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"writing": "Cultural Relations\n\nPart 4\n\n(c)2025 Bruno Hirschkoff\n\nFor Irving\n\n \n\nThe following is a work of erotic fiction intended solely for adult audiences. It is not intended for commercial publication nor for widespread distribution without the permission of the Author. The Author asserts the exclusive right of ownership of Asantrea, and all characters, settings, concepts, locations and events described herein.\n\nApprox 6,500 words / 30 minutes reading time\n\nChapter 4\n\nAraxes did not sleep well that night. It was his first night in Ammunash's Garden, and it was such an alien environment. The night was barely any different from the day, he had noticed; the bioluminescence of the understorey meant it was difficult to tell precisely what time of day or night it was, other than the darkening of the canopy an impossible height above them. \n\nAraxes wondered if the transit of Saliel had yet occurred. In the depths of the Garden, it was impossible to tell. \n\nBut the thought that his initiation date to the Lamaye might instead have occurred the previous evening with his first truly sexual experience of the Y'Dasz stood out to him as a fitting moment.\n\nFurther north, in the sweaty jungles, the sisters had taken turns keeping watch, and had been evidently on-edge. Here, in the sanctuary of the Garden, they were entirely at ease. All of them slept at the same time, and close together. Araxes found himself with his head pillowed on Nur-Ayya's arm while she draped the other over his midriff. On his other side, Yt'tai lay with her back to him, and over the course of the night she shuffled backwards until he was sandwiched between her and Nur-Ayya. Veyo, Nenwoh and Yattah slept in a similar pile, with Veyo between the huntress and the forager. \n\nAraxes laid awake for most of the night, or at least in a very shallow, fitful sleep. The light bothered him the most, he found. Out on the plains, the night could be very dark, shot through only with the glow of the Firmament far above, and the light of one or two of Asantrea's moons. But even then, he could pull down the reeds over the door of his hut and sleep in darkness. At one point, Veyo rose and wandered into the forest for a short time, presumably to relieve herself, and when she returned, he felt her presence nearby. He did not open his eyes, but he could smell her, and hear her breathing. She seemed to be squatting near his head, and abruptly he felt something brush over his manhood. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai's closeness to him was keeping him erect, moreso than he typically would be at night. It was Veyo's hand. His eyes flew open, and he looked up to stare directly into her crotch. She was preoccupied, gently stroking his cock, being as quiet as she could so as not to wake Nur-Ayya or Yt'tai, both of whom would be unimpressed if she was caught. \n\nAraxes contemplated the thought of moving his head slightly and pressing his tongue upward against her vulva. It was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from it. She was clearly intensely in need of what he was displaying. Her delicate inner lips were even more puffy and swollen than they had been earlier, glistening with wetness and protruding beyond the soft outer lips - until very recently, Araxes had no idea how a woman's genitals were constructed, having only ever caught the briefest of glimpses before his abduction by the Y'Dasz.\n\nBut had it been an abduction? They had saved his life, after all. \n\nVeyo abruptly froze in place when Yt'tai mumbled in her sleep and stretched. Araxes moved his head slightly, and gave his cock a firm flex in her hand to let her know he was awake. She moved, and their eyes met in the eerie bioluminescence. Both knew they could not do what they wanted. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai made sure of that, by guarding Araxes. He would be noticed if he left, and missed if he did not return in a short time. The spear-sisters were clearly keeping him and Veyo apart. \n\nAraxes wondered what would happen when he was no longer shaka'hakt. Would Veyo become possessive of him? Or would she mount him a few times and then, her interest sated, move on?\n\nA thick drool of her nectar strung downward from her entrance closer to his face, and on a whim, Araxes swiped it up with his tongue, caressing her slick heat for a tantalising moment. She slapped a hand over her muzzle to contain her gasp, and her hips trembled. She was incredibly sensitive. That was a surprise. Her hand moved rapidly for a moment on his cock, and then, with a tortured sigh, she retreated. \n\nAraxes listened to her masturbating for a hundred breaths somewhere nearby, and the soft grunts of her orgasm, and then tried to force himself to think of something - anything - else. \n\n*\n\nThe slight lightening of the canopy high above was the only visual sign of dawn. But the change in the birdsong was unmistakeable.\n\nThe morning chorus in Ammunash's Garden was deafening. \n\nHoots, hollers, whoops and screeches swept across the forest like a wave, seemingly only minutes after Araxes had finally forced his mind into submission and fallen asleep. Yt'tai stirred, and stretched, and rolled towards him. Her muzzle pressed into the side of his neck, and she ran her hand through the wiry pelt of his chest, mumbling quietly in her shallow sleep. Then Nur-Ayya awoke with a thunderous yawn, and rose to a sitting position on the forest floor, tipping Araxes and Yt'tai over like twigs. She knuckled her eyes, blinked a few times, yawned again, and rose to her hooves. Araxes heard her pissing noisily somewhere nearby, and shared a chuckle with Yt'tai at the noise, who rolled her eyes. \n\nOnce everyone was awake, Veyo collected their clothing from where she had hung it over the thick stem of a giant forest floor plant to dry, and distributed it among the party. It did not seem to matter whose clothing was whose; all of them were similarly constructed and able to be adjusted to the size of the wearer. Nenwoh and Yattah dressed similarly, arranging their fabrics into loincloths. Yt'tai opted to dress herself in little more than a binding strip around her chest, but with nothing at all below her waist. She gave a little smile to Araxes in response to his curious stare. Veyo seemed more than content to remain nude, which surprised no one. Nur-Ayya took only a long strip of cloth, which she tied around her waist such that it preserved her modesty by only the barest fraction. The remainder, she gave to Araxes. \n\nThe common factor was how much less all of the spear-sisters wore here, compared to the dense northern jungles. All of them bundled up their excess cloths and tied them around their spears in densely bound bundles. \n\n``Wearing too many, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya tutted in her heavily accented and halting Lamaye, at the sight of Araxes attempting to swaddle himself in clothing. ``Y'Dasz clothing being... forest. Dytaea Goddess clothing us, Amel Goddess feeding us.''\n\nThen she switched to Y'Dasz, and spoke slowly for Araxes' benefit. ``So much clothing is not comfortable for us. It soaks up our sweat, crushes our pelts, and it rubs and itches. You will see very little clothing among the Y'Dasz. Come...''\n\nShe beckoned him forward, and helped him to arrange a simple pouch loincloth, which contained his manhood and resulted in a long flap of cloth that hung to his knees both front and back. It was astonishingly comfortable. Araxes thought he would feel exposed, but feeling fabric cupping and containing his manhood was something he was unaccustomed to, even back home. Nur-Ayya secured the loincloth with a knot on his left hip, and patted his cheek.\n\n``Good. Enough that Veyo doesn't see everything, but still comfortable. Yes?''\n\nAraxes nodded and removed his gaze from Nur-Ayya's bare breasts with some effort. He was picking up more and more of their language, the more they spoke, but some of their customs remained alien to him.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?''\n\n``Mm?''\n\n``Worrying... not, to speaking Lamaye. Y'Dasz... learning. Better.''\n\nNur-Ayya grinned, and touched her ossicones to his briefly in a gesture he was coming to recognise as one of respect and admiration. Then she turned her back, wearing nothing more than the tiny scrap of cloth around her wide hips, and marched ahead. Veyo fell in beside Araxes for the day's travel, since they were now in familiar territory and her skill as a pathfinder was not needed. Yt'tai came behind them, and made her presence known with a playful smack to Veyo's bare arse, to which she performatively moaned.\n\nNenwoh and Yattah foraged ahead of the small party, and before long, Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes found themselves walking in a relaxed group, with much of the spear sisters' discipline abandoned in the safety of their home. Yt'tai and Veyo chatted endlessly, and through their conversation Araxes picked up more and more words and phrases of their language.\n\nTowards the late afternoon, or so he judged it, Araxes' brooding thoughts found a focus, and he formulated a question in his mind.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?'' Araxes said, jogging forward a few paces to come up alongside her. \n\n``Mm? You have been quiet today, Araxes. Is everything alright?'' she replied.\n\n``Thinking, is. Not knowing... ahh... for purpose... Y'Dasz taking Lamaye. Asking?''\n\n``To save your life,'' Nur-Ayya replied simply. She draped her enormous arm around his skinny shoulders and yanked his body in against her side while they walked. ``What would have become of you had you remained there, alone, out on the savannah, with a head wound? Your own people cast you out, Araxes, as they have so many others before you. We bring the forsaken among us, and some become Y'Dasz.''\n\nIt was a perfectly reasonable answer, Araxes supposed. He processed it slowly, translating it in his mind. He asked Nur-Ayya to repeat herself a couple of times, until he was sure he understood. But she had not answered him in full. She was holding something back. Something important. Araxes found that further questions were met with sexual innuendo, or a blank stare as though she did not understand him. \n\nEventually, he got the message to cease probing, and turned his attention back to their surroundings. \n\nThe Y'Dasz were a sparse population, it turned out. By that evening, they began to encounter people; a small group here or there, some signs of habitation among the gargantuan trees, often more than an hour's walk apart. A hut, or a cooking fire, or some arrangement of food production, harvesting or similar, would often appear through the forest. The Y'Dasz did not clear the trees to create open land; they lived in harmony with their forest world, and did not seek to change its form or its function beyond subtly shaping the understorey to form huts, shelters woven from the living forest. \n\nThe three spear-sisters and Araxes caught up to Nenwoh and Yattah as the canopy high overhead was undergoing its subtle transition into nightfall. They made camp and rested near to a tiny gathering of Y'Dasz, no more than a dozen of them, and Araxes heard that word shaka'hakt spoken numerous times in response to the curious stares he attracted. \n\nThey were all women, Araxes realised with surprise, and showed a similar type of interest in him as the spear sisters had when they had first met. A type of restrained curiosity, controlled by their culture of initiation. It suddenly occurred to Araxes that he was yet to see an Y'Dasz man.\n\nThat night, Araxes found himself sleeping almost under guard. Nur-Ayya remained awake, taking first watch with her spear at her side. Then Yt'tai took her place. Then Yattah. Then Nenwoh. Then, finally, as the dawn approached, Veyo reluctantly dragged herself upright to stand her watch. Araxes took his fingers back from where she had been using them to subtly and silently masturbate herself for most of the night, guiding his touch with her hand, and filled his lungs with her scent. \n\n``Veyo is in the peak of her rut,'' Nur-Ayya said quietly as she sleepily rolled to face Araxes, to touch her forehead to his. ``I am proud of you for your control. It shall not be long until neither of you need restrain yourselves any longer, nor any of the rest of us.''\n\nAraxes considered that for a long moment, and then gently trailed his fingers along the elegant curve of Nur-Ayya's neck. Her eyelids fluttered and she held her breath until he stopped, by which time he could smell her arousal. \n\n``Veyo rut... not only, not alone?'' he said boldly. \n\n``Very perceptive you are, little Lamaye. No, she is not. All of us are.''\n\nAraxes thought for a moment, and then gently offered Nur-Ayya his hand - the same one Veyo had been using. Nur-Ayya's eyes glinted in the soft bioluminescence of the forest, and she held his wrist for a long moment. But then she released him. \n\n``No. It is too close to the dawn. I cannot.''\n\nAraxes nodded his understanding. \n\nIt did not stop Nur-Ayya from taking care of herself, though. Araxes found himself unable to go back to sleep, not with the sound and scent of Nur-Ayya quietly masturbating right beside him. He desperately wanted to touch her. To taste her. He ached and throbbed and drooled into his belly fur, but he resisted. She climaxed within minutes, and fell into a slumber beside him with her hand resting on his thigh, her fingertips caressing the skin a mere finger's breadth from the root of his aching manhood.\n\nThe deafening dawn chorus commenced only moments later, it seemed. Araxes groaned and knuckled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he gasped in shock and leapt backward. Veyo was standing over him, straddling his legs and staring at him. She laughed.\n\n``The dawn breaks,'' she said. ``Come, the villagers have already risen.''\n\nNur-Ayya yawned hugely and rose to her hooves. She scratched her crotch sleepily, sniffed her fingers, and then thrust her hand down to haul Araxes upright. Veyo bit her lip, staring at his persistent erection, and the action she performed was, while similar to Nur-Ayya's scratch, rather more delicate and prolonged.\n\n``Hide behind me until that goes down, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya ordered. ``The local women may not have the self-control that we spear sisters have.''\n\n``He could hide it between my legs,'' Veyo suggested helpfully.\n\nNur-Ayya snorted and swatted affectionately at Veyo. ``Go and pleasure yourself again, sister. Somewhere Araxes cannot see, hear or smell you.''\n\nVeyo did so.\n\nAraxes grimaced. It took some time, but eventually he had shrunk enough to at least tuck himself back inside his loincloth pouch.\n\nAs on the mornings that had come before, breakfast was shared between them, although on this morning there was a new factor - the local Y'Dasz giraffes turned out to stare at Araxes. Most of them were naked. Some wore jewellery or other adornments on their bodies, and others carried baskets of food to bring to Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters. She, as the leader of their little group, accepted the offerings with ritualistic dignity, and in what seemed to be a local custom, returned most of the gifts to the people who had given them. She took only morsels, tokens of gratitude. Yt'tai explained the ritual to him quietly; it was a cultural practice for a village or settlement to welcome home a traveller who had been absent for a long time; it was bad form to take all of the offered gifts, and worse form to refuse them entirely. \n\nA young woman of approximately Araxes' age who had been staring at him all morning, and for most of the previous evening too, tentatively stepped forward. Instead of Nur-Ayya, she approached him directly. She was a pretty thing, slender and toned like Yt'tai, with small and perky breasts and hips that seemed slightly too wide for her frame. She was flushed and visibly flustered, and carried no offering. Rather, she was the offering. \n\nSuddenly, the nature of Y'Dasz gifts made sense to Araxes. They were a metaphor for sexual congress. One party offered up their whole selves. An exchange occurred. The recipient took something small - the pleasure of a shared orgasm - and the one who had offered themselves was returned the largest portion of the gift. And Araxes was being offered precisely that, with no cultural metaphor attached.\n\nShe approached him with shallow breaths, her ears perked sharply forward, and then turned her back to him. She thrust her buttocks backward and stood stiff-legged with her tail raised over her back, as if he would mount her right there in the open in front of all her gathered family and neighbours, and the five spear-sisters. \n\n``Esti-sa aqeti shaka'hakt. Kur-tidak sheqi a'amadeti,'' he said softly to her (I remain forbidden. The day after tomorrow shall be here quickly).\n\nThe young woman looked desperately disappointed, and Araxes felt bad for her - more so now that he knew something of the level of denial she may be feeling. But Nur-Ayya clapped him on the shoulder appreciatively, and in silence, the party of six moved out.\n\nNur-Ayya slowly explained to Araxes that the densest population of Y'Dasz occurred in a place called Zalemanya, and it was there that they were headed. But Zalemanya was not village. The more Nur-Ayya spoke of it, the larger it seemed, until Araxes realised that it referred not to a set location, but the place where the Aethyrsage of her people chose to rest. As such, Zalemanya was a concept, more than a location, and had probably existed in several distinct locations through its history.\n\n``Zalemanya... Y'Dasz... many?'' Araxes asked Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Many, yes. Some thousands,'' she indicated twelve on her fingers for him. ``But Zalemanya is very large. Four days from one side to the other. Big spaces between people. But it is to Ayya-Yurah we must go, and she is the centre of Zalemanya.''\n\n*\n\nThe journey to the centre of Zalemanya took two more days. The further they travelled through the vastness of Ammunash's Garden, the denser the undergrowth became, until there seemed to be little sunlight that filtered all the way to the forest floor. But far from being perturbed by this, the savannah-born Araxes was enchanted. It was a monumentally large place, in every way, but it felt intimate and protected.\n\nAnd the further they travelled, the more Y'Dasz Araxes saw. Tiny outposts and isolated villages became larger settlements, and those larger settlements became closer and closer together until they travelled through a near-continuous, living city. But there were no buildings of stone or timber here; the more permanent-seeming structures were of trained and interwoven vines and branches, some of them set five or six times his height up into the trees, with elaborate bridges between them made from trained, living branches. Everywhere he looked, the ever-present bioluminescence of the understorey illuminated this forest world, and its people, too. \n\nThe presence of the Y'Dasz was far more marked nearer to the centre of Zalemanya. Paths between the trees were well-worn, and some were even paved with stones, kept free of moss and lichen by the passage of many hooves. There was little sign of organised agriculture, but many of the people they crossed paths with carried large baskets laden with fruits, fungi, tubers and nuts; the bounty of the forest that sustained these people. Others sat in comfortable circles weaving baskets, mending strips of cloth, or shaping blocks of obsidian or flint into blades, for tools and weapons. Here and there, Araxes saw a spear sister; an Y'Dasz warrior woman bearing a spear the same as those carried by Nur-Ayya and her group, with the physique and presence of one trained in martial combat. \n\nMany of the people Araxes saw stared openly at him as they passed. Nearly all were giraffes, although he did see several groups of okapi as well, and even the occasional slender, lithe feline of speciation he did not recognise.