Godlike by Rachel
The Meaning of Balance
It is a comfort and an honor to have such dedicated readers! Your insights and questions relating to the story are always spot-on, and your praise is thoroughly humbling! I’m thrilled you all loved the last chapter so much, and so I’ve persevered through this recent bout of writer’s “lack of motivation” spell to give you another chapter, which – as I said before – continues to live up to your spectacularly high expectations J And don’t worry, the chapter DOES have dialogue…eventually!
Disclaimer: I do not own Apuleius’ Myth of Cupid & Psyche, nor do I own Inuyasha or its characters.
This chapter includes Skye’s weekly challenge prompt: pledge.
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The dawn brought to light every little thing Kagome expected; numerous feelings she experienced the night before but blocked in lieu of time – hours upon hours – spent in the arms of the husband she despised. Or tried to despise. She hoped so thoroughly that come the sunrise, her loathing for the selfish god who stole her from every joy she ever knew would rise again to a boiling point; to her benefit, the waters of Kagome’s passions had certainly reached a stinging sim mer that burned her e yes and caused her palms to sweat, but they would not boil.
It was the first morning after having become the wife of a god, a Kami of the Heavens that could have anyone he so pleased – could do anything he so pleased – and the human princess was already at quite a loss of what to think, for this creature had chosen her, a plain human, to lie with at night and flee at first light. It was a bafflement that would wrack the woman for days to come, but on this the first day as a god’s wife, it was a thought that threatened to render her completely mad.
Kagome spent the first hour upon her waking in the marriage-bed, feeling out the wrinkles in the cold bed sheets where her husband had lain only hours prior. His weight had caused a large indentation to appear in the mattress, one that stretched from end to end. She marveled at the size and pondered how such a monstrous thing could treat her so – no. It would not do her good to dwell on that first night, for it would be an uncommon occurrence in the ensuing marriage. It did not matter if he was made of marble or splintered wood; the man she was to call “husband” was a monster in all sorts.
Eventually, the princess emerged from the bed, and upon doing so was met with the physical repercussions of joining with a man not of her mortal world. In the scant letters she had received from Kikyo after her marriage, her elder sister had spoken of the pain of losing her cherished maidenhood and how – supposing the husband was gentle and considerate – “the pain was not entirely worse than the way an unused muscle is sore after a strenuous exercise, but the soreness is located in a place that is unfamiliar to a maiden and is cause for much embarrassment in the morning.” Kagome understood immediately her sister’s words, but knew that this discomfort was beyond that of a muscle being rendered useful. It was painful, and embarrassing, and when the pangs became too much for her she was filled with shame and self-disgust.
The third hour out of bed was spent in a gilt chair by a long window overlooking the vast mountainous terrain of the country, but the view was obscured by endless mists, dotted with thick clouds pierced sporadically with the highest treetops; she truly was above the world, dangling in the heavens but not quite amongst the Kami themselves. The sun was not quite overhead, making the damp greenery shine, and when the wind blew across the valleys it became a sea of forests and grassy mountaintops. It was beauty in its most natural habitat, and Kagome – by marriage – was perhaps meant to be better than it all. A preposterous, pretentious idea, one she was quick to put to rest with nothing more than a scoff and shake of her head.
When the scenery became a blur of greenery, the glare of the sun, and very little else, Kagome turned from the window and wandered into the belly of the palace she was to call home from that moment on. Outside of the bedroom the building was surprisingly underwhelming. The build was of superior quality, compared to those made by human hands; the wood was dark, the paper screens thin but sturdy, and the ceilings tall but not unbearably so. Kagome disliked the feeling of being dwarfed by her “home” environment. As she walked through the long corridors, occasionally she would poke her head into the different rooms on either side and discover what lay inside. In many cases, the rooms were empty, as if they had been lying long in wait for more bodies to take up residence there. But in every empty room there was a small lily-white candle upon a wooden dais, with the wick already cut but unlit. Kagome briefly recalled seeing lit candles the night before, but perhaps in the confusion of events, she had misinterpreted what the little golden lights were.
Everything in that grand but empty home seemed a mirage to the human princess. Every corner turned lead to another corridor, every corridor leading to more empty rooms with unlit candles inside. Was there any purpose to this place, she wondered? Was it not only her doom to be the night pleasure of a god, but to roam the daylight hours alone in a gutted home? Happenstance and misery were not meant to be synonymous with one another, and yet there stood Kagome, the personification of both. Surely a being that claimed to admire her so would not subject her to such a torturous life.
