The time has come, OverLongBeard said, to speak not of one of the many perils encountered by the Wee Yin but of another sort of adventure, a gaze into the abyss of passion fulfilled and denied, a reverie of sweat, the clash of godwants and gland driven meanders through earthy tumbles of mind and limbs entwined, of the meeting and first days of the wee one with the Godless Romantic.

And a murmur rose in the crowd, a low tremor with an insistent quaverish undertow broken with the sounds of buttocks shifting and squeezing together, of rough hands scraping up and down forearms. The people loved the heroic tales but from time to time they enjoyed this other distraction, the stories of dark places and wetness, of rude ingress, of gods brought low by lust.

Though the Wee Yin and the Godless Romantic are now as arrows in a quiver, one striking if the other falls short, it was not always so. Though having tasted passion in his early years and pleasant enough companionships since, nothing had stirred him for some time and though he felt amused enough in his wanders through the land and his neverending studies of any and all things, he had come to see himself as a lizard on a rock, his blood slow, the centuries beginining to weigh on him and the settling of a melancholy into his eternal bones.

The Wee Yin was centuries younger but despite her youth (for she was only a few hundred years old) and despite the inherent glee that dwelt within her as sap within a tree, she was in the midst of a decade long doldrum of the spirit. She too was alone and while she sensed her discomfort to be more fleeting than the dour expectations of GR, she was not a happy camper.

It was by chance that the two were both at a mead fueled gathering of the Green Clan at the one of the Wee Yin’s favourite rest stops, the Cell and Bastion (on the banks of the Okervil). They were all there and it was one their typical nights with a cacophany of drunken prose filling the smoky tavern. It was a rough hewn space of middling size, the beams soaked with ale, the floor ankle deep in leaves and dust, but it was home of a sorts. Light fought its way in through smeared windows and more times than not made it little more than half way into the room. Books were piled to the rafters along the walls, underfoot as well, and all the clan seemed to be there that night in full croak, verse in the air purple and thick. The only person not reading other than our two heroes was Kat-theOdd who was danced on a great oaken table in the middle. The Kat was a slender twirligig of a thing, and she danced amidst the massed orators. And the few gods that were there were amused with her spirit as they often were with other mortals (the quick they called them, for the best of them burned bright in their short traipse of living).

In the corner was the incongruous Alabama Carleton, ignored as always by all there. She preened and muttered to herself but without a book for she was incapable of deciphering any written language and on occasion even lost the ability to speak. However, she was drawn to any gathering in the illusion that without exception they were held in her honour and despite all evidence to the contrary remained quite steadfast in this belief.

It seemed at one moment to be just another gathering when the Godless Romantic espied the Wee Yin absorbed in watching the dance, her hands clapping in time and a wide grin stretched across her dirt smudged face and because she could not dance herself was content with the occasional somersault and whoop and he was suddenly struck dumb with lust for he saw not a diminutive balled up folk hero but a figure encircled with runes of auric fires that swirled and drew him like a moth.

And when he saw her, he knew at once that she was the sun to his lizard. He felt his ichor quicken in her presence and despite his experience was afraid for he knew that his comfortable ennui was in peril. He had been long enough in his langour that it was second nature to him and to abandon it was to board blind passage over a strange ocean.

As he stared at her bright sillouette, she was desire made flesh to him, her breasts and belly untouched by him but in his spirit already familiar, he could taste her from afar and as his consciousness fled before the flood of her scent and sweat, and she felt his need wrapping about her like a tongue though he had still not moved, she turned to him, and for her too the room flew asunder, the world shattered into coptic dust under her feet, and it was just the two of them stumbling toward the door like dromedaries sighting an oasis after weeks crossing the dunes.

As they fell into the night air and each other, wordless, and lust struck, they flew into the woods nearby, and sought their succor. As they devoured each other, the Wee Yin felt her body getting larger and larger and though at first she thought it was an illusion it was not, for it was the Godless Romantic’s sudden and total belief in her being which transformed her into almost twice her usual diminutive self.

As they caught their breath, hours later, lying in the midst of the large clearing where previously there was none, for their passions had flattened trees both great and small, and pressed the underbrush into a soft sweet smelling bed, they knew that despite few words had passed between them, it was as certain as seasons that they would soon be thrashing again in perfect derangement.

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