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Cultural Relations

©2025 Bruno Hirschkoff

For Irving

The following is a work of erotic fiction intended solely for adult audiences. It is not intended for commercial publication nor for widespread distribution without the permission of the Author. The Author asserts the exclusive right of ownership of Asantrea, and all characters, settings, concepts, locations and events described herein.

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Approx 7,700 words / 40 minutes reading time

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Chapter 7

Nur-Ayya was pregnant, as it happened.

Since their first lovemaking, they took any and every opportunity they could to be alone together, and by an unspoken agreement between the women of the Y’Dasz, Nur-Ayya was the only one in whom Araxes left his seed, at least until she was demonstrably carrying his calf.

He was hers, first and foremost.

It took Araxes some time to work that out, and initially it led to some awkward moments, particularly with Veyo. Veyo had always been vocal and very forward in her desire for him to fuck her, and of course Araxes, now he had been accepted by the Y’Dasz, was only too happy to oblige her. Their sexuality was wild and primal; urgent moments of horny rutting snatched throughout their days and nights, almost always instigated by Veyo. Araxes craved those moments just as much as he craved Nur-Ayya’s touch, but the mood was often very different. Veyo’s needs were raw and carnal, while Nur-Ayya’s were slower, more emotionally than physically intense.

So it tended to be, that when he was rutting Veyo, he had little control of his orgasms. They just happened as his body dictated, but whenever that happened, she would hurriedly push him out of her and make him spill his seed up her body or capture it in her mouth. He adored it, adored the way she stared with such primal lust straight at his manhood while he ejaculated, milking him onto the soft swell of her pubic mound or against her breasts. But at first, he struggled to understand why she always pulled him out of her at the very moment of his climax, even if it ruined her own peak.

When he eventually worked out why this was, it made sense to him, and he got better at playing his part, focusing on bringing Veyo to climax long before his own. In time, the relationship he had with Veyo and Nur-Ayya turned into Veyo teasing and working him up, and him draining himself exclusively inside Nur-Ayya.

For her part, Nur-Ayya insisted that he fill her at least once each day, but in practice it often turned into several times, particularly with Yt’tai and Veyo constantly teasing him.

When Nur-Ayya’s monthly bleeding was late, she was at first tentatively excited. It wasn’t until the second month of it not occurring at all, that she finally knew for certain that she was carrying Araxes’ calf.

It was the middle of the afternoon, not long before he would typically begin to assist in food preparation for the evening meal. Araxes had been out foraging in the forest with a small band of men for most of the day. It had left him hot and sweaty, and he decided to bathe before his evening tasks. He found Nur-Ayya near the bathing pools, naked and surrounded by a close gathering of Y’Dasz—Tsu-Isi, Veyo and Yt’tai among them. She stood half a head taller than any of them, and smelt strongly of a fragrant, floral oil. Her fur was being combed and groomed by her sisters. Nur-Ayya’s hands were clasped over her belly, which when she moved them, Araxes saw bore a spiralling pattern of Nightglow Orchid paste, painted to represent her womb with a bright, glowing starburst of represented light within it. His heart skipped.

“There he is! Araxes!” called Veyo.

A dozen sets of eyes turned to him, and a cheer erupted from the crowd. Araxes, shocked to immobility, found himself hoisted to shoulder height and carried to Nur-Ayya. He stumbled when they set him down, and gazed up at Nur-Ayya.

“You did it, Araxes,” Yt’tai said into his ear. “You finally sowed your seed in Nur-Ayya’s fields. A new life grows within her, sired by you.”

Araxes was not prepared for the surge of emotion it brought forth in him. He stepped forward and reverently laid his hands on Nur-Ayya’s belly. Tears of happiness blurred his vision. She swept him into a powerful embrace, and then hoisted him bodily into the bathing pool with an almighty splash, to a chorus of cheers.

She waded in after him as he surfaced, and he grinned up at her.

“I am surprised it took this long,” he said drily. “Although I am not complaining.”

“You speak as though our lovemaking will cease now, your job done,” Nur-Ayya returned, with her head tilted to one side.

“Will it not? I would not wish to… uh… hurt the calf.”

Nur-Ayya snorted. “So little you know, still, despite spending the last two cycles of the moons with your cock inside me. Do not worry. The calf is safely held further inside me than even you can reach. Now, we make love for pleasure only.”

“And,” Veyo said from behind him, sliding her hand around to cup his manhood, “now we all get to feel your seed inside us…”

Araxes fluttered and slumped.

“Hah! That is the fastest I have seen him harden since before we returned to Zalemanya,” Nur-Ayya laughed.

For the very first time, that evening, Veyo did not push him off.

He had seen the hunger in her eyes from the moment she had seen him at the bathing pool. In the hours that followed, Nur-Ayya was swept away by the other women of the village, to be doted upon and fed and revered, and for the new life she carried to be celebrated.