\n\nAnd, as Nur-Ayya had indicated, he saw very little clothing among the Y-Dasz. After the initial culture shock of the spear sisters' open sexuality and preference for nudity, Araxes found himself slowly becoming accustomed to seeing naked female bodies wherever he went. It still aroused him, certainly, but as time passed, the moments when it caused him to become erect seemed to be getting easier to control, and limited mostly to those moments where Veyo or Yt'tai or Nur-Ayya specifically wanted to tease him. And tease him they did, relentlessly - although none moreso than Veyo.\n\nAraxes noted curiously that none of the very few men he saw carried weapons or shields, nor did they generally have the sculpted physique of the Lamaye warriors he was familiar with. Very few bore the ritual scars of Lamaye initiation on their shoulders and chests. Most were carrying out tasks that seemed predominantly domestic in nature; processing food, cooking, cleaning, trimming and training the vines and branches of the Y'Dasz's homes. But what intrigued him the most, were those men he saw in attendance to pregnant Y'Dasz women. There were few enough of those, and Araxes noted that there were very few calves or younger Y'Dasz giraffes. But those who were carrying a new life within them seemed to be treated with utter deference, verging on worship.\n\n``Araxes, step aside,'' Nur-Ayya instructed him suddenly. \n\nHe stumbled to do so, taken aback by the snap of authority in her voice, and fell heavily. A pregnant Y'Dasz woman passed by, with no fewer than four people in her attendance; two men, and two younger women. \n\nNur-Ayya hoisted Araxes to his hooves once more, and busily dusted the mud and moss from his pelt. Araxes suddenly felt very alone, and very lost in this alien world. He had felt as though he was beginning to understand the Y'Dasz while travelling only with the spear sisters, but here in Zalemanya, it felt as if he knew nothing at all. \n\n``Why am I here?'' Araxes demanded, angrily cuffing tears of frustration from his cheeks. \n\nNur-Ayya?s face softened and she seemed to slump, as if relieving herself of a burden carried too long. Her voice when next she spoke was a low murmur that Araxes had to concentrate to hear. \n\n``We... are an afflicted people, Araxes. Long ago, we displeased the great mother and suffered a great punishment that continues to this day. Come, walk with me. Tell me what you see.''\n\nNur-Ayya linked her arm through his and set a languid pace, off and away from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare they had been on. Their hooves sank pleasingly into the dense, layered moss that carpeted the forest. All around, Araxes could see just what he?d seen before; Y?Dasz giraffes with their inverse colours, at once a bizarre sight to the Lamaye man and yet, here in the verdant depths of Ammunash?s Garden, they fit. \n\n``I do not know what it is I am supposed to see,'' Araxes admitted at length. \n\n``You see Y?Dasz, Araxes. Now, what do you not see?''\n\nAraxes tilted his head up to stare at Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Long ago,'' she continued, ``we took the blessings of the great mother, the goddess Dytaea, whose love for her creator Ammunash spawned this world. We took them and we used them, and we paid a high price for our irreverence. A great sickness befell our Aethyrborn guardians. Those who channelled the Aethyr into our hearts and our loins were torn from us. Most never returned. Wolves walked amongst us and brought the sickness with them, and with them they took our guardians.''\n\nAraxes frowned in confusion. While he spoke passable Y?Dasz after his time amongst the so-called Forest Demons, Nur-Ayya spoke with the weight of a thousand generations' worth of culture and he struggled to follow her nuanced meanings. \n\n``I still do not understand.''\n\n``How many Y?Dasz menfolk have you met, Araxes?''\n\n``None. None. I... thinking... Y'Dasz men far away fighting, foraging.''\n\nThe few giraffe men Araxes saw were clearly not Y'Dasz; the Y'Dasz giraffes had distinctive pelt markings that were the opposite of the Lamaye's own, with pale ivory patches over darker brown. The Lamaye tended to have sharper-edged dark patches over tawny fur, while the western Sagunu were darker still, with patches of burnt umber over mahogany. Araxes recognised several Lamaye and Sagunu men by their markings alone, but did not recognise any of them individually. \n\n``All of them, at all times, such that their women have to raid neighbouring tribes for a partner to rut?'' Nur-Ayya laughed mirthlessly. Araxes shifted uncomfortably. ``The Y?Dasz have no menfolk-Aethyrborn any longer, Araxes, nor any touched by the Aethyr in the way it is meant to be. We give birth only to daughters, and it has been this way for two generations. The last of the surviving Y?Dasz menfolk-Aethyrborn died of old age two generations hence. He died very happy, but he died, still. And after the sickness, was as mortal as you or I and lost to the Aethyr.''\n\n``What... happening to Aethyrborn?''\n\nAraxes was, of course, familiar with Aethyr, and of Aethyrborn and their Aethyr-touched offspring; the cruel Lamaye chieftain Beltezaar, Isaeos' father, had been an Aethyrborn of Bezar, the god of fire. And, it was said, most shamans of the Lamaye were Aethyr-touched; the mortal offspring of Aethyrborn. He believed it. But where Aethyrborn to the Lamaye meant power and trouble, individuals to be feared and revered, it seemed to mean something quite different to the Y'Dasz.\n\n``Lu-Temba was his soul-name. He took flesh and walked among us for many years, and fathered many calves, who became our Aethyrsages. He survived the great sickness, but was forever changed. He did not remember who he was, or that he should return to us beyond the veil of his death. And after he left us... the Y'Dasz had no more sons.''\n\nAraxes remembered hearing of some long-past event involving the Aethyrborn, and it dawned upon him that what Nur-Ayya referred to as ?sickness? probably meant a spiritual sickness, rather than a physical one.\n\nA ritual. Wolves. Arahan. The strange word was in his mind somehow, although he had nothing by which to define it.\n\n``We begged and we prayed and we called upon Dytaea to restore him to us. But the sickness meant that the goddess no longer saw him among us. The great Lu-Temba was not Aethyrborn, not any longer. And so his spirit fled and left us afflicted.''\n\n``Y'Dasz taking... menfolk of others... because cannot have sons?'' Araxes hazarded. \n\nNur-Ayya nodded and hung her head. Araxes reached up to touch her shoulder and her eyes lifted to meet his. \n\n``Understanding,'' he said. ``Knowing not of... pain. Sorrow, I have.''\n\n``You could not have known. It is my burden to bear, not yours.''\n\n``Why not... saying, before-ago?''\n\n``It is my people?s shame! We Y?Dasz bear it together, but rarely is it spoken.''\n\n``If saying... men coming. Nur-Ayya and spear sisters beautiful, like flowers... attracting, to men.''\n\nNur-Ayya cupped the back of his neck and brought her forehead to his own. Her ossicones bumped against his own, and she held him there for a long moment. \n\n``I look forward to bearing your calf, Araxes Lamaye,'' she whispered. ``You have a good soul.''\n\nTowards the evening of the seventh day since the Y'Dasz had rescued him from the baking heat of the savannah, the party of six finally reached their destination. Nenwoh and Yattah had scouted ahead, to arrive ahead of Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes, and to inform the Aethyrsage of their approach. \n\nAs such, when they arrived, Ayya-Yurah was ready for them. \n\n*\n\nIt took three days for a majority of the expected Lamaye village representatives to arrive in Impili in response to Shuva's call - the shamans and village elders from all five permanent Lamaye settlements, and elders from the nomadic groups. As was tradition, Atatafi the shamaness greeted them upon their arrival at the village, for until Shuva was ritually confirmed as the new Chieftain, the Lamaye were without a leader. The body of Isaeos had been preserved with the refined, waxy resin excreted by a beetle that lived in the high branches of the Savannah acacias, but even so, by the time the village representatives were present, it had begun to stink. The former Chieftain's final journey would be from the Chieftain's hut, to a funeral pyre that had been prepared some distance from the village. But his body needed to be witnessed by the village representatives.\n\nShuva did not sit in the Chieftain's throne. That would be presumptuous, and he did not want to be equated to his father. Instead, he waited off to one side of the dais with Arashi at his side, in his ceremonial dress, while a dozen village elders filed through the Chieftain's hut. Some carried burning incense in clay pots, which they passed over Isaeos' body while they inspected him. Others murmured prayers. All of them turned to Shuva and offered him tiny gestures of their intended acceptance of his ascension before they left. \n\nThen the locals came through. All Lamaye from all villages were entitled to see and pay their respects to the dead Chieftain. \n\nBarely half of the village of Impili did so, although every single one of them showed up and dutifully filed through. Very few people from the other villages were present. Shuva watched them with curiosity and empathy. They were cowed into obedience. Terrified of his father, even in death. \n\nHe would change that.\n\nAt long last, the time was upon him. And today, of all days, was the day of the transit of Saliel, where the silver moon would pass across the face of Kesh, the summer sun, and cause there to be only one light in the midday sky. It was the day when Araxes would have been initiated, had the runt remained with the Lamaye. Shuva was surprised to remember him at all; he may have been the shaman's son, but he was not a man of any particular importance. But there had been something about him. An intelligence, tempered by sadness. If the Lamaye had not been led by Isaeos, Shuva supposed that Araxes would have had a place among them. \n\nHe hoped Araxes had survived Oaal and Xanaf's attack. And perhaps that he'd even survived the Y'Dasz, and found his way to the Sagunu after all.\n\nShuva did not carry his father's body. That was a break from tradition, he knew, but it was also a message to the villagers. He was not his father, and would not honour him beyond what was strictly necessary. All knew of Isaeos' brutality, and Shuva fancied that he saw hope on the faces of some of his people at his gesture. \n\nThe sky was dark and heavy with cloud, that day. Shuva felt a pang of anxiety that they would not see the transit, except as a brief dimming of the already dark sky. The air felt pregnant with the promise of a storm; dense and still. All of the villagers from Impili were present, together with the several dozen representatives of the other Lamaye villages. All in all there were well over four hundred Lamaye present; giraffes, antelope, zebra, many mahogany-patched pelts and elegant necks, horns and stripes gathered around the unlit funeral pyre.\n\nFinally, it was Shuva's time to speak. Arashi squeezed his hand, and he briefly touched her face before stepping forward and raising his hands.\n\n``Hear me, Lamaye!'' he called. His voice carried far on the still air, and he sent a silent prayer to Lakesh, the Storm Goddess, for making it so. ``Chieftain Isaeos is dead. You have seen his body, stripped of life, laying before you. Those who killed him, witnessed by myself, witnessed by Arashi of the Sagunu, witnessed by Abdi of the Lamaye, witnessed by Eytliah of the Lamaye, confirmed by Saare and Luwam of the Lamaye, are Xanaf of the Lamaye and Oaal of the Lamaye, who are held until their trial.''\n\nA ripple of voices passed through the gathered giraffes. Xanaf and Oaal were well known among the locals, although not for good reasons. Somewhere in the group, a young woman cried out in anguish. She was pregnant with Oaal's calf. \n\nShuva allowed the people to talk briefly among themselves, and then once again held up his hands for silence. \n\n``Hear me, Lamaye! I, Shuva, son of Isaeos, son of Beltezaar, stand before you! The torch of Chiefdom passes from father to son, and I stake my right to claim it today. Do any among you challenge my right?'' \n\nShuva saw fear on a few faces, and he made a point of staring directly at those people, and softened his voice. This was the part where he emerged. Where his intentions would become clear. \n\nAnd at that very moment, the sky darkened. The transit had commenced. A shiver ran up Shuva's spine. This was the moment. He turned his face skyward and raised his arms.\n\n``Amel of the Rivers, Lady of the Plains, cast your divine sight upon your children once more, and bless us with your succour.''\n\nUtter silence descended over the Lamaye.\n\nShuva was a Bezari! Isaeos had been all fire and violence - his first act as Chieftain had been to burn half the village. What Shuva promised with those few words was a return to the pre-Bezari days - before Beltezaar had lurched forth from his fiery home to bring war and violence to the Lamaye and their neighbours. \n\nAtatafi, the woman who had given birth to Araxes the runt, stepped forward. She was laden with the ritual artefacts of her craft, her ears and lips heavily pierced with rings and barbs of polished wood and bone, her breasts bare. She danced around Shuva, who stood with his head bowed and his hands held palms-up before him under the darkened sky. \n\nInto his hands, she placed a shallow clay bowl, and into it she poured a measure of water from a corked gourd hanging from a woven strap around her neck. Then she stooped, and peered long and hard into the water. A long, low hum rose in her throat - an eerie buzzing sound, which continued for many minutes without pause for breath. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, and shook her hands, causing the many wooden and metal bangles on her arms to rattle. And then she whooped to the sky, and flung the water upward in a spray. \n\nAt that moment, a deafening crack of thunder exploded from the sky directly overhead, and lightning struck Isaeos' funeral pyre, barely a dozen paces from where they stood. The percussive force of the strike knocked Shuva, Arashi and Atatafi from their hooves.\n\nImpregnated with flammable oils, the pyre erupted with a whoosh, engulfing the Chieftain in the fire from which he had been born.\n\nThe people backed away in fear and awe. Shuva was stunned. As they rose, he turned to the shamaness, and she gave him a strange little smile. \n\n``It is Amel who speaks, through Lakesh. Not Bezar,'' she said to him in a dry, raspy voice. \n\nShamans were forbidden from speaking to any but a Chieftain, or another shaman.\n\nSomehow, the significance of that outweighed even the divine providence of the lightning, for Shuva. He fell to his knees before her, and before his goddesses, and there, in the presence of the frightened Lamaye, she smeared his cheeks with sacred ochre and presented him with the bronze Chieftain's dagger - the very same weapon that had taken Isaeos' life.\n\nThen, with another flash and a long, brittle, rolling crack of thunder, sparse, heavy raindrops began to fall from the leaden sky to the desiccated and dusty ground. \n\nShuva rose to his hooves once again and scanned the gathered Lamaye. Some remained stunned into immobility, their mouths open and eyes wide, while others were murmuring among themselves. Yet others had excitement on their faces, hands held aloft to the burgeoning rain, whose fat drops hissed and cracked into Isaeos' roaring pyre. More than a few knelt and pressed their heads to the ground towards him.\n\nShuva turned his face skyward, and allowed the bellow of triumph that welled up in his chest to come forth.\n\nHe was Chieftain of the Lamaye, and the gods themselves had intervened to make their approval as clear as the day which, moments thereafter, once again lightened as the transit of Saliel came to its end, and a new era was born.\n\n*\n\nAyya-Yurah's calf was due to be born very soon. The Aethyrsage's breasts hung full and heavy in readiness, distended with milk. Her belly, which was swollen and full with the weight of life she carried, put a strain on her back, such that she was not as mobile as she would have liked. But the arrival of a new Lamaye man in their midst was cause for celebration. It always was, but this one seemed special, to Ayya-Yurah, for he had arrived on the day of the transit of Saliel. \n\nShe had scried several times upon his journey inward to Zalemanya in the company of Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters, and found herself uncharacteristically drawn to this skinny, slightly runty young man in ways she rarely was. There was something special about him, and that caused a flutter of excitement in her that she was unprepared for. \n\nNenwoh and Yattah returned several hours ahead of Araxes. Ayya-Yurah sent Tsu-Isi, one of her attendants, to greet them. Tsu-Isi brought the two women into the Aethyrsage's presence. \n\n``We welcome you home, sisters,'' Ayya-Yurah said. ``Tell me of whom you bring.''\n\nNenwoh related the story of how Araxes was found, and Ayya-Yurah nodded sagely. Her story reflected the Aethyrsage's scrying, so she knew the truth of her words. That Araxes had willingly followed the spear sisters was a good sign of itself; not all Lamaye men did. Some fought. Some ran. Some broke the shaka'hakt within days. Some who made it to Zalemanya were found not to be pure, and unfit to become Y'Dasz. \n\nAraxes appeared to be none of these, and as such he was a rare find. \n\nThe calf inside her seemed to sense her excitement and moved and kicked. She caressed her distended belly, murmuring to her child, and thanked Nenwoh and Yattah for their presence. Tsu-Isi showed them out, and Ayya-Yurah moved slowly around the inside of her hut, preparing to receive Araxes into her presence. \n\nAll of the rituals must be practiced. It was how the Y'Dasz welcomed a newcomer to their society, and vetted their intentions and their desires. Violent men were rejected. Those who had broken shaka'hakt by succumbing to the spear sisters ahead of their induction were rejected. The ritual was an intimate and invasive one, and Ayya-Yurah would, for a time, be inside Araxes' mind. She would have access to his thoughts and memories. Ayya-Yurah set out the various artefacts and herbs she would need, and sent prayers to Amel and Dytaea that he would be the one she had sought for so many years - the one who would alleviate the suffering of the Y'Dasz, and finally bring to an end the years of silence from the gods they had endured.\n\nAyya-Yurah called over her attendants. \n\n``Tsu-Isi, Ivaeah, Shayya - the time has come. Greet him, and bring him to me.''\n\nAyya-Yurah sent forth her welcoming party, and did her best to calm her quivering heart while she waited for Araxes' arrival in her presence. \n\n*\n\n"
},
".description.json": {
"description": "Chapter 4 (of 8) of Cultural Relations - commissioned by IrvingWrites\n\nAraxes travels with the Y'Dasz spear sisters through the immensity of Ammunash's Garden, to Zalemanya. Along the way, he learns far more of Y'Dasz culture, and begins finally to understand the purpose Fate has laid out for him.\nMeanwhile, far to the north, Shuva is confirmed as the new Chieftain of the Lamaye (a passage I'm particularly proud of!)"
