Conception

When he had digested that last bittersweet draff of his psychosis, he sensed the cluthe's pollution was depleted. With angry, febrile effort, he commoved his heavy limbs and eyes back into waking. The torfire had exhausted its crude fuel; together he and the dowager of Cær Brae were bundled naked under a thin blanket, so that she could furnish him with her body's heat.

He became instantly, absurdly aroused by her, a reaction he had wholly forgotten, and tried to stand to hide his distress. But she had stirred and sensed his motive, and cleaved to him, importuning: "Yes, yes, welcome life!" He could feel directly her sensuality, the softness and roundness of fertility; his counterpart instinct swelled to arrest control.

In a vulgar fury he tore away their cover, and took her to her back. But her small cry brought a sudden, unhappy stop; his breath and voice shook upon her throat, "Do not goad me further to this base act."

She cried again, her keen nails raking his shoulders, and she seethed at his ear: "What now, man? You fear the surrender of sex? Yes, surrender! I my body make vulnerable to you, you your emotion make vulnerable to me. It is in surrender that we abolish our own walls."

So he submitted, to himself and to her; and as he entered her he felt that he had entered into her, she became more real and he less so; and as he released he felt that he had become released, his body abluted and ablated, and only his senses remained - momentarily suffused with hers, then rushing upward, outward, across the dark of the sandveldt and in all directions.

In the sepulcher of Cær Brae, the Allmother curled, sobbing; her lover gone.