But Araxes was far from forgotten. As soon as he had finished his food preparation duties, he saw Veyo hovering in the undergrowth nearby. Her chest rose and fell with aroused breathing, and he saw that her nipples were hard. He moved towards her as though in a trance, and even before she had touched him, he was rising to erection in front of her.

“You have no idea how much I ache to feel your seed inside me,” Veyo said, visibly squirming at the sight of his cock rising to stare directly at her groin.

“How much?” he asked her, his voice a little husky.

She stepped into him and pushed her breasts up beneath his chin, and he felt her thighs around his cock, enveloping him in humid warmth.

“Every time we fuck, it is all I can think of. Letting you finish. Feeling you thrust and lose control and spill what I have watched so many times as deep inside me as you can get it. After you leave me to visit my sister, it leaves me with such an empty ache inside that my fingers cannot fill, no matter how many times I come. Come with me. I need it. Right now. I can feel your cock pulsing.”

Without another word, Veyo picked him up and tossed him over her shoulder like a sack of yams. He flailed, and then relaxed. Somehow, it made his heart beat all the harder, the way she handled him so. She playfully smacked his skinny rump, and he felt precum drool from his foreskin onto her chest. He couldn’t see where she was taking him, but it hardly mattered. He could smell her arousal, and even as she walked, he boldly reached for her buttocks, fondling her and eliciting another playful grope of his own.

Then suddenly she set him back on his hooves, and immediately flung her arms around his slender body. Her tongue slid along the side of his neck, and she fell backwards onto a hummock of moss edged with tiny ferns and pinpricks of bioluminescent vegetation, pulling him down on top of her. It was the perfect height for Araxes to stand over her, and he laughed.

“You found this spot for this reason, didn’t you?” he teased.

“Of course I did,” she replied matter-of-factly.

Even as she spoke, she was touching him, stroking his cock in her hand, rubbing it against her body in a particularly hedonistic way that was unique to her. He adored it. She gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes, and allowed her long purple tongue to hang from her mouth. Her shoulder moved with a subtle rhythm, elicited by her hand’s movement on his cock, and Araxes groaned with arousal.

Then she simply pressed his cock downward. It lined up perfectly with her entrance, and he felt her slickness against the end of his foreskin. He didn’t hold back. He rolled his hips, and saw Veyo’s eyes widen and felt her legs raise and clamp around his hips as he entered her, sliding easily into her molten heat with one slow, deep thrust. The penetration pushed back his foreskin, and he trembled at the sensitivity, which was by now so familiar but never got any less enticing or exciting to feel. He began to move, drawing back and pushing inward, a slow, deep rhythm that rocked Veyo’s body up and down against her mossy hummock.

She grappled with his slender body, hauling him down over her, and gripped his rump with one hand roughly. Her fingers dug into his buttock and she hauled him roughly into her, over and over, rolling and bucking her hips up against him. There was no holding back. She was not the slightest bit concerned about monitoring his state of arousal, ready to push him out at the critical moment. All that mattered now was pleasure. There was nothing else.

His brain fogged with lust at that notion. The primal carnality of Veyo’s desire could finally blossom, uninhibited and raw. He felt her clench around him every time he withdrew, and felt her slickness dripping from his balls as they swung beneath him, bouncing off of Veyo’s buttocks with every rough, deep inward thrust. She moaned loudly and trembled, and Araxes picked up his pace, delivering a flurry of short, deep, rapid thrusts. Veyo hissed and shoved a hand between their bodies to urgently rub herself, and Araxes felt her tighten and flutter around his cock the moment she did so.

“Come for me Veyo,” he mumbled heatedly.

“Fuck me harder,” she countered. “Fuck… ram it in… go on… push your cock as deep as you can… oh!”

He obliged her, and hornily dragged his tongue up the side of her neck while he did. She trembled and bit her lip and tensed up, and he thrust again, and again, while she masturbated around him, until finally she climaxed with a breathy exhalation and a convulsion of pleasure. And he did not stop. He didn’t need to. Feeling her come lit the spark in his groin, and Araxes allowed himself to be driven by his instincts. His instinct to breed. To impregnate her. To ejaculate his fertile seed as deep inside her as he could physically go.

His hooves scrabbled on the mossy forest floor, seeking greater purchase, more leverage. Deeper. His balls mashed against her body, and he tremulously moved inside her, stimulating himself in the deepest recesses of her fluttering vagina. She was still rubbing herself, and he adored how open she was about such a thing. It was all about pleasure for Veyo.

“Keep rubbing yourself,” he mumbled into her ear. “It’s so exciting to feel you masturbate while I fuck you… I’m going to cum inside you…”

She whimpered and clamped her thighs harder around his waist, and he felt her orgasm once again. Then again, seconds later. Her eyes were unfocussed and her mouth hung open, and she was breathing hard. The spark in his groin flared into an inferno, and he edged inside her.

“My seed is leaking into you,” he reported. “I nearly came right then, and it is coming forth, I can feel it…”

“Oh fuck!” Veyo screamed. “Fuck me! Fuck every drop of it into my cunt! Harder! Now! I need it!”