},
".writing.json": {
"writing": "Cultural Relations\n\nPart 4\n\n(c)2025 Bruno Hirschkoff\n\nFor Irving\n\n \n\nThe following is a work of erotic fiction intended solely for adult audiences. It is not intended for commercial publication nor for widespread distribution without the permission of the Author. The Author asserts the exclusive right of ownership of Asantrea, and all characters, settings, concepts, locations and events described herein.\n\nApprox 6,500 words / 30 minutes reading time\n\nChapter 4\n\nAraxes did not sleep well that night. It was his first night in Ammunash's Garden, and it was such an alien environment. The night was barely any different from the day, he had noticed; the bioluminescence of the understorey meant it was difficult to tell precisely what time of day or night it was, other than the darkening of the canopy an impossible height above them. \n\nAraxes wondered if the transit of Saliel had yet occurred. In the depths of the Garden, it was impossible to tell. \n\nBut the thought that his initiation date to the Lamaye might instead have occurred the previous evening with his first truly sexual experience of the Y'Dasz stood out to him as a fitting moment.\n\nFurther north, in the sweaty jungles, the sisters had taken turns keeping watch, and had been evidently on-edge. Here, in the sanctuary of the Garden, they were entirely at ease. All of them slept at the same time, and close together. Araxes found himself with his head pillowed on Nur-Ayya's arm while she draped the other over his midriff. On his other side, Yt'tai lay with her back to him, and over the course of the night she shuffled backwards until he was sandwiched between her and Nur-Ayya. Veyo, Nenwoh and Yattah slept in a similar pile, with Veyo between the huntress and the forager. \n\nAraxes laid awake for most of the night, or at least in a very shallow, fitful sleep. The light bothered him the most, he found. Out on the plains, the night could be very dark, shot through only with the glow of the Firmament far above, and the light of one or two of Asantrea's moons. But even then, he could pull down the reeds over the door of his hut and sleep in darkness. At one point, Veyo rose and wandered into the forest for a short time, presumably to relieve herself, and when she returned, he felt her presence nearby. He did not open his eyes, but he could smell her, and hear her breathing. She seemed to be squatting near his head, and abruptly he felt something brush over his manhood. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai's closeness to him was keeping him erect, moreso than he typically would be at night. It was Veyo's hand. His eyes flew open, and he looked up to stare directly into her crotch. She was preoccupied, gently stroking his cock, being as quiet as she could so as not to wake Nur-Ayya or Yt'tai, both of whom would be unimpressed if she was caught. \n\nAraxes contemplated the thought of moving his head slightly and pressing his tongue upward against her vulva. It was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from it. She was clearly intensely in need of what he was displaying. Her delicate inner lips were even more puffy and swollen than they had been earlier, glistening with wetness and protruding beyond the soft outer lips - until very recently, Araxes had no idea how a woman's genitals were constructed, having only ever caught the briefest of glimpses before his abduction by the Y'Dasz.\n\nBut had it been an abduction? They had saved his life, after all. \n\nVeyo abruptly froze in place when Yt'tai mumbled in her sleep and stretched. Araxes moved his head slightly, and gave his cock a firm flex in her hand to let her know he was awake. She moved, and their eyes met in the eerie bioluminescence. Both knew they could not do what they wanted. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai made sure of that, by guarding Araxes. He would be noticed if he left, and missed if he did not return in a short time. The spear-sisters were clearly keeping him and Veyo apart. \n\nAraxes wondered what would happen when he was no longer shaka'hakt. Would Veyo become possessive of him? Or would she mount him a few times and then, her interest sated, move on?\n\nA thick drool of her nectar strung downward from her entrance closer to his face, and on a whim, Araxes swiped it up with his tongue, caressing her slick heat for a tantalising moment. She slapped a hand over her muzzle to contain her gasp, and her hips trembled. She was incredibly sensitive. That was a surprise. Her hand moved rapidly for a moment on his cock, and then, with a tortured sigh, she retreated. \n\nAraxes listened to her masturbating for a hundred breaths somewhere nearby, and the soft grunts of her orgasm, and then tried to force himself to think of something - anything - else. \n\n*\n\nThe slight lightening of the canopy high above was the only visual sign of dawn. But the change in the birdsong was unmistakeable.\n\nThe morning chorus in Ammunash's Garden was deafening. \n\nHoots, hollers, whoops and screeches swept across the forest like a wave, seemingly only minutes after Araxes had finally forced his mind into submission and fallen asleep. Yt'tai stirred, and stretched, and rolled towards him. Her muzzle pressed into the side of his neck, and she ran her hand through the wiry pelt of his chest, mumbling quietly in her shallow sleep. Then Nur-Ayya awoke with a thunderous yawn, and rose to a sitting position on the forest floor, tipping Araxes and Yt'tai over like twigs. She knuckled her eyes, blinked a few times, yawned again, and rose to her hooves. Araxes heard her pissing noisily somewhere nearby, and shared a chuckle with Yt'tai at the noise, who rolled her eyes. \n\nOnce everyone was awake, Veyo collected their clothing from where she had hung it over the thick stem of a giant forest floor plant to dry, and distributed it among the party. It did not seem to matter whose clothing was whose; all of them were similarly constructed and able to be adjusted to the size of the wearer. Nenwoh and Yattah dressed similarly, arranging their fabrics into loincloths. Yt'tai opted to dress herself in little more than a binding strip around her chest, but with nothing at all below her waist. She gave a little smile to Araxes in response to his curious stare. Veyo seemed more than content to remain nude, which surprised no one. Nur-Ayya took only a long strip of cloth, which she tied around her waist such that it preserved her modesty by only the barest fraction. The remainder, she gave to Araxes. \n\nThe common factor was how much less all of the spear-sisters wore here, compared to the dense northern jungles. All of them bundled up their excess cloths and tied them around their spears in densely bound bundles. \n\n``Wearing too many, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya tutted in her heavily accented and halting Lamaye, at the sight of Araxes attempting to swaddle himself in clothing. ``Y'Dasz clothing being... forest. Dytaea Goddess clothing us, Amel Goddess feeding us.''\n\nThen she switched to Y'Dasz, and spoke slowly for Araxes' benefit. ``So much clothing is not comfortable for us. It soaks up our sweat, crushes our pelts, and it rubs and itches. You will see very little clothing among the Y'Dasz. Come...''\n\nShe beckoned him forward, and helped him to arrange a simple pouch loincloth, which contained his manhood and resulted in a long flap of cloth that hung to his knees both front and back. It was astonishingly comfortable. Araxes thought he would feel exposed, but feeling fabric cupping and containing his manhood was something he was unaccustomed to, even back home. Nur-Ayya secured the loincloth with a knot on his left hip, and patted his cheek.\n\n``Good. Enough that Veyo doesn't see everything, but still comfortable. Yes?''\n\nAraxes nodded and removed his gaze from Nur-Ayya's bare breasts with some effort. He was picking up more and more of their language, the more they spoke, but some of their customs remained alien to him.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?''\n\n``Mm?''\n\n``Worrying... not, to speaking Lamaye. Y'Dasz... learning. Better.''\n\nNur-Ayya grinned, and touched her ossicones to his briefly in a gesture he was coming to recognise as one of respect and admiration. Then she turned her back, wearing nothing more than the tiny scrap of cloth around her wide hips, and marched ahead. Veyo fell in beside Araxes for the day's travel, since they were now in familiar territory and her skill as a pathfinder was not needed. Yt'tai came behind them, and made her presence known with a playful smack to Veyo's bare arse, to which she performatively moaned.\n\nNenwoh and Yattah foraged ahead of the small party, and before long, Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes found themselves walking in a relaxed group, with much of the spear sisters' discipline abandoned in the safety of their home. Yt'tai and Veyo chatted endlessly, and through their conversation Araxes picked up more and more words and phrases of their language.\n\nTowards the late afternoon, or so he judged it, Araxes' brooding thoughts found a focus, and he formulated a question in his mind.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?'' Araxes said, jogging forward a few paces to come up alongside her. \n\n``Mm? You have been quiet today, Araxes. Is everything alright?'' she replied.\n\n``Thinking, is. Not knowing... ahh... for purpose... Y'Dasz taking Lamaye. Asking?''\n\n``To save your life,'' Nur-Ayya replied simply. She draped her enormous arm around his skinny shoulders and yanked his body in against her side while they walked. ``What would have become of you had you remained there, alone, out on the savannah, with a head wound? Your own people cast you out, Araxes, as they have so many others before you. We bring the forsaken among us, and some become Y'Dasz.''\n\nIt was a perfectly reasonable answer, Araxes supposed. He processed it slowly, translating it in his mind. He asked Nur-Ayya to repeat herself a couple of times, until he was sure he understood. But she had not answered him in full. She was holding something back. Something important. Araxes found that further questions were met with sexual innuendo, or a blank stare as though she did not understand him. \n\nEventually, he got the message to cease probing, and turned his attention back to their surroundings. \n\nThe Y'Dasz were a sparse population, it turned out. By that evening, they began to encounter people; a small group here or there, some signs of habitation among the gargantuan trees, often more than an hour's walk apart. A hut, or a cooking fire, or some arrangement of food production, harvesting or similar, would often appear through the forest. The Y'Dasz did not clear the trees to create open land; they lived in harmony with their forest world, and did not seek to change its form or its function beyond subtly shaping the understorey to form huts, shelters woven from the living forest. \n\nThe three spear-sisters and Araxes caught up to Nenwoh and Yattah as the canopy high overhead was undergoing its subtle transition into nightfall. They made camp and rested near to a tiny gathering of Y'Dasz, no more than a dozen of them, and Araxes heard that word shaka'hakt spoken numerous times in response to the curious stares he attracted. \n\nThey were all women, Araxes realised with surprise, and showed a similar type of interest in him as the spear sisters had when they had first met. A type of restrained curiosity, controlled by their culture of initiation. It suddenly occurred to Araxes that he was yet to see an Y'Dasz man.\n\nThat night, Araxes found himself sleeping almost under guard. Nur-Ayya remained awake, taking first watch with her spear at her side. Then Yt'tai took her place. Then Yattah. Then Nenwoh. Then, finally, as the dawn approached, Veyo reluctantly dragged herself upright to stand her watch. Araxes took his fingers back from where she had been using them to subtly and silently masturbate herself for most of the night, guiding his touch with her hand, and filled his lungs with her scent. \n\n``Veyo is in the peak of her rut,'' Nur-Ayya said quietly as she sleepily rolled to face Araxes, to touch her forehead to his. ``I am proud of you for your control. It shall not be long until neither of you need restrain yourselves any longer, nor any of the rest of us.''\n\nAraxes considered that for a long moment, and then gently trailed his fingers along the elegant curve of Nur-Ayya's neck. Her eyelids fluttered and she held her breath until he stopped, by which time he could smell her arousal. \n\n``Veyo rut... not only, not alone?'' he said boldly. \n\n``Very perceptive you are, little Lamaye. No, she is not. All of us are.''\n\nAraxes thought for a moment, and then gently offered Nur-Ayya his hand - the same one Veyo had been using. Nur-Ayya's eyes glinted in the soft bioluminescence of the forest, and she held his wrist for a long moment. But then she released him. \n\n``No. It is too close to the dawn. I cannot.''\n\nAraxes nodded his understanding. \n\nIt did not stop Nur-Ayya from taking care of herself, though. Araxes found himself unable to go back to sleep, not with the sound and scent of Nur-Ayya quietly masturbating right beside him. He desperately wanted to touch her. To taste her. He ached and throbbed and drooled into his belly fur, but he resisted. She climaxed within minutes, and fell into a slumber beside him with her hand resting on his thigh, her fingertips caressing the skin a mere finger's breadth from the root of his aching manhood.\n\nThe deafening dawn chorus commenced only moments later, it seemed. Araxes groaned and knuckled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he gasped in shock and leapt backward. Veyo was standing over him, straddling his legs and staring at him. She laughed.\n\n``The dawn breaks,'' she said. ``Come, the villagers have already risen.''\n\nNur-Ayya yawned hugely and rose to her hooves. She scratched her crotch sleepily, sniffed her fingers, and then thrust her hand down to haul Araxes upright. Veyo bit her lip, staring at his persistent erection, and the action she performed was, while similar to Nur-Ayya's scratch, rather more delicate and prolonged.\n\n``Hide behind me until that goes down, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya ordered. ``The local women may not have the self-control that we spear sisters have.''\n\n``He could hide it between my legs,'' Veyo suggested helpfully.\n\nNur-Ayya snorted and swatted affectionately at Veyo. ``Go and pleasure yourself again, sister. Somewhere Araxes cannot see, hear or smell you.''\n\nVeyo did so.\n\nAraxes grimaced. It took some time, but eventually he had shrunk enough to at least tuck himself back inside his loincloth pouch.\n\nAs on the mornings that had come before, breakfast was shared between them, although on this morning there was a new factor - the local Y'Dasz giraffes turned out to stare at Araxes. Most of them were naked. Some wore jewellery or other adornments on their bodies, and others carried baskets of food to bring to Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters. She, as the leader of their little group, accepted the offerings with ritualistic dignity, and in what seemed to be a local custom, returned most of the gifts to the people who had given them. She took only morsels, tokens of gratitude. Yt'tai explained the ritual to him quietly; it was a cultural practice for a village or settlement to welcome home a traveller who had been absent for a long time; it was bad form to take all of the offered gifts, and worse form to refuse them entirely. \n\nA young woman of approximately Araxes' age who had been staring at him all morning, and for most of the previous evening too, tentatively stepped forward. Instead of Nur-Ayya, she approached him directly. She was a pretty thing, slender and toned like Yt'tai, with small and perky breasts and hips that seemed slightly too wide for her frame. She was flushed and visibly flustered, and carried no offering. Rather, she was the offering. \n\nSuddenly, the nature of Y'Dasz gifts made sense to Araxes. They were a metaphor for sexual congress. One party offered up their whole selves. An exchange occurred. The recipient took something small - the pleasure of a shared orgasm - and the one who had offered themselves was returned the largest portion of the gift. And Araxes was being offered precisely that, with no cultural metaphor attached.\n\nShe approached him with shallow breaths, her ears perked sharply forward, and then turned her back to him. She thrust her buttocks backward and stood stiff-legged with her tail raised over her back, as if he would mount her right there in the open in front of all her gathered family and neighbours, and the five spear-sisters. \n\n``Esti-sa aqeti shaka'hakt. Kur-tidak sheqi a'amadeti,'' he said softly to her (I remain forbidden. The day after tomorrow shall be here quickly).\n\nThe young woman looked desperately disappointed, and Araxes felt bad for her - more so now that he knew something of the level of denial she may be feeling. But Nur-Ayya clapped him on the shoulder appreciatively, and in silence, the party of six moved out.\n\nNur-Ayya slowly explained to Araxes that the densest population of Y'Dasz occurred in a place called Zalemanya, and it was there that they were headed. But Zalemanya was not village. The more Nur-Ayya spoke of it, the larger it seemed, until Araxes realised that it referred not to a set location, but the place where the Aethyrsage of her people chose to rest. As such, Zalemanya was a concept, more than a location, and had probably existed in several distinct locations through its history.\n\n``Zalemanya... Y'Dasz... many?'' Araxes asked Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Many, yes. Some thousands,'' she indicated twelve on her fingers for him. ``But Zalemanya is very large. Four days from one side to the other. Big spaces between people. But it is to Ayya-Yurah we must go, and she is the centre of Zalemanya.''\n\n*\n\nThe journey to the centre of Zalemanya took two more days. The further they travelled through the vastness of Ammunash's Garden, the denser the undergrowth became, until there seemed to be little sunlight that filtered all the way to the forest floor. But far from being perturbed by this, the savannah-born Araxes was enchanted. It was a monumentally large place, in every way, but it felt intimate and protected.\n\nAnd the further they travelled, the more Y'Dasz Araxes saw. Tiny outposts and isolated villages became larger settlements, and those larger settlements became closer and closer together until they travelled through a near-continuous, living city. But there were no buildings of stone or timber here; the more permanent-seeming structures were of trained and interwoven vines and branches, some of them set five or six times his height up into the trees, with elaborate bridges between them made from trained, living branches. Everywhere he looked, the ever-present bioluminescence of the understorey illuminated this forest world, and its people, too. \n\nThe presence of the Y'Dasz was far more marked nearer to the centre of Zalemanya. Paths between the trees were well-worn, and some were even paved with stones, kept free of moss and lichen by the passage of many hooves. There was little sign of organised agriculture, but many of the people they crossed paths with carried large baskets laden with fruits, fungi, tubers and nuts; the bounty of the forest that sustained these people. Others sat in comfortable circles weaving baskets, mending strips of cloth, or shaping blocks of obsidian or flint into blades, for tools and weapons. Here and there, Araxes saw a spear sister; an Y'Dasz warrior woman bearing a spear the same as those carried by Nur-Ayya and her group, with the physique and presence of one trained in martial combat. \n\nMany of the people Araxes saw stared openly at him as they passed. Nearly all were giraffes, although he did see several groups of okapi as well, and even the occasional slender, lithe feline of speciation he did not recognise.