Athaliah and Mathan were strolling around in the garden behind her palace. It was full of colorful flowers, planted between nuts’ and apples’ trees. The dim and cold night hid the beauty of the place, but the lovers enjoyed the calm atmosphere and the rustling of the leaves caused by the cold night’s wind..
“What do you think, my sweatheart?” asked Mathan in a flattering, sentimental voice, “Has not Baal created that cool but magnificent night, for romance and mutual pleasures of the flesh? Like us- He and His sweetheart Ashera are now one interwoven in the hidden channels of the other.”
“Their juices flow from and into each other,” she exclaimed with a smile, “like a pure stream slowly striving to get into a hidden cave, found only between the mountains of paradise.”
“I enjoy the delicate smells of the roses here ,” said Mathan.
“As for me,” she said, as challanging his storage of images, “The Lilacs’ and Narcissos’ scents’ are filling my lungs. My breath is now so easy, so smooth. I am viewing within my own eyes an amazing form, an abstract structure, that signifies something to me. It is flashing like diamonds and gold and silver mixed together, and I am licking them like wonder-cakes…with my tongue.”
He saw at what she was hinting. She took him by his hand and led him to her room and both were undressing quickly and gazing at each others’ body in the dim light, but they soon covered themselves with her wide white cotton sheet, kissing and caressing.
“Would her Majesty permit me to lick her clitoris and bring her those attacks of sensations, that are sweeter than cakes, more exciting than scents?”
She nodded and they enjoyed each other’s flesh and breath, wildness and spirit.
When they became satiated, she told him, analysing a relationship that had faded out:
“Only the weekly procedure of lying with late king Jehoram– had made me…somewhat acquainted with him. He was a bad husband, as every king…Yes, all that has become a remote past, disappeared like a dream. It had been better for me ...”
She was feeling her heart melt toward the Baal priest, who had been younger than her in five years, so she revealed. She appreciated his courage to impress her with his sexual vitality and powerful belief in the “seemingly natural forces created by the Idols,” as he defined it, “I believe that they are much more sophisticated than the jealous God of Israel. I like that highly free behavior, aimed for the pleasures of the flesh and spirit, that the Knaanite Idols permit us to have. They all are aimed to enjoy with us, like participating in our pleasures of the flesh…”
Athaliah asked Mathan if he had ever married. No, he said. He devoted himself to God, until he saw that he could never achieve the position of high priest of God.
He had thought he was more worthy of it than Yehoyada, because of his wider knowledge of the holy books, his oratorial capability, and his dovotion to the temple’s Ceremonies. However, the king- her husband Jehoram- had chosen Yehoyada as chief priest of God. Yehoyada’s knowledge of Moses commandments was less, far less than Mathan. In fact, everybody had been aware that Yehoyada did not have a brilliant mind. “So, God had disappointed me,” said Mathan, “in not meeting my expectations from him. He realy showed me how stupid and naïve I had been all the years long…”
“But I can’t believe, that no woman had really loved you,” she said.
“I laid down a lot of virgins, but I had not fallen in love. It seemed that they had not gottn the complexity of character and sharpnesss of mind, that I would seek in a woman friend. I was alreays bored very soon with a woman, dear Athaliah. You are the first who makes me so enthusiastic and excited and challenged by your mere presence. Had I known you before, I don’t know if I would have desired you so much- unless the new, shocking circumstances had caused an entire change in your soul and mind.”
“Beware - not to pour your sperm inside me,” she suddenly disconnected from his touch and rose from the bed. She was like reminding herself of a danger: ”If it happens that I’ll become pregnant from you,” she threatened nervously, “I’ll kill you. Or the baby, or both of you!”
They both came down again to each other with an assault of loud laughter.
Then they took a little sneeze, after having those two consecutive intercourses. He told her that his belittled penis would not grow for a third penetration, according to his experience with that organ... He laughed at himself for “not being able to lie within you for a whole long night,” – so he apologized and she liked that.
Mathan suddenly jumped aside. His nudeness was illuminated by a ‘three thirds’ moonlight, and he rose up. She saw his athletic figure beginning to run to the coutyard and she opened the back door, looking after him. He returned within a short while, after having found some article near the fence’s bush. He brought it with him back to the room. It was a cane of bamboo, and he waved with it, while kneeling near her naked body. She laughed and said:
“My dear lover wants to use this stick? For what? As an exchange for the sleeping snake between his legs?”
Mathan was looking at her nice ass. She put on her a night robe, and handed him another one – from her wardrobe. “We should not take cold,” she said, and let him carry her her by his arms outside, still holding his cane in his hand. They saw a small heap of carved stones, that were set in a row, like a long bench. He asked her to stand on that, and climbed to stand next to her. He raised the hollow cane in the air and was looking through it on the flashing stars.
Athaliah touched the bamboo and asked what he was going to do with it.
“Had it been smooth and elastic and cold blooded, like Moses’ snake, I would have agreed it to be sent into me. I haven’t experienced this kind of flesh pleasure since my youth…” she laughed.
“If you wish it,” he said, “Very well, next night I’ll bring something. Its poison should be cut out…But now, let me show you something through this ‘telescope cane’…”
“Priest of Baal,” she said, “is it an invention, or a marvel, or what?” She remembered that before that - he had given her something to drink, and they both were quite drunk.
“Looking through this cane concentrates the object, which we would like to watch,“ said Matahn , “it would clear vague shapes. I’ve frequently used that. It helps me to understand the signs from the stars more precisely. This is the art of Baal’s witchcraft, that I’ve secretely studied.”
Athaliah snatched the cane from his hands, and was already looking above through it.
“I’d like to search for a sign- that will strengthen my army against Jehu. His troops approach our borders, so I heard from Abner today.”
She delivered the cane back to Mathan.
“Look at those stars,” said Mathan, who was looking above again, “at the left of the long Milk Route, the long like a river of enlightened haze! You can see a group of more sparkling stars than the rest of them…”
Athaliah took the cane and saw a view that made her quite tremble from fear. The Baal priest embraced her naked body under her robe, and kissed her throat.
“Is it a good omen?” she asked. He nodded.
The shape of the sparkling stars was like the following:
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