First Night Alone

Chapter One

We sat on one of the lower roof edges watching the monks at their evening exercises. Father's feet tapping the clay shingles on the level below. The night smelled of snow and sandalwood incense. No more than a dozen were in the court yard smooth heads steaming as they danced their deadly forms. Others walked their shoes sometimes crushing the gray gravel underfoot or mutely slapping against the stone floors finishing evening errands.

I was resting my head in the crook of Father's arm and I felt him take a deep breath in and slowly sigh. "I have to return to our family." He whispered but my heart had already started to pound in my little chest. "We haven't been gone for so long, but it's never wise to go missing for to long."

For some reason, unexplained to me, Father had whisked me away from our home and every one we loved. Forty some odd years ago and I had never had the courage to ask why or when will we get to back. I missed Milk Mother and the honey flavored milk she offered me as a new born, and Dhumavati with her new found love and I even missed our Great Father in the smallest way.

"When do we leave?" I asked, afraid of sounding to eager.

"We don't you need to stay here, it will only be for two weeks, when I return you will know then if we both go back or stay."

"Why? I miss everyone?" I was embarrassed at not being able to hide the whining in my voice, when I knew it really hid the sorrow. "Sorry Father." I muttered. He lifted his arm from my shoulder and lay his hand and fingers across my forehead.

"Listen Jovina Succubare listen to me well, you must take care of yourself for the next two weeks." He rolled me into his chest. "These men have given us a place for almost half a century. They could expel us from here, or worst hunt, capture and torment us for as long as they are willing to remember. Don't destroy their world don't ruin it for us, we are but guest in there home and remember that every moment you are alone. Promise me that." His words rumbled against my eyelids and through my head.

"I promise to keep to myself." I swore against his soft beige tunic shirt made by immortal hands to be worn for centuries if the wearer was only willing. He pressed me into his hard chest and let me go.

"It's time." He extracted his dusty brown body from my futile grasp from around his wait and we stood. I watched as he faded from his extremities to core mirroring the sky behind him fading from daylight to dusk. I knew he was there even if he was already back at the Fortress. I followed Fathers lead and made my way to the dinning hall.

I liked living with the monk's it was similar to our family's Fortress who's stone walls in the basin of Death Valley homes the divine and lesser beings of the body yet all are welcome.

I carefully avoided the men as they walked carrying their plates and drinks to the tables around the hall. There were about a hundred clean shaven heads and faces. Chopsticks smooth black wood shining with mild depressions from centuries of meals tapped on beautiful porcelain bowls. Hushed voices floated around the tables and wove together to collect in the air and hovered warm caressing.

After dinner, everyone dispersed and I followed, a small group into one of three libraries's and curled up in a large chair off in a corner. They spoke of the T'ang dynasty the Mahayana Buddhism and scholar Padmasambhava's introduction of Tibetan Buddhism. A discussion I had heard many times over the decades and dozed off peacefully.

When I woke up the room was dark and suddenly I felt so alone an emptiness echoed in my bones and I fled. Through the closed doors down the empty hall, fear began to rise and I broke through the stone walls blinded and lost. I hit a wall of calm and fell to my knees. When I opened my eyes there was a monk about fifty sitting on a low bench completely covered in red pillows that overflowed and covered half the floor. There were two small iron lamps sitting on wall hooks, but the room held an innate illumination from him.

"Hello child." He said in low tones.

"Drapa, Please forgive this embarrassment." I was terrified. My father would kill me. I could had done nothing more disrespectful had if I had jumped up on the dinning room table naked for all to see and drenched us all in sensual obscenities, striped naked. This was where they communed with their "Great Father" Father explained. Even other monks didn't interrupt this prayer. I started to tremble ferociously and had to concentrate to make myself un-form.

I looked up because a small harsh light came from him it weaved back and forth across the room working its way to me. Then there were three and then maybe ten more, than I could count. It memorized me trying to keep track of all the movement. My vision swam and my head felt warped.

"I'm sorry, please stop, I will go." I meauled unable to take flight, my heart pounded in my warped skull so that I had to place both hands on the floor which scared me even more to have to touch one more thing in the room, tears and tiny sobs escaped.

