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Keeper of the Flame

"Stop here, please," Tomas said. It was actually about five blocks from his apartment, but Tomas was a man who knew his limits. If he didn't get out soon, he'd be leaving a pretty serious mess for the taxi driver to deal with, and Tomas had worked too many shit jobs to make someone else clean up after him. He handed over the full fare, plus a generous tip, and sat down hard on the curb until the world stopped feeling like it was tumbling end over end.

Eventually, the cool night air helped to quell his nausea enough for Tomas to get up and put one foot in front of the other. He wished he'd paid a little bit more attention to those limits of his back at the reception, but it hadn't seemed like very much alcohol at all when the celebrations were in full swing. It wasn't until he got out to the parking lot that he realized just how much he'd indulged himself in all of the various toasts to his brother's happiness, and by then all he could do was catch a cab and go back for his car in the morning.

"Safety first, Tomas," he mumbled to himself, turning the corner and ambling down the street at an erratic pace. He didn't see any reason to hurry, not when it was such a lovely night and he had no particular plans for tomorrow. He was just a few blocks away from home, and as soon as he got inside he could eat a little something to settle his stomach and sleep it off. He might be just the tiniest bit drunk, but he wasn't about to let that make him do anything stu-

Tomas looked around. He suddenly realized that what he thought was the Plaza Apartments, five blocks from his place, was actually another apartment complex altogether. The two places looked just similar enough that someone could mistake them for one another in the dark...from the back of a moving taxi...while being a little bit less sober than he was willing to admit...but Tomas wasn't five blocks from his apartment. He didn't know where the hell he was.

It wasn't time to panic yet, though. Tomas didn't recognize the neighborhood, but that just meant he needed to get another taxi. He put a little more conscious effort into his walk, heading down to the corner of the street. All he had to do was find out where he was, and then he could call for another ride. And this time, if he started to feel sick, he'd ask the driver to wait. He reached into his pocket-

His cell phone wasn't there.

Tomas stopped dead. He checked his other pockets, one by one, jacket and pants. No phone anywhere. With a sinking sensation, he remembered setting it down on the seat so that he could buckle up his seat belt-a task that seemed inexplicably difficult at the time, and one that required his full concentration. He didn't remember picking it back up again. He didn't remember his cab number either, or even what company he'd called, but that was a crisis he could handle later. Right now, he needed to get home.

He looked around. The windows in the apartment complex were dark. So were the windows in the houses across the street. They had bars on them, too. That didn't improve Tomas' growing sense of panic, but he decided that the only real thing to do was to start walking and look for someone who was awake at two o'clock in the morning, and ask to use their phone. He picked a direction at random and got moving.

Tomas didn't know how long he walked, exactly, although he reached for his phone to see what time it was about a half-dozen times during his search before remembering that he didn't have it on him. The only thing he knew was that he definitely felt a good deal more sober by the time he spotted a light in someone's window. He also felt tired, sore, and more than a little bit relieved to see the warm glow shining through gauzy red curtains. He picked up his pace a bit, cursing the dress shoes that pinched his toes with every step, and came up to the door of a small cottage that seemed even smaller compared to the houses on either side. Hoping that he wasn't about to intrude on some home defense nut, Tomas knocked on the door.

He tapped on the door once, but he never had a chance to knock again-the door opened immediately, revealing a woman wearing a red silken robe tightly cinched about the waist. Tomas lowered his hand slowly and awkwardly, a bit stunned by the speed of her response. She must have seen him coming up the walk, he realized. "Um, hi," he said, trying for a sheepish smile. "I know it's late, but...um..." He flailed a bit with his hands, trying to gesture back the way he had come and pantomime an invisible taxi. He finally muttered, "I'm lost," and left it at that before his mouth did any more damage.

She stared back at him. She didn't look frightened, or upset at having her evening disrupted by a stranger knocking on her door in the middle of the night. She looked sad, somehow. Almost melancholy. It was a strange expression, and it didn't sit well on her face. She looked too beautiful to have so much sorrow; her features were strikingly exotic, absolutely impossible to place to any location or culture. Her long, thick hair kinked and curled in a way that seemed African, but everything else was beautifully blended into a mix of features that seemed like they were from everywhere all at once.

