuldig’s mouth opened and closed slowly. He finally took the belt with deliberate movements. “What is to be my sacrifice?”
The priestess grinned merrily. “You promised sweat, tears, blood, and body to the god, didn’t you?”
Schuldig nodded dumbly.
Her grin blossomed into a bright smile. “Well, that is to be your sacrifice. I’ll let Him explain the rest.”
“Him?”
She turned around and walked out the door. “Put that on,” she said as she disappeared into the hallway.
Schuldig didn’t bother calling out to her to wait. He just did as he was told. If Crawford could see him now, he thought bitterly. What the fuck had that jerk gotten him into this time?
*
The night visits made him sweat.
Tears leaked out of his eyes when the feelings grew too intense, and blood spilled from other places when he wasn’t careful with himself, pressing too hard or trying to take too much.
He paid with his body, clutching the belt in his hands even as the god clutched him.
And every time the god appeared in his room, soft look in His piercing violet eyes, Schuldig walked freely into his outstretched arms.
People wondered sometimes, and rumors abounded that someone had tamed the untamable philanderer. And yet others could swear that a desire for something else had claimed him, to the exclusion of all else.
Crawford never got the truth from Schuldig, no matter how hard he tried. Schuldig merely told him, “The god answered my prayer. What more could there be to tell?”
*
Schuldig walked into the night soon after his thirtieth birthday and disappeared. He left all his worldly possessions behind. There were no letters of farewell or clues as to his whereabouts. He simply vanished.
But in a room at the heart of Desire’s temple, there is a statue of two men together. The man behind stands on a pedestal, one arm outstretched to his supplicants. He carries the weight of a god. The other man stands on the ground, with his back pressed to the god’s front and his head cradled in the god’s shoulder. This man exudes peace; desire fulfilled. The god’s arm wraps around him. Their fingers are entwined. The second man also reaches out, but he reaches down, as if to touch the supplicant who would kneel at his feet.
A priestess rarely seen, and said to be ageless, cares for this statue. She has black pigtails and a sweet smile.
Some say they have heard her laughter on the wind of the hilltop.
Some say they even hear two voices join her, and that to hear them is a blessing from the god.
Endnotes
This story started thusly:
When it all is said and done I’m tired and should be sleeping. RA’s beginning to resume a FFXII game, and I’m yawning and wondering if I can’t coax a story from my fingers, my brain, one more time.
And then came the lines from the Tori Amos song I placed at the beginning. And then came the first lines and the story, the idea for which I had planned to play with in something else, but no matter: what’s done is done. I hope you enjoyed the journey ^_^
Notes: Rosalyn_Angel is playing FFXII. I am making myself write even though I was tired when I started. Ah, life is good when you’re exercising your imagination. Inspiration was a Tori Amos song, which was playing when this story began.
*
What I want is not to want what isn’t mine
But I am desire
~Tori Amos, ‘Another Girl’s Paradise’
“Go see Him,” Crawford ordered. “This infatuation is disgusting.”
“With all due respect, sir, go fuck yourself and leave me alone.” Schuldig pulled the last petal from the flower in his hand and threw it and the stem out the low window.
Crawford adjusted his collar, metal stars declaring his commander status apparently not enough to cow his best soldier into some kind of submission. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Schuldig yanked his third rose from the bouquet at his feet and started ripping it apart over the ground below his perch.
A gloved hand took the remains of the unwanted bouquet. Schuldig reached for it, but Crawford held it just a touch out of grabbing distance. “I have an idea,” he said.
Schuldig scowled, snapping fiery orange hair out of his stormy blue eyes. “What’s your idea, oh illustrious leader?” He reached for the roses again, and this time managed to swipe them. He lowered himself back onto the window ledge and started pulling another from the bouquet.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Crawford said mysteriously.
Schuldig pulled out the rose defiantly and waved it under Crawford’s glasses. Crawford grabbed it, thorns digging into his white gloves but not quite piercing through. “I hear Desire doesn’t take kindly to those who…damage his property.”