\n\nAnd, as Nur-Ayya had indicated, he saw very little clothing among the Y-Dasz. After the initial culture shock of the spear sisters' open sexuality and preference for nudity, Araxes found himself slowly becoming accustomed to seeing naked female bodies wherever he went. It still aroused him, certainly, but as time passed, the moments when it caused him to become erect seemed to be getting easier to control, and limited mostly to those moments where Veyo or Yt'tai or Nur-Ayya specifically wanted to tease him. And tease him they did, relentlessly - although none moreso than Veyo.\n\nAraxes noted curiously that none of the very few men he saw carried weapons or shields, nor did they generally have the sculpted physique of the Lamaye warriors he was familiar with. Very few bore the ritual scars of Lamaye initiation on their shoulders and chests. Most were carrying out tasks that seemed predominantly domestic in nature; processing food, cooking, cleaning, trimming and training the vines and branches of the Y'Dasz's homes. But what intrigued him the most, were those men he saw in attendance to pregnant Y'Dasz women. There were few enough of those, and Araxes noted that there were very few calves or younger Y'Dasz giraffes. But those who were carrying a new life within them seemed to be treated with utter deference, verging on worship.\n\n``Araxes, step aside,'' Nur-Ayya instructed him suddenly. \n\nHe stumbled to do so, taken aback by the snap of authority in her voice, and fell heavily. A pregnant Y'Dasz woman passed by, with no fewer than four people in her attendance; two men, and two younger women. \n\nNur-Ayya hoisted Araxes to his hooves once more, and busily dusted the mud and moss from his pelt. Araxes suddenly felt very alone, and very lost in this alien world. He had felt as though he was beginning to understand the Y'Dasz while travelling only with the spear sisters, but here in Zalemanya, it felt as if he knew nothing at all. \n\n``Why am I here?'' Araxes demanded, angrily cuffing tears of frustration from his cheeks. \n\nNur-Ayya?s face softened and she seemed to slump, as if relieving herself of a burden carried too long. Her voice when next she spoke was a low murmur that Araxes had to concentrate to hear. \n\n``We... are an afflicted people, Araxes. Long ago, we displeased the great mother and suffered a great punishment that continues to this day. Come, walk with me. Tell me what you see.''\n\nNur-Ayya linked her arm through his and set a languid pace, off and away from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare they had been on. Their hooves sank pleasingly into the dense, layered moss that carpeted the forest. All around, Araxes could see just what he?d seen before; Y?Dasz giraffes with their inverse colours, at once a bizarre sight to the Lamaye man and yet, here in the verdant depths of Ammunash?s Garden, they fit. \n\n``I do not know what it is I am supposed to see,'' Araxes admitted at length. \n\n``You see Y?Dasz, Araxes. Now, what do you not see?''\n\nAraxes tilted his head up to stare at Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Long ago,'' she continued, ``we took the blessings of the great mother, the goddess Dytaea, whose love for her creator Ammunash spawned this world. We took them and we used them, and we paid a high price for our irreverence. A great sickness befell our Aethyrborn guardians. Those who channelled the Aethyr into our hearts and our loins were torn from us. Most never returned. Wolves walked amongst us and brought the sickness with them, and with them they took our guardians.''\n\nAraxes frowned in confusion. While he spoke passable Y?Dasz after his time amongst the so-called Forest Demons, Nur-Ayya spoke with the weight of a thousand generations' worth of culture and he struggled to follow her nuanced meanings. \n\n``I still do not understand.''\n\n``How many Y?Dasz menfolk have you met, Araxes?''\n\n``None. None. I... thinking... Y'Dasz men far away fighting, foraging.''\n\nThe few giraffe men Araxes saw were clearly not Y'Dasz; the Y'Dasz giraffes had distinctive pelt markings that were the opposite of the Lamaye's own, with pale ivory patches over darker brown. The Lamaye tended to have sharper-edged dark patches over tawny fur, while the western Sagunu were darker still, with patches of burnt umber over mahogany. Araxes recognised several Lamaye and Sagunu men by their markings alone, but did not recognise any of them individually. \n\n``All of them, at all times, such that their women have to raid neighbouring tribes for a partner to rut?'' Nur-Ayya laughed mirthlessly. Araxes shifted uncomfortably. ``The Y?Dasz have no menfolk-Aethyrborn any longer, Araxes, nor any touched by the Aethyr in the way it is meant to be. We give birth only to daughters, and it has been this way for two generations. The last of the surviving Y?Dasz menfolk-Aethyrborn died of old age two generations hence. He died very happy, but he died, still. And after the sickness, was as mortal as you or I and lost to the Aethyr.''\n\n``What... happening to Aethyrborn?''\n\nAraxes was, of course, familiar with Aethyr, and of Aethyrborn and their Aethyr-touched offspring; the cruel Lamaye chieftain Beltezaar, Isaeos' father, had been an Aethyrborn of Bezar, the god of fire. And, it was said, most shamans of the Lamaye were Aethyr-touched; the mortal offspring of Aethyrborn. He believed it. But where Aethyrborn to the Lamaye meant power and trouble, individuals to be feared and revered, it seemed to mean something quite different to the Y'Dasz.\n\n``Lu-Temba was his soul-name. He took flesh and walked among us for many years, and fathered many calves, who became our Aethyrsages. He survived the great sickness, but was forever changed. He did not remember who he was, or that he should return to us beyond the veil of his death. And after he left us... the Y'Dasz had no more sons.''\n\nAraxes remembered hearing of some long-past event involving the Aethyrborn, and it dawned upon him that what Nur-Ayya referred to as ?sickness? probably meant a spiritual sickness, rather than a physical one.\n\nA ritual. Wolves. Arahan. The strange word was in his mind somehow, although he had nothing by which to define it.\n\n``We begged and we prayed and we called upon Dytaea to restore him to us. But the sickness meant that the goddess no longer saw him among us. The great Lu-Temba was not Aethyrborn, not any longer. And so his spirit fled and left us afflicted.''\n\n``Y'Dasz taking... menfolk of others... because cannot have sons?'' Araxes hazarded. \n\nNur-Ayya nodded and hung her head. Araxes reached up to touch her shoulder and her eyes lifted to meet his. \n\n``Understanding,'' he said. ``Knowing not of... pain. Sorrow, I have.''\n\n``You could not have known. It is my burden to bear, not yours.''\n\n``Why not... saying, before-ago?''\n\n``It is my people?s shame! We Y?Dasz bear it together, but rarely is it spoken.''\n\n``If saying... men coming. Nur-Ayya and spear sisters beautiful, like flowers... attracting, to men.''\n\nNur-Ayya cupped the back of his neck and brought her forehead to his own. Her ossicones bumped against his own, and she held him there for a long moment. \n\n``I look forward to bearing your calf, Araxes Lamaye,'' she whispered. ``You have a good soul.''\n\nTowards the evening of the seventh day since the Y'Dasz had rescued him from the baking heat of the savannah, the party of six finally reached their destination. Nenwoh and Yattah had scouted ahead, to arrive ahead of Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes, and to inform the Aethyrsage of their approach. \n\nAs such, when they arrived, Ayya-Yurah was ready for them. \n\n*\n\nIt took three days for a majority of the expected Lamaye village representatives to arrive in Impili in response to Shuva's call - the shamans and village elders from all five permanent Lamaye settlements, and elders from the nomadic groups. As was tradition, Atatafi the shamaness greeted them upon their arrival at the village, for until Shuva was ritually confirmed as the new Chieftain, the Lamaye were without a leader. The body of Isaeos had been preserved with the refined, waxy resin excreted by a beetle that lived in the high branches of the Savannah acacias, but even so, by the time the village representatives were present, it had begun to stink. The former Chieftain's final journey would be from the Chieftain's hut, to a funeral pyre that had been prepared some distance from the village. But his body needed to be witnessed by the village representatives.\n\nShuva did not sit in the Chieftain's throne. That would be presumptuous, and he did not want to be equated to his father. Instead, he waited off to one side of the dais with Arashi at his side, in his ceremonial dress, while a dozen village elders filed through the Chieftain's hut. Some carried burning incense in clay pots, which they passed over Isaeos' body while they inspected him. Others murmured prayers. All of them turned to Shuva and offered him tiny gestures of their intended acceptance of his ascension before they left. \n\nThen the locals came through. All Lamaye from all villages were entitled to see and pay their respects to the dead Chieftain. \n\nBarely half of the village of Impili did so, although every single one of them showed up and dutifully filed through. Very few people from the other villages were present. Shuva watched them with curiosity and empathy. They were cowed into obedience. Terrified of his father, even in death. \n\nHe would change that.\n\nAt long last, the time was upon him. And today, of all days, was the day of the transit of Saliel, where the silver moon would pass across the face of Kesh, the summer sun, and cause there to be only one light in the midday sky. It was the day when Araxes would have been initiated, had the runt remained with the Lamaye. Shuva was surprised to remember him at all; he may have been the shaman's son, but he was not a man of any particular importance. But there had been something about him. An intelligence, tempered by sadness. If the Lamaye had not been led by Isaeos, Shuva supposed that Araxes would have had a place among them. \n\nHe hoped Araxes had survived Oaal and Xanaf's attack. And perhaps that he'd even survived the Y'Dasz, and found his way to the Sagunu after all.\n\nShuva did not carry his father's body. That was a break from tradition, he knew, but it was also a message to the villagers. He was not his father, and would not honour him beyond what was strictly necessary. All knew of Isaeos' brutality, and Shuva fancied that he saw hope on the faces of some of his people at his gesture. \n\nThe sky was dark and heavy with cloud, that day. Shuva felt a pang of anxiety that they would not see the transit, except as a brief dimming of the already dark sky. The air felt pregnant with the promise of a storm; dense and still. All of the villagers from Impili were present, together with the several dozen representatives of the other Lamaye villages. All in all there were well over four hundred Lamaye present; giraffes, antelope, zebra, many mahogany-patched pelts and elegant necks, horns and stripes gathered around the unlit funeral pyre.\n\nFinally, it was Shuva's time to speak. Arashi squeezed his hand, and he briefly touched her face before stepping forward and raising his hands.\n\n``Hear me, Lamaye!'' he called. His voice carried far on the still air, and he sent a silent prayer to Lakesh, the Storm Goddess, for making it so. ``Chieftain Isaeos is dead. You have seen his body, stripped of life, laying before you. Those who killed him, witnessed by myself, witnessed by Arashi of the Sagunu, witnessed by Abdi of the Lamaye, witnessed by Eytliah of the Lamaye, confirmed by Saare and Luwam of the Lamaye, are Xanaf of the Lamaye and Oaal of the Lamaye, who are held until their trial.''\n\nA ripple of voices passed through the gathered giraffes. Xanaf and Oaal were well known among the locals, although not for good reasons. Somewhere in the group, a young woman cried out in anguish. She was pregnant with Oaal's calf. \n\nShuva allowed the people to talk briefly among themselves, and then once again held up his hands for silence. \n\n``Hear me, Lamaye! I, Shuva, son of Isaeos, son of Beltezaar, stand before you! The torch of Chiefdom passes from father to son, and I stake my right to claim it today. Do any among you challenge my right?'' \n\nShuva saw fear on a few faces, and he made a point of staring directly at those people, and softened his voice. This was the part where he emerged. Where his intentions would become clear. \n\nAnd at that very moment, the sky darkened. The transit had commenced. A shiver ran up Shuva's spine. This was the moment. He turned his face skyward and raised his arms.\n\n``Amel of the Rivers, Lady of the Plains, cast your divine sight upon your children once more, and bless us with your succour.''\n\nUtter silence descended over the Lamaye.\n\nShuva was a Bezari! Isaeos had been all fire and violence - his first act as Chieftain had been to burn half the village. What Shuva promised with those few words was a return to the pre-Bezari days - before Beltezaar had lurched forth from his fiery home to bring war and violence to the Lamaye and their neighbours. \n\nAtatafi, the woman who had given birth to Araxes the runt, stepped forward. She was laden with the ritual artefacts of her craft, her ears and lips heavily pierced with rings and barbs of polished wood and bone, her breasts bare. She danced around Shuva, who stood with his head bowed and his hands held palms-up before him under the darkened sky. \n\nInto his hands, she placed a shallow clay bowl, and into it she poured a measure of water from a corked gourd hanging from a woven strap around her neck. Then she stooped, and peered long and hard into the water. A long, low hum rose in her throat - an eerie buzzing sound, which continued for many minutes without pause for breath. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, and shook her hands, causing the many wooden and metal bangles on her arms to rattle. And then she whooped to the sky, and flung the water upward in a spray. \n\nAt that moment, a deafening crack of thunder exploded from the sky directly overhead, and lightning struck Isaeos' funeral pyre, barely a dozen paces from where they stood. The percussive force of the strike knocked Shuva, Arashi and Atatafi from their hooves.\n\nImpregnated with flammable oils, the pyre erupted with a whoosh, engulfing the Chieftain in the fire from which he had been born.\n\nThe people backed away in fear and awe. Shuva was stunned. As they rose, he turned to the shamaness, and she gave him a strange little smile. \n\n``It is Amel who speaks, through Lakesh. Not Bezar,'' she said to him in a dry, raspy voice. \n\nShamans were forbidden from speaking to any but a Chieftain, or another shaman.\n\nSomehow, the significance of that outweighed even the divine providence of the lightning, for Shuva. He fell to his knees before her, and before his goddesses, and there, in the presence of the frightened Lamaye, she smeared his cheeks with sacred ochre and presented him with the bronze Chieftain's dagger - the very same weapon that had taken Isaeos' life.\n\nThen, with another flash and a long, brittle, rolling crack of thunder, sparse, heavy raindrops began to fall from the leaden sky to the desiccated and dusty ground. \n\nShuva rose to his hooves once again and scanned the gathered Lamaye. Some remained stunned into immobility, their mouths open and eyes wide, while others were murmuring among themselves. Yet others had excitement on their faces, hands held aloft to the burgeoning rain, whose fat drops hissed and cracked into Isaeos' roaring pyre. More than a few knelt and pressed their heads to the ground towards him.\n\nShuva turned his face skyward, and allowed the bellow of triumph that welled up in his chest to come forth.\n\nHe was Chieftain of the Lamaye, and the gods themselves had intervened to make their approval as clear as the day which, moments thereafter, once again lightened as the transit of Saliel came to its end, and a new era was born.\n\n*\n\nAyya-Yurah's calf was due to be born very soon. The Aethyrsage's breasts hung full and heavy in readiness, distended with milk. Her belly, which was swollen and full with the weight of life she carried, put a strain on her back, such that she was not as mobile as she would have liked. But the arrival of a new Lamaye man in their midst was cause for celebration. It always was, but this one seemed special, to Ayya-Yurah, for he had arrived on the day of the transit of Saliel. \n\nShe had scried several times upon his journey inward to Zalemanya in the company of Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters, and found herself uncharacteristically drawn to this skinny, slightly runty young man in ways she rarely was. There was something special about him, and that caused a flutter of excitement in her that she was unprepared for. \n\nNenwoh and Yattah returned several hours ahead of Araxes. Ayya-Yurah sent Tsu-Isi, one of her attendants, to greet them. Tsu-Isi brought the two women into the Aethyrsage's presence. \n\n``We welcome you home, sisters,'' Ayya-Yurah said. ``Tell me of whom you bring.''\n\nNenwoh related the story of how Araxes was found, and Ayya-Yurah nodded sagely. Her story reflected the Aethyrsage's scrying, so she knew the truth of her words. That Araxes had willingly followed the spear sisters was a good sign of itself; not all Lamaye men did. Some fought. Some ran. Some broke the shaka'hakt within days. Some who made it to Zalemanya were found not to be pure, and unfit to become Y'Dasz. \n\nAraxes appeared to be none of these, and as such he was a rare find. \n\nThe calf inside her seemed to sense her excitement and moved and kicked. She caressed her distended belly, murmuring to her child, and thanked Nenwoh and Yattah for their presence. Tsu-Isi showed them out, and Ayya-Yurah moved slowly around the inside of her hut, preparing to receive Araxes into her presence. \n\nAll of the rituals must be practiced. It was how the Y'Dasz welcomed a newcomer to their society, and vetted their intentions and their desires. Violent men were rejected. Those who had broken shaka'hakt by succumbing to the spear sisters ahead of their induction were rejected. The ritual was an intimate and invasive one, and Ayya-Yurah would, for a time, be inside Araxes' mind. She would have access to his thoughts and memories. Ayya-Yurah set out the various artefacts and herbs she would need, and sent prayers to Amel and Dytaea that he would be the one she had sought for so many years - the one who would alleviate the suffering of the Y'Dasz, and finally bring to an end the years of silence from the gods they had endured.\n\nAyya-Yurah called over her attendants. \n\n``Tsu-Isi, Ivaeah, Shayya - the time has come. Greet him, and bring him to me.''\n\nAyya-Yurah sent forth her welcoming party, and did her best to calm her quivering heart while she waited for Araxes' arrival in her presence. \n\n*\n\n"
