*It’s cold where I am this week. :) *
The cycle has ended; the cycle has begun. Ten years have passed, ten after ten after ten. The cycle of They Who Watch.
The elder women knew the end of the cycle was upon them. They kept count in the knots of the Goddess’s tapestry, in the records in the century calendar; the child born of the last Goddess-On-Earth was now in her tenth year. Even without the tapestry, their records, though, they would still have known the time had come; the year before last the harvest was poor, with so much lost to early frost. The previous year the frost was earlier still, leaving barely enough to feed the livestock and themselves. If this year followed suit they might have to choose between food for themselves or the animals…and if the year was bad enough the choice for both would be made for them. The Winter God ran wild while the Goddess slept; it was time to be woken.
This ceremony was one of their oldest. After the countless centuries its steps were as well known as was the path to Her temple. Records from before, and then stories from even before records told of times when the ceremony was not followed as expected. The years that men fled from their duty to the Winter God were followed by years of poor herds and stillborn stock. The years they failed to kill Winter on earth led to unusually cold summers, and the years they failed to skin and tan the hide of Winter’s proxy ushered in early frosts. Women who refused the Goddess’ honor were found frozen in the snows that did not end until the next ten-year cycle and the next ceremony, carried out by those few who were left to perform it.
It was midwinter, on the day when daylight was shortest that the Lottery was held. All men between the ages of twenty and forty had their names inscribed on paper markers and placed in an urn. All women between the age of twenty and forty did the same. Mother, maiden, sister, aunt; no woman was exempt from selection. No man was safe.
On this cycle the man chosen was a farmer she had known all her life, a kind man with a kind family who had just seen his thirty-eighth year the month before. He smiled when they pulled his name from the pot and read it aloud to the waiting crowd, joked and bragged about how hard the Wolven warriors would have to work to catch him. Two days prior he had spent his day in the yard of his farm with his family and enjoying the light in the time he had left. At the last he kissed his wife and hugged his children, stripped off his clothes, painted his face and body in the patterns of the God and disappeared into the forest as the sun sank beneath the trees to be hunted, brought down, and skinned by the Wolven warriors. His agonized screams echoed among the trees and to that gentle lullaby Winter was put to sleep; the Goddess could now be woken.
Now her. At twenty-three, she knew as all women did that she *could* be chosen, but did not seriously expect to play the role of the Goddess’ proxy; no one *ever* believed it could be **them** even as the scrap of paper was held up and their name read out for the village to witness. Three elder women, each of whom had performed the same role in decades past had taken her into the yurt of the eldest, where they washed and oiled her body. One had checked her hair for bald patches and her eyes for sickness, checked her teeth were good and her skin was free from blemish and boils. Another bent between her legs and breathed deep to check there were no scabs or sores then gently probed inside for any obstruction, prepared to break it gently if necessary to ensure that nothing got in the way of the ceremony. Not that they expected it would; with the life they lived it was rare – although not unheard of – for a woman to be her age to not have lost it to rough landings, whether it be of the ice or the smooth-talking boy variety.
And so, before the sun rose and the last of Winter’s screams faded they cut the throat of a goat and covered her neck to foot in blood, leaving only her head and a circle between her thighs up to her belly clear. Around her neck they placed a garland of last year’s dried flowers, across her eyes ashes from the remains of the year’s harvest feast. In her hair ribbons in the colors of spring, tied and woven in the pattern of the Goddess. When they were done, they lit the candles – ten in total, ten candles to represent ten years of mild weather and bountiful harvest – around the sheepskin where she would lie, and before they left her alone with the Goddess they daubed the slightest drops of perfume across her. A drop on each nipple, a drop in her hair, one on each ankle and each wrist. One on the join between her legs. Then they filed out.
She lay there in the candlelit twilight considering the candles. She had been told that if a man brought her past the edge of ecstasy he was to extinguish one of the candles before he withdrew from within the Goddess surrogate. It was important that the candle be extinguished with him still inside of her; she was to hold him there until he did.
There would be much bragging and posturing around *who* extinguished *which* candle and *when* at the festival that night.
She counted each candle and when she had finished counted each again, then lay back and tried not to think about the day ahead of her, to fill her mind only with the will of the Goddess. The candles burned and the darkness was slowly starting to lift when the first of the village men came in through the door.
*No man was exempt from the duty, from communion with the Goddess.* The first through the door was Hrolf, the handsomest and strongest of the Wolven warriors…if you listened to Hrolf, anyway. She greeted him in the name of the Goddess, and in the name of the Goddess he accepted. He smiled, and washed first his hands then his manhood in the basin of fresh water, careful to pour the water on the ground and not back into the pitcher.
She smiled and bent her knees as he knelt between her legs. It was tradition that the first man to visit be the first to waken the Goddess, and she was glad *he* was the first to visit. She needed no oil to smooth his way in as she took hold of him and guided him into her, she already wet, so wet. He started slow, but moved ever faster as he tasted her neck, her cheek, her breasts. Her breath came faster and faster and before she knew it she was one with the Goddess. She lay for a moment catching her breath and he snuffed a candle before pulling out (and the breeze was cold, cold between her legs as he dripped down the crack), giving her one last kiss on the nose before leaving the yurt.
Next came the twins. Not brothers by blood, but inseparable friends since childhood, the twins did everything together…apparently including wakening the Goddess. They entered the yurt laughing and bragging to each other over who would be the one to waken her. One carried a small hourglass, and as his friend bent to the task he tipped the hourglass. When the sands ran out a few minutes later he laughed and told his friend to move over and let the real man have a go.