"What could possibly be so horrible in this place as to give you fits?" He asked and lights stopped moving.

"The lights and I'm sorry I was scared looking for light, and ran but there wasn't any." I began to cry again. The lights dimmed by half wavering in the air.

"I know you're out there, when it grows dark I can, feel you." He explained drawing out the word feel so that it reached out across the room like a finger pulled along a silk cloth.

"We never meant to intrude, only a quite safe place to live for awhile." Shoot, I has slipped said we, hopefully he wouldn't notice.

"How long has a little while been?" He asked.

I sighed, "About a century and a half." The lights began their insane dance moving in on me one at a time and would slide off again, then two lights and the spinning began again.

"I never knew I was so blind to all around me. Maybe I would have guessed I noticed something different ten years ago or more, but not that much. Why are you such a small thing?" He asked as the lights danced across my body."

"The lights make my head feel funny." I prayed silently that this didn't offend him for fear of what else he would do and hoped the silent prayer didn't reach my Father's ears either.

"Forgive me," he said and the lights froze again, "but I only wish to see who could only be so interesting."

"I mean no disrespect, if you were to make the lights one, maybe you could see better." Bite my tongue! Thought I didn't hear it, the room felt lighter as though it laughed at this horrible little mess of two different entities, two different sexes that were from two different religions collide. The light faded to the brightness of the sky during a cloudy storm and the different tentacles pulled together as if a broom of light could sweep me clean. My panic pulsed in my throat for a moment then the lights fused together and held mellow and steady.

"Are you standing?" He asked the sound coming from three feet above his head where the light now originated, maybe.

"No, I'm to horribly afraid and ashamed." I said the sound carried on the weight of my words rather than the desire to be honest.

"Please come near and sit." So I stood, my bare feet never feeling the imperfections in the wood floor or the plainness of my looks as this moment. Though maybe trying to dazzle him would have been even more disastrous. The spotlight found my face and worked it way down my lankiness. The light unrolled itself over my head, around my shoulders and coated me completely. "Are you trapped in this body, trapped in this place?"

"I am not a tortured soul, Drapa." I replied and followed the light to just a foot or so on the floor in font of him and sat mimicking his position.

"A few moments ago I don't know if I would have believe you not that I believe in you anyways." He seemed to think that was funny. "So who and where are these others that you live here with?"

"I would rather not say his name out loud, after the sun has set we rise in power, and if I say his name, he may hear and I don't wish him to know what horrible thing I have done."

"So you are afraid of him?"

"Only because I've done the one thing he asked me not to and I will be reprimand." My voice still lacked strength.

"I won't tell him if you don't."

"I must so, do not corrupt your morals for me, if he were to ever ask you." I added that last part because I couldn't imagine it ever happening.

"So he is your god or police?"

"No but with him I would not exist."

"Could you live," he paused "survive without him?"

"Yes, but not that I would want to, I love him."

"Is he your husband, or brother or lover or father?"

I didn't respond.

"Husband?"

"No"

"Brother?"

"No"

"Father."

"Always." I answered, he paused, and my eyelids came together pushing away the darkness that sat in the back of my brain waiting to engulf me. I opened my eyes and saw a pair of cloth shoes it was a man it was him. The light was gone and in its place was his metaphysical self. Twenty years younger with gray eyes so light they were the color of hard packed snow in the moonlight held together between two layers of blackness. He held out his hand.

"Come sit with me for awhile."

"Will not your gesko take offence?" The last thing I wanted to do was get him in trouble with his moral police.

"How can I do something wrong if you're not real?" He asked.

In less than three hours, I had broken a dozen rules. So hey if I'm going to burn why not throw caution to the wind. And on top of that, I don't know if I would have had the courage to be on my own. I took his hand to rise only because it felt like the right thing to do, not because I was so frail. And he sat beside his body on the bench and I laid down facing the room on the pillows next to him and place my head on his thighs. It felt natural and intimate, one of the most intimate or power filled acts in the universe. His body tensed like cording on a bow. I took a deep breath and our body's relaxed as one. . It was as thought someone cut the cording in my brain and the fear and tension just wasn't there anymore. Before he touched me, I could feel his fingertips.