He handed the rose back to Schuldig, who took it with cautious fingers. “Desire?”
“His temple’s just an hour’s ride away. I think it is time you asked Him to relieve you of your burden.”
“But-you can’t just go to the god and tell Him-what, that I refuse to serve Him anymore? Even I’m not that stupid.”
“Then trick Him.”
Schuldig pursed his lips and eyed Crawford like he’d finally gone off the deep end. “You want me to trick a god.”
Crawford stepped up to the window beside Schuldig and looked out. “Or you could tell him the truth. That you’re…” He smirked. “In love with a girl you can’t have. And that you want her only so you can deflower her and leave her wishing she’d never turned you down.”
Schuldig scowled. The sudden pain in his palm that alerted him to the squeezing of his fists was not at all a welcome distraction. He threw the rose to the stone floor in disgust and looked out into the brightening day. “So,” he said testily, “how do you trick a god?”
“Simple,” Crawford said. “You lie.”
*
The columns of Desire’s temple stretched up to the afternoon sky, daring clouds to threaten the painted serenity of its hilltop perch. Wildflowers were a pinpricked wash of color across the hillside, and the dirt road Schuldig’s horse trotted up on kicked up dust that glittered gold in the sunlight and disappeared like mist behind them. Beautiful as it looked, however, it still caked his once-black boots and navy uniform slacks, and smelled like the sweat and horse of the temple stables despite the work of the constant breeze.
He reigned in his horse and dismounted about twenty yards from the temple, as was customary, and passed off his horse to attendants who would take it to the stables to be cared for while he made his prayers. Removing his cap and squinting up at the steps, he made his way there as the sun slowly reached its peak in the sky. He didn’t sweat as he climbed the wide staircase. The builders of such staircases liked to boast to one another that theirs reached closer to heaven than the next temple, or so Schuldig suspected as he climbed. It was annoying, to say the least. The only thing that kept him from turning around in indignation was that stupid girl, and his imagination.
After all, the elderly surely came to Desire’s temple on behalf of loved ones, and even themselves. What must they go through to climb these steps? Schuldig grinned, but hadn’t the energy for a full-blown snicker. He could just picture them wobbling up the steps, canes digging into the stone, and stopping to bake in the sun as they gulped down water that would weigh down their bellies, and ate their lunches to regain the energy the sun was sapping from their bones even as they waited for strength to return.
He reached the top with a sigh of relief; even with his hair pulled back, his face and the back of his neck were uncomfortably hot.
It was dimmer inside than outside, which was to be expected. Smoky incense and dim lamps gave the place a feeling of sensuality amid lazy days. Priestesses in gauzy silks that slid enticingly over plump bottoms and firm bouncing breasts bent over couches and lit candles and giggled together in the corners. It reminded him of a brothel. The priests must love this place, he thought. He’d heard of the sacrificial orgies to Desire. And there were never more than five priests in the temple-the rest were priestesses.
Some days, Schuldig really thought he’d gone into the wrong profession.
But he was here to get rid of his desire, not plumb its depths. He stepped further into the dim room and felt a shiver run down his spine. It seemed the sunlight only stretched so far into this place before it was rebuffed. He had crossed that threshold.
At once, the people in the room seemed to notice him. Conversation died, however, when a priestess with black pigtails down her back floated gracefully forward from a darkened corridor. She smiled sweetly, knowingly, at Schuldig and inclined her head slightly-as much as a priestess ever did to a soldier, or anyone not directly in the service of a god. “Welcome,” she said.
Schuldig bowed slightly, cap clutched firmly under his arm and opposite fingers digging into its visor. “Thank you,” he said with more respect than he’d thought he would feel. “I’m here to-”
“We’ve been expecting you,” the priestess said. “Follow me.”
She turned with no further explanation, bare feet soundless on the stone floor, and started walking past the golden altar in the center of the room toward the dark corridor from which she’d come. Schuldig eyed the rest of the atrium’s occupants with suspicion, but followed when he realized all eyes of the priestesses were on him and the woman leading him.
