Teramis

RUNES AT THE SOLSTICE
(Used by permission of the Author)

Solstice is a special turning of the season for me. It is more than the nadir of winter; it is a time for ritual that has become a personal tradition of rune magic and blood magic.  It is a time when I reaffirm energies that I embody, and on this occasion, I was due - long overdue - to recut the permanent runes I bear upon my person.

This is not a ritual done lightly with a partner, and whomever I do it with is someone I choose very, very carefully. There is too much power involved for it to be otherwise, and the intentions must be focused and clear and without hidden agendas. There was only one person I could possibly ask to participate in this rune ritual with me: Ms. Celeste.  We are very heart-connected, there is a lovely D/s balance between us, she understands the intentions needed.  I was honored that she said yes to my invitation, and so we met at the appointed time in a private dungeon in the city.

She stands in leggings and tall boots and a clinging sweater top:  gorgeous red-head all in black.  I am also darkly attired, black curls coiled up on my head, black pearls in my ears.  The toybag is sorted out, the music is playing.  She turns and says, "Unless you want me to cut them off of you..."

Ah. Her signal for me to undress.

She sits atop the horse while I do so.  Studying me, not taking her eyes off me. My energy is different than I expected for this. I have not put myself in that space of surrender to her that makes it easy to go down and be pushed hard and far. Rather, there is a testy, belligerent undercurrent in me. I think it is coming from some energy work I have been doing lately; there is a part of me that welcomes this as ordeal, not surrender-ride. There is a part that does not want to bow to her. I had remarked on this feeling in the car on the way over. She was quiet, her energy in a different place. Now I am getting the benefit of the full focus of her attention and recall what she said in the car. "Don't poke. You won't like what comes out to play."  And I recognize the energy I am engaging with here.

It is the Beast. The Predator that I have engaged in few others, lurking just skin-deep beneath the surface. She is in a deadly sadistic space. Concentrated. Coiled. Not overtly aggressively domming - not needing to. I read that energy and my pulse starts to speed as I take off my clothes. I put them on the floor near her. She motions me into her arms. "Come here."

I stand between her legs as she sits on the horse, her hands on my arms. She begins to stroke my skin, soft, exploring touch...fingers trailing on shoulders, arms, over chest...up, along collar bone. Both hands caress me, I feel her warmth against my neck. Her face is inches away from mine, her eyes have captivated me. She is studying me, watching me, still. Hands rest at the base of my throat, her thumbs stroking me on either side of my neck, resting against my flesh, finding that spot where my pulse beats beneath the skin and pressing there, gently.  Then more firmly. My eyes widen as her unspoken threat hits me with hard realization. Carotid arteries. She could squeeze me to unconsciousness with pressure on those spots.  She sees that recognition in the flare of my nostrils, the pulse thumping harder in my throat.  The pressure from her thumbs increases. Her head tilts, eyes still holding mine.  It is enough to remind me of what she could do.  I wonder how far I would let this go, I who do not do breath play...or would I resist at all?  I am starting to wonder how far *she would go with this, as the blood begins to pound in my ears, and still her eyes do not waver...

Predator.

Her hands leave my neck and she embraces me. I am struck by her fragrance. I hug her back, unsettled by the coiled violence that is my friend.

She leaves me, to pull out a chair and put a towel on it that I am to sit on.  She has put cuffs on me, but leaves them unbound. "What is it you want?" she asks me.  I fumble for an answer, not sure what she means by that, what kind of answer she's looking for. She is testing the heft of my canes. We have brought my toys....implements that it is ok to get my blood on....."You're thinking too linearly," she says. "I don't mean what cane you want to be hit with. I mean, what do you _want_?"

I get her drift now.  "A transformative experience," I reply.

She sits on the bondage table next to me as I answer. She leans close. "And I," she says softly, "want your submission."

That is not what I expected to hear.  I think I blinked, startled.

"And you are going to give it to me before we are done here. Just as you have cuffs on, but I'm not going to bind you tonight. You're going to sit there and take this, because you know you want it.  And because it pleases me."

