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Unto Ishtar a Sacrifice

Summary:

It is a day upon which he needs to be, has to be, must be a woman.

From the very moment he awakens, the female humours in him cry out for a body to move in beyond this confinement of a crude, hard, angular body male; the moment he opens his eyes to Dawn, his female soul clamours for, riots for, demands for herself a space in which to live and breathe and be.

Like a thief, he sneaks out of his own bedroom and leaves for the shabestan, the secret room at the back of it none but he know exists. Beyond magic runes and sigils has he hidden its shape, guiding the eyes and the bodies of others past it should they try and intrude, and these sigils he now draws in the air with impatience and great haste, a maiden hurrying to a tryst with a lover who is to her forbidden.

For at the centre of this small room he now lights with his lanterns stands someone who is to him, indeed, forbidden: a mighty stele of Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, Aphrodite, Freyja, Hathor, Gauri, Sri--call her by whatever name you will, but this is forever she.

Aye, the great She, Love Herself nude and bewinged; the great She that has always been and will forever be.

Notes:

Takes place within the Of Roses Unfurling universe. Will make more sense if you have read of Jaffar's sex-changing magic in The Orchid's Unfolding, and can be read anytime after that particular story, but can also be read as a complete standalone. This emerged as a Jaffarine counterpart of The Garden of Gazelles, of sorts: only in this story, it's Jaffar's turn to be fulfilled. And his greatest desire--despite his religious upbringing--is to be possessed by the Great Goddess Ishtar: she who is love and womanhood herself.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

She is clothed with pleasure and love.
She is laden with vitality, charm,
and voluptuousness.
Ishtar is clothed with pleasure and love.

-Akkadian hymn to Ishtar

***

It is a day upon which he needs to be, has to be, must be a woman.

From the very moment he awakens, the female humours in him cry out for a body to move in beyond this confinement of a crude, hard, angular body male; the moment he opens his eyes to Dawn, his female soul clamours for, riots for, demands for herself a space in which to live and breathe and be.

Like a thief, he sneaks out of his own bedroom and leaves for the shabestan, the secret room at the back of it none but he know exists. Beyond magic runes and sigils has he hidden its shape, guiding the eyes and the bodies of others past it should they try and intrude, and these sigils he now draws in the air with impatience and great haste, a maiden hurrying to a tryst with a lover who is to her forbidden.

For at the centre of this small room he now lights with his lanterns stands someone who is to him, indeed, forbidden: a mighty stele of Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, Aphrodite, Freyja, Hathor, Gauri, Sri--call her by whatever name you will, but this is forever she. Aye, the great She, Love Herself nude and bewinged; the great She that has always been and will forever be. Owls and peacocks leap about her blessed feet; her breasts and hips and lips emerge from the stone lush and full; her sex is offered for worship a smooth, soft and plump delicacy.

Swiftly, he strips himself and kisses her feet, and his feet, too, become small and soft and dainty, covered with fresh henna, anklets, rings upon each of his toes; he repeats this kiss upon her palms and the same happens to his hands, his jewellery now making music as he continues to invoke her in this manner, in his matter, inviting her to step into a body living, sweet.

For a goddess of the flesh loves the flesh, settles gladly in a body passionate, keen; her laughter rings like thin glass bells at a man so sacrificing to her his very manhood itself, not unlike the eunuchs of old who had her by the name of Inanna known.

And oh, how this divine he-adoratrice now worships her, whispers against her bosom his sorrows in a voice soft and feminine and feline, lets loose his soul's anguish with floods of tears as voluminous as those of a weeping-woman. He tells her of his soul's pain at being imprisoned underneath a chest flat, below hard shoulders, a body all angles; the rough hair of a man he curses, always invading his body where he would desire smooth and soft planes instead; oh, but he reels in revulsion at the smells pungent and bitter where he would rather scent the sweetness of a woman, taste in stead of foul sebum and must the honey of cunny-dew.

And his goddess hears his prayers, answers them, lovingly showering him with her affections, transforming his body to bear a woman's graces; his sobs, she drinks in and returns to his mouth fragrant with rose and ambergris. Where they touch, they mingle in blood and bone and flesh and skin, she gifting his body with that femininity which he desires: with each fervent kiss of his, whisker and stubble are wiped clean from his face like so many impurities, his cheeks growing plump and downy as if they had never borne a man's hair at all; in this manner, she kisses him back eagerly a nymph of Lesbos.

"Please!" he cries and his Adam's apple is bitten from his throat by her ghostly teeth, the bony angles of his body smoothed into roundness by her succubus lips; as he returns her bites and pinches and squeezes, his own breasts fill out in her owl-clawed hands, still wet from the blood of enemies. Bast's kittens meaow at her feet; Sekhmet roars; the pard throne of Cybele springs into life; Durga's tiger brushes its tail across his now Callipygean buttocks.

"Take me!" he cries.

Soft and rippling with fat, his thighs now quiver as he kneels for the final sacrifice, his lips hovering over her vulva, the crescent of her crown now a sharp sickle in her hand that presses against his sack, measures where to slice off his prick. He stares up at her, her smile bathing him in the euphoria of a promise granted, all of him sparkling, bubbling, gay like wine: and as he presses his lips to her cunny, what for any other man would be a shriek of terror becomes a cry of orgasm's rapture, delight.

Joy triumphant, Woman triumphant, Love triumphant he now stands before his sister, mother, mistress, displaying to her a cunny perfect and most beautiful; the tears that had been salty of sorrow now flow sweet from happiness as he now plays with his new sex, its fragile petals, the pomegranate-seed of its clitoris a key to the gates of the deepest ecstasies.

"Thank you," he kisses onto his goddess's lips, embracing her fervently, rubbing hand on thigh on mound on finger in cunny until she, he come fast, as lightning, as one; staggering, he withdraws from her with his eyes glazed, dilated, dark seas, skies.

Her eyes, the colour of dark honey, crooked in perpetual sweet drunkenness, laugh back at him. "My husband who is my wife," she speaks to him and draws her beloved into her arms; with a cry of delight he embraces her a wellspring, a fountain of sweetness, of light.

Honey, jasmine-honey flows out of her mouth onto his lips, her sex honey as he drinks from it, he himself become honey as he floods out onto her tongue in turn, honey, honey; jasmine petals scatter in constellations all around the dais as they make love there the pair of divine twins, Gemini female, female.

A woman, he--she--dies into her arms, so many times neither of them knows the passage of time, of day, of night; honey, honey, all of him flows-glows like sunlight, like the molten core of the earth is soul poured into soul in this crucible, in this womb-chamber, honey, honey; sweet, sweet.

Into the Earth, swallowed into its great cunny, swallowed, his-her consciousness fades, honey, honey;
About him the chime of Ishtar's anklets, about his head owls' wingbeats, the laughter of houris of Paradise, honey, honey;
Into sweetness all these fade, dark

Sleep, and sweet sleep,
Cocooned in honey, honey;
Honey sweet, and Love's lips upon his bejewelled ear:
"Sleep
Sweet, Beloved sweet
Sweet, Beloved sweet
Sweet, Beloved
Sweet, sweet, sweet
Sweet."

***
END

***

Notes:

Freely rebloggable Tumblr promo post for the fic here.

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