The hourglass – no, the minuteglass – was tipped again and again as each of them took his turn. One was thick and filled her more than anyone before her, the other was smaller but thrust at an angle that scratched her in just the right spot. Again and again, first one then the other, she began to pant and thrust her hips in turn which spurred them on to higher heights of ribaldry and praise to the Goddess, and in the end it was he with the clever snake that brought her over the edge. Laughing and bragging about the obstacle he’d left for his friend, he extinguished a candle and moved out of the way for his friend to finish, which he did a minute later…much to her frustration for as sensitive as she was, he filled her just nicely and was almost there.
*No man was exempt from the duty, from communion with the Goddess.* The village’s hostler entered next. He shed his pants,lay down between her legs and as started humping she wondered – despite his two children – if he had ever lay with a woman before or just his horses and when she snuck a quick peek during a particularly enthusiastic thrust had to smother a giggle; he’d make a bird look cock-proud. At least he could and did finish even if no candle was extinguished that time.
After the hostler came the blacksmith with a chest of steel and arms like steel and – she discovered – a rod of steel between his legs as well. He was big, *big*, yet despite accidentally (and painfully) bumping her cervix once was as skilled in her forge as he was at his. She wrapped her legs around his and pulled him tight against her while he nibbled her ear and kissed her neck and before she knew it she came with all the heat and fire of the furnace at his workshop, crying, *crying* aloud the name of the Goddess with her teeth against the side of his neck. He paused for a time and reached over to extinguish a candle, then began again and she let him for she came again and then for a third time, that last grabbing his hair and groaning loudly at one last, careful thrust where he withdrew and she felt what was him mixed with the rest spill out and down upon the sheepskin. After one last, hard embrace she let him rise to go back to his wife.
Two of the village hunters came next, and she hoped they were better with the spears by their side than the spears between their legs. They did their duty, but she could not do hers. The third hunter who entered made her turn her head even as she opened her legs, as he was one who the village knew as a cruel man. Few hadn’t heard his wife’s cries in the night from the things he did to her; when he lay her on her knees and thrust the butt of his spear in one hole while he pounded away in the other, or violated her with his spear shaft. Or heard how he used his sister-in-law who also lived with them as a wineskin, forcing a wide-mouth flask into her and filling her again and again with wine, drinking what spilled out as he got drunker and drunker, insisting that his wife join him in drinking from her sister before finally using the poor woman as a waste pit, pissing inside of her when he needed to go and beating her when she tried to resist. Even he, though – as he moved between her legs – knew to treat the vessel of the Goddess with the respect Her proxy on earth deserved. Although he pushed his way in roughly she could not make herself any wetter so although uncomfortable she could not fault him for it and he finished as quickly as she could ask. When he was done he left without a word or a backwards look and she was glad of it when he did.
*No man was exempt from the duty, from communion with the Goddess.* An elder walked through the door and tied the flap shut. An old man, he was unable to get erect and she had to take him in her mouth for quite awhile before he could get hard enough to enter her. Once inside, however, she found him to be a careful man and found herself, if she closed her eyes and let herself sink to first enjoy it then – to her surprise – crying out in pleasure. He respectfully waited inside of her while he reached over and pinched out a candle, then gently withdrew. Although he himself did not finish his duty to the Goddess was done nevertheless.
…..
*No man was exempt from the duty, from communion with the Goddess.* Man after man filed through the door, each performing their duty to the Goddess. Many perfunctory, some enthusiastic, some few – from where *she* lay – correctly. The light that swept past the curtain told her that the sun was near to setting; one candle remained. All the men had been through the yurt and all had done their duty by the Goddess save for one. As the edge of the sun dropped below the horizon the rustling outside the door filled her with dread. This was the visit she’d been dreading; no man was exempt, not even her own father.
This was a bad omen. With one candle remaining she would *have* to come to the Goddess with her own father inside of her; she had hoped the last of the candles would have been extinguished before now so she could have satisfied the edicts of the Goddess with a single thrust and no eye contact, but it was not to be. As the figure entered she adjusted her hips and prepared to receive her own father between her legs and deep into her.
But to her surprise, it was *not* her father who entered the yurt, but rather Hrenna, Hrolf’s sister. This was new, and Hrenna laughed at the confusion on her face.
“You were expecting someone else?” Hrenna asked, with a smile. She nodded. Hrenna laughed again. “Figured,” she said. “Don’t worry. Or rather, that’s just what he did, and found urgent business that could not wait at Tabor-On-The-River late last night. He’s not here, and hasn’t been all day.”
“Oh,” she said, raising up on her elbows. “Then why…?”
“Me?” Hrenna asked, kneeling down in front of her. “I’m one of the Wolven Warriors. I became part of the group two weeks before. I went through the welcoming ceremony four days earlier. I participated in the hunt of the Winter God, and so..,” she smiled as she gently stroked a hand up her thigh, “I am recognized by the village as a man.” Hrenna bent between her legs but after a quick glance at what was left for the Goddess and a wry smile she instead lay beside her and began to gently stroke between her legs. She lay back and closed her eyes, letting Hrenna tickle her, rub and fondle her, now slipping one finger inside of her, now two, then caress her again. She pulled Hrenna close to her and kissed her deep, letting Hrenna bring her hand – slick with the Goddess – up to circle her nipple then run back down between her thighs. Her breath became to come in harder, faster.
It was the rule that when a candle was to be extinguished that the man must remain inside of her while the flame was snuffed. And so when she gave herself to the Goddess she took Hrenna’s hand and pushed it inside of her, up to the palm, and closed her thighs to trap that hand while she shuddered and came not once, but twice to the feel of those fingers deep within.
Extinguished the final candle. Kissed Hrenna once more to the feel of a warm breeze blow in from the south and a promise of the early Spring.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/qmuk4l/the_ceremony_of_the_goddess