Araxes’ brain turned into complete mush. A swamp of primal need and carnal desperation. His glans burned with the teetering edge he held himself on, and he drew his cock back only to hammer it forth into her convulsing, spasming core once, twice, three times more… and on the fourth, he ejaculated.

He gave a strangled, guttural cry and hunched over her, snarled out “Cumming!” into her ear, and felt her orgasm yet again around him even as his seed pulsed forth in rapid spurts inside her. His climax lasted for a dozen breaths, although during the whole time neither of them drew a breath nor exhaled. Then he collapsed over her, and opened his eyes to gaze into hers.

“I could feel it coming out of you!” Veyo said in wonderment. “I could feel it pulsing and… ohhh, I feel full, I can feel your seed inside me, and it is the very first time I have felt it… Oh Araxes! Now I know what my sister has felt every day since the day you arrived!”

Araxes trembled. His arms and legs felt like jelly. He was softening gradually, and eventually he slipped out of Veyo. She shuffled forward and leaned down to bring his softening penis to her lips, where she kissed it.

“Thank you,” she said, although whether she was referring to all of him or just his cock, Araxes was not sure.

*

Over the days that followed, Nur-Ayya’s role in Zalemanya changed utterly. For the term of her pregnancy, as was the case with all Y’Dasz women, she would no longer perform a warrior’s duties, nor any taxing physical labour. Pregnancy among the Y’Dasz was all but worshipped, treated as utterly sacred. Pregnant Y’Dasz women were revered, their every desire attended and catered to by their peers. Nur-Ayya’s rank in the Y’Dasz social hierarchy meant that for her in particular, life would become very comfortable indeed for the term of her gestation. She was bathed daily by the village’s younger women, and brought the very best of the food.

But Araxes was far from forgotten. As the father of her calf, he gained significant respect among the Y’Dasz, and Nur-Ayya made sure he did not feel abandoned, having completed his ‘task.’

By the time she was five months pregnant, Nur-Ayya’s belly was becoming distended, with the swelling of the new life within it. Araxes spent a lot of time with her, and through her learned more and more of the Y’Dasz, their culture, their history, their people—and of the other peoples who lived in the vast expanse of Ammunash’s Garden, all but unknown to the world beyond.

“We do not only travel north, when we send out our women to our neighbours,” Nur-Ayya said to him with a playful smile on her lips. “Did you believe the only purpose for Y’Dasz warrior women was to raid the Lamaye of their men?”

She was reclining on a pile of soft, moss-packed baskets in her nest, which had been expanded to better accommodate the calf when it was born. New vines, vibrantly green and purple, formed a mat which would in time thicken and grow into a solid shelter. Araxes lay beside Nur-Ayya, with his arm over her hips and his head resting gently on her pregnant belly. Araxes shrugged softly and turned his head to gaze up at her, resting his chin on her belly. Nur-Ayya chuckled, and fondled his ears affectionately.

“We have long held diplomatic relations with the other tribes of the Garden, also. The Dhriti and Vataki in particular, with whom our trade moves along the great river, the L’Om-ah Assan. Our waterways are tributaries of the Assan, as are those of the Dhriti. So we meet with them on the waters, and together move downriver to trade with the Vataki.”

“Are they like us?” Araxes asked. “Giraffes?”

Nur-Ayya laughed. “No. Not at all. The Dhriti are a variegated people. Dhriti wolves; servals, caracal and lynx; antelope and deer. The Vataki are different again; Zebra, okapi, antelope, and tigers. Our customs are familiar, but unique to each culture.”

“There are zebra and antelope in the northern grassland too, although a long way towards the setting suns. Many days.”

“Yes. The Dhriti, Vataki and Shefa zebra and antelope, and the Il-Qahra, are the same people, but living apart for many generations. Like us. Y’Dasz and Lamaye and Sagunu are one people, but driven apart many years hence by history and circumstance. We are all one, Araxes, and we are meant to be one.”

As she spoke, she caressed the swelling of her belly, and Araxes kissed her fingers when they came within range. She cupped his muzzle in her hand, and gazed into her eyes.

“Come here,” she said quietly.

Araxes moved upward, carefully moving his body over hers until he was on his hands and knees, level with Nur-Ayya’s face. Her eyes glinted in the soft bioluminescence of the nest, and almost without conscious will, Araxes brought his muzzle down until their lips met. Nur-Ayya cupped the nape of his neck, splaying her fingers through his wiry mane, and brushed her tongue along his bottom lip. He shivered, and then gasped when he felt her other hand close around his cock.

“Did hearing me speak of our neighbours cause this?” she teased him, tenderly stroking his erect member and brushing its tip against the underside of her belly.

Araxes flexed in her grip and saw her eyelids flutter with a bloom of arousal.

“Hearing you speak. Being close to you. Touching you. Smelling you. All of you.”

Nur-Ayya’s grip tightened momentarily. She gently pressed his foreskin back, and brushed the head of his arousal against her groin.

