Priestess of Hathor -- ancient lesbians by Wilma Alone. Floating. Somewhere floating. How had I come to be adrift in this fearsome place? Had my soul departed? Was this the river that bore the dead to the afterlife? Why did the crushing pain in my chest not ease, then, and my breath not cease its tormented gasping? Should a dead one suffer this raging fever and this burning in her lungs? My head would not clear itself. I rubbed my eyes and blinked them open that I might lay hold upon my world and find sense therein. My struggle became panic. There were no memories! I possessed neither name nor history. I clutched myself and felt my body and legs, naked but for the tattered skin of an animal which covered only my loins. A female creature with neither origin nor destination was I, and I knew not else but pain and fear. The Wise Ones had not said there would be crocodiles. They had not said there was unendurable pain in the afterlife. Wise Ones? How did I know that? I blinked as though to see them better through the mist of my fevered brain, but they were phantoms, intuitions that had not the substance of a memory. My planks of wood carried me now toward ominous reeds, a capricious mood of the River Spirit finding diversion in tyrannizing a lost and bewildered waif. I made myself small as the sinister entanglement approached, hiding my face in my hands and convincing myself Evil could not befall an unseen soul who had departed already her veil of tears. But the Wise Ones had said the voyage of the unworthy to the afterworld was beset with peril while the soul of the worthy was carried by gentle waves and sweetly scented breezes to a land where Evil cannot go. And Evil was upon me! I heard it rattle and thrum, and I shrunk the more and tightened myself into a tiny knot of flesh. I was unworthy and would suffer unimaginable agony in eternity. But as I listened, I heard the forces of Evil opposed by favoring spirits. The clatter became a rhythm of the sistrum, and the wailing of the wind ogres through the reeds were o'ercome by soothing voices of sweet song. Healing forces of female spirits in the afterworld were contending for my soul and driving away the demons of the reeds. I prayed to Hathor for deliverance from the monsters of Hate there to ravage me, and I sought her strong hand to come with her entourage of feminine spirits and carry me into the sanctuary of her sacred breast. In childlike hope did I reach out my hand to the Goddess, and with the faith of innocence did I accept without surprise the warm hand which took mine gently and kissed it. I raised my head from its grave between my knees and gazed upon the beauteous countenance of my soul's Refuge. Her smile was balm to my tortured spirit, her touch magic to my body. Power flowed out of her being into mine, and we merged in a communion older than archetypes, a conjoining of aspects of the feminine principle, she the stronger and I the weaker but we together empowered by female forces beyond reckoning. She saw my pain and felt it as though it were her own. She came to me and kissed me, holding me in her arms. In an instant I was whole! The woman had healed me with her embrace and restored me with her kiss. The fire in my lungs was quenched, my body's affliction and my mind's tribulation vanishing with her caress and with the profound kiss of her precious lips. "Welcome, Little Sister," she said. "My Goddess, my Goddess Hathor, I knew you would save me." "No, no, Little Sister," she said, touching my lips with her finger. "I am Bethriah, High Priestess of the Temple of Hathor. I saw your plight in my crystals and willed you here for healing." "Bethriah," I whispered reverently, her name a melody to my becalmed mind as were her knowing eyes a song in my soul sung with a devotion antedating our mortal forms. Bethriah was a wonderful teacher. Our time together along the Great River and in the temple gardens were cherished hours. She was warm and serene, often playful and easily amused, a woman of good humor, uncluttered in mind and spirit. Her mere presence was therapeutic, her touch an encounter with Goodness, and her kiss was rapture supernal. Bethriah filled my thoughts and feelings. Her moods and whims were reflected in my own, and it was through experiencing Bethriah that I experienced life itself. In the evenings, she would bring the other priestesses and me into her chambers where we would bathe her and attend her as she taught us. There were readings of praise to Hathor and poetic expressions in dedication to the Feminine Soul, and Bethriah would guide us in our meditations to see and feel things beyond the senses and to enter one another with our minds. At the beginning, I was allowed only to be present and attend them