The following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certain characters from the Xenaverse. It is not meant to infringe on anyone else's rights.
It occurs to me that Callisto isn't exactly what one would expect. She's not overly tall and if you look at her the muscles her body wears are all long and lean. She looks like a woman of the desert, more than anything. Whipcord. There's just not much bulk to her.
Yet she caught me to her and lifted me up, and I wouldn't have doubted that she could have done the same, even when she wasn't a goddess.
She has that powerful a personality.
Some folks can lift just with sheer willpower and my sometimes sweet wife had more than her fair share. No wonder she was called "Scourge of the Lion", way back when. Probably scared the Romans to death, just because she didn't *look* like she could do half the things that she did.
Then again, we *were* way back when; just in another place, divergent.
I was barely conscious as she carried me...and it was later, much later, when I had a chance to think, that I realized that I had been wrong on that first impression.
It wasn't that Gaia hadn't known me.
That had just been one of those first impressions gathered from sheer overload. No, it was that I couldn't handle the fullness of HER contact right now. I was too weak and too long gone from the Mother's presence. I hadn't had a chance to bury myself in her, to slow my breath or empty my mind enough, to *FEEL* her old grand soul.
That or the blood had quit their flow to my legs and I'd over-reacted. I hate when that happens.
Callisto maneuvered us into 'her' tent, which was by far the largest present. By large I mean *HUGE*, as in standing two stories tall and stretching fifty feet at the base. It was way bigger than any tent *I'd* ever seen, that was sure. However reluctant a goddess she might have been, this world's Xena obviously appreciated a deity's need for worship space.
The interior was opulent with "found," riches and king's ransoms. There were tapestries depicting battles and war, all rendered glorious without missing a bit of the blood and gore that served as walls between the 'rooms'. We passed the treasure 'room', the bath 'room', the weapons 'room', a 'room' where Callisto paused, doing a double-take right there while making sure *I* couldn't get a good look in, and then moved away from with a rather hurried step.
You get the idea, yes?
All the while I lay cradled in my wife's arms, somewhere between what can only be described as the worst acid trip on record and hyper-lucid clarity. I couldn't think straight, or diagonally, or any which way, yet my thoughts were as clear and concise as ever. Though the insight "Gee, that's the color BLUE!" hardly seems very earth shaking.
It didn't help Ephiny was dogging our heels. My skin felt so flushed it could only have been either from the heat of her glaring at me with suspicion, or that my skin and all that was inside me were starting to spontaneously peel off the bone. I was more inclined to think it was the latter at the time. I was little more than a skeleton by the time we reached the bed 'room', though oddly I didn't fall completely apart when Callisto gently placed me on the bed.
Just as well, the vision of her humming "the toe bone's connected to the foot bone, the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone" is just too horrifying to seriously entertain.
The mattress turned out to be Very relaxing. It was stuffed with soft down and absurdly long and wide. It was more like the family nest, than a bed for just..one.. What something this comfortable was doing in the portable temple of the Goddess of War was utterly beyond me, though I, at the moment, wasn't about to start questioning any of it.
Voices flittered and floated about me as I settled into the plush bedding, my muscles (when had they come back? I wondered) unclenched so completely I felt I was little more than a strangely marked rag doll with its stuffing all out of place. The voices were alternatively seductive and angry. They sounded like there were only two of them, but the ring of their voices were different each time, so there might as well have been a dozen.
"And what is this, Goddess? A follower of Hecate?"
"One of her chosen, actually. I came across her on the field."
"How ever did you to corral her?"
"I have many skills."
"I heard Solari nearly perforated you. Shall I have her disciplined? Or would you prefer to?" I could just imagine the saucy-evil-hungry grin curving that mouth of Ephiny's.
"Really, War-Leader. I have *better* things to do with my time, don't I?"
"As you wish, Goddess." Fingertips brushed my forehead. "My, but she is a prize."
The fingertips were snatched away from me almost instantly. "She is. *My* prize. Remember that, War-Leader."
"Of course, Goddess. Of course." There were footsteps, and the sounds of curtains being rustled "I heard tell of another warrior with you. What of him."
"Oh, have him stripped and brought here. And keep at least ten guards on him." There were metalic thumps accompanying each sentence. "He was this one's so-called champion. I want him *here* to see just what he's been 'championing'."
Ephiny's laugh was pure malice. "Oh, Xena. The Gods will long regret banishing you from Olympus!"
I could feel the change in my wife's face, imagine it in my head. Callisto's smile was equal to Ephiny's, and its presence alone left me shaking. "You think?" A final something clattered to the floor. "Now get out."
Ephiny's voice was more concerned than seductive. "Are you sure? Shouldn't I...?"
"Out." My wife's voice was at once tender, quiet, and shaved ice. The War-Leader took her leave as Callisto's lean form slid across the mattress and hovered close to mine. I risked opening my eyes to her's, seeing expressive brown gazing down on me with infinite care and barely-restrained hunger. She cupped my cheek with one hand, her touch warm to my overheated skin.
"Brigid," she said, with infinite care. A tear graced my cheek "It's time."
Katrina's Fan Fiction | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: November 22, 1998
ŠNovember1998
URL: ../../STO/sog/sog2summer31.html