“I want you inside me. Touching your cock has made me wet, and I have not felt a climax since yesterday.”

Araxes exhaled hotly over Nur-Ayya’s throat. She reached down with her other hand to grip one of Araxes’ buttocks, and pulled him upward until his tip lodged at her gates. Then she simply relaxed, and let him take over. He knew his role by now. Knew her body, how to please her. Gently but firmly, he lifted her powerful legs up until her knees were over his shoulders, and pushed his hips forward. Familiar heat and warmth enveloped him, and Nur-Ayya gave a heated moan at his penetration.

He felt her squeeze around him, those inner muscles tightening around his hardness, and pushed deep into her until he felt the firm button of her ceiling against his tip. She trembled and shook with pleasure, and her heavy breasts rolled rhythmically as his thrusts rocked her body. She squeezed them together with her hands, and gazed seductively up at him. It was an unspoken invitation he did not need to have repeated. Araxes dropped from his hands to his elbows over her, and pressed his muzzle adoringly between her breasts. They were so soft, so warm, and carried the faint tang of sweat. But now her scent was subtly different. Rather than the warm, grassy musk of heat, her pelt carried the faintly milky scent of impending motherhood. He breathed her in deeply, pushing his face between her breasts, and then trailed his lips upward and to the side, toward one of her enlarged, swollen nipples. Nur-Ayya clenched tightly around him as his lips caressed it, and he felt her body tense and gyrate with pleasure beneath him. His thrusts were steady and measured, the muscles of his core driving his manhood into her with a steadiness he did not possess when he was first found by the Y’Dasz all those months ago.

As if she could read his thoughts, one of Nur-Ayya’s hands trailed down his abdomen, and she chuckled warmly between her elevated breaths.

“I can feel your muscles working…” she murmured, a smirk on her muzzle. “We did that, did we not?”

“Y-yes… yes you did… The first few times, making love to you left me with an ache, but my strength has built…”

“Most men’s muscles are in their arms, their chests, their legs and mostly between their ears,” Nur-Ayya observed. “Yours are in your core, and serve to make you our prized breeding bull…”

Araxes melted at her words. His thrusts faltered and he felt the familiar burn of impending climax in his lower abdomen. A slow, languid heat welled up along his cock and spilled into Nur-Ayya, but he did not climax. Not yet. He remembered how Veyo had reacted when he mentioned exactly this moment to her.

“My seed is leaking into you…” he murmured.

Nur-Ayya’s eyes widened and her legs shifted from his shoulders to his torso, wrapping powerfully around him and hauling him deep into her.

“Amel’s tits, that is so arousing… fuck me, Araxes… get me pregnant!”

“I already did that!”

“Get me more pregnant!”

Araxes groaned loudly. Her powerful arms enfolded him, pulling his weight down over her. He momentarily panicked that he was crushing their child, but he was so close to climax. He thrust into her with increased urgency, faster and harder, and Nur-Ayya’s eyes rolled back in her head. It was a matter of principle that she climax before him, and Araxes grit his teeth to hold his peak back for just a moment longer. But it was no use. He was powerless to stop the floodgates from opening.

“I’m s-sorry, I can’t…” he grunted.

Then he ejaculated.

His breath left him in a guttural whoosh. His body trembled and shook and bucked rhythmically, sending powerful jets of seed into Nur-Ayya. She did not stop him or chastise him; rather, she seemed to relish the feeling, and gyrated her hips against him throughout his peak, until he stopped convulsing and thrusting.

She chuckled softly and kissed his face. “Do not worry, Araxes. That felt very, very good. And I am still very close to my climax…”

Her eyes flicked downward, and he knew what she was asking.

He slipped out of her, and laid a rapid trail of kisses down her body, from her collarbone, over her breast, the swell of her belly, and into her humid, fragrant groin. His seed leaked thickly from her swollen vulva, and Araxes wasted no time. Once again, Nur-Ayya’s legs made their way over his shoulders, and he slipped his hands beneath her buttocks, lifting her hips to his face like a sacred chalice. His long tongue caressed her, dragging slickly upward and around her erect clitoris. She shuddered and gripped his ossicone, pulling his face firmly into her groin.

“Turn around over me, I wish to taste myself on your cock,” she ordered.

He complied, although it was an awkward position. But his long neck came in handy for such moments. He was very sensitive so soon after climaxing. Nur-Ayya seemed to know that, and was gentle in her attentions to his half-softened member. Her breath against his groin, the scent and taste of her, caused him to harden once again, and she held his head against her while he licked her. He knew how to please her with his mouth, as well as his cock. He’d done so enough times already to know what would bring her to climax. He pushed his mouth against her clitoris and pursed his lips around it, sucking gently and flicking his tongue rapidly side to side across it. She gasped and gripped the back of his head tightly in one hand, shoving him against her. Her hips thrust upward against him, and Araxes pressed two fingers into her vagina, displacing a heavy drool of his own semen from within her. Nur-Ayya grunted and he felt her heatedly nuzzling along the side of his cock, gently stroking him against her cheek with her other hand. This was all about her. He maintained a steady and stable pace, curling his fingers upward inside her and licking her until she was trembling and tense and thrusting against him. Her climax, when it hit, elicited a loud moan from her, and she mouthed at his cock throughout, until she, too, was satisfied.