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In the depths of the Garden, it was impossible to tell. \n\nBut the thought that his initiation date to the Lamaye might instead have occurred the previous evening with his first truly sexual experience of the Y'Dasz stood out to him as a fitting moment.\n\nFurther north, in the sweaty jungles, the sisters had taken turns keeping watch, and had been evidently on-edge. Here, in the sanctuary of the Garden, they were entirely at ease. All of them slept at the same time, and close together. Araxes found himself with his head pillowed on Nur-Ayya's arm while she draped the other over his midriff. On his other side, Yt'tai lay with her back to him, and over the course of the night she shuffled backwards until he was sandwiched between her and Nur-Ayya. Veyo, Nenwoh and Yattah slept in a similar pile, with Veyo between the huntress and the forager. \n\nAraxes laid awake for most of the night, or at least in a very shallow, fitful sleep. The light bothered him the most, he found. Out on the plains, the night could be very dark, shot through only with the glow of the Firmament far above, and the light of one or two of Asantrea's moons. But even then, he could pull down the reeds over the door of his hut and sleep in darkness. At one point, Veyo rose and wandered into the forest for a short time, presumably to relieve herself, and when she returned, he felt her presence nearby. He did not open his eyes, but he could smell her, and hear her breathing. She seemed to be squatting near his head, and abruptly he felt something brush over his manhood. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai's closeness to him was keeping him erect, moreso than he typically would be at night. It was Veyo's hand. His eyes flew open, and he looked up to stare directly into her crotch. She was preoccupied, gently stroking his cock, being as quiet as she could so as not to wake Nur-Ayya or Yt'tai, both of whom would be unimpressed if she was caught. \n\nAraxes contemplated the thought of moving his head slightly and pressing his tongue upward against her vulva. It was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from it. She was clearly intensely in need of what he was displaying. Her delicate inner lips were even more puffy and swollen than they had been earlier, glistening with wetness and protruding beyond the soft outer lips - until very recently, Araxes had no idea how a woman's genitals were constructed, having only ever caught the briefest of glimpses before his abduction by the Y'Dasz.\n\nBut had it been an abduction? They had saved his life, after all. \n\nVeyo abruptly froze in place when Yt'tai mumbled in her sleep and stretched. Araxes moved his head slightly, and gave his cock a firm flex in her hand to let her know he was awake. She moved, and their eyes met in the eerie bioluminescence. Both knew they could not do what they wanted. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai made sure of that, by guarding Araxes. He would be noticed if he left, and missed if he did not return in a short time. The spear-sisters were clearly keeping him and Veyo apart. \n\nAraxes wondered what would happen when he was no longer shaka'hakt. Would Veyo become possessive of him? Or would she mount him a few times and then, her interest sated, move on?\n\nA thick drool of her nectar strung downward from her entrance closer to his face, and on a whim, Araxes swiped it up with his tongue, caressing her slick heat for a tantalising moment. She slapped a hand over her muzzle to contain her gasp, and her hips trembled. She was incredibly sensitive. That was a surprise. Her hand moved rapidly for a moment on his cock, and then, with a tortured sigh, she retreated. \n\nAraxes listened to her masturbating for a hundred breaths somewhere nearby, and the soft grunts of her orgasm, and then tried to force himself to think of something - anything - else. \n\n*\n\nThe slight lightening of the canopy high above was the only visual sign of dawn. But the change in the birdsong was unmistakeable.\n\nThe morning chorus in Ammunash's Garden was deafening. \n\nHoots, hollers, whoops and screeches swept across the forest like a wave, seemingly only minutes after Araxes had finally forced his mind into submission and fallen asleep. Yt'tai stirred, and stretched, and rolled towards him. Her muzzle pressed into the side of his neck, and she ran her hand through the wiry pelt of his chest, mumbling quietly in her shallow sleep. Then Nur-Ayya awoke with a thunderous yawn, and rose to a sitting position on the forest floor, tipping Araxes and Yt'tai over like twigs. She knuckled her eyes, blinked a few times, yawned again, and rose to her hooves. Araxes heard her pissing noisily somewhere nearby, and shared a chuckle with Yt'tai at the noise, who rolled her eyes. \n\nOnce everyone was awake, Veyo collected their clothing from where she had hung it over the thick stem of a giant forest floor plant to dry, and distributed it among the party. It did not seem to matter whose clothing was whose; all of them were similarly constructed and able to be adjusted to the size of the wearer. Nenwoh and Yattah dressed similarly, arranging their fabrics into loincloths. Yt'tai opted to dress herself in little more than a binding strip around her chest, but with nothing at all below her waist. She gave a little smile to Araxes in response to his curious stare. Veyo seemed more than content to remain nude, which surprised no one. Nur-Ayya took only a long strip of cloth, which she tied around her waist such that it preserved her modesty by only the barest fraction. The remainder, she gave to Araxes. \n\nThe common factor was how much less all of the spear-sisters wore here, compared to the dense northern jungles. All of them bundled up their excess cloths and tied them around their spears in densely bound bundles. \n\n``Wearing too many, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya tutted in her heavily accented and halting Lamaye, at the sight of Araxes attempting to swaddle himself in clothing. ``Y'Dasz clothing being... forest. Dytaea Goddess clothing us, Amel Goddess feeding us.''\n\nThen she switched to Y'Dasz, and spoke slowly for Araxes' benefit. ``So much clothing is not comfortable for us. It soaks up our sweat, crushes our pelts, and it rubs and itches. You will see very little clothing among the Y'Dasz. Come...''\n\nShe beckoned him forward, and helped him to arrange a simple pouch loincloth, which contained his manhood and resulted in a long flap of cloth that hung to his knees both front and back. It was astonishingly comfortable. Araxes thought he would feel exposed, but feeling fabric cupping and containing his manhood was something he was unaccustomed to, even back home. Nur-Ayya secured the loincloth with a knot on his left hip, and patted his cheek.\n\n``Good. Enough that Veyo doesn't see everything, but still comfortable. Yes?''\n\nAraxes nodded and removed his gaze from Nur-Ayya's bare breasts with some effort. He was picking up more and more of their language, the more they spoke, but some of their customs remained alien to him.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?''\n\n``Mm?''\n\n``Worrying... not, to speaking Lamaye. Y'Dasz... learning. Better.''\n\nNur-Ayya grinned, and touched her ossicones to his briefly in a gesture he was coming to recognise as one of respect and admiration. Then she turned her back, wearing nothing more than the tiny scrap of cloth around her wide hips, and marched ahead. Veyo fell in beside Araxes for the day's travel, since they were now in familiar territory and her skill as a pathfinder was not needed. Yt'tai came behind them, and made her presence known with a playful smack to Veyo's bare arse, to which she performatively moaned.\n\nNenwoh and Yattah foraged ahead of the small party, and before long, Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes found themselves walking in a relaxed group, with much of the spear sisters' discipline abandoned in the safety of their home. Yt'tai and Veyo chatted endlessly, and through their conversation Araxes picked up more and more words and phrases of their language.\n\nTowards the late afternoon, or so he judged it, Araxes' brooding thoughts found a focus, and he formulated a question in his mind.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?'' Araxes said, jogging forward a few paces to come up alongside her. \n\n``Mm? You have been quiet today, Araxes. Is everything alright?'' she replied.\n\n``Thinking, is. Not knowing... ahh... for purpose... Y'Dasz taking Lamaye. Asking?''\n\n``To save your life,'' Nur-Ayya replied simply. She draped her enormous arm around his skinny shoulders and yanked his body in against her side while they walked. ``What would have become of you had you remained there, alone, out on the savannah, with a head wound? Your own people cast you out, Araxes, as they have so many others before you. We bring the forsaken among us, and some become Y'Dasz.''\n\nIt was a perfectly reasonable answer, Araxes supposed. He processed it slowly, translating it in his mind. He asked Nur-Ayya to repeat herself a couple of times, until he was sure he understood. But she had not answered him in full. She was holding something back. Something important. Araxes found that further questions were met with sexual innuendo, or a blank stare as though she did not understand him. \n\nEventually, he got the message to cease probing, and turned his attention back to their surroundings. \n\nThe Y'Dasz were a sparse population, it turned out. By that evening, they began to encounter people; a small group here or there, some signs of habitation among the gargantuan trees, often more than an hour's walk apart. A hut, or a cooking fire, or some arrangement of food production, harvesting or similar, would often appear through the forest. The Y'Dasz did not clear the trees to create open land; they lived in harmony with their forest world, and did not seek to change its form or its function beyond subtly shaping the understorey to form huts, shelters woven from the living forest. \n\nThe three spear-sisters and Araxes caught up to Nenwoh and Yattah as the canopy high overhead was undergoing its subtle transition into nightfall. They made camp and rested near to a tiny gathering of Y'Dasz, no more than a dozen of them, and Araxes heard that word shaka'hakt spoken numerous times in response to the curious stares he attracted. \n\nThey were all women, Araxes realised with surprise, and showed a similar type of interest in him as the spear sisters had when they had first met. A type of restrained curiosity, controlled by their culture of initiation. It suddenly occurred to Araxes that he was yet to see an Y'Dasz man.\n\nThat night, Araxes found himself sleeping almost under guard. Nur-Ayya remained awake, taking first watch with her spear at her side. Then Yt'tai took her place. Then Yattah. Then Nenwoh. Then, finally, as the dawn approached, Veyo reluctantly dragged herself upright to stand her watch. Araxes took his fingers back from where she had been using them to subtly and silently masturbate herself for most of the night, guiding his touch with her hand, and filled his lungs with her scent. \n\n``Veyo is in the peak of her rut,'' Nur-Ayya said quietly as she sleepily rolled to face Araxes, to touch her forehead to his. ``I am proud of you for your control. It shall not be long until neither of you need restrain yourselves any longer, nor any of the rest of us.''\n\nAraxes considered that for a long moment, and then gently trailed his fingers along the elegant curve of Nur-Ayya's neck. Her eyelids fluttered and she held her breath until he stopped, by which time he could smell her arousal. \n\n``Veyo rut... not only, not alone?'' he said boldly. \n\n``Very perceptive you are, little Lamaye. No, she is not. All of us are.''\n\nAraxes thought for a moment, and then gently offered Nur-Ayya his hand - the same one Veyo had been using. Nur-Ayya's eyes glinted in the soft bioluminescence of the forest, and she held his wrist for a long moment. But then she released him. \n\n``No. It is too close to the dawn. I cannot.''\n\nAraxes nodded his understanding. \n\nIt did not stop Nur-Ayya from taking care of herself, though. Araxes found himself unable to go back to sleep, not with the sound and scent of Nur-Ayya quietly masturbating right beside him. He desperately wanted to touch her. To taste her. He ached and throbbed and drooled into his belly fur, but he resisted. She climaxed within minutes, and fell into a slumber beside him with her hand resting on his thigh, her fingertips caressing the skin a mere finger's breadth from the root of his aching manhood.\n\nThe deafening dawn chorus commenced only moments later, it seemed. Araxes groaned and knuckled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he gasped in shock and leapt backward. Veyo was standing over him, straddling his legs and staring at him. She laughed.\n\n``The dawn breaks,'' she said. ``Come, the villagers have already risen.''\n\nNur-Ayya yawned hugely and rose to her hooves. She scratched her crotch sleepily, sniffed her fingers, and then thrust her hand down to haul Araxes upright. Veyo bit her lip, staring at his persistent erection, and the action she performed was, while similar to Nur-Ayya's scratch, rather more delicate and prolonged.\n\n``Hide behind me until that goes down, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya ordered. ``The local women may not have the self-control that we spear sisters have.''\n\n``He could hide it between my legs,'' Veyo suggested helpfully.\n\nNur-Ayya snorted and swatted affectionately at Veyo. ``Go and pleasure yourself again, sister. Somewhere Araxes cannot see, hear or smell you.''\n\nVeyo did so.\n\nAraxes grimaced. It took some time, but eventually he had shrunk enough to at least tuck himself back inside his loincloth pouch.\n\nAs on the mornings that had come before, breakfast was shared between them, although on this morning there was a new factor - the local Y'Dasz giraffes turned out to stare at Araxes. Most of them were naked. Some wore jewellery or other adornments on their bodies, and others carried baskets of food to bring to Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters. She, as the leader of their little group, accepted the offerings with ritualistic dignity, and in what seemed to be a local custom, returned most of the gifts to the people who had given them. She took only morsels, tokens of gratitude. Yt'tai explained the ritual to him quietly; it was a cultural practice for a village or settlement to welcome home a traveller who had been absent for a long time; it was bad form to take all of the offered gifts, and worse form to refuse them entirely. \n\nA young woman of approximately Araxes' age who had been staring at him all morning, and for most of the previous evening too, tentatively stepped forward. Instead of Nur-Ayya, she approached him directly. She was a pretty thing, slender and toned like Yt'tai, with small and perky breasts and hips that seemed slightly too wide for her frame. She was flushed and visibly flustered, and carried no offering. Rather, she was the offering. \n\nSuddenly, the nature of Y'Dasz gifts made sense to Araxes. They were a metaphor for sexual congress. One party offered up their whole selves. An exchange occurred. The recipient took something small - the pleasure of a shared orgasm - and the one who had offered themselves was returned the largest portion of the gift. And Araxes was being offered precisely that, with no cultural metaphor attached.\n\nShe approached him with shallow breaths, her ears perked sharply forward, and then turned her back to him. She thrust her buttocks backward and stood stiff-legged with her tail raised over her back, as if he would mount her right there in the open in front of all her gathered family and neighbours, and the five spear-sisters. \n\n``Esti-sa aqeti shaka'hakt. Kur-tidak sheqi a'amadeti,'' he said softly to her (I remain forbidden. The day after tomorrow shall be here quickly).\n\nThe young woman looked desperately disappointed, and Araxes felt bad for her - more so now that he knew something of the level of denial she may be feeling. But Nur-Ayya clapped him on the shoulder appreciatively, and in silence, the party of six moved out.\n\nNur-Ayya slowly explained to Araxes that the densest population of Y'Dasz occurred in a place called Zalemanya, and it was there that they were headed. But Zalemanya was not village. The more Nur-Ayya spoke of it, the larger it seemed, until Araxes realised that it referred not to a set location, but the place where the Aethyrsage of her people chose to rest. As such, Zalemanya was a concept, more than a location, and had probably existed in several distinct locations through its history.\n\n``Zalemanya... Y'Dasz... many?'' Araxes asked Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Many, yes. Some thousands,'' she indicated twelve on her fingers for him. ``But Zalemanya is very large. Four days from one side to the other. Big spaces between people. But it is to Ayya-Yurah we must go, and she is the centre of Zalemanya.''\n\n*\n\nThe journey to the centre of Zalemanya took two more days. The further they travelled through the vastness of Ammunash's Garden, the denser the undergrowth became, until there seemed to be little sunlight that filtered all the way to the forest floor. But far from being perturbed by this, the savannah-born Araxes was enchanted. It was a monumentally large place, in every way, but it felt intimate and protected.\n\nAnd the further they travelled, the more Y'Dasz Araxes saw. Tiny outposts and isolated villages became larger settlements, and those larger settlements became closer and closer together until they travelled through a near-continuous, living city. But there were no buildings of stone or timber here; the more permanent-seeming structures were of trained and interwoven vines and branches, some of them set five or six times his height up into the trees, with elaborate bridges between them made from trained, living branches. Everywhere he looked, the ever-present bioluminescence of the understorey illuminated this forest world, and its people, too. \n\nThe presence of the Y'Dasz was far more marked nearer to the centre of Zalemanya. Paths between the trees were well-worn, and some were even paved with stones, kept free of moss and lichen by the passage of many hooves. There was little sign of organised agriculture, but many of the people they crossed paths with carried large baskets laden with fruits, fungi, tubers and nuts; the bounty of the forest that sustained these people. Others sat in comfortable circles weaving baskets, mending strips of cloth, or shaping blocks of obsidian or flint into blades, for tools and weapons. Here and there, Araxes saw a spear sister; an Y'Dasz warrior woman bearing a spear the same as those carried by Nur-Ayya and her group, with the physique and presence of one trained in martial combat. \n\nMany of the people Araxes saw stared openly at him as they passed. Nearly all were giraffes, although he did see several groups of okapi as well, and even the occasional slender, lithe feline of speciation he did not recognise.