Ancient, Ancient

behavior does not ensure that george or any assignment is a believer. i sway me body from side to side. but i must follow my instincts. they tell me to get as close as possible so that i might feel what they feel. i roll my head around on my neck. you who are wise, please accept my apology. i touch me forehead to ground in front of me, close me eyes, & move me prayer to Ancestor First. i get me bag & me hunterself & run out door.

When they got to George’s house WaLiLa’s eyes were so heavy with sleep, she could not keep them open. She knew the elders were trying to lull her into a state of unconsciousness to stop her from completing the assignment her way. She sat on the sofa & tried to appear lucid.

“WaLiLa, I’m going upstairs to take a shower, okay?”

WaLiLa nodded. As she heard the faint splash of water dripping on George’s body, WaLiLa slid off the sofa & fell into a deep sleep on the carpet. George returned to find WaLiLa curled on the floor. He watched her torso’s silent heaving motions. He examined her unguarded face softened by sleep. Sitting next to her, he caressed her sleeping body with his eyes. Laying with his back to her, he took deep stabilizing breaths & touched WaLiLa over & over in his mind. His cautious breathing woke her up. It was so careful & so loud. It was slowly passing its tongue over her ear. Come to me, it said. Wake up & hold me, it said. Come, I want you. Then the insistent breathing gave way to mumbling. The mumbling evolved into words. The words were asking if he could put his arms around her.

“Yes,” she murmured through her veil of sleep.

He wrapped his arms around her, & a current blazed through her, zinging her awake. He started mumbling her name again & pulled her closer. She ignored his call, acted as though she couldn’t hear.

“WaLiLa,” he said more urgently.

“Hmmm?” she whispered.

“Lila,” he called.

She turned over to face him. His face showed all the torturous emotions that were shooting through his body. WaLiLa knew it was time. Well, she looked up at the elders, I gather the nectar my own way. WaLiLa closed her eyes & kissed him. That one kiss, a simple touch of the lips opened a floodwall of actions & emotions. Tongues passed through the barriers of lips, clothing parted & lay rumpled on the floor. As their hips grinded to their own beat, WaLiLa remembered defending herself to the council of elders. Everybody has had to do fieldwork from the beginning of time, they said. Why, they wanted to know, why did she have to be so difficult? Why couldn’t she just do it the old way & get the nectar while he slept? It didn’t matter to them that nectar gathering was a richer & more fulfilling experience during lovemaking. The nectar that seeped through the skin during sleep was thin, almost translucent. But when she gathered nectar while the flower was open, its essence was so powerful, it almost knocked her unconscious.

She pushed the council of elders out of her mind & extended her arms as wide as she could. To George, it looked like she was unfurling large wings, like those of a moth. He dismissed the thought, crediting the delusion to his happiness. She enfolded him in her wings & pulled in all of the energy, sweat, & fluids he released to her. His surrender released the potent nectar WaLiLa had been sent to Earth to obtain. She and hundreds of other fieldworkers spent the majority of their youth learning tactics and techniques to persuade humans to part with it. This nectar runs the veins with the blood and exits the pores with the sweat. It is active in saliva and tears, but humans hadn’t even begun to discover the nectar’s existence. No human language even had a word for it. In WaLiLa’s language, it was signified by a slow fluid motion from the head to the heart. The nectar of a believer could incite a shock in the body ten times as powerful as the adrenaline rush of an orgasm. But the nectar of a non-believer could freeze all life within the body starting with the slow petrification of the bones. It may be blood that sustains human life, but it is the potent nectar that ensures the continuation of the life cycle.

George and WaLiLa lay quiet. WaLiLa wiggled her fingers & toes, & smiled. She was still alive— George believed! He believed in the ancestors, and this belief begat a new cycle of life. George felt a warm glow in the base of his belly. At this moment, he knew he was complete. He did not know about the healing touch. He smiled thinking he had found his better half in WaLiLa. With her, he thought, I can be whole. He did not know that this feeling was his. In exchange for his belief, WaLiLa had passed this completeness to him through his navel from the center of her being. He now owned this feeling, & tomorrow, when he called his mother, he would call her as a complete being, not expecting the successes of his life to be dependent upon her. Next week when his medical project failed, he would fail as a complete being, not granting his failure to his thesis partner. And next month when he found a lover, he would come to her whole, expecting not fulfillment, but love. WaLiLa had given George back to himself. Absolved him from guilt & pettiness. Freed him to really be. George closed his eyes & began to drift off into sleep when he felt WaLiLa shift underneath him.

“What?” he murmured.

“I… I must go,” WaLiLa stammered. “Out I must go. I need have air fresh.”

“Now?” George asked worried.

“Yes.” WaLiLa wiped moisture from her eyes.

At George’s insistence, they walked outside together under the canopy of the cluttered night sky. His concern for her safety made WaLiLa smile. Full with the moon & star constellations, the sky was calling her. WaLiLa knew her time was up, but she felt her connection to George still tugging at her hips. She glanced at him. He was walking slowly with his head thrown back, caught under the sky’s spell. WaLiLa lowered her head and wondered how George would react to her departure. He won’t remember, she consoled herself, and concentrated on how it felt to be with him.

As their feet propelled them forward, they began to discuss stars & spirits & where it was exactly that the ancestors dwelled. Whoosh—a moth fluttered between them. George caught an anguished look on WaLiLa’s face. Two more moths flew by & took George’s attention. Soon a steady stream of moths were flying between them. So taken was he with this miracle of nature, he did not notice that WaLiLa had stopped walking.

George turned to utter some phrase of amazement, and found that WaLiLa was not there. He looked back and saw her, standing in the misty night air with her eyes closed, her body eerily still. The moths were attaching themselves to her body, softly and gently. Her hands were open, palms tilted upward in a gesture of acceptance. George ran to her and began to frantically brush the moths off her body. But as he removed one, two more would replace it, until WaLiLa’s body was completely covered. He could no longer see his hands. George’s fingers were shaking in disbelief. The moths!

Staring at WaLiLa’s moth-clad body, George shook his hands free of moths. WaLiLa’s arms floated upward, and in a graceful motion, began performing some kind of entranced dance; her body began to sway. In moments, George could see the flapping of one, two, then thousands of moth wings. Eventually, they took flight, leaving George stooped in the middle of the street, alone except for a pile of moth’s wings marking the place where WaLiLa had been standing.

MalKai’s Last Seduction

“the most powerful seductions are executed against the silence of few words”

Sometimes, I feel

                   shoulder shrug

like a motherless child.

                   cheek rub against shoulder