The priestess led him down a dizzying maze of corridors, red skirts flashing like a lady’s smile behind a fan in the sputtering lamplight. Schuldig knew they had gone down a small ways into the hill, and thought they had perhaps circled the temple twice, though never by the same halls. He wanted to ask where she was leading him, but that would break the strange spell he felt slithering along beneath the cloying floral scent of the hallways.
At long last, the priestess stopped at a bead-curtained doorway and motioned him inside. Schuldig nodded stiffly and put his fingers to the fire-colored beads. “Wh-”
A rush of rose-scented wind from his left, and his companion disappeared in a flutter of soft petals that brushed Schuldig’s cheek and uniform like a caress. Looking back into the dancing shadows of the corridor, Schuldig felt his heart clench. He would be hopelessly lost if he tried to turn back now. Best just get it over with.
All the same, he had never heard of a supplicant being led into the temple. They lit incense at the altar and left sacrifices and prayers. They didn’t venture past the public spaces.
This definitely didn’t feel like a public space.
Fucking Crawford.
Steeling his nerves, Schuldig parted the beads and stepped into the room.
And gasped.
It was empty, but for a statue of the god. He felt sure this was the god, for though no images of the gods and goddesses were ever to be produced, this had the feeling of weight, of power, in the very marble from which it was carved. Pale, lustrous arms, eyes painted sharp violet, hair the color of blood. A violet silk cloth had been draped enticingly over a muscular thigh, and clasped at the hip by a twining pair of ruby-studded gold roses. The god’s carved hands were spread and slightly raised, as if in greeting. A soft expression decorated the aristocratic face rather than one of cruelty, as Desire was often said to have by those spurned by their desired. He seemed almost…soft. Human.
But that was blasphemy, wasn’t it?
Schuldig stepped carefully into the room, fearing even as he did that he would be struck down on the spot. His boots echoed dully in the empty room as he approached the statue. After some moments standing in front of it, Schuldig sighed. Might as well stop acting like an idiot and get this over with.
He knelt at the stone feet and bowed his head. “Our Lord Desire of the flesh and of the soul, I beg of you to hear me now.”
Schuldig could feel an invisible weight pressing on his shoulders, filling his nose and his lungs with pressure. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and dripped onto the low pedestal. He wiped it hastily away and continued.
“The salt of my sweat and tears, I dedicate…” The weight was pressing harder now, squeezing his chest, stopping his breath. “I dedicate…to you.”
His forehead pressed heavily into the stone floor, his bare hands clenching the sharp edge of the pedestal as if it could stop the pain in his chest, his head.
“My…my blood and my b-body, I-” The pedestal felt slick against his hands, aching now like his chest with the throbbing of his blood, but he dared not look up. “I lift up in supplication.”
The pressure squeezed like a vise around him, and he swayed on his knees, head nodding back and forth on the ground, sweat pouring into the cracks of the stone floor. He lifted his head with effort and gazed up into the piercing violet eyes of the stone god and finished the prayer: “Do what you will of me, but heed my prayer, oh Lord of man and beast!”
The pressure tightened impossibly, and Schuldig heard the sonorous voice of the god like a whisper in the mountains. It echoed in the cavern around him, soft and slick as the touch of lips, and as explosive to the body and mind. “And what is your request, Schuldig of the King’s army?”
Schuldig choked on the words Crawford had instructed him to speak, and tears leaked down his face. And yet he could not look away from the piercing gaze of those stone eyes, the unmoving face of the god. “I-” The vise gripped his throat and he sputtered, gasped for breath. He could feel himself growing dizzy, could see the edges of his vision fraying into a black abyss. I want to be free of desire without substance, he heard from somewhere in his mind. It was his own voice, but he was certain he hadn’t spoken. And he was just as certain the voice had spoken truly.
The vise loosened around his throat and Schuldig gulped in air desperately, head falling forward and loose strands whipping into his wet eyes.
“Keep your vow to me,” Schuldig heard echoing around him, “And I will grant you your desire.”
