The sun rose from the ceiling of the world. Portraits of the future were hidden in each of its rays. They danced off the trees, soaking her skin through to the bone, beating off her face and propelling her subconscious into the thicket of fate. Flowers became screens, an incantation was sung, and the heavens parted in a glorious rapture. The virgin girl, precious and alone, was washing her feet in the river when a splashing came from the other side. A sense of panic came rushing through her, as the figure who'd made it was something she'd never seen in her life: a human boy.
The girl Naya retreated back into the jungle, startled by his intrusion. The moist air from a night of heavy rainfall made it difficult to breathe as she ran. The screeching of an excited chimpanzee came from somewhere behind. When she looked back she saw that the boy was chasing her, and quickly gaining ground. Despite being one of the fastest runners in her village, she was finding it difficult to gain any distance on him. It was miraculous; he seemed to be as fast as some of the panthers she'd seen on the prowl.
Eventually he caught up with her and wrestled her to the ground, asking who she was and what she was doing in the river. When she realized they spoke the same language, she pleaded for him not to hurt her.
The boy Managua apologized for scaring her, saying he just wanted to know what she was, as he'd never seen anything like her before. After helping her up, he introduced himself as well. The chimp she'd heard was Mango, his furry little companion, who was out of breath after finally catching up with them. The boy teased him, saying, you'd think a monkey would be able to keep up with a human, eh? Mango bashfully looked into space as if he didn't understand human-speak, though Managua knew he did.
His hair, matted with water, had considerable length down the sides of his face. His bangs curved forward over his forehead in thin, concave curls. The chiseled features of his face concealed a storied and wounded soul. His eyes were big, and the cheeks below them were covered with shallow facial hair that moved its way towards his mouth, where bulbous, pouting lips matched the ruddy hue of his complexion. His naked body was a platter of muscles she didn't even know existed, and they cut through him like bark on an oak tree. She noticed the flatness of his chest, and wondered why breasts like hers weren't there. She saw the cuts and ridges of his stomach, and the restless motion of his muscular arms. Looking lower, she saw the shorts he was wearing and couldn't help but wonder what might be underneath the dampness of it. She had a pretty good idea that his genitals were shaped to fit inside her own, despite that fact that her Mothers never told her such things existed. He walked with a grace and simplicity that reminded her of an arrogant ape, driven by the confidence and intelligence that puts him at the top of the food chain. She felt uneasy by his presence, but what girl who first lays eyes on a boy ever doesn’t? The virgin quickly found herself fascinated by this extraordinary creature, and wanted to know everything about him. His aura was strong, and she found that she'd never felt this way for any of the girls in her village.
That was where girls like her were taught that men were destroyers of creation. They explored and expanded, consuming all the natural resources around their settlements before moving on, like a virus. She'd been taught that the Earth was a woman, and that the Earth had only invented men as a means to procreate. But men had ignored the Earth and invented their own pantheon of Gods who ruled the sky somewhere between the clouds and the sun. It was a curse to even look at a man; by looking at one you were breaking a pact that kept your soul from becoming damned. But the virgin wanted to know what the myths really meant. She didn’t want to let anymore spiritual threats hide the truth; she wanted to know it for herself. She suspected Managua wanted the same, and that's why fate had brought them together at the river on that fine day.
Together they walked under the sunlit canopy of the jungle, with Naya leading the way. They talked about their villages, their Gods and Goddesses, and about how they seemed to be opposite sides of the same dynamic. Tucans and parrots challenged each other with their songs in the grand heights of the kapok trees. Pythons slithered around their branches, camouflaging themselves with lianas plants that climbed towards the sky, reaching for the sun in all their mighty lengths; hummingbirds and bees buzzed as they pollinated hibiscus plants; ferns waved in the wind that the humans created after walking past them; chimps swung from vines under the canopy, much to Mango's amusement. The whole jungle sang a harmony of life as the two strangers got to know one another. Naya picked out a purple periwinkle for Managua, smiling as she gave it to him. He returned the smile and put the flower in her golden hair, his touch sending tingles down her spine.
"Where are you taking me?", he asked.
"It's a place I like to go when I feel lonely, or when I feel like the Sisters in my village don't want me around", she said, looking downwards.
She led him to the base of an enormous bonsai tree that sported an entire city of animals in its branches. It rose hundreds of feet into the sky. She reached inside her toga to retrieve a key, which she used to unlock a door in the bark that lead them into a cave beneath its roots. Mango was claustrophobic, so he waited outside. As they descended down a spiral stairway, there emanated a pink glow from the cavernous depths. The glow grew greater as they descended; the bottom looked to Managua like the interior of a rhododendron.
"What is this place?", he asked timidly.
"This is the seed of life from which the whole jungle originates. I took the key from my Mothers this morning." The pink light lit up her cheeks, painting an aura so inherently feminine that Managua felt that he would melt in her presence. "What's that on your arm?", she asked.
He didn't know. He looked at it and thought he might have scraped himself against a thorn while he was chasing her. "It's nothing."
"I should have a look at it. It could be a snake bite." His stomach churned at the notion. He didn't like snakes; the idea that a snake's unwarranted tongue had been on his body nauseated him.
"My Mothers think this place is sacred. They teach us that the Great Bonsai is an extension of Gaia, that it's roots extend to the very core of the planet."
"What's Gaia?"
"Do they not teach about Gaia in Marduk? Gaia is the Earth Goddess. The planet is alive, Managua." Her eyes lit up like lightbulbs. She came to him, whispering softly into his ears: "The Earth is a woman." She was so close, and looking at him so desperately that he felt a great passion tugging at his soul. "She gives us all that we need, and has the power to destroy us when necessary. We are no match for her wrath." Managua thought about storms, earthquakes, volcanos. The girl read his mind: “Whenever a volcano erupts, it’s like a metaphor for menses."