They lay in silence in that position for some time, both dazed and warm and relaxed in the afterglow of their shared pleasure, until Nur-Ayya announced with characteristic bluntness that she needed to piss and he needed to help her up.

The thought crossed Araxes’ mind that he wouldn’t be averse to her pissing on him, but he kept that to himself. Instead, he rolled off of her and helped her to her hooves.

“I did not think you would be aroused by that,” Nur-Ayya said suddenly.

“By what?”

“Me pissing on you.”

Araxes opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“Oh come, you did not need to say it aloud, I can read your body language, and I can read the Aethyr. Next time I am in heat, I shall remember that.”

*

Araxes had been living with the Y’Dasz for almost a full cycle of the seasons—although in the tropical climes of Ammunash’s Garden, the only sign of the seasons was the oscillation between wet and dry. In the wet season, the rivers ran faster and deeper, and intense tropical deluges caused torrents of rainwater to run down the trunks of the vast trees. The canopy far overhead was too dense for rain to reach the ground as rain, except during the most intense monsoonal systems, during which the clouds hung lower than the canopy. Araxes was entranced by that – to see rainclouds inside the forest. To the Y’Dasz, it was just a part of life. So long as their sleeping nests remained dry inside, very little about day to day life was affected by the rains.

Nur-Ayya’s pregnancy progressed without complication, until she appeared ready to explode. Her belly became so distended that her skin showed through her fur, and her navel popped out. She found it harder and harder to clamber about among the elevated walkways and nests of Zalemanya, and for the final month, relied heavily on Araxes to help her with everyday tasks. They also did not make love for the last month of her pregnancy, for which she was—to Araxes’ surprise—deeply apologetic. He did his best to reassure her, but the hormonal changes that came with late-stage pregnancy were something that could not be assuaged with a simple reassurance.

Araxes sought the counsel of Ayya-Yurah during those days, and the Aethyrsage in turn reassured him that he was doing all that he could.

In truth, it was her immobility that bothered Nur-Ayya the most. A warrior first and foremost, being all but nest-bound troubled her, and she was looking forward to the pregnancy being over. Ayya-Yurah’s calf, Nur-Ayya’s youngest sister, was already walking by that time, although she was still being nursed by Ayya-Yurah. She was a painfully adorable calf, and Araxes found himself feeling unexpectedly paternal towards her. He found that anticipating his own child’s birth gave him a feeling of pride and accomplishment he’d never had before.

Nur-Ayya went into labour during one of the heaviest monsoonal deluges of the year. The clouds hung low and heavy beneath the cathedral-like canopy of the Garden, and the rain was so dense and persistent that the forest floor became inundated, and all of the Y’Dasz were forced into their elevated nests while the flood passed. Ayya-Yurah insisted that Nur-Ayya make use of the Aethyrsage’s hut, where there was more space, and medicines on hand. Araxes, of course, went with her.

It worried Araxes greatly to see Nur-Ayya in such a vulnerable state, even through Ayya-Yurah’s repeated reassurances.

“How long will the birth take?” he asked the Aethyrsage.

Ayya-Yurah shrugged. “It is hard to say. It is her first calf, and the first can often be the hardest. But she is strong, and we will be here for her for as long as it takes. Tsu-Isi and Veyo will also be here. I have asked Ivaeah and Shayya to take care of my daughter Melaku, so nothing will draw me away. This… Nur-Ayya’s birth… Amel has seen us once more, and she has sent the rains to bless us. I know this. Have faith, Araxes.”

Araxes nodded, and glanced over Ayya-Yurah’s shoulder to where Veyo and Tsu-Isi were approaching the Aethyrsage’s hut through the rain. Several enormous leaves had been harvested and arranged across the hut’s threshold which served as a sort of porch to prevent the rain from entering, and beneath them, the two women paused to let the worst of the rainwater drain from their pelts.

“Veyo is always wet,” Tsu-Isi observed drily to Araxes, recalling Araxes’ words to her sister.

Veyo snorted and shook herself bodily, showering all of them with water from her pelt.

Tsu-Isi ducked inside the Aethyrsage’s hut, leaving Araxes and Veyo alone under the giant leaves. Veyo met his gaze, and stepped in to nudge her ossicones against his own.

“I am proud of you, Araxes,” she murmured. “You are truly one of us, and about to become a father of an Y’Dasz calf.”

Araxes cupped the back of Veyo’s neck and nuzzled her face. Then she grinned filthily.

“When you get me pregnant, I am going to lie to you about it so that you keep breeding me.”

Araxes, by now well used to Veyo’s filthy mind, simply smirked at her and pulled her close to him, their naked bodies touching. “Who told you I would stop trying to get you pregnant once I knew you were?”