\n\nAnd, as Nur-Ayya had indicated, he saw very little clothing among the Y-Dasz. After the initial culture shock of the spear sisters' open sexuality and preference for nudity, Araxes found himself slowly becoming accustomed to seeing naked female bodies wherever he went. It still aroused him, certainly, but as time passed, the moments when it caused him to become erect seemed to be getting easier to control, and limited mostly to those moments where Veyo or Yt'tai or Nur-Ayya specifically wanted to tease him. And tease him they did, relentlessly - although none moreso than Veyo.\n\nAraxes noted curiously that none of the very few men he saw carried weapons or shields, nor did they generally have the sculpted physique of the Lamaye warriors he was familiar with. Very few bore the ritual scars of Lamaye initiation on their shoulders and chests. Most were carrying out tasks that seemed predominantly domestic in nature; processing food, cooking, cleaning, trimming and training the vines and branches of the Y'Dasz's homes. But what intrigued him the most, were those men he saw in attendance to pregnant Y'Dasz women. There were few enough of those, and Araxes noted that there were very few calves or younger Y'Dasz giraffes. But those who were carrying a new life within them seemed to be treated with utter deference, verging on worship.\n\n``Araxes, step aside,'' Nur-Ayya instructed him suddenly. \n\nHe stumbled to do so, taken aback by the snap of authority in her voice, and fell heavily. A pregnant Y'Dasz woman passed by, with no fewer than four people in her attendance; two men, and two younger women. \n\nNur-Ayya hoisted Araxes to his hooves once more, and busily dusted the mud and moss from his pelt. Araxes suddenly felt very alone, and very lost in this alien world. He had felt as though he was beginning to understand the Y'Dasz while travelling only with the spear sisters, but here in Zalemanya, it felt as if he knew nothing at all. \n\n``Why am I here?'' Araxes demanded, angrily cuffing tears of frustration from his cheeks. \n\nNur-Ayya?s face softened and she seemed to slump, as if relieving herself of a burden carried too long. Her voice when next she spoke was a low murmur that Araxes had to concentrate to hear. \n\n``We... are an afflicted people, Araxes. Long ago, we displeased the great mother and suffered a great punishment that continues to this day. Come, walk with me. Tell me what you see.''\n\nNur-Ayya linked her arm through his and set a languid pace, off and away from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare they had been on. Their hooves sank pleasingly into the dense, layered moss that carpeted the forest. All around, Araxes could see just what he?d seen before; Y?Dasz giraffes with their inverse colours, at once a bizarre sight to the Lamaye man and yet, here in the verdant depths of Ammunash?s Garden, they fit. \n\n``I do not know what it is I am supposed to see,'' Araxes admitted at length. \n\n``You see Y?Dasz, Araxes. Now, what do you not see?''\n\nAraxes tilted his head up to stare at Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Long ago,'' she continued, ``we took the blessings of the great mother, the goddess Dytaea, whose love for her creator Ammunash spawned this world. We took them and we used them, and we paid a high price for our irreverence. A great sickness befell our Aethyrborn guardians. Those who channelled the Aethyr into our hearts and our loins were torn from us. Most never returned. Wolves walked amongst us and brought the sickness with them, and with them they took our guardians.''\n\nAraxes frowned in confusion. While he spoke passable Y?Dasz after his time amongst the so-called Forest Demons, Nur-Ayya spoke with the weight of a thousand generations' worth of culture and he struggled to follow her nuanced meanings. \n\n``I still do not understand.''\n\n``How many Y?Dasz menfolk have you met, Araxes?''\n\n``None. None. I... thinking... Y'Dasz men far away fighting, foraging.''\n\nThe few giraffe men Araxes saw were clearly not Y'Dasz; the Y'Dasz giraffes had distinctive pelt markings that were the opposite of the Lamaye's own, with pale ivory patches over darker brown. The Lamaye tended to have sharper-edged dark patches over tawny fur, while the western Sagunu were darker still, with patches of burnt umber over mahogany. Araxes recognised several Lamaye and Sagunu men by their markings alone, but did not recognise any of them individually. \n\n``All of them, at all times, such that their women have to raid neighbouring tribes for a partner to rut?'' Nur-Ayya laughed mirthlessly. Araxes shifted uncomfortably. ``The Y?Dasz have no menfolk-Aethyrborn any longer, Araxes, nor any touched by the Aethyr in the way it is meant to be. We give birth only to daughters, and it has been this way for two generations. The last of the surviving Y?Dasz menfolk-Aethyrborn died of old age two generations hence. He died very happy, but he died, still. And after the sickness, was as mortal as you or I and lost to the Aethyr.''\n\n``What... happening to Aethyrborn?''\n\nAraxes was, of course, familiar with Aethyr, and of Aethyrborn and their Aethyr-touched offspring; the cruel Lamaye chieftain Beltezaar, Isaeos' father, had been an Aethyrborn of Bezar, the god of fire. And, it was said, most shamans of the Lamaye were Aethyr-touched; the mortal offspring of Aethyrborn. He believed it. But where Aethyrborn to the Lamaye meant power and trouble, individuals to be feared and revered, it seemed to mean something quite different to the Y'Dasz.\n\n``Lu-Temba was his soul-name. He took flesh and walked among us for many years, and fathered many calves, who became our Aethyrsages. He survived the great sickness, but was forever changed. He did not remember who he was, or that he should return to us beyond the veil of his death. And after he left us... the Y'Dasz had no more sons.''\n\nAraxes remembered hearing of some long-past event involving the Aethyrborn, and it dawned upon him that what Nur-Ayya referred to as ?sickness? probably meant a spiritual sickness, rather than a physical one.\n\nA ritual. Wolves. Arahan. The strange word was in his mind somehow, although he had nothing by which to define it.\n\n``We begged and we prayed and we called upon Dytaea to restore him to us. But the sickness meant that the goddess no longer saw him among us. The great Lu-Temba was not Aethyrborn, not any longer. And so his spirit fled and left us afflicted.''\n\n``Y'Dasz taking... menfolk of others... because cannot have sons?'' Araxes hazarded. \n\nNur-Ayya nodded and hung her head. Araxes reached up to touch her shoulder and her eyes lifted to meet his. \n\n``Understanding,'' he said. ``Knowing not of... pain. Sorrow, I have.''\n\n``You could not have known. It is my burden to bear, not yours.''\n\n``Why not... saying, before-ago?''\n\n``It is my people?s shame! We Y?Dasz bear it together, but rarely is it spoken.''\n\n``If saying... men coming. Nur-Ayya and spear sisters beautiful, like flowers... attracting, to men.''\n\nNur-Ayya cupped the back of his neck and brought her forehead to his own. Her ossicones bumped against his own, and she held him there for a long moment. \n\n``I look forward to bearing your calf, Araxes Lamaye,'' she whispered. ``You have a good soul.''\n\nTowards the evening of the seventh day since the Y'Dasz had rescued him from the baking heat of the savannah, the party of six finally reached their destination. Nenwoh and Yattah had scouted ahead, to arrive ahead of Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes, and to inform the Aethyrsage of their approach. \n\nAs such, when they arrived, Ayya-Yurah was ready for them. \n\n*\n\nIt took three days for a majority of the expected Lamaye village representatives to arrive in Impili in response to Shuva's call - the shamans and village elders from all five permanent Lamaye settlements, and elders from the nomadic groups. As was tradition, Atatafi the shamaness greeted them upon their arrival at the village, for until Shuva was ritually confirmed as the new Chieftain, the Lamaye were without a leader. The body of Isaeos had been preserved with the refined, waxy resin excreted by a beetle that lived in the high branches of the Savannah acacias, but even so, by the time the village representatives were present, it had begun to stink. The former Chieftain's final journey would be from the Chieftain's hut, to a funeral pyre that had been prepared some distance from the village. But his body needed to be witnessed by the village representatives.\n\nShuva did not sit in the Chieftain's throne. That would be presumptuous, and he did not want to be equated to his father. Instead, he waited off to one side of the dais with Arashi at his side, in his ceremonial dress, while a dozen village elders filed through the Chieftain's hut. Some carried burning incense in clay pots, which they passed over Isaeos' body while they inspected him. Others murmured prayers. All of them turned to Shuva and offered him tiny gestures of their intended acceptance of his ascension before they left. \n\nThen the locals came through. All Lamaye from all villages were entitled to see and pay their respects to the dead Chieftain. \n\nBarely half of the village of Impili did so, although every single one of them showed up and dutifully filed through. Very few people from the other villages were present. Shuva watched them with curiosity and empathy. They were cowed into obedience. Terrified of his father, even in death. \n\nHe would change that.\n\nAt long last, the time was upon him. And today, of all days, was the day of the transit of Saliel, where the silver moon would pass across the face of Kesh, the summer sun, and cause there to be only one light in the midday sky. It was the day when Araxes would have been initiated, had the runt remained with the Lamaye. Shuva was surprised to remember him at all; he may have been the shaman's son, but he was not a man of any particular importance. But there had been something about him. An intelligence, tempered by sadness. If the Lamaye had not been led by Isaeos, Shuva supposed that Araxes would have had a place among them. \n\nHe hoped Araxes had survived Oaal and Xanaf's attack. And perhaps that he'd even survived the Y'Dasz, and found his way to the Sagunu after all.\n\nShuva did not carry his father's body. That was a break from tradition, he knew, but it was also a message to the villagers. He was not his father, and would not honour him beyond what was strictly necessary. All knew of Isaeos' brutality, and Shuva fancied that he saw hope on the faces of some of his people at his gesture. \n\nThe sky was dark and heavy with cloud, that day. Shuva felt a pang of anxiety that they would not see the transit, except as a brief dimming of the already dark sky. The air felt pregnant with the promise of a storm; dense and still. All of the villagers from Impili were present, together with the several dozen representatives of the other Lamaye villages. All in all there were well over four hundred Lamaye present; giraffes, antelope, zebra, many mahogany-patched pelts and elegant necks, horns and stripes gathered around the unlit funeral pyre.\n\nFinally, it was Shuva's time to speak. Arashi squeezed his hand, and he briefly touched her face before stepping forward and raising his hands.\n\n``Hear me, Lamaye!'' he called. His voice carried far on the still air, and he sent a silent prayer to Lakesh, the Storm Goddess, for making it so. ``Chieftain Isaeos is dead. You have seen his body, stripped of life, laying before you. Those who killed him, witnessed by myself, witnessed by Arashi of the Sagunu, witnessed by Abdi of the Lamaye, witnessed by Eytliah of the Lamaye, confirmed by Saare and Luwam of the Lamaye, are Xanaf of the Lamaye and Oaal of the Lamaye, who are held until their trial.''\n\nA ripple of voices passed through the gathered giraffes. Xanaf and Oaal were well known among the locals, although not for good reasons. Somewhere in the group, a young woman cried out in anguish. She was pregnant with Oaal's calf. \n\nShuva allowed the people to talk briefly among themselves, and then once again held up his hands for silence. \n\n``Hear me, Lamaye! I, Shuva, son of Isaeos, son of Beltezaar, stand before you! The torch of Chiefdom passes from father to son, and I stake my right to claim it today. Do any among you challenge my right?'' \n\nShuva saw fear on a few faces, and he made a point of staring directly at those people, and softened his voice. This was the part where he emerged. Where his intentions would become clear. \n\nAnd at that very moment, the sky darkened. The transit had commenced. A shiver ran up Shuva's spine. This was the moment. He turned his face skyward and raised his arms.\n\n``Amel of the Rivers, Lady of the Plains, cast your divine sight upon your children once more, and bless us with your succour.''\n\nUtter silence descended over the Lamaye.\n\nShuva was a Bezari! Isaeos had been all fire and violence - his first act as Chieftain had been to burn half the village. What Shuva promised with those few words was a return to the pre-Bezari days - before Beltezaar had lurched forth from his fiery home to bring war and violence to the Lamaye and their neighbours. \n\nAtatafi, the woman who had given birth to Araxes the runt, stepped forward. She was laden with the ritual artefacts of her craft, her ears and lips heavily pierced with rings and barbs of polished wood and bone, her breasts bare. She danced around Shuva, who stood with his head bowed and his hands held palms-up before him under the darkened sky. \n\nInto his hands, she placed a shallow clay bowl, and into it she poured a measure of water from a corked gourd hanging from a woven strap around her neck. Then she stooped, and peered long and hard into the water. A long, low hum rose in her throat - an eerie buzzing sound, which continued for many minutes without pause for breath. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, and shook her hands, causing the many wooden and metal bangles on her arms to rattle. And then she whooped to the sky, and flung the water upward in a spray. \n\nAt that moment, a deafening crack of thunder exploded from the sky directly overhead, and lightning struck Isaeos' funeral pyre, barely a dozen paces from where they stood. The percussive force of the strike knocked Shuva, Arashi and Atatafi from their hooves.\n\nImpregnated with flammable oils, the pyre erupted with a whoosh, engulfing the Chieftain in the fire from which he had been born.\n\nThe people backed away in fear and awe. Shuva was stunned. As they rose, he turned to the shamaness, and she gave him a strange little smile. \n\n``It is Amel who speaks, through Lakesh. Not Bezar,'' she said to him in a dry, raspy voice. \n\nShamans were forbidden from speaking to any but a Chieftain, or another shaman.\n\nSomehow, the significance of that outweighed even the divine providence of the lightning, for Shuva. He fell to his knees before her, and before his goddesses, and there, in the presence of the frightened Lamaye, she smeared his cheeks with sacred ochre and presented him with the bronze Chieftain's dagger - the very same weapon that had taken Isaeos' life.\n\nThen, with another flash and a long, brittle, rolling crack of thunder, sparse, heavy raindrops began to fall from the leaden sky to the desiccated and dusty ground. \n\nShuva rose to his hooves once again and scanned the gathered Lamaye. Some remained stunned into immobility, their mouths open and eyes wide, while others were murmuring among themselves. Yet others had excitement on their faces, hands held aloft to the burgeoning rain, whose fat drops hissed and cracked into Isaeos' roaring pyre. More than a few knelt and pressed their heads to the ground towards him.\n\nShuva turned his face skyward, and allowed the bellow of triumph that welled up in his chest to come forth.\n\nHe was Chieftain of the Lamaye, and the gods themselves had intervened to make their approval as clear as the day which, moments thereafter, once again lightened as the transit of Saliel came to its end, and a new era was born.\n\n*\n\nAyya-Yurah's calf was due to be born very soon. The Aethyrsage's breasts hung full and heavy in readiness, distended with milk. Her belly, which was swollen and full with the weight of life she carried, put a strain on her back, such that she was not as mobile as she would have liked. But the arrival of a new Lamaye man in their midst was cause for celebration. It always was, but this one seemed special, to Ayya-Yurah, for he had arrived on the day of the transit of Saliel. \n\nShe had scried several times upon his journey inward to Zalemanya in the company of Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters, and found herself uncharacteristically drawn to this skinny, slightly runty young man in ways she rarely was. There was something special about him, and that caused a flutter of excitement in her that she was unprepared for. \n\nNenwoh and Yattah returned several hours ahead of Araxes. Ayya-Yurah sent Tsu-Isi, one of her attendants, to greet them. Tsu-Isi brought the two women into the Aethyrsage's presence. \n\n``We welcome you home, sisters,'' Ayya-Yurah said. ``Tell me of whom you bring.''\n\nNenwoh related the story of how Araxes was found, and Ayya-Yurah nodded sagely. Her story reflected the Aethyrsage's scrying, so she knew the truth of her words. That Araxes had willingly followed the spear sisters was a good sign of itself; not all Lamaye men did. Some fought. Some ran. Some broke the shaka'hakt within days. Some who made it to Zalemanya were found not to be pure, and unfit to become Y'Dasz. \n\nAraxes appeared to be none of these, and as such he was a rare find. \n\nThe calf inside her seemed to sense her excitement and moved and kicked. She caressed her distended belly, murmuring to her child, and thanked Nenwoh and Yattah for their presence. Tsu-Isi showed them out, and Ayya-Yurah moved slowly around the inside of her hut, preparing to receive Araxes into her presence. \n\nAll of the rituals must be practiced. It was how the Y'Dasz welcomed a newcomer to their society, and vetted their intentions and their desires. Violent men were rejected. Those who had broken shaka'hakt by succumbing to the spear sisters ahead of their induction were rejected. The ritual was an intimate and invasive one, and Ayya-Yurah would, for a time, be inside Araxes' mind. She would have access to his thoughts and memories. Ayya-Yurah set out the various artefacts and herbs she would need, and sent prayers to Amel and Dytaea that he would be the one she had sought for so many years - the one who would alleviate the suffering of the Y'Dasz, and finally bring to an end the years of silence from the gods they had endured.\n\nAyya-Yurah called over her attendants. \n\n``Tsu-Isi, Ivaeah, Shayya - the time has come. Greet him, and bring him to me.''\n\nAyya-Yurah sent forth her welcoming party, and did her best to calm her quivering heart while she waited for Araxes' arrival in her presence. \n\n*\n\n"
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  "description": "Chapter 4 (of 8) of Cultural Relations - commissioned by IrvingWrites\n\nAraxes travels with the Y'Dasz spear sisters through the immensity of Ammunash's Garden, to Zalemanya. Along the way, he learns far more of Y'Dasz culture, and begins finally to understand the purpose Fate has laid out for him.\nMeanwhile, far to the north, Shuva is confirmed as the new Chieftain of the Lamaye (a passage I'm particularly proud of!)"
