10 Yellowwood
The sun was already high when I woke. I felt Brightsong moving, burrowing curled into the curve of Yarrow’s back. A sigh and words spoken softly beyond the curtain told me Willowwind and Arrowshot were stirring as well. Someone else was already up, his footfalls soft on the floor in the passageway. The slow, lazy morning after Full Moon is always sweet and delicious--even more so for the brothers whose beloveds come up country than for the rest of us. These hours before noon of the next day are the bridge back into the daily rhythm of our life, a time when the veil remains thin.
Yarrow reached behind him to bring Brightsong’s arm around his chest, then turned his head to meet the lad’s lips. I moved away as softly as I could to the far edge of the bed. I could have risen and slipped out, but I couldn’t bring myself to forgo the sight of them together--the man I’ve loved since my first days in Refuge, and the man he’s loved and waited for in patient hope, since long before the lad came of age.
I know I’ll never have his heart quite the way Brightsong does. I knew it even then. There’s a sadness in that, but a beauty as well. The freedom I give him is the freedom he gives me; the freedom we all aspire to give one another, though sometimes we fail. I know that Yarrow would lay down his life for me. As I for him. But his love for Brightsong is a mirror of the love of Cernunnos for Gil. Not just at Full Moon but from day to day, they’re knit together into the Soul of the Staghorn Lord as I’ve rarely seen two men joined.
Yarrow turned to face Brightsong and our eyes met, much as mine had met Brightsong’s at that moment of terrible and beautiful understanding the afternoon before. The moment he knew, as a visitor is required to learn, that he and Yarrow would never be husbands to one another, like men down country to their wives. The moment I knew that the years of our sleeping together alone nearly every night were drawing to a close. The moment that Yarrow had to face the pain of witnessing his lad’s loss of innocence, a new man’s entry into the ways of the twice-begotten and twice-born.
I rose from the bed as casually as I could manage, stretched, turned, and parted the curtain into the aisle. And then found myself weeping, much as Brightsong had wept the afternoon before, though, I’m thankful to say, more quietly. Some cushions lay piled together just outside the curtain, and I sank down onto them, my forehead pressed to my knees. I found respite in the posture, as though I could comfort myself as I longed for Yarrow to comfort me.
Willowwind found me there when he parted the curtain of the cubicle next to ours. I felt his hand on my shoulder, then clasping my own hand to raise me up into his arms. We said nothing, nor needed to. His embrace was enough, the solace I needed and all the solace I could receive. Finally, “Come to bed,” he whispered, and led me beyond the curtain where Arrowshot lay, who raised the sheet and then drew it over the three of us.
“I’m sorry for the pain of yesterday,” I whispered to them both.
Arrowshot was quiet for a moment, then turned to me. “It had to happen. And was healed soon enough--“ he paused, smiling, and wiping away the tear running down my cheek, “from what we saw of the three of you together last night.” He paused at the sound of Yarrow moaning in pleasure beyond the curtain. “And from what we can hear right now,” he chuckled, and reached out to tousle Willowwind’s hair. “You wish you were with them, don’t you--just a little?” he asked him.
Willowwind laughed. “You know me very well for a man I only get to see one or two days a month.” He reached across my chest to take his beloved’s other hand. “How couldn’t I fall a little in love with a man who looks so much like you?”
Their clasped hands settled on my chest. Arrowshot nuzzled into my cheek. The brother-down-country of my beloved, the father-down-country of the man he in turn loved. The Soul of Cernunnos was still moving in me, as it still blessedly moves in many of us the morning after Full Moon. I wanted to make love to him and in him to Yarrow and to Brightsong as well. To Arrowshot and Willowwind together and in them both to the whole great chain of my brothers, stretching back to the First Days, and forward to generations of men not yet twice-begotten and twice-born.
The sounds of Yarrow and Brightsong making love just feet away could only be a source of heartache for me, or else of joy, and I chose joy.
I turned and opened my mouth to Arrowshot. Felt Willowwind kissing my chest, then his tongue flickering around my nipple. His fingers beneath my sac, lightly stroking me there at first, then pressing more firmly. His hand rising then to curl around my stand. My breath quickening. Arrowshot rolling onto his side. Straddling me. Pressing his stand against mine, offering us both to Willowwind’s grasp. The two of them kissing deeply.
