Talla's Temple Ch. 08

"Hardly," Shanata replied gently. "The influence of a Goddess can only extend a short distance. The more women inhabit her Temple, the further her power can reach. The first Temple was small. The women that served it kept the peace by Serving the men nearest it."

"You said there was fighting," Talla recalled.

"Yes," Shanata confirmed. "Men who wanted peace came voluntarily, giving their girl children to the Temple. Men who thought women ought to be treated better did the same. But there was fighting. There are men who prefer war, who prefer to take without giving. Those men, in the days before the peace of the Goddess overwhelmed their hatred, brought war to the walls of the Temple."

That was a strange image. The battles the book had described, the ones among men, could involve hundreds and hundreds of fighters, rushing at each other with swords, cutting each other to death. And those men did the same thing, attacking the walls of a Temple and the women inside? She recalled a long ago conversation with Meena, when she had been surprised to learn that most of the Division of Form was dedicated to martial training. At the time, that had seemed like a ridiculous number of people. Suddenly it seemed dangerously insufficient.

But she had noticed something else.

"You said 'there are men ...'," Talla pointed out. "They're still here?"

"The power the gods gave us, through the Goddess, keeps them at peace," Shanata said. "But if a man strays too far from the Temple, that power can not reach him."

She tried to imagine Zhair'lo turning in to some raging monster, bent on killing her or subduing her in to a 'wife'. What a terrible thought. Was that what he really was underneath?

"All men are like this?"

"No," Shanata said firmly.

That was a relief.

"Some will turn violent without the protection of the Goddess, but not all," she clarified. "Many will simply fall in to a very deep slumber, losing all will to act until a new Goddess comes. A few others -- a precious few -- will continue as if nothing happened."

Like rolling dice, then. One never knew what numbers would come. Which kind of man was Zhair'lo, underneath it all? How would his dice fall? What piece was he on the board?

-----==================----

When he regained consciousness, it was to the sensation of a mouth on his penis.

Gods. Again? The skinny, little girl was insatiable. Was there any more in him to give?

Yes. It turned out there was.

He did his best to keep his penis hard. If he could just hold it erect long enough to get it inside her, she could take over. He was counting on the mesh now, to prop him up.

Sweating heavily with determination, she straddled his exhausted body.

"One more time," she murmured. "Just for me."

She forced him in to her again and he felt a sudden rush of awareness and arousal. He wasn't sleepy anymore. His exhaustion was forgotten. Meshing had done its job yet again and she had brought him to her level.

A boy could drown in that feeling. It wasn't what he'd had with Talla. That was certain. But it still smothered him, merging him with Natta until -- for a short while - he didn't care about who he was.

Bliss -- all the way to orgasmic oblivion.

By the time he woke again it would be morning and Natta would be gone.

-----==================----

"So those were the first gifts from the gods," Shanata concluded. "The Perfections of the first Goddess; the Upgrade so she could pass it on; the Mesh so her servants could bring her peace to men. All of this was given to us at year zero."

Talla nodded. It was a lot to absorb in a few hours.

"I advise you to think about this for a while," Shanata said. "I have taught you tonight what girls your age learn in a month or two. We will meet again, at some later date, and you may ask questions then."

"Yes, Mistress," Talla replied vacantly. Her mind was elsewhere.

Dismissed from her lesson, she wandered out in to the common room of Endowment Hall. A few other Virgins were there, stoking the fires and doing other menial tasks in preparation for tonight's post-coital gathering. No one that she knew was there. Lara and Salee would be out cutting their long skirts. That was okay. She had more time for her thoughts.

The gods had purposefully placed their magic in the hands of women because men had failed so miserably. To think that, at one time, it was the men who had learned to read and write and that women could rarely do either. How odd a time that must have been. The gods had seen a flaw in that plan, or perhaps an injustice. They had corrected the situation by giving women the power to make men peaceful.

But to use that power, the women had to cooperate with each other. One woman -- even a Goddess -- could not use it alone. She needed all of the women, working together with her, to bring that peace. Fear of violence would keep them together.

Clever, Talla thought. Very, very clever.