Veyo growled and groped for his cock for a moment.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now I am wet.”

Tsu-Isi’s hiss drew them back to the present moment, and Araxes grinned apologetically at her. Tsu-Isi’s gaze dropped briefly to his groin, and she rolled her eyes.

“You two are the horniest giraffes I have ever known,” she said, then grinned. “I like it. Now get in here and witness the birth of your first calf.”

“Want to wait for that to go down?” Veyo teased.

“It’s not going to, and you know it.”

Veyo cackled in glee, grabbed his cock, and led him by it into the Aethyrsage’s hut.

Nur-Ayya was kneeling on soft basket-woven mats stuffed with flaxcloth and moss in the centre of the hut. She gave Araxes a thin smile when he entered.

“It is coming soon, Araxes. Your calf,” she said.

He knelt before her and touched ossicones with her for a long moment, then kissed her lips and her cheeks and her eyelids, showing her his love and respect. Then, abruptly, she cried out in pain and collapsed against him. He recoiled in shock, but Ayya-Yurah, Tsu-Isi and Veyo were there in a heartbeat to catch and support her, and hold her body up. They prompted her to rise into a squat, and bade Araxes to move behind her and hold her head to his chest, to support and hold her. He did so without question.

“Veyo,” Ayya-Yurah said, “you shall monitor the birth. Be ready to catch the calf and support it, guide it into the world, and once it is born, cut the cord. You know how.”

“Yes, mother,” Veyo replied with none of her usual belligerence.

“Tsu-Isi, you and I shall link arms around Araxes and Nur-Ayya and pray to Amel. Come.”

The result of this was that Nur-Ayya was surrounded, covered, enveloped in giraffes; her family, her sisters and her mother, in a protective cocoon while she gave birth. There was symbolism here that Araxes knew nothing about, but he knew just enough to recognise the importance of what he was witnessing. The prayers to Amel were to get the goddess’ attention, to seek her blessing and her protection. Their prayers were eerie and otherworldly, spoken not with their mouths but seemingly with their throats, a guttural and piercing sound that sent chills through Araxes.

Nur-Ayya’s contractions became quicker, and Araxes did his best to reassure her, holding her and kissing her eyes and speaking to her of how well she was doing, how close she was. Veyo announced when Nur-Ayya was dilated, and when she could see the calf’s head. Araxes did not know what she spoke of, but the women certainly did, and Veyo cheered quietly with every little victory.

The birth itself was far quicker than any had expected, particularly since it was Nur-Ayya’s first. Suddenly, with a curse, Veyo dived in to catch the calf as it emerged, and Araxes watched open-mouthed as the gravid swelling of Nur-Ayya’s belly suddenly went down, as a new life was created. Ayya-Yurah and Tsu-Isi’s prayers reached an ululating crescendo, and then concluded. Nur-Ayya was exhausted, her fur matted with sweat, and Veyo quickly and efficiently cleaned the afterbirth, tied and cut the calf’s umbilical cord, and caught Nur-Ayya’s placenta in a clay bowl provided for that very reason. Tsu-Isi took that, sprinkled a powder over it, and placed it outside the door of the hut.

“I… mother?” came Veyo’s voice.

She was still holding the calf, which had since taken its first breath and had begun to lustily squall.

“Yes, Veyo?”

“Mother, come… look…”

“What is it? Is my calf alright?” Nur-Ayya asked weakly.

Araxes perked his ears forward.

Ayya-Yurah rose to her knees and shuffled to where Veyo held the flailing, squalling calf in her arms.

Ayya-Yurah’s next breath was a deep gasp, followed by a whoop of such joy that Araxes had never heard. She ululated her delight to the heavens, and lovingly took the tiny calf from Veyo’s arms to present it to its mother.

“What is it? What is wrong?” Nur-Ayya asked, increasingly worried.

“Nothing is wrong, my daughter! The opposite! Look! Look!”

Nur-Ayya looked. And she, too gasped with joy.

There, in her arms, wrinkled and matted and blotchy from the birth, with eyes clenched tightly shut while a tiny mouth quested for milk, lay a bull calf. A baby boy.

“Amel has heard us, Amel has seen us, and Amel has blessed us this day!” Ayya-Yurah said excitedly. “My daughter, you have given the Y’Dasz their first son in a generation! And you, Araxes! You have brought blessings upon us since the day you arrived! I… I must see him, I must see my grandson in the Aethyr! Tsu-Isi!”

Ayya-Yurah’s furtiveness was unlike anything Araxes had seen from the usually calm and collected Aethyrsage, but while she bustled and fussed, he at least had the opportunity to be somewhat alone with Nur-Ayya, holding her against him with her head on his shoulder, and gazing at his newborn son, while the tiny calf suckled eagerly at his mother’s breast.

“He is the first son of the Y’Dasz to be born in a generation,” Nur-Ayya repeated. “The first boy. And he is yours, Araxes, you brought him to us! You cannot possibly comprehend the significance of that.”