as they touched each other's nakedness and developed their power to transfer their thoughts without speaking. I was not brought into these lessons, but I was allowed to brush Bethriah's long hair and apply creams to her body and legs. It was also my duty to treat the other priestesses with the Oil of Hathor, an ointment of secret ingredients made by the High Priestess herself and blessed by the Goddess. One evening while the women were communing with each other and I was watching them and attending Bethriah's feet as she reclined on her couch, I received my first message. I thought she had spoken to me, so clear did it seem, but when I looked up at her, she was sipping from her cup. I paused, baffled, and her gaze fell upon me as she lowered the cup. Again, I felt her speak: "Place your lips on my toes and suck them, Nemra." But her lips were closed and her only movement was to raise her foot slightly toward my mouth. Her warm eyes and gentle smile reassured me, and I swooned at the mysterious connection of our minds as I lowered my mouth to her foot and kissed it lovingly. A feeling of warmth passed through my body as I slipped my mouth over her toes and sucked them. I caressed her smooth, womanly legs and worshipped her. "I know, Nemra," her mind said in response to my thought of love for her. I thought my love again, and she received it into her and communicated as though through her flesh her acceptance of my feelings. My tongue found delight on the underside of her toes as I sucked, and she moved her foot to allow me to lick the bottom of it and to feel it pressed against my face. My hands explored her calves and her thighs, and the pressure of her beautiful bare foot increased on my face as I stretched to feel more of her. She slid her foot across my swooning face and rested it on my shoulder. I worshipped her ankle and the delicate place below her calf. I gazed up into her adorable visage and could hardly contain my desire as I massaged her ivory legs with my face from her ankle to her inner thigh. She opened her legs and reached down and took my face in her hands. Slowly, she moved my face into the wondrous glory of her womanhood and sensuously rubbed her smooth, soft thighs against my face as though pumping the pedals of an unseen device. I nuzzled my face into her femaleness, and I gloried in the sensations of her womanly flesh push-pulling my serving face to and fro in her moistening sex. She pulled me into her, and my mouth found the precious bud of her exciting rose. I incorporated it and tongued it and sucked on it, and she worked herself sensually in my mouth. Moans and cooing sounds came from above me as I sucked her down there and basked in sensations of her movements and her legs and her body and her breasts and her hands and her feet. Bethriah's cadence increased, and I kept pace with my mouth and tongue. Controlling me with her hands and her copulatory movements, she moved my mouth to serve her orifice of femininity and the sensitive flower of her anus. Erratic womanquakes began randomly interrupting her rhythmic undulations. Her vaginal well produced its copious nectar, and I drank the libation of her lust. Bethriah nourished me with increasing amounts of her juice while her coital movements became progressively irregular. Her breathing was punctuated now by feminine grunts and gasps. She tightened her legs around my face and I felt her feet moving on my back. Squeezing, rubbing, releasing, squeezing, grinding, hunching, pulling, tightening, pressing, releasing again and tightening again. She began to vibrate and thrash, surrendering herself to her pleasure and trusting me with her gift. Suddenly she gripped my face tight and stopped all movement. My mouth and my soul locked in her torrid pit, I sucked and swallowed without moving my face or distracting her. She screamed uninhibitedly and tightened her grip even more as she jerked in my mouth. Her legs pounded me now, and her feet hammered my back, but I did not lose my mouthlock nor did I forget to suck and drink from my beautiful tutor and priestess. She regained enough control over her body to roll us both over so that she sat fully upon my serving face, freely using my mouth to complete herself again and again and again. She gave and I received, she took and I served. Beneath her I had found my rightful place, and in service to her I had found identity. Never again would I have to wander nameless and without memory. The continual search for purpose and meaning on earth had ended. I knew who I was and what I was intended to be, and my spirit was freed in surrender to Bethriah, High Priestess of the Temple of Hathor in the reign of Nefertiti in the 18th dynasty of Egypt. Yours in Fantasy, Wilma (aka Nemra)