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"writing": "Cultural Relations\n\nPart 4\n\n(c)2025 Bruno Hirschkoff\n\nFor Irving\n\n \n\nThe following is a work of erotic fiction intended solely for adult audiences. It is not intended for commercial publication nor for widespread distribution without the permission of the Author. The Author asserts the exclusive right of ownership of Asantrea, and all characters, settings, concepts, locations and events described herein.\n\nApprox 6,500 words / 30 minutes reading time\n\nChapter 4\n\nAraxes did not sleep well that night. It was his first night in Ammunash's Garden, and it was such an alien environment. The night was barely any different from the day, he had noticed; the bioluminescence of the understorey meant it was difficult to tell precisely what time of day or night it was, other than the darkening of the canopy an impossible height above them. \n\nAraxes wondered if the transit of Saliel had yet occurred. In the depths of the Garden, it was impossible to tell. \n\nBut the thought that his initiation date to the Lamaye might instead have occurred the previous evening with his first truly sexual experience of the Y'Dasz stood out to him as a fitting moment.\n\nFurther north, in the sweaty jungles, the sisters had taken turns keeping watch, and had been evidently on-edge. Here, in the sanctuary of the Garden, they were entirely at ease. All of them slept at the same time, and close together. Araxes found himself with his head pillowed on Nur-Ayya's arm while she draped the other over his midriff. On his other side, Yt'tai lay with her back to him, and over the course of the night she shuffled backwards until he was sandwiched between her and Nur-Ayya. Veyo, Nenwoh and Yattah slept in a similar pile, with Veyo between the huntress and the forager. \n\nAraxes laid awake for most of the night, or at least in a very shallow, fitful sleep. The light bothered him the most, he found. Out on the plains, the night could be very dark, shot through only with the glow of the Firmament far above, and the light of one or two of Asantrea's moons. But even then, he could pull down the reeds over the door of his hut and sleep in darkness. At one point, Veyo rose and wandered into the forest for a short time, presumably to relieve herself, and when she returned, he felt her presence nearby. He did not open his eyes, but he could smell her, and hear her breathing. She seemed to be squatting near his head, and abruptly he felt something brush over his manhood. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai's closeness to him was keeping him erect, moreso than he typically would be at night. It was Veyo's hand. His eyes flew open, and he looked up to stare directly into her crotch. She was preoccupied, gently stroking his cock, being as quiet as she could so as not to wake Nur-Ayya or Yt'tai, both of whom would be unimpressed if she was caught. \n\nAraxes contemplated the thought of moving his head slightly and pressing his tongue upward against her vulva. It was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from it. She was clearly intensely in need of what he was displaying. Her delicate inner lips were even more puffy and swollen than they had been earlier, glistening with wetness and protruding beyond the soft outer lips - until very recently, Araxes had no idea how a woman's genitals were constructed, having only ever caught the briefest of glimpses before his abduction by the Y'Dasz.\n\nBut had it been an abduction? They had saved his life, after all. \n\nVeyo abruptly froze in place when Yt'tai mumbled in her sleep and stretched. Araxes moved his head slightly, and gave his cock a firm flex in her hand to let her know he was awake. She moved, and their eyes met in the eerie bioluminescence. Both knew they could not do what they wanted. Nur-Ayya and Yt'tai made sure of that, by guarding Araxes. He would be noticed if he left, and missed if he did not return in a short time. The spear-sisters were clearly keeping him and Veyo apart. \n\nAraxes wondered what would happen when he was no longer shaka'hakt. Would Veyo become possessive of him? Or would she mount him a few times and then, her interest sated, move on?\n\nA thick drool of her nectar strung downward from her entrance closer to his face, and on a whim, Araxes swiped it up with his tongue, caressing her slick heat for a tantalising moment. She slapped a hand over her muzzle to contain her gasp, and her hips trembled. She was incredibly sensitive. That was a surprise. Her hand moved rapidly for a moment on his cock, and then, with a tortured sigh, she retreated. \n\nAraxes listened to her masturbating for a hundred breaths somewhere nearby, and the soft grunts of her orgasm, and then tried to force himself to think of something - anything - else. \n\n*\n\nThe slight lightening of the canopy high above was the only visual sign of dawn. But the change in the birdsong was unmistakeable.\n\nThe morning chorus in Ammunash's Garden was deafening. \n\nHoots, hollers, whoops and screeches swept across the forest like a wave, seemingly only minutes after Araxes had finally forced his mind into submission and fallen asleep. Yt'tai stirred, and stretched, and rolled towards him. Her muzzle pressed into the side of his neck, and she ran her hand through the wiry pelt of his chest, mumbling quietly in her shallow sleep. Then Nur-Ayya awoke with a thunderous yawn, and rose to a sitting position on the forest floor, tipping Araxes and Yt'tai over like twigs. She knuckled her eyes, blinked a few times, yawned again, and rose to her hooves. Araxes heard her pissing noisily somewhere nearby, and shared a chuckle with Yt'tai at the noise, who rolled her eyes. \n\nOnce everyone was awake, Veyo collected their clothing from where she had hung it over the thick stem of a giant forest floor plant to dry, and distributed it among the party. It did not seem to matter whose clothing was whose; all of them were similarly constructed and able to be adjusted to the size of the wearer. Nenwoh and Yattah dressed similarly, arranging their fabrics into loincloths. Yt'tai opted to dress herself in little more than a binding strip around her chest, but with nothing at all below her waist. She gave a little smile to Araxes in response to his curious stare. Veyo seemed more than content to remain nude, which surprised no one. Nur-Ayya took only a long strip of cloth, which she tied around her waist such that it preserved her modesty by only the barest fraction. The remainder, she gave to Araxes. \n\nThe common factor was how much less all of the spear-sisters wore here, compared to the dense northern jungles. All of them bundled up their excess cloths and tied them around their spears in densely bound bundles. \n\n``Wearing too many, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya tutted in her heavily accented and halting Lamaye, at the sight of Araxes attempting to swaddle himself in clothing. ``Y'Dasz clothing being... forest. Dytaea Goddess clothing us, Amel Goddess feeding us.''\n\nThen she switched to Y'Dasz, and spoke slowly for Araxes' benefit. ``So much clothing is not comfortable for us. It soaks up our sweat, crushes our pelts, and it rubs and itches. You will see very little clothing among the Y'Dasz. Come...''\n\nShe beckoned him forward, and helped him to arrange a simple pouch loincloth, which contained his manhood and resulted in a long flap of cloth that hung to his knees both front and back. It was astonishingly comfortable. Araxes thought he would feel exposed, but feeling fabric cupping and containing his manhood was something he was unaccustomed to, even back home. Nur-Ayya secured the loincloth with a knot on his left hip, and patted his cheek.\n\n``Good. Enough that Veyo doesn't see everything, but still comfortable. Yes?''\n\nAraxes nodded and removed his gaze from Nur-Ayya's bare breasts with some effort. He was picking up more and more of their language, the more they spoke, but some of their customs remained alien to him.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?''\n\n``Mm?''\n\n``Worrying... not, to speaking Lamaye. Y'Dasz... learning. Better.''\n\nNur-Ayya grinned, and touched her ossicones to his briefly in a gesture he was coming to recognise as one of respect and admiration. Then she turned her back, wearing nothing more than the tiny scrap of cloth around her wide hips, and marched ahead. Veyo fell in beside Araxes for the day's travel, since they were now in familiar territory and her skill as a pathfinder was not needed. Yt'tai came behind them, and made her presence known with a playful smack to Veyo's bare arse, to which she performatively moaned.\n\nNenwoh and Yattah foraged ahead of the small party, and before long, Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes found themselves walking in a relaxed group, with much of the spear sisters' discipline abandoned in the safety of their home. Yt'tai and Veyo chatted endlessly, and through their conversation Araxes picked up more and more words and phrases of their language.\n\nTowards the late afternoon, or so he judged it, Araxes' brooding thoughts found a focus, and he formulated a question in his mind.\n\n``Nur-Ayya?'' Araxes said, jogging forward a few paces to come up alongside her. \n\n``Mm? You have been quiet today, Araxes. Is everything alright?'' she replied.\n\n``Thinking, is. Not knowing... ahh... for purpose... Y'Dasz taking Lamaye. Asking?''\n\n``To save your life,'' Nur-Ayya replied simply. She draped her enormous arm around his skinny shoulders and yanked his body in against her side while they walked. ``What would have become of you had you remained there, alone, out on the savannah, with a head wound? Your own people cast you out, Araxes, as they have so many others before you. We bring the forsaken among us, and some become Y'Dasz.''\n\nIt was a perfectly reasonable answer, Araxes supposed. He processed it slowly, translating it in his mind. He asked Nur-Ayya to repeat herself a couple of times, until he was sure he understood. But she had not answered him in full. She was holding something back. Something important. Araxes found that further questions were met with sexual innuendo, or a blank stare as though she did not understand him. \n\nEventually, he got the message to cease probing, and turned his attention back to their surroundings. \n\nThe Y'Dasz were a sparse population, it turned out. By that evening, they began to encounter people; a small group here or there, some signs of habitation among the gargantuan trees, often more than an hour's walk apart. A hut, or a cooking fire, or some arrangement of food production, harvesting or similar, would often appear through the forest. The Y'Dasz did not clear the trees to create open land; they lived in harmony with their forest world, and did not seek to change its form or its function beyond subtly shaping the understorey to form huts, shelters woven from the living forest. \n\nThe three spear-sisters and Araxes caught up to Nenwoh and Yattah as the canopy high overhead was undergoing its subtle transition into nightfall. They made camp and rested near to a tiny gathering of Y'Dasz, no more than a dozen of them, and Araxes heard that word shaka'hakt spoken numerous times in response to the curious stares he attracted. \n\nThey were all women, Araxes realised with surprise, and showed a similar type of interest in him as the spear sisters had when they had first met. A type of restrained curiosity, controlled by their culture of initiation. It suddenly occurred to Araxes that he was yet to see an Y'Dasz man.\n\nThat night, Araxes found himself sleeping almost under guard. Nur-Ayya remained awake, taking first watch with her spear at her side. Then Yt'tai took her place. Then Yattah. Then Nenwoh. Then, finally, as the dawn approached, Veyo reluctantly dragged herself upright to stand her watch. Araxes took his fingers back from where she had been using them to subtly and silently masturbate herself for most of the night, guiding his touch with her hand, and filled his lungs with her scent. \n\n``Veyo is in the peak of her rut,'' Nur-Ayya said quietly as she sleepily rolled to face Araxes, to touch her forehead to his. ``I am proud of you for your control. It shall not be long until neither of you need restrain yourselves any longer, nor any of the rest of us.''\n\nAraxes considered that for a long moment, and then gently trailed his fingers along the elegant curve of Nur-Ayya's neck. Her eyelids fluttered and she held her breath until he stopped, by which time he could smell her arousal. \n\n``Veyo rut... not only, not alone?'' he said boldly. \n\n``Very perceptive you are, little Lamaye. No, she is not. All of us are.''\n\nAraxes thought for a moment, and then gently offered Nur-Ayya his hand - the same one Veyo had been using. Nur-Ayya's eyes glinted in the soft bioluminescence of the forest, and she held his wrist for a long moment. But then she released him. \n\n``No. It is too close to the dawn. I cannot.''\n\nAraxes nodded his understanding. \n\nIt did not stop Nur-Ayya from taking care of herself, though. Araxes found himself unable to go back to sleep, not with the sound and scent of Nur-Ayya quietly masturbating right beside him. He desperately wanted to touch her. To taste her. He ached and throbbed and drooled into his belly fur, but he resisted. She climaxed within minutes, and fell into a slumber beside him with her hand resting on his thigh, her fingertips caressing the skin a mere finger's breadth from the root of his aching manhood.\n\nThe deafening dawn chorus commenced only moments later, it seemed. Araxes groaned and knuckled his eyes. When his vision cleared, he gasped in shock and leapt backward. Veyo was standing over him, straddling his legs and staring at him. She laughed.\n\n``The dawn breaks,'' she said. ``Come, the villagers have already risen.''\n\nNur-Ayya yawned hugely and rose to her hooves. She scratched her crotch sleepily, sniffed her fingers, and then thrust her hand down to haul Araxes upright. Veyo bit her lip, staring at his persistent erection, and the action she performed was, while similar to Nur-Ayya's scratch, rather more delicate and prolonged.\n\n``Hide behind me until that goes down, Araxes,'' Nur-Ayya ordered. ``The local women may not have the self-control that we spear sisters have.''\n\n``He could hide it between my legs,'' Veyo suggested helpfully.\n\nNur-Ayya snorted and swatted affectionately at Veyo. ``Go and pleasure yourself again, sister. Somewhere Araxes cannot see, hear or smell you.''\n\nVeyo did so.\n\nAraxes grimaced. It took some time, but eventually he had shrunk enough to at least tuck himself back inside his loincloth pouch.\n\nAs on the mornings that had come before, breakfast was shared between them, although on this morning there was a new factor - the local Y'Dasz giraffes turned out to stare at Araxes. Most of them were naked. Some wore jewellery or other adornments on their bodies, and others carried baskets of food to bring to Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters. She, as the leader of their little group, accepted the offerings with ritualistic dignity, and in what seemed to be a local custom, returned most of the gifts to the people who had given them. She took only morsels, tokens of gratitude. Yt'tai explained the ritual to him quietly; it was a cultural practice for a village or settlement to welcome home a traveller who had been absent for a long time; it was bad form to take all of the offered gifts, and worse form to refuse them entirely. \n\nA young woman of approximately Araxes' age who had been staring at him all morning, and for most of the previous evening too, tentatively stepped forward. Instead of Nur-Ayya, she approached him directly. She was a pretty thing, slender and toned like Yt'tai, with small and perky breasts and hips that seemed slightly too wide for her frame. She was flushed and visibly flustered, and carried no offering. Rather, she was the offering. \n\nSuddenly, the nature of Y'Dasz gifts made sense to Araxes. They were a metaphor for sexual congress. One party offered up their whole selves. An exchange occurred. The recipient took something small - the pleasure of a shared orgasm - and the one who had offered themselves was returned the largest portion of the gift. And Araxes was being offered precisely that, with no cultural metaphor attached.\n\nShe approached him with shallow breaths, her ears perked sharply forward, and then turned her back to him. She thrust her buttocks backward and stood stiff-legged with her tail raised over her back, as if he would mount her right there in the open in front of all her gathered family and neighbours, and the five spear-sisters. \n\n``Esti-sa aqeti shaka'hakt. Kur-tidak sheqi a'amadeti,'' he said softly to her (I remain forbidden. The day after tomorrow shall be here quickly).\n\nThe young woman looked desperately disappointed, and Araxes felt bad for her - more so now that he knew something of the level of denial she may be feeling. But Nur-Ayya clapped him on the shoulder appreciatively, and in silence, the party of six moved out.\n\nNur-Ayya slowly explained to Araxes that the densest population of Y'Dasz occurred in a place called Zalemanya, and it was there that they were headed. But Zalemanya was not village. The more Nur-Ayya spoke of it, the larger it seemed, until Araxes realised that it referred not to a set location, but the place where the Aethyrsage of her people chose to rest. As such, Zalemanya was a concept, more than a location, and had probably existed in several distinct locations through its history.\n\n``Zalemanya... Y'Dasz... many?'' Araxes asked Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Many, yes. Some thousands,'' she indicated twelve on her fingers for him. ``But Zalemanya is very large. Four days from one side to the other. Big spaces between people. But it is to Ayya-Yurah we must go, and she is the centre of Zalemanya.''\n\n*\n\nThe journey to the centre of Zalemanya took two more days. The further they travelled through the vastness of Ammunash's Garden, the denser the undergrowth became, until there seemed to be little sunlight that filtered all the way to the forest floor. But far from being perturbed by this, the savannah-born Araxes was enchanted. It was a monumentally large place, in every way, but it felt intimate and protected.\n\nAnd the further they travelled, the more Y'Dasz Araxes saw. Tiny outposts and isolated villages became larger settlements, and those larger settlements became closer and closer together until they travelled through a near-continuous, living city. But there were no buildings of stone or timber here; the more permanent-seeming structures were of trained and interwoven vines and branches, some of them set five or six times his height up into the trees, with elaborate bridges between them made from trained, living branches. Everywhere he looked, the ever-present bioluminescence of the understorey illuminated this forest world, and its people, too. \n\nThe presence of the Y'Dasz was far more marked nearer to the centre of Zalemanya. Paths between the trees were well-worn, and some were even paved with stones, kept free of moss and lichen by the passage of many hooves. There was little sign of organised agriculture, but many of the people they crossed paths with carried large baskets laden with fruits, fungi, tubers and nuts; the bounty of the forest that sustained these people. Others sat in comfortable circles weaving baskets, mending strips of cloth, or shaping blocks of obsidian or flint into blades, for tools and weapons. Here and there, Araxes saw a spear sister; an Y'Dasz warrior woman bearing a spear the same as those carried by Nur-Ayya and her group, with the physique and presence of one trained in martial combat. \n\nMany of the people Araxes saw stared openly at him as they passed. Nearly all were giraffes, although he did see several groups of okapi as well, and even the occasional slender, lithe feline of speciation he did not recognise.