I shoot her a look, then. I am told this 'look' of mine can seem defiant, challenging.  Perhaps it can appear that way from the outside, but that is not the feeling attached to the expression inside. In my heart I feel caught flat-footed.  Beyond startled. My world has skipped a beat. I have heard something - an order, an attitude, or a command - that I was fully unprepared for, and am taking it in in that moment. My mind suddenly racing as all the implications of what I have just heard hit home. Looking her in the eye to see if she really meant that....

She meant that.  Self-bondage: my restraints composed of her command over me, only. I find that it is harder to give myself up to the pain when I have to tightly control my reactions to it. That there is a limit to how far I *can control my reactions, before involuntary response to pain takes over. Not that that matters, here and now. She wants me to admit that I want an ordeal so badly I will sit still for it on my own, and do it because she has told me to.

"Bitch," I say.

Now *that is defiant. I did mention, did I not, that I am not in a space of surrender this evening?

She smiles coldly, and begins tapping my leg with a split birch rod.

Birch, split, then bundled together as a package of rods. Feels delicate to the hand, springy, slender lengths of wood. Seems very harmless. Until it bites stingingly into one's flesh, raising tiny welts instantly where it lands. Her first blow does exactly that, across my upper thigh, and I react in the chair. She enjoys that reaction, cautions me to keep my hands back and out of the way and she continues to tease and hit, tease and hit with the birch rods. When I am beginning to have to breathe rhythmically to process the pain, she switches to another one of the many canes I have brought. The short rattan one, I think; it is her favorite, among my assortment.

She runs it over small welts she has already raised.  "You know what I like about this?" she asks rhetorically. "I like to see you sweat. But even before you sweat, there is a change in your body chemistry. I can smell it."

She can smell the acrid sweat of nerves, that my still relatively-collected demeanor is not revealing in any other way. I feel the pulse racing in my throat. I also feel one long bead of sweat run down my ribs.  This is not the heated body flush of someone taking a beating, yet; these are glands on overdrive already from the mere menace of her presence, the mere tease that she has begun this torture session with. But I have played with her before, and grasp the depth of her unfettered sadism in a way I think few others do.  I know what there is here to fear, and I have knowingly invited her Beast to come out and play. My body is responding to that threat already. We are predator and prey, and my body gives that recognition away.

But soon enough that is not the only state my body is in. There were too many canes to count. There is her hand pressing against my sternum now and then when the blows are particularly fierce,  holding me back in the chair so that I do not involuntarily spasm forward during a blow and come into the path of her cane stroke. Tops of thighs, outer thighs, inner thighs...a network of welts and deep bruising left by heavy rods, my breathing turning to cries and the quandary of where to put my hands, my unbound hands, out of the way of her blows.  My palms are open to the ground to channel the pain, to run that excess energy out of me, or I hold them to my face sometimes like a nervous child not knowing where to put her hands when she fidgets.

Fidget. That is not a word for what I do beneath her blows. Writhe, perhaps, is closer.  And when my breathing escalates to cries and sobs, I hear her next to me. "Yessss..." she murmurs. Pleased with it. Encouraging it. Feeding off my pain.

One moment she asks me something, I do not remember what - but my answer I recall, for it was automatic, and seared the observer in my brain as I spoke the words.   "Yes, Ma'am," I say to her.

I catch her half-smile. The once-belligerent part of me notes and subsides, abandoning this contest of wills for now.  She wanted my submission? Somehow, she has gained it, in the alchemy of pain and control she is working with me.

"On your stomach", she orders me to the bondage table when I am in tears. 

"You didn't think I would leave your backside alone, did you?"

She continues her work, harder, more brutal than before. I am already warmed up and already in tears; she takes it from there. I cry and stay as still as I can, with an effort. I catch a glimpse of her in the mirror, grinning in that way I recognize, sadistic glee, joy in my pain and torment.  I like that, but I don't have time to dwell on it. She has graduated from canes to sjambok, and beats me soundly to tears and deep bruising with that evil implement. Just as I think she is giving me a tiny respite she returns to me with a vibrator. "You know how I like to combine sex with pain," she said. "I'm going to beat you with the sjambok until you cum. However long it takes.  And if you don't cum good enough, then we'll do it all over again. And you're going to do this because you know the idea of it makes you incredibly hot."

