MAINOMENOS

There are dreams you can hardly shake off

Days and nights you can hardly let go without squeezing gold out of them.

I'm a water woman, made of rain and mist. This very rain I tried to hold before the moment I surrendered.

Ananké drove me to an icy land, leading the way to a wet forest. Ineluctable necessity whose footsteps I willingly followed.

Cold took hold of me the moment I stepped into his world, touching his hand, smooth as glass and cool as snow. This hand I took under my coral feathers to warm it up, the very coral taken from my sea swimming its way to his neck and settling on his reef.

Looking for his abandonned hand in the night again, the fingertips made to hit the right the key and the silky rosy arms where entertwined blue veins reminded me of some mysterious long-forgotten undergrounds. Cold again, as I contemplated his long slender body stretched under the cover, barely moving not the break the spell. Above him, I was breathing the intoxicating smell of the forest , above these child-like features, the rounded forehead, the swollen lips, taking as much as I could

before dawn hurt us both. Then, a giggle in the dark shook us off from sleep.

There were magnetic fields we had both trodden upon with earthly feet. My head on the pillow, the wet red -soiled forest was all around me again with its dewy smell. We weren't alone, the truth was down there, in the eyes of long-gone Gods, their names chanted as we walked up the sacred path, Mercury, the Deer God and the furious Mainomenos. We flew over the stone temple, a red-eyed roaring insect peeping at us in the haze. My rain suddenly started to fall and I woke up a woman.

Night again, clung at these arms' length again, his violent desire so mute and restrained, my body split, wrung by the opposite powers fighting inside . Cold was biting my skin and then I felt the dark swell of pleasure coming up, washing the reef, I let a barely human cry and then fell myself expelled from his body and mine . And there he was, Mainomenos, the Roaring God glaring his scarlet eye at me, burning me with his beastly breath. The room was filled with his feverish smell as I was swiping his scorching body, set ablaze with an everlasting desire. There he was, the immortal Saviour, the heroic and powerful Beast and there was nothing beyond the Beast, as Mainomenos was now feasting on our shivering remains. The Great Mother kissed our foreheads with her smouldering lips as we sunk into the depths of the forest again.