“I think I am starting to get an idea,” Araxes said with a soft chuckle. “But that is not important to me right now. What is important is you, and this calf, are safe and comfortable and fed and protected and warm.”

Nur-Ayya twisted her head around to kiss him, and he held her close.

Ayya-Yurah knelt before her daughter and grandson, and quickly quaffed a small cup of the same potion she had imbibed at Araxes’ induction ceremony. Its effects were quick, and the Aethyesage entered the trancelike state with practiced ease. She reached for the calf through her trance, and softly touched him. The instant she did so, Ayya-Yurah recoiled as if struck by lightning. Her trance evaporated in seconds, and she knelt, stunned, staring at the tiny calf. Now that he had fed, the calf was curiously silent, his eyes wide open, tiny brow furrowed in concentration.

Ayya-Yurah looked up from him to Nur-Ayya and Araxes with an expression on her face of… was it reverence? Araxes was bemused.

“I know what you must name him,” the Aethyrsage said. “I know him.”

“What have you seen, mother? Come, I have just given birth to him, I an exhausted and cannot comprehend riddles at this moment,” Nur-Ayya prompted.

Ayya-Yurah reached and caressed the tiny calf’s head.

“You… you both, have brought about not only a blessing upon us with a son, but with our prayers to Amel, you have brought back to us something we feared would be forever lost. He has found his way home. He is Aethyrborn.

“He is Lu-Temba, daughter.”

*

The shock of such a revelation took some time to find its place within the minds of the Y’Dasz; none moreso than Araxes. Not only had he sired the first son to be born to an Y’Dasz woman in over a generation, but that son was Aethyrborn.

And not just any Aethyrborn—he was their Aethyrborn. The very soul Nur-Ayya had lamented the loss of as a great shame on all Y’Dasz.

It took Araxes some time to understand how this had come to pass. Aethyrborn, in his knowledge, were immortal spirits. They came and went as they wished, and tended to erupt from volcanoes or burst forth from floodwaters; creatures born of elemental forces wrought into mortal bodies. Ayya-Yurah explained to him that this was not the case. Aethyrborn, when they arrived in mortal bodies, were born just like anyone else. But unlike a mortal child, an Aethyrborn comes into this world with all of the memories of their previous incarnations intact, all the way back to their creation by the Gods during the Fifth Age of Ammunash, when the Gods breathed the knowledge of Creation into Ammunash’s animals and caused them to stand upright and know themselves.

The Aethyrborn were the sparks from the forge, at that moment in the creation mythology of Asantrea.

They were indeed immortal, in their way; Aethyrborn straddled the physical and the ethereal, and could exist as disembodied consciousness theoretically forever, inhabiting the elemental forces and realms they were born to. But many Aethyrborn chose to live mortal lives—it was more exciting, if nothing else. But where a mortal soul, upon death, is cleansed and its Aethyr returned through the Amphora of Aktis to be forged into a new soul by Bezar at his forge, Aethyrborn souls return intact to the Aethyr and retain all of their memories.

“So… does Lu-Temba… remember everything that has ever happened to him?” Araxes asked her incredulously.

Ayya-Yurah chuckled. “Not necessarily. He will feel like an alien on his own world for a time. He will know things he has no right to know, and will not know why he knows them. The Aethyrborn soul in him must bond and grow anew with his new body and mind. He cannot speak, he cannot read, he cannot practice Aethyrshaping – those are skills of the body and mind, not of the soul. Until he has mastered those skills, he will be effectively trapped within the prison of his new body. It will be frustrating, so it is important that he knows from an early age that we know who he is and can see him. In time, he will begin to learn from his soul, an inner pool of knowledge, and will experience his memories of former lives as dreams and visions. We must guide him, then, and in time he shall become one of us once again, and will know, from that moment, that he should return to us when his mortal life is ended.”

Araxes cuffed an unexpected tear from his cheek, and turned to where Nur-Ayya was cradling Lu-Temba in her arms, feeding the tiny calf. His eyes were open and he was gazing up at his mother, gulping hungrily and holding her fingers in his tiny hands, splayed as they were across his chest.

Ayya-Yurah’s hand rested on his shoulder, and Araxes leaned into the Aethyrsage, who embraced him.

“You have done something for us that no man has ever done before. I did not tell you as much at the time, because you were unaware of it and I did not wish to upset you further, but… Araxes, are you aware that you are, yourself, Aethyr-touched?”

“What? Me? No, I could not be, it isn’t…”

“Is it not? Your mother is Atatafi, the shamaness of Impili. You know full well that she is Aethyr-touched. Do you know who your father was?”

Araxes shook his head. Don’t tell me it was Isaeas.

“Do not worry, it was not the Bezari chieftain. I can read you the way my daughter does, Araxes—yes, even your dirty thoughts,” Ayya-Yurah chuckled. “Your father did not know he was Aethyrborn. Some do not—they simply go through life feeling out of place somehow, like they don’t fit. He was an Il-Qahra man, a traveller and a nomad. I have seen him in your mother’s memories, when she and I have found one another on the Aethyr.”