The melting into One. The Staghorn Lord alive in us. The heart opening to gratitude at the wonder of it, and pouring out Love in morning light as bright as the dawn of the First Days. All of us gathered under the sheltering branches. None of us left alone. Our souls healed. The world repaired. The whole of this grace grounded in our bodies and flowing from them as a spring from its source. Time falling away.
And then awareness of the curtain parted between our bed and the next, clutched in Brightsong’s hand as he stood watching us. Yarrow embracing him from behind, his chin on Brightsong’s shoulder as he whispered encouragement in his new beloved’s ear .
Willowwind turned to meet their gaze and opened his arms. Brightsong hesitated for only a moment, looking to Arrowshot before falling into Willowwind’s embrace. Yarrow followed him into the cubicle, gently kissing the back of his neck, then raising his eyes to me in invitation. I rose to meet him at the foot of the bed. His skin smelled of wet earth and seedflow and tasted of salt. I sank to my knees in front of him and gazed up into his face as I pressed my tongue into the sweet crease between his balls and his thigh that I know so well and love so dearly. His palm laid to the side of my head was bliss. He gasped, bent down to stroke my shoulders, and then turned to sit on the edge of the bed as I took his stand in my mouth, lapping at the dewdrop that had trickled from its tip.
Further up on the bed, Arrowshot was embracing Willowwind from behind, kissing his neck, the front of his body rolling into his beloved’s back, buttocks, and thighs. Brightsong’s arm had lain on Willowwind’s flank. Now he stretched it forward to stroke his father-down-country’s shoulder.
Yarrow followed my distraction at the sight and turned, pulling me up onto the corner of the bed with him. As I went down on him again, he reached out to trace the line of his brother-down-country’s spine with his fingers before turning back to me, raising my head from his stand and pressing my lips to his.
I lost myself in the kiss, as I’d lost myself in our lovemaking the afternoon before. And then, feeling hands at my hips, looked down to see Brightsong gazing up at me, couched at the foot of the bed, Arrowshot beside him kneeling before Yarrow, whose amazement mirrored my own. I couldn’t distinguish the pleasure of Brightsong’s stroke from the pleasure of witnessing Arrowshot’s on Yarrow. It seemed, instead, that the Pleasure was living Itself through us--through Arrowshot to Yarrow, through Yarrow to me in the kiss that we resumed; through me to Brightsong; through the arm slung across his shoulder back again to Arrowshot, for the cycle to begin again.
Sons of the Staghorn Lord, twice-begotten, twice-born. Twice-begetting one another: in the connection flowing among us, one to the next, creating anew the bond that knits men together in love, overcoming enmity and division.
The curtain into the corridor still hung open from when Willowwind had drawn me in after I’d sat weeping outside. Now, just beyond the opening stood Amberleaf, frozen. Watching all of us together, but fixed mostly on the sight of Brightsong kissing and caressing my stand. Willowwind saw him too, from where he crouched by Arrowshot, stroking his beloved’s hair and Yarrow’s chest at the same time. He rose and went through the curtain, where the two talked for a few moments before Willowwind laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder and encouraged him into the cubicle. Everything about his mien made clear both his fascination and his fear.
Yarrow’s breath came now in short gasps that I knew meant he’d reached a point beyond any turning back. All four of us sensed it: Yarrow burying his face in my neck; Arrowshot slowing his stroke and reaching up to rake his brother-down-country’s belly with the fingers of one hand; Brightsong reaching up to clutch Yarrow’s hand in his own just as his Yarrow’s seed arced up to fall pooling on his chest; Willowwind coming forward again from where Amberleaf stood to lay his hands on Brightsong’s and Arrowshot’ shoulders. All of us moaning encouragement and praise. Then Brightsong springing up to kiss the man he adored. Willowwind lapping up the seed from Yarrow’s chest. His eyes locking with Brightsong’s just before they came together in a kiss overflowing with the offering of Yarrow’s body to our Father and Lord.
And then Brightsong turning to me, to share with me in turn the gift of our beloved to us both.
Twice-begotten, twice-born. Twice-begetting one another.
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