Evil, wicked woman. Has she been reading my secret diaries and fuck fantasies? Or is this something I have shared with her in the past sometime in a friendly confidential talk? To be beaten until I cum, or to be allowed to cum only while being tortured, *is one of the hottest scenarios for me. 

But I had not been prepared for anything sexual this evening - the focus being on marshaling this rising tide of SM energy and funneling it into ritual work - not that sex is bad, hardly that, but so unexpected, and an order like this! With the sjambok that is agonizing....!

I shoot her another one of those unbelieving 'looks' in the mirror. She locks eyes with me. All I can say is "Yes, Ma'am" and I comply with her wishes, asking permission before my release, struggling to process the unrhythmic pain of the sjambok and the rising tide of pleasure...

It occurs to me, just after the waves of orgasm pass through me, that after I have cum my tolerance to pain is reduced. Apparently it has occurred to her as well.

"And now," she says, "I want your tears."

If I thought I had cried before that, I was mistaken. She has discovered the long, flat, three-layered strap in my toybag.  She lays into me with it, hitting already-battered flesh and welts mercilessly until tears stream down my face. And still she keeps on. My writhing doesn't stop her and there are no blows I can dodge...I try to relax into it but there comes a certain level of continued, relentless body stress that defies "relaxation".  She has driven me to that point of surrender that I had resisted, though. That is the only way to endure such relentless torment, continuing hail of blows that goes on and ceaselessly on.  I recall a playpartner from years ago sadistically urging me through an overcharged torment, saying, "Pain is a river. Flow on it, flow with it...."

I do. I give myself up to it, at last, as I shake with sobs and tears destroy my makeup and my hair comes undone, long and unbound curls cascading into my face. It takes me a while to recognize that she has stopped. She is sitting next to me, leaning on me. Kissing my tear-stained cheek. Happy with how she has hurt me, and happy with my response.

And now, with energy fully charged and catharsis upon me - now is the time for the cutting. I roll onto my back gingerly as she adjusts the lighting. 

She finds old scar lines, many faded very faint, and recuts the runes I wear upon my flesh. She adds one, alters some, recuts all. Three on one thigh, two on the other; finally, a triad on my back in a spot congruent with my heart chakra. Compared to the beating that has preceded it, our actions must look very gentle and collected: me, lying still; her, concentrated, with movements slow and precise.  I breathe through the cutting; myriad razor lines of fire in my skin, some very painfully intense, even with all the endorphins in my system.  I hear her breathing in synch with me. I can feel how connected we are; I see her aura surrounding her head, her shoulders, as she cuts me. I feel this surplus of energy we have raised together, and let that flow through the runes, energizing them, letting them form in my mind's eye, icons and archforms and powerful symbols of magic that speak to my spirituality and my intentions of what I wish to embody.

It is a slow, careful series of cuttings.  I get flashes of insight; visions, even, during the process.  I am saying farewell to old things in my life, manifesting new things instead. I could not do this by myself.  How honored I am that this wonderful Domme has chosen to share this experience with me.

Later, champagne, hors d'ouvres, and holiday gift exchanges are a fitting wind down to our adventure together.  A day later I sit, bruised and aching, with legs that seem to function only reluctantly (an observation, not a complaint :).  There is a sense of different energy about me, and the aftermath of this very charged ritual still percolating on many levels. 

What a special gift my dear friend has given me for this holiday.  I am grateful for that, and this acute awareness of shifting energies during this very special season.

Happy Solstice to us all.

Teramis

Copyright 2001 by Teramis.  This article may not be reprinted or electronically archived on websites without explicit permission of the author. Permission for personal use freely granted including redistribution to mailing lists as long as this attribution is left attached. For additional permissions inquire of author at Teramis@teramis.com.  See author's website for more information: www.teramis.com.

Last update March 1, 2003

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