But as per her nature, Kagome did not cease her explorations because of her disenchantment. She was scarcely enchanted in the first place, but she was not one to let dismay take her completely. She went on, deeper into the palace, until sunlight began to shine through the screens and the late morning breeze whispered upon the fibrous rice paper. Kagome must have passed a good number of empty halls before reaching the back of the house (if one could call it that), which consisted of one long high wall of shoji screens. The princess came nearer to it, uncertain as to whether or not any part of it would open to the outside – she could feel the sunlight on her skin where it shone through the paper, and oh how she wanted to breathe the fresh air…she reached out and touched the wall, and with only that gentle contact the wall opened to reveal a long deck that wrapped all around the back of the palace, with stairs just ahead that descended into a garden of unmatched beauty.
Kagome’s breath was stolen from the moment she stepped out into the sunlight, for there before her was an array of flora that surely no other mortal had had the privilege of beholding. Every tree still bore the heavy burden of their spring blossoms, even while the season had long since passed; the scent of cherries hung light in the air, mingled with the aromas of pine, rose, lotus, fresh rain and cut grass. A stone path danced among the flowers and the trees, which Kagome followed silently for many minutes. Her bare feet skimmed the river-rocks that paved the way through the garden, whilst the gossamer hem of her sleeping yukata (laid out for her by her husband) swept along behind her. Deft fingers glanced the dangling branches of the cherry trees and the high blossoms of pink roses; the princess’ onyx locks caught the stray scents of the fragrant flowers as they blew about in the morning breeze.
Kagome was thoroughly entranced by the god’s garden, but soon caught wind of another smell, one she remembered fondly from her youth but had not enjoyed in many a year – the scent of a natural hot spring, bubbling up from the earth. She followed the path to its end, where looming before her was a magnificent sight: an un-walled dojo, open to the fresh air and the sight of the rolling hills of all Japan, encircling a fresh-water hot spring with amenities already laid aside. Kagome took careful steps up to the rocky lip of the spring, and when her body felt the heat rising from the water, it screamed for her to submerge herself and relieve some of the aches it had been enduring for so many hours already.
The fifth hour since rising from bed Kagome spent happily in the hot spring, relishing the heat of the water as it soothed her of her physical pains. The sun was now dazzling the world from directly overhead, but the princess remained unharmed in the shade of the roof above her. While the water alleviated her body’s tender misery, Kagome’s unhappy mind began to wage war upon her, assaulting her with questions and arguments that even the blissfully hot water could appease. Her conscience rebelled at the thought of enjoying any of the gifts the monster had laid out for her, for they were nothing but nasty traps camouflaged in pretty guises. Thoughts ran rampant similar veins: how could you have let yourself be taken so easily? Why did you not fight him until the bitter end? Why are you bathing when you should be escaping? Guilt and shame began to fill her up, and very soon Kagome found herself disgusted by being in her own bathing water, she felt so defiled.
Clean, physically satiated but unhappy, the princess returned to the palace through the garden but took no joy in the sight of it. Her every thought was plagued with self-deprecation and misery. She had been a child of great parentage, brought up to stand for rights and her own happiness; beloved by all the people she knew and by many she had never met, praised for her beauty, her kind hand and her gracious smile. A fine upbringing and a happy home brought her into the life of the adult world full of joy and naïveté, a world that would soon be cut out from under her with her sister’s arranged and miserable marriage. With Kikyo gone, Kagome had quickly come to understand the way of the world as it was when governed by the selfish and the greedy; and she, despite all of her hopes, had fallen into its unjust and wretched scheme just as Kikyo had.
She had abandoned everything she had been raised to respect – temperance, fairness, understanding, judgment, knowledge, rationality – with one touch from the god she was to call “husband.” One brush of his lips and she had fallen under his every whim when she had pledged to fight his advances, even if it meant her death. Where had her mind gone? Why did her senses take flight when she needed them most? She gave herself – quite willingly – to a creature she still had not set eyes on. Kagome had felt him to be a man, but her eyes never found purchase upon a face of any kind. In the darkness, he was invisible, but she had felt his eyes upon every inch of her skin throughout the night. The princess shivered as she roamed the halls, hoping to distance herself from the bedchamber that had been her great undoing.