Her eyes narrowed. Tomas could see a few small wrinkles here and there, but it was almost as impossible to tell her age as it was her ethnicity. If she was older than forty, though, she wore it well. "It has come," she said in an accentless voice, seemingly to herself. "Then now is not the time, mine is not the voice." The words held the same inexpressible sadness that was written on her face, a grief that Tomas could not begin to understand, let alone console. He opened his mouth, but speech seemed impossible in the face of that near-sacred sorrow.

Then it vanished, as quickly as if it had never happened. She favored Tomas with a smile and said, "Come in, please! Have a seat on the couch, young man, you certainly look like you've had a rough day. I'll just go and call a taxi for you."

Tomas opened the screen door and stepped inside, feeling slightly disoriented by the sudden change in the woman's mood. He half-wondered if it had just been his imagination, a lingering effect of the alcohol that threw off his perception and convinced him that everyone was hiding a world of private pain that he was intruding on. If it was, he was glad he didn't get drunk more often. He sat down on the couch, staring around him in that awkward way you did when you were by yourself in a stranger's house.

The woman left the room and came back a few minutes later, that same welcoming smile still on her face. "There," she said. "That's all settled. Your cab is on its way, although I should warn you from long experience that it takes a while for them to make it out this way. Still, I hope I'm an agreeable enough person to pass the time with." She sat down on the chair opposite him and reached out to shake his hand. "My name is Isra."

"Tomas," he said, surprised at the strength of her grip. "I'm sorry to be such a bother. I asked the taxi to drop me off, but I wasn't where I thought I was, and..." He trailed off again, unable to find himself at ease in the stranger's house no matter how welcoming she was.

"It's no bother at all!" she said, sitting back in her chair. "I like to think of it as destiny, myself. Here I was, unable to sleep, and here you were, out on your own at night in a neighborhood that's...well, let's just say it's seen better days. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn't been the one with my light on?"

Tomas smiled. "I guess I was pretty lucky." He didn't feel lucky, though; he felt awkward and uncomfortable, just sober enough to feel like he was failing badly at polite conversation but not nearly drunk enough not to care about it. He couldn't wait to get home and sleep.

Isra's response surprised him. "There's no such thing as luck, Tomas," she said, reaching into her robe and pulling out a pendant. "Everything has a reason, if you're only willing to listen to the universe and accept it." She cupped the pendant in her hands as though she was holding a baby bird.

Tomas wasn't feeling up for any kind of philosophical discussion tonight. "I suppose that's a comforting way of looking at things," he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. He didn't want to get into any debates, he didn't want to start an argument, he just wanted to get his taxi and get home.

And then it was back, that impossibly intense melancholy he'd noticed before. Her eyes were full of it, her smile just a mask over a heart overflowing with it. She was aching with it, and somehow Tomas knew that he was the cause. Not anything he had said or done, but his very presence here tonight had done something to her.

"Comforting?" she said. "Not always. There will always be times, even for the faithful, when knowing the reason and accepting it are two different things." She held out the pendant. "Here. Look at this. It may help to explain."

Tomas leaned forward and looked at the tiny object on the end of the chain. It looked like a glass globe, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter, and inside it was something that looked like a tiny flame. No, not 'looked like', Tomas corrected himself. It was a flame. There was a perfect miniature fire dancing inside the globe, burning without any apparent source of fuel or air, flickering and glowing between her outstretched palms as if by magic.

"This was a gift from my mother, back when I was a child. She took it with her from Egypt-she was forced to leave everything else behind, that night. I traveled with her inside her womb during her flight, and when we finally arrived in our new home, each in our own way, she named me Isra, 'journey at night'." She cradled the pendant in her hands reverently, the flames almost seeming to reach back against the glass to touch her as well.

"Many times, I asked my mother why she left. She would always tell me the same story-she was no longer safe in Egypt." Tomas listened, but at the same time he tried to figure out how the flame could possibly burn inside the globe. He didn't see any holes, nothing that would let air in, and even if it had air and fuel it wasn't giving off any heat. "She said she saw a vision in the Flame, a vision of herself drowned as a witch with me still growing in her belly. A vision of our line coming to its end."

Tomas frowned in what he hoped was a sympathetic expression, but his attention was still on the fire in the pendant. It didn't look like an illusion. He couldn't imagine any kind of device or trick of the light producing that flickering dance that only a real flame could make. He watched it intensely, hoping to see any kind of artificial repetition to its motions.

"As I got older, that story no longer satisfied me," Isra said. She leaned a bit closer, giving Tomas a better view of the pendant. "I asked her why she left, and when she started to tell me the