Schuldig nodded clumsily and tried vainly to stand. A flutter of skirts and then hands were gripping his arm and waist, helping him to his feet. It was the priestess from before. She helped him into the room next door and sat him on a plush violet couch. He rested gratefully as he caught his breath. She wiped his face with a damp cloth and hummed a temple song often sung in the streets in praise of Desire. She had a sweet, kind voice. Schuldig rather thought she could have been a good sister to someone, a good daughter, if she hadn’t been consigned to this solitary life. “So,” she said finally, when Schuldig was able to sit up under his own strength. She studied him, hands on her hips and slight smirk on her face. “So,” he said again, “has He explained things to you at all?”
Shaking his head didn’t make him dizzy for more than a moment, and for that Schuldig was grateful.
The priestess sighed and walked over to a chest near the door. Schuldig looked at her pert bottom and felt…nothing. The thought sent a shock through him. He studied her youthful body, freshly that of woman, and tried to imagine having sex with her.
Nothing.
He didn’t want her.
Thinking of the woman who had scorned him, too, brought nothing. Schuldig thought desperately of the women he had bedded; of the men.
And felt nothing of his past desire. Only the dispassionate film of memory floated through his shock to touch his mind. The priestess’s hand waving in front of his face snapped him out of his growing horror. Was this what the god had taken his prayer to mean?
“Take this,” the priestess said firmly. She handed him woven violet belt. Its clasp was a pair of ruby and gold entwined roses. “Keep this with you at all times,” she said solemnly. “It is to remind you of your sacrifice.”
Schuldig’s mouth opened and closed slowly. He finally took the belt with deliberate movements. “What is to be my sacrifice?”
The priestess grinned merrily. “You promised sweat, tears, blood, and body to the god, didn’t you?”
Schuldig nodded dumbly.
Her grin blossomed into a bright smile. “Well, that is to be your sacrifice. I’ll let Him explain the rest.”
“Him?”
She turned around and walked out the door. “Put that on,” she said as she disappeared into the hallway.
Schuldig didn’t bother calling out to her to wait. He just did as he was told. If Crawford could see him now, he thought bitterly. What the fuck had that jerk gotten him into this time?
*
The night visits made him sweat.
Tears leaked out of his eyes when the feelings grew too intense, and blood spilled from other places when he wasn’t careful with himself, pressing too hard or trying to take too much.
He paid with his body, clutching the belt in his hands even as the god clutched him.
And every time the god appeared in his room, soft look in His piercing violet eyes, Schuldig walked freely into his outstretched arms.
People wondered sometimes, and rumors abounded that someone had tamed the untamable philanderer. And yet others could swear that a desire for something else had claimed him, to the exclusion of all else.
Crawford never got the truth from Schuldig, no matter how hard he tried. Schuldig merely told him, “The god answered my prayer. What more could there be to tell?”
*
Schuldig walked into the night soon after his thirtieth birthday and disappeared. He left all his worldly possessions behind. There were no letters of farewell or clues as to his whereabouts. He simply vanished.
But in a room at the heart of Desire’s temple, there is a statue of two men together. The man behind stands on a pedestal, one arm outstretched to his supplicants. He carries the weight of a god. The other man stands on the ground, with his back pressed to the god’s front and his head cradled in the god’s shoulder. This man exudes peace; desire fulfilled. The god’s arm wraps around him. Their fingers are entwined. The second man also reaches out, but he reaches down, as if to touch the supplicant who would kneel at his feet.
A priestess rarely seen, and said to be ageless, cares for this statue. She has black pigtails and a sweet smile.
Some say they have heard her laughter on the wind of the hilltop.
Some say they even hear two voices join her, and that to hear them is a blessing from the god.
Endnotes
This story started thusly:
When it all is said and done I’m tired and should be sleeping. RA’s beginning to resume a FFXII game, and I’m yawning and wondering if I can’t coax a story from my fingers, my brain, one more time.
And then came the lines from the Tori Amos song I placed at the beginning. And then came the first lines and the story, the idea for which I had planned to play with in something else, but no matter: what’s done is done. I hope you enjoyed the journey ^_^