The day wore on, and never once did Kagome go back to that cursed room. She spent the hours training her willpower back to its former strength, ignoring the silent cries her treacherous body made when her thoughts strayed to the memory of the god’s hands upon her thighs, his lips upon her breast, or his silk-spun hair gripped between her fingers…Kagome felt as if every panel of wood in the palace had soaked up the sounds of her passion in the night and were throwing them back at her in spite. Rationale warred with nature as the day wore on, harrowing the princess to her last wits. Never had she been split so disparately between two courses of action – to resist or fall – in so strong a manner. A creature of yearning desire had been awoken in the night, and it had gone to war with Kagome’s other half – the balanced, patient maiden who was unaware of all the kinds of darkness in the world – and while these two halves battled fiercely for hours on end, they could find no common ground.
Was she forever to be torn in two pieces, just as she was to live in different worlds? Resilience and lust, day and night; stubbornness and passion, the light and the soul-consuming dark…no balance, no grey. Kagome felt as if she were doomed to live in disharmony till the end of her days, and the thought grieved her as much as the thought of being married to a selfish and uncaring god did. Perhaps she would do as she had said the night before – tonight when her husband came to take her, she would not respond to him as she had previously. She would lie in placid acceptance, neither reacting nor taking part in the events; she would be a good wife, for Kikyo had said that a good wife never hinders the actions of her husband in the marriage bed. “It is better to lie still and let him do what he pleases, sister – husbands can be temperamental and quick to fury should their wives think themselves an equal in the ways of the flesh.” It went against many of her opinions of equality, but Kagome knew it would be the best choice for her to make after having made the irreparable mistake of falling prey to passion on the first night of marriage to a god.
The princess was pulled from her musings when her feet touched tatami and she felt the dying evening wind upon her face. While lost in thought Kagome had wandered from the eastern wing of the palace to the west, where the corridor opened into a large open room with no far walls, with only thin beams to support the curved roof. The lack of screens allowed for a full, unhindered view of the sunset as it descended upon the hills and trees below. Kagome was left breathless by the sight of it, and when she slowly brought herself to sit on the floor, she discovered that the adjacent wall was lined with palates and downy cushions to rest upon. As she watched the sun gradually set, Kagome realized how little she had rested or eaten in the previous day, and the exhaustiveness of her stress quickly caught up to her.
There were still a few hours before the true darkness of night would set in, heralding the return of her husband, and Kagome was determined to utilize those hours to her personal advantage. By the time the god arrived, she would be insufficiently rested and famished, giving him good cause to keep his distance from her lest she tear him limb from limb out of aggravation. With a coy smile upon her face, Kagome fell upon her side and drifted to sleep, a pillow clutched tightly in her arms and the setting sun shining happily upon her weary face. It did not know of her internal struggles, but perhaps so much the better.
Kagome awoke with a start some hours later, as if an alerting dream had roused her from a perfectly decent slumber. The haziness of fatigue rested heavy on her eyes, but she tried to ignore it so as to determine where it was she lay. Night had descended upon the palace, and where the sun’s rays had shone only stars now glittered. Kagome quickly realized she was no longer in the west wing of the god’s home, but back in the bed she had been loath to return to all day, and she was not alone. About her waist a heavy arm rested, and through the fog of her tiredness she recognized an all-too-familiar hand tucked beneath her side. Her heart rate caught up quite quickly to her waking mind, and the princess very suddenly tried to escape from the god’s grasp. To her great surprise, he did not try to stop her, resulting in her falling upon the floor in an ungraceful heap. Kagome dreaded what might happen next – would he punish her for trying to flee? It was too dark to see his reaction, but it was not long before she could hear it. First there was the low chuckle that made her sit up in alertness, and then the deep tenor of his voice as it filled in the empty air between them:
“Trying to run away, Kagome?” The laughter in his tone was not blatant, but she could hear it. Kagome huffed and got to her feet in a rush of fabric.
“I have decided upon a great many things in your absence, my Lord,” she replied, “And I rather dislike your handling me in my sleep.” Again his quiet, rumbling laugh shook her, but she made her best attempt to disregard it.