\n\nAnd, as Nur-Ayya had indicated, he saw very little clothing among the Y-Dasz. After the initial culture shock of the spear sisters' open sexuality and preference for nudity, Araxes found himself slowly becoming accustomed to seeing naked female bodies wherever he went. It still aroused him, certainly, but as time passed, the moments when it caused him to become erect seemed to be getting easier to control, and limited mostly to those moments where Veyo or Yt'tai or Nur-Ayya specifically wanted to tease him. And tease him they did, relentlessly - although none moreso than Veyo.\n\nAraxes noted curiously that none of the very few men he saw carried weapons or shields, nor did they generally have the sculpted physique of the Lamaye warriors he was familiar with. Very few bore the ritual scars of Lamaye initiation on their shoulders and chests. Most were carrying out tasks that seemed predominantly domestic in nature; processing food, cooking, cleaning, trimming and training the vines and branches of the Y'Dasz's homes. But what intrigued him the most, were those men he saw in attendance to pregnant Y'Dasz women. There were few enough of those, and Araxes noted that there were very few calves or younger Y'Dasz giraffes. But those who were carrying a new life within them seemed to be treated with utter deference, verging on worship.\n\n``Araxes, step aside,'' Nur-Ayya instructed him suddenly. \n\nHe stumbled to do so, taken aback by the snap of authority in her voice, and fell heavily. A pregnant Y'Dasz woman passed by, with no fewer than four people in her attendance; two men, and two younger women. \n\nNur-Ayya hoisted Araxes to his hooves once more, and busily dusted the mud and moss from his pelt. Araxes suddenly felt very alone, and very lost in this alien world. He had felt as though he was beginning to understand the Y'Dasz while travelling only with the spear sisters, but here in Zalemanya, it felt as if he knew nothing at all. \n\n``Why am I here?'' Araxes demanded, angrily cuffing tears of frustration from his cheeks. \n\nNur-Ayya?s face softened and she seemed to slump, as if relieving herself of a burden carried too long. Her voice when next she spoke was a low murmur that Araxes had to concentrate to hear. \n\n``We... are an afflicted people, Araxes. Long ago, we displeased the great mother and suffered a great punishment that continues to this day. Come, walk with me. Tell me what you see.''\n\nNur-Ayya linked her arm through his and set a languid pace, off and away from the heavily trafficked thoroughfare they had been on. Their hooves sank pleasingly into the dense, layered moss that carpeted the forest. All around, Araxes could see just what he?d seen before; Y?Dasz giraffes with their inverse colours, at once a bizarre sight to the Lamaye man and yet, here in the verdant depths of Ammunash?s Garden, they fit. \n\n``I do not know what it is I am supposed to see,'' Araxes admitted at length. \n\n``You see Y?Dasz, Araxes. Now, what do you not see?''\n\nAraxes tilted his head up to stare at Nur-Ayya. \n\n``Long ago,'' she continued, ``we took the blessings of the great mother, the goddess Dytaea, whose love for her creator Ammunash spawned this world. We took them and we used them, and we paid a high price for our irreverence. A great sickness befell our Aethyrborn guardians. Those who channelled the Aethyr into our hearts and our loins were torn from us. Most never returned. Wolves walked amongst us and brought the sickness with them, and with them they took our guardians.''\n\nAraxes frowned in confusion. While he spoke passable Y?Dasz after his time amongst the so-called Forest Demons, Nur-Ayya spoke with the weight of a thousand generations' worth of culture and he struggled to follow her nuanced meanings. \n\n``I still do not understand.''\n\n``How many Y?Dasz menfolk have you met, Araxes?''\n\n``None. None. I... thinking... Y'Dasz men far away fighting, foraging.''\n\nThe few giraffe men Araxes saw were clearly not Y'Dasz; the Y'Dasz giraffes had distinctive pelt markings that were the opposite of the Lamaye's own, with pale ivory patches over darker brown. The Lamaye tended to have sharper-edged dark patches over tawny fur, while the western Sagunu were darker still, with patches of burnt umber over mahogany. Araxes recognised several Lamaye and Sagunu men by their markings alone, but did not recognise any of them individually. \n\n``All of them, at all times, such that their women have to raid neighbouring tribes for a partner to rut?'' Nur-Ayya laughed mirthlessly. Araxes shifted uncomfortably. ``The Y?Dasz have no menfolk-Aethyrborn any longer, Araxes, nor any touched by the Aethyr in the way it is meant to be. We give birth only to daughters, and it has been this way for two generations. The last of the surviving Y?Dasz menfolk-Aethyrborn died of old age two generations hence. He died very happy, but he died, still. And after the sickness, was as mortal as you or I and lost to the Aethyr.''\n\n``What... happening to Aethyrborn?''\n\nAraxes was, of course, familiar with Aethyr, and of Aethyrborn and their Aethyr-touched offspring; the cruel Lamaye chieftain Beltezaar, Isaeos' father, had been an Aethyrborn of Bezar, the god of fire. And, it was said, most shamans of the Lamaye were Aethyr-touched; the mortal offspring of Aethyrborn. He believed it. But where Aethyrborn to the Lamaye meant power and trouble, individuals to be feared and revered, it seemed to mean something quite different to the Y'Dasz.\n\n``Lu-Temba was his soul-name. He took flesh and walked among us for many years, and fathered many calves, who became our Aethyrsages. He survived the great sickness, but was forever changed. He did not remember who he was, or that he should return to us beyond the veil of his death. And after he left us... the Y'Dasz had no more sons.''\n\nAraxes remembered hearing of some long-past event involving the Aethyrborn, and it dawned upon him that what Nur-Ayya referred to as ?sickness? probably meant a spiritual sickness, rather than a physical one.\n\nA ritual. Wolves. Arahan. The strange word was in his mind somehow, although he had nothing by which to define it.\n\n``We begged and we prayed and we called upon Dytaea to restore him to us. But the sickness meant that the goddess no longer saw him among us. The great Lu-Temba was not Aethyrborn, not any longer. And so his spirit fled and left us afflicted.''\n\n``Y'Dasz taking... menfolk of others... because cannot have sons?'' Araxes hazarded. \n\nNur-Ayya nodded and hung her head. Araxes reached up to touch her shoulder and her eyes lifted to meet his. \n\n``Understanding,'' he said. ``Knowing not of... pain. Sorrow, I have.''\n\n``You could not have known. It is my burden to bear, not yours.''\n\n``Why not... saying, before-ago?''\n\n``It is my people?s shame! We Y?Dasz bear it together, but rarely is it spoken.''\n\n``If saying... men coming. Nur-Ayya and spear sisters beautiful, like flowers... attracting, to men.''\n\nNur-Ayya cupped the back of his neck and brought her forehead to his own. Her ossicones bumped against his own, and she held him there for a long moment. \n\n``I look forward to bearing your calf, Araxes Lamaye,'' she whispered. ``You have a good soul.''\n\nTowards the evening of the seventh day since the Y'Dasz had rescued him from the baking heat of the savannah, the party of six finally reached their destination. Nenwoh and Yattah had scouted ahead, to arrive ahead of Nur-Ayya, Yt'tai, Veyo and Araxes, and to inform the Aethyrsage of their approach. \n\nAs such, when they arrived, Ayya-Yurah was ready for them. \n\n*\n\nIt took three days for a majority of the expected Lamaye village representatives to arrive in Impili in response to Shuva's call - the shamans and village elders from all five permanent Lamaye settlements, and elders from the nomadic groups. As was tradition, Atatafi the shamaness greeted them upon their arrival at the village, for until Shuva was ritually confirmed as the new Chieftain, the Lamaye were without a leader. The body of Isaeos had been preserved with the refined, waxy resin excreted by a beetle that lived in the high branches of the Savannah acacias, but even so, by the time the village representatives were present, it had begun to stink. The former Chieftain's final journey would be from the Chieftain's hut, to a funeral pyre that had been prepared some distance from the village. But his body needed to be witnessed by the village representatives.\n\nShuva did not sit in the Chieftain's throne. That would be presumptuous, and he did not want to be equated to his father. Instead, he waited off to one side of the dais with Arashi at his side, in his ceremonial dress, while a dozen village elders filed through the Chieftain's hut. Some carried burning incense in clay pots, which they passed over Isaeos' body while they inspected him. Others murmured prayers. All of them turned to Shuva and offered him tiny gestures of their intended acceptance of his ascension before they left. \n\nThen the locals came through. All Lamaye from all villages were entitled to see and pay their respects to the dead Chieftain. \n\nBarely half of the village of Impili did so, although every single one of them showed up and dutifully filed through. Very few people from the other villages were present. Shuva watched them with curiosity and empathy. They were cowed into obedience. Terrified of his father, even in death. \n\nHe would change that.\n\nAt long last, the time was upon him. And today, of all days, was the day of the transit of Saliel, where the silver moon would pass across the face of Kesh, the summer sun, and cause there to be only one light in the midday sky. It was the day when Araxes would have been initiated, had the runt remained with the Lamaye. Shuva was surprised to remember him at all; he may have been the shaman's son, but he was not a man of any particular importance. But there had been something about him. An intelligence, tempered by sadness. If the Lamaye had not been led by Isaeos, Shuva supposed that Araxes would have had a place among them. \n\nHe hoped Araxes had survived Oaal and Xanaf's attack. And perhaps that he'd even survived the Y'Dasz, and found his way to the Sagunu after all.\n\nShuva did not carry his father's body. That was a break from tradition, he knew, but it was also a message to the villagers. He was not his father, and would not honour him beyond what was strictly necessary. All knew of Isaeos' brutality, and Shuva fancied that he saw hope on the faces of some of his people at his gesture. \n\nThe sky was dark and heavy with cloud, that day. Shuva felt a pang of anxiety that they would not see the transit, except as a brief dimming of the already dark sky. The air felt pregnant with the promise of a storm; dense and still. All of the villagers from Impili were present, together with the several dozen representatives of the other Lamaye villages. All in all there were well over four hundred Lamaye present; giraffes, antelope, zebra, many mahogany-patched pelts and elegant necks, horns and stripes gathered around the unlit funeral pyre.\n\nFinally, it was Shuva's time to speak. Arashi squeezed his hand, and he briefly touched her face before stepping forward and raising his hands.\n\n``Hear me, Lamaye!'' he called. His voice carried far on the still air, and he sent a silent prayer to Lakesh, the Storm Goddess, for making it so. ``Chieftain Isaeos is dead. You have seen his body, stripped of life, laying before you. Those who killed him, witnessed by myself, witnessed by Arashi of the Sagunu, witnessed by Abdi of the Lamaye, witnessed by Eytliah of the Lamaye, confirmed by Saare and Luwam of the Lamaye, are Xanaf of the Lamaye and Oaal of the Lamaye, who are held until their trial.''\n\nA ripple of voices passed through the gathered giraffes. Xanaf and Oaal were well known among the locals, although not for good reasons. Somewhere in the group, a young woman cried out in anguish. She was pregnant with Oaal's calf. \n\nShuva allowed the people to talk briefly among themselves, and then once again held up his hands for silence. \n\n``Hear me, Lamaye! I, Shuva, son of Isaeos, son of Beltezaar, stand before you! The torch of Chiefdom passes from father to son, and I stake my right to claim it today. Do any among you challenge my right?'' \n\nShuva saw fear on a few faces, and he made a point of staring directly at those people, and softened his voice. This was the part where he emerged. Where his intentions would become clear. \n\nAnd at that very moment, the sky darkened. The transit had commenced. A shiver ran up Shuva's spine. This was the moment. He turned his face skyward and raised his arms.\n\n``Amel of the Rivers, Lady of the Plains, cast your divine sight upon your children once more, and bless us with your succour.''\n\nUtter silence descended over the Lamaye.\n\nShuva was a Bezari! Isaeos had been all fire and violence - his first act as Chieftain had been to burn half the village. What Shuva promised with those few words was a return to the pre-Bezari days - before Beltezaar had lurched forth from his fiery home to bring war and violence to the Lamaye and their neighbours. \n\nAtatafi, the woman who had given birth to Araxes the runt, stepped forward. She was laden with the ritual artefacts of her craft, her ears and lips heavily pierced with rings and barbs of polished wood and bone, her breasts bare. She danced around Shuva, who stood with his head bowed and his hands held palms-up before him under the darkened sky. \n\nInto his hands, she placed a shallow clay bowl, and into it she poured a measure of water from a corked gourd hanging from a woven strap around her neck. Then she stooped, and peered long and hard into the water. A long, low hum rose in her throat - an eerie buzzing sound, which continued for many minutes without pause for breath. She rocked from side to side on her hooves, and shook her hands, causing the many wooden and metal bangles on her arms to rattle. And then she whooped to the sky, and flung the water upward in a spray. \n\nAt that moment, a deafening crack of thunder exploded from the sky directly overhead, and lightning struck Isaeos' funeral pyre, barely a dozen paces from where they stood. The percussive force of the strike knocked Shuva, Arashi and Atatafi from their hooves.\n\nImpregnated with flammable oils, the pyre erupted with a whoosh, engulfing the Chieftain in the fire from which he had been born.\n\nThe people backed away in fear and awe. Shuva was stunned. As they rose, he turned to the shamaness, and she gave him a strange little smile. \n\n``It is Amel who speaks, through Lakesh. Not Bezar,'' she said to him in a dry, raspy voice. \n\nShamans were forbidden from speaking to any but a Chieftain, or another shaman.\n\nSomehow, the significance of that outweighed even the divine providence of the lightning, for Shuva. He fell to his knees before her, and before his goddesses, and there, in the presence of the frightened Lamaye, she smeared his cheeks with sacred ochre and presented him with the bronze Chieftain's dagger - the very same weapon that had taken Isaeos' life.\n\nThen, with another flash and a long, brittle, rolling crack of thunder, sparse, heavy raindrops began to fall from the leaden sky to the desiccated and dusty ground. \n\nShuva rose to his hooves once again and scanned the gathered Lamaye. Some remained stunned into immobility, their mouths open and eyes wide, while others were murmuring among themselves. Yet others had excitement on their faces, hands held aloft to the burgeoning rain, whose fat drops hissed and cracked into Isaeos' roaring pyre. More than a few knelt and pressed their heads to the ground towards him.\n\nShuva turned his face skyward, and allowed the bellow of triumph that welled up in his chest to come forth.\n\nHe was Chieftain of the Lamaye, and the gods themselves had intervened to make their approval as clear as the day which, moments thereafter, once again lightened as the transit of Saliel came to its end, and a new era was born.\n\n*\n\nAyya-Yurah's calf was due to be born very soon. The Aethyrsage's breasts hung full and heavy in readiness, distended with milk. Her belly, which was swollen and full with the weight of life she carried, put a strain on her back, such that she was not as mobile as she would have liked. But the arrival of a new Lamaye man in their midst was cause for celebration. It always was, but this one seemed special, to Ayya-Yurah, for he had arrived on the day of the transit of Saliel. \n\nShe had scried several times upon his journey inward to Zalemanya in the company of Nur-Ayya and the spear sisters, and found herself uncharacteristically drawn to this skinny, slightly runty young man in ways she rarely was. There was something special about him, and that caused a flutter of excitement in her that she was unprepared for. \n\nNenwoh and Yattah returned several hours ahead of Araxes. Ayya-Yurah sent Tsu-Isi, one of her attendants, to greet them. Tsu-Isi brought the two women into the Aethyrsage's presence. \n\n``We welcome you home, sisters,'' Ayya-Yurah said. ``Tell me of whom you bring.''\n\nNenwoh related the story of how Araxes was found, and Ayya-Yurah nodded sagely. Her story reflected the Aethyrsage's scrying, so she knew the truth of her words. That Araxes had willingly followed the spear sisters was a good sign of itself; not all Lamaye men did. Some fought. Some ran. Some broke the shaka'hakt within days. Some who made it to Zalemanya were found not to be pure, and unfit to become Y'Dasz. \n\nAraxes appeared to be none of these, and as such he was a rare find. \n\nThe calf inside her seemed to sense her excitement and moved and kicked. She caressed her distended belly, murmuring to her child, and thanked Nenwoh and Yattah for their presence. Tsu-Isi showed them out, and Ayya-Yurah moved slowly around the inside of her hut, preparing to receive Araxes into her presence. \n\nAll of the rituals must be practiced. It was how the Y'Dasz welcomed a newcomer to their society, and vetted their intentions and their desires. Violent men were rejected. Those who had broken shaka'hakt by succumbing to the spear sisters ahead of their induction were rejected. The ritual was an intimate and invasive one, and Ayya-Yurah would, for a time, be inside Araxes' mind. She would have access to his thoughts and memories. Ayya-Yurah set out the various artefacts and herbs she would need, and sent prayers to Amel and Dytaea that he would be the one she had sought for so many years - the one who would alleviate the suffering of the Y'Dasz, and finally bring to an end the years of silence from the gods they had endured.\n\nAyya-Yurah called over her attendants. \n\n``Tsu-Isi, Ivaeah, Shayya - the time has come. Greet him, and bring him to me.''\n\nAyya-Yurah sent forth her welcoming party, and did her best to calm her quivering heart while she waited for Araxes' arrival in her presence. \n\n*\n\n"
}

3858871_5991766_BrunoHirschkoff_bh_cr_ch4.pools.json · CAS artifact Download

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