Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 2b - Consort Moon Flower

But I digress, for we were féted that evening before our departure to Katithandra with a farewell banquet as sumptuous as any I had attended previously. All involved were in attendance. Ministers, consuls, ambassadors, merchants and priests from all the various denominations of all the religions who held any hope of impression on the Qhan and his court. There were many tears from our consorts and servants, with whom we had grown especially close over the last couple of years. The rice wine flowed freely but it is not to my liking and against my vows so I feigned intolerance. The Polos though were most inebriated by evening’s end and at the conclusion of the speeches, I last saw the Polos carried carefully from the hall by their servants for they could not walk unaided.

Outside the great hall My Bishop and Knight Commander waited for me with some of their retinue to formally bid me well and to give me gifts from the Mater that they had been entrusted with. For she had foreseen that I may have been chosen for some special purpose and had prepared them to equip for such an event. So there were letters of marque, gifts of ornate rings, a dagger and a light chainmail circlet to wear under my habit. Most special were small leather bound copies of the Gospel of Jaqub and the Letters of Joachim, to inspire me on whatever sojourn parted me from my company.

My consort, Moon Flower–who, in accordance with my vows and my station within my Order, I had consecrated when she had been given to me months before – was especially attentive to me and had held onto my arm throughout the evening. She had been pleading for me to take her with me but word was that the Qhan had already slated her for someone else, for such is the way of an Imperial Concubine.

Although my experience of the feminine was that of a priest of the Jaqubean Order of the Just, I was fully cognisant of the ways of the world. For the Order maintains that one must be in the world if one is to guide the ways of the world. I had been anointed, as is the way of our Order, by one of the Sisters upon my turning sixteen; and I can still clearly remember her touch.

It would though, be another ten years before I reached the age of marriage as ordained by our Order. Till then I would follow the ordinances as practised by our Master in his first marriage to the Marion priestess Magdalen. I had so far passed through the first two Stages of Revelation ordained necessary for a marriage within the Order. The first being the Anointing and the second the Consecration.  The latter permitted me to legitimise others in their relationships, and if need be to consecrate a concubine, all according to our Ordinances.

When all the politics was done with that evening and the Polos had been carried out of the grand hall, Moon Flower hurried me through the corridors away to our rooms. There she bathed me and rubbed scented oils into my skin saying I would not receive such touch for many months while on such a journey and of many more things she had heard about the court.

Moon Flower then led me to our bed and, bidding me to recline, kissed me passionately all over before presenting her glistening jade palace for me to enter at my pleasure. Her joy was so great at our joining, that a paroxysm shook her whole body. I was much taken aback by such display and feared hysteria at my leaving had overcome her. Such a paroxysm I had never before witnessed in her nor with any of the Sisters that the Order had placed me with previous to this quest.

Moon Flower was most reassuring on realising my shock and taking her pillow book from her ornately carved fragrant wooden chest, where she kept her most treasured belongings, she showed me page upon page of celestial joy. This was the term such sexual paroxysm is called and is apparently much celebrated and sought after by couples. Whereupon closing the pillow book she assured me that I had not done her any harm and that I was never to forget this moment for she said her joy had been the greatest so far of her life. This I found difficult to believe for I am an achieved master, so I thought her words more for my comfort than anything else.

We lay caressing while Moon Flower told me of the equality of men and wimyn as laid down in the proscriptions of their Laws of Yin and Yang. Of how a substantive Yin gives rise to a flourishing Yang, and of how the radiant Yang inspires the nourishing Yin. In this fashion so wimyn are to men as the yin is to the yang and most simply put in Moon Flowers words, a womyns joy is the substance of a mans existence. 

Moon Flower then described in detail a womyns needs and how I could recognise her approaching celestial joy. Rolling me onto my back she sat astride me and so joined, Moon Flower described for me the phases of her joyousness and displayed also some of the skills and delights she had been instructed in by her White Tigress teachers–the matriarchs of the consorts who ensured that all wymin were healthy and able for their duties.

Moon Flower was gone when I awoke and, like many on this journey, I never saw her again and so I never had the opportunity to thank her for the revelations that she had given me. For even though among my Order wimyn are held as equals in the way that our Lord did make it so, the Paulians, Petrines and Johnanites maintain that wimyn are the source of original sin which must be endured by all humanity. Of course such heresy is not tolerated throughout the Empire, as the pleasure of the body when consecrated is sanctioned as a celebration of the unity of body and spirit. The Frederichan Reform Church holds not that pleasure is evil.

I have read much of the heresies such that sexual congress must only be for the begetting of children. That only certain positions are allowed or else conception will result in the malformed or feeble of mind. That finding joy in intercourse is sinful as it will lure the righteous from the true path of finding joy in the Holy Spirit and the hereafter.

The teachers of our Jaqubean Order of the Just, stressed at every opportunity that all is God’s creation and that to praise God is to be in a constant state of rejoicing in all of creation. In such ways the Reformation of Emperor Frederich and the Third Age of Saint Joachim had been promulgated by our Order and spread through the agency of such as the Beguines and the Troubadours until the heretics cowered in that stink hole of Paris that is their Holy See. There they call all that is joyful satan, yet they use the ways of shaitan to connive and abuse and usurp while they trample and slaughter all who do not believe and pay homage to them.

Now, after my revelations with Moon Flower I can see the truth of the Third Age and the Reformation. We must live our lives as given to us, remaining mindful of our hamartia, our original sin or our character flaws, as the greek word truly translates. Saint Joachim, blessings be upon him, showed we need no church to be in spirit and our Emperor Frederich cut the bonds of theocracy and set the Petrines adrift until they sank in the putridness of their Holy See.

This journey to Cathay was teaching me much of how all of this plays out for those in lands where my Order has only the barest of influence yet where other Masters have taught similarly.

I was deeply peaceful after these revelations for a knowing had settled upon me that gave me a confidence such as had imbued me during my original indwelling after the ceremonies of my coming of age. With this new found confidence in myself and my quest, so began my preparations, and I joined the Polo’s in the seemingly endless rounds of goodbyes and farewells.