"What’s menses?"
"It discharges from our bodies when too much... Nevermind."
"Lava?"
"Oh, hush". She laughed again, her face dancing in his eyes.
He had no idea what she was talking about, but he did think the Gaia idea made sense. The tree above them supported an enormous city of fruits, birds, and animals in its branches. The roots of Great Bonsai must have stretched for miles across the entirety of Gambria. He'd been taught that the known world ended at the Limestone Mountains, where the extremeties of this tree's roots must have ended. The tree was the jungle’s supreme life source, connecting everything together via the pathways of its subterranean network. It nourished and gave nutrients to the jungle, the same way a mother does to a child. His thoughts were interrupted by Naya staring into his eyes. He looked away, trying to think of something to say.
"My Fathers, they teach us the Earth was created by an all powerful being. They would find your teachings nonsense." He walked to the middle of the cave, where there was a pink pool. It was the source of light that illuminated the cave. It looked like water, but it was more than water. He looked into it uneasily, beginning to feel a bit unsteady. Naya stood over the pool on the opposite side of him.
"Is that so? What do you think, Managua?"
She knelt down to touch the water. He stared into it as she moved her fingers over it, grazing the surface and hypnotizing his senses. She prodded the water as softly as anything he’d ever seen. He found himself willing to give anything to have those hands on his body.
"I think our universe favors strength. It's like the food chain- only the strong survive." She smiled to herself. Managua cast a shadowed expression that returned to the water, resuming his postulate: “The universe leaves the wounded out to die."
"And what about healing? Does the universe not have remedies for the sick and the dying?"
"A survivor minimizes the odds."
"What are the odds of being bitten by a poisonous snake?"
Before he could answer her, she cupped her hand into the water, brought it out, and touched his wound with it. He felt the water relax his muscles where the pain had been. It slowly rippled through his body, like the affect of a massage. She rubbed the place where the snake had bitten him, as if she were a miracle worker. The boy felt a tenderness to her touch he’d never known before.
She burned for him in more places than one. At first his charming charisma had fed flames that lit up her heart, but now the burning was in a place she hadn’t felt it come from before. She instinctively knew that whatever was underneath the cloth around his groin was meant to fit inside her, and to please her.
Managua felt the invisible strings of energy between their lips attracting to one another, like magnets. She grabbed his shoulders as he ran his hand through her hair, and the charge of electricity between them converged, its force of attraction colliding in an explosion of passion. They couldn’t explain why they knew how to do it, they just instinctively knew how it was done. Their lips curled around each other’s and their bodies entwined. The ancient schism had been reconciled; their bodies formed a sacred bond that the land had seen far too seldom.
His breath on her neck sent shivers up and down her spine, setting off fireworks inside her head. She became like a flower blossoming in the sun for the very first time. He was aware of her trembling, and held her to soothe her increased excitement. She swallowed his lips as if he were a piece of cherry pie: steaming, lustrous, and sweet like the candy that grew off trees in her village. The heat between them ballooned into a force-field of impenetrable yearning.
As he removed her toga, she reached underneath his cloth and grabbed the thing she had imagined was there. She ached for it to be inside her, begging for him to force it between her thighs. He lay her down in the bath of pink water, feeling as if everything he had learned and accomplished up to that point had meant nothing next to this new emotion, this feeling called love. The healing waters caressed them the same way that the soft whisper of an ebb tide does to the seashore. She closed her eyes, feeling her spirit ascending to the Gates, banging on it, harassing the Godesses above to release her from the fires below and let her fly into the celestial sky beyond. Opening her eyes, she saw that it wasn’t the Godesses above her, but him, freeing her from the confines of Earth with his loving hands and swarming kisses.
Before he entered her he had time to take in the distant hollows of her eyes and the pink wavelets of hair floating around her face. Those wavelets had cascaded down her neck and become saturated by the mysterious liquid. The ecstasy in her smile expressed the liberation of an angel after many years in solitude. His groin burned for a certain moment that was at once confounding and wonderful. When it came, their coupled moans offered a chorus to the melody of pleasure orchestrating their senses. The feel of her body around his was so intoxicating that he simultaneously kissed her while moving his pelvis deeper inside her.
The chorus they became was enhanced by each thrust they gave one another. If they’d been aware of what sensations this pleasure would bring them, it would not have been as special. Together they experienced sensations that neither of them knew existed, and fluids moved inside their bodies that they didn't know were there. They felt the jungle around them panting in unison behind the drums of sex. It chanted a mantra of change, its lyrics bringing the birth of a new age, certain in its prophecy, intruding upon their love-making as if the very walls of the cavern had disappeared. The leaves, ferns, fruits, fairies, and even the hungry predators of the jungle all chimed in with the muse of their moaning. The heat from their bodies extended to all corners of the jungle as the pink water around them swelled into a vibration of transcendental union. The girl was enchanted beyond measure, while the boy was focused on finishing the task that his body had seemingly demanded him to do.
When the moment came he grabbed onto her shoulders, moving harder, deeper, thrusting her into the granite floor with less sensual grace. She flowered like a garden in the spring, her entire body becoming one with the Earth and that which grew on it. Sequential orgasms devoured her as muses from the jungle rang sirens to the scribes of heaven, who'd heard them and were now orchestrating a crescendo of blissful music. The amplification escalated into a sharp, vibrating note at the highest amplitude; the highest pitch of perception, the wavelength of God, and everything around them became One.
When they were finished, they collapsed into the water under the divine spell their love had cast. They were cherished by it, illuminated by it, and poisoned by it forever.
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