“I apologize for having done so, my Lady,” he said, and in the stillness Kagome could hear him moving about in the bed – sitting up, perhaps? – but he did not come near her. “It seemed prudent as the nights are not yet warm enough to sleep outside, and the palates in the western wing do not nearly provide as much comfort as the bed I have supplied for you.” There was a distinct sound just then, as if a large hand were smoothing down the linens on the mattress. “What are these ‘great many things’ you decided upon, then, Kagome?” He asked. Kagome crossed her arms over her chest.
“Last night was an unforgivable lapse in judgment on my part. I have since pledged never to allow you dominion over my body in such a way.”
“And what way is that, my Lady?”
Kagome knew quite well what he sought to do with his question – he wanted her to feel cornered, flustered into admitting something he wanted to hear that she did not want to say. She had prepared herself for something like it.
“In a way that blinds me to my morals and taints my soul with lust. I will not rescind my upbringing so that you may sate your desires by night and leave me to starve by day.”
The god paused. “Starve, you say?” Without warning, Kagome’s wrist was clasped in his hand and she was pulled firmly through the darkness into what must have been an antechamber, for the air suddenly seemed closer and the darkness even more black than in the bedchamber. Before Kagome could demand her release, the god’s hand left her wrist, and she was left to stand blind in the room. Fear did not take her, but nervousness did, and she nearly shrieked when she felt his hand upon her own. The princess went to pull away, but her husband’s grip was immovable.
“Please, Kagome,” came his voice through the darkness, “I wish you would not fight me.”
“If not you, then for myself!” she cried, and when she did so her husband dropped something into her open mouth. She went to spit it out, but he was quick to close her mouth with a gentle finger beneath her chin. When he did so, Kagome’s tongue was awash in the flavors of sweat cream and red berry, and she chewed and swallowed them with delight.
“An entire feast was laid out for you, but you spent the day wandering needlessly into empty places.” As he spoke, Kagome felt his hand travel from her wrist to the side of her neck, and her disloyal body shivered when he brushed his thumb along the hollow of her throat. She felt another piece of fruit settle between her lips, which she bit into and swallowed quickly.
“I am not the sort of man to treat his wife poorly,” he whispered into her ear. “Just the opposite, in fact. If you would but let me show you-”
“No!” Kagome cried, jumping away from his gentle hold even as she felt another morsel brush against her mouth. She hated that she could not see her adversary, but would not let it deter her. “I may have wandered, needlessly as you said, but it was not without its benefits,” she said to the darkness. “I told you that you would not have me in such a way again, and I will hold to that, or else my past means nothing. If you wish to have me, I will not bar you from your right as my husband, but I will not demean myself by taking part in the affair.” Her stomach was crying out for nourishment and another part of her was pleading for his touch, but Kagome’s resolve was firm. She did not move from where she stood, even though she knew not if her adversary was still before her.
All was silent for a moment, before Kagome felt the god’s presence behind her. Before she could move away, one strong arm wrapped about her waist, and the other around her shoulders. She struggled for a time before realizing that her husband was not trying to ensnare her – he was embracing her. His nose was buried in her hair, and his hold on her was sure and gentle.
“Beautiful Kagome,” he whispered, keeping her body pressed close to his, “You speak of balance and meaning, that to experience something new is to abandon your upbringing. Did you never consider growth as a part of true life? That with the past must come the future, and all that it entails? Your family raised you to be a woman, and indeed someday a wife, but along the way you had begun to find yourself, a Kagome that no one else knew, or would know if they did not know how to free her. You are bright, Kagome, but you are also naïve.”
She had never heard him speak so much, and while she listened closely to his words with her rational mind, her irrational body was reacting purely to the sound of his voice. She began to struggle in his hold, but he would not release her.
“I told you before, I do not wish for your obedience, for that is not who you are. You are loyal and compassionate, fierce if need be; there is no part of you that seeks to bow to the will of others. It is what I admire most about you, my Kagome. It is not your beauty, as it charms so many others; beauty is many things, but it is not always a reflection of the soul within. You are more than your appearance, as are most creatures that walk this earth, and I would have you flourish in that knowledge than let yourself be crushed by the weight of your own inhibitions. I can show you balance, Kagome, if only you would let me.”