“You have seen and spoken with my mother?”

“Yes, once or twice. She is safe and well, Araxes. I spoke with her once again in the days after the birth of Lu-Temba, because his return to us and Amel’s blessings have given me an idea.”

Araxes turned his gaze from Nur-Ayya and his son to the Aethyrsage. Raindrops glinted in her eyelashes and dripped from the end of her muzzle.

“We know from your memories, and from my scrying, that Isaeos is no longer Chieftain of the Lamaye. He has been succeeded by Shuva. Atatafi has shown me this, through messages shared in our dreams. Such is the way of Aethyrshapers. When Lu-Temba is a little older, he will be your responsibility to raise and care for, alongside Nur-Ayya. But for now, he is entirely dependent on his mother and her milk. Nur-Ayya cannot leave Zalemanya, and Y’Dasz custom prohibits it, anyway. But while Lu-Temba is a babe in arms, an opportunity exists for us to send you back to the Lamaye—no, no, not like that! Don’t look at me that way, Araxes! You are Y’Dasz, and that is not changing. No, I mean to send you to the Lamaye as a messenger and an envoy. You will travel with a party of spear sisters as before, and make contact with the Lamaye under the leadership of Shuva.”

“For what purpose?”

“To fulfil your destiny.”

Araxes frowned.

“To bring about the return of an ancient custom, just as you have brought us the blessings of a Goddess who had long forsaken us, and brought back to us the Aethyrborn soul of Lu-Temba.”

“What custom is this?”

“For countless generations, the peoples of the Lamaye, the Y’Dasz, the Il-Qahra, the Sagunu, and sometimes the Vataki, the Dhriti, the Jera, the Shefa and the Khala too, would come together once a year, a great festival on the savannah at the edge of Ammunash’s Garden. Every year at the peak of the dry season, in the weeks before the rains commence, our peoples would come together to trade, to make new pacts, to settle differences, and to love, Araxes. We would love openly and without shame, under the open sky, in full view of Lakesh and of Amel, and the goddesses would come together as we did, and bring about the rains in the throes of their own ecstasy.”

Araxes stared at her open-mouthed. “Is that… is that real?”

“As real as I am standing before you now. Our peoples have grown apart, Araxes. Driven asunder by the Bezaris who afflicted the Lamaye, the most populous and powerful of the Ammunashi cultural groups. The Bezari chieftains brought not love and trade, but war and grievance. They came for conquest, not for pleasure. To take slaves, not to create new life. Lu-Temba remembered that, the last time we knew him. My mother’s mother told me of the stories she heard from his lips when she was a calf. The circle is complete with you, Araxes, and I believe, as does your mother, that you have the power in you, Aethyr-touched as you are, to complete other circles, as well. Much bigger circles.”

“But I am an outcast, a runt, I was rejected by my own people…”

“And accepted and loved by ours. Have no doubt in your heart, Araxes, for within you beats the heart of a warrior. Not a warrior of blood and fire, but a warrior of love and peace. Love must often be fought for, in its own way. To quench the flames of conquest and rape and pillage, Amel and Lakesh must be appeased. Will you do this?”

Araxes focused on Ayya-Yurah’s face. She was more serious than he had seen her, and when he nodded, she slumped in relief and drew him to her breast to embrace him. She kissed his eyelids and held their ossicones together for a long and surprisingly intimate moment. Her hands caressed his body, and he could feel her heartbeat through their closeness.

“You will travel with a party, as you have before. I will sent Tsu-Isi as leader, since Nur-Ayya cannot travel. With her, you will take Yt’tai, Zanta, and…” Ayya-Yurah paused, and gave him a cheeky smirk. “…and Veyo.”

Araxes fluttered at the thought. Would she be as incorrigible now as she had been on their first journey? More so, in all likelihood. And he could not find a single reason to complain about that.

“She will probably also be pregnant by the time we return,” Araxes said quietly.

Ayya-Yurah laughed and casually cupped his balls. “Good! I only hope that you no longer being shaka’hakt does not dampen her enthusiasm.”

Araxes sucked in a breath and shook his head. “Not in the slightest, not yet anyway.”

Ayya-Yurah laughed again. “Then it shall be a very enjoyable journey for you both, I should imagine.”

“Who is Zanta?”

“Zanta is a spear sister, one of the grand-daughters of Lu-Temba’s last incarnation. She is older and calmer than Tsu-Isi, Yt’tai or Veyo are, and will help to… moderate the group, and give you credibility with the Lamaye, in case they see three young spear sisters and you, and dismiss you.”

Araxes nodded. “And perhaps will ensure that we make good time to our destination, and do not spend the whole journey ah…” he trailed off, and mimed penetration with his fingers.

“Yes. Though do not think that is in any way discouraged.”

“I definitely do not think of it as such at all!”

*