With that, he stepped away and left Kagome standing in the dark, silent and lost in thought. His words echoed in her mind, but the affect his embrace and his voice had wrought upon her body rang more loudly than anything else. She feared becoming a woman – a wife – would mean abandoning the lessons of her past, but her husband promised her balance. Blindly, she began to seek out the food that had gone untouched during the day. Her hands found purchase in a bowl of fruit, the same full, red berries he had fed to her a few minutes before. Within that bowl was a choice, a fateful choice between denial and acceptance – while not whole acceptance of her husband, acceptance of her new role in life – and the difference between misery and satisfaction, of a kind.
When she returned to the bedchamber, Kagome could just barely make out the figure of her husband on the mattress sitting cross-legged, head bowed. His silhouette was massive but featureless, but she did not feel fear. She set the bowl of fruit upon the far end of the bed and crawled up next to her Lord, reaching a hand out to turn his face to look at her. He did not resist her, and when she thought him to be facing her, she leaned in. Their lips met in unhurried time, with Kagome leading the dance on her own accord. She cradled the nape of his neck with her hand and leaned in further, testing his patience as well as her own. She would learn to balance her new life with her old one, and knew this would be as good a place as any to start.
She turned her head to gain better access to her husband’s yielding lips. His own hand raised up to cup her cheek, and he answered her slow and investigative kiss with certainty and understanding. He seemed confident, certain, when she remained hesitant and unsure. Very soon he was leading her into a different dance; he turned and rose to his knees before her, pulling her onto hers to face him. Kagome felt her yukata fall away without warning, but the god was quick to pull her close against him as he deepened their kiss, fueling the fire of their combined passion. Kagome wrapped her arms around his neck and felt the excited tension in the muscles there, but it was not long before her attention was directed to the path his hands were tracing down her spine. Shivers coursed through her at the light contact that was so dissimilar to the way he ravished her mouth with his own.
When his fingers began to seek out her warmth, Kagome bucked and gasped, surprise and uncertainty pulling her out of her euphoric state. Their kiss abruptly ended. Kagome went to speak, but another gasp cut her words short when she felt her husband suddenly at her back, pressed naked against her with one arm around her waist. She could feel his desire between her thighs as well as the beginnings of her own, but he made no move to take her. Instead, the hand already on her hip began to descend towards her core, slow and deliberate so as to give her ample time to react. Kagome did not know what his actions would yield, but she could not turn away now without feeling ashamed of herself. She may have disliked her husband’s character, but she did not want him to think her a coward. When he touched her heat with a gentle finger, her gasp was not one of surprise. Her husband took advantage of her parted lips once again, it seemed, and Kagome simultaneously felt a piece of fruit fall into her mouth the same moment her husband brushed his finger against something within her that made her head fall back onto his strong shoulder with a whimper. Her knees were beginning to tremble as she knelt, but the god’s arm around her waist held her pressed firmly against his front.
“Now you will see what it means to balance the new and the old, my Kagome,” he said, feeding her another succulent red berry as two of his fingers dipped brazenly into her heat. Kagome’s hands reached up and held onto his corded forearm as she arched back, her cries muffled by the fruit in her mouth. Traces of the sweet syrup spilled from her lips, and the god at her back was quick to lick them from her chin, biting gently at her flesh as his fingers wrecked impassioned havoc on her nerves from within. Kagome was helpless in his hands as he fed her hungers, but soon her hips began to meet the pace of his fingers and her lips eagerly awaited more of the sweet fruit from the bowl. She sighed and moaned, and for a time he would not feed her – perhaps to listen to her sounds – and without the coolness of the berries all she felt was the rising heat that scorched every fiber of her being, especially as it began to drip down her thighs like the juices of the fruit from the bowl.
As her cries grew louder and her breaths shallower – in time with the quickening motion of her husband’s hand – Kagome felt him tilt her head back and smother her lips with his own, and to her delight and surprise she felt him tear away half of a large berry with his teeth, letting her receive the other half before swallowing the outcry of her climax with his mouth. Kagome’s entire body went stiff and her hands gripped his arm in a vice, and the god at her back felt every tremor that wracked her body as he ground his palm against the bundle of nerves above her heat. The action caused her to fall away from his lips and give an even louder cry as one of her arms reached up to bend around the back of his neck to support her weakening body. Kagome no longer knew her head from her toes, nor her own body from her Lord’s. She was trembling, with juices spilling from her mouth and her core simultaneously.
Behind her, Sesshoumaru grinned wickedly. He had promised to teach her balance, after all. Now it was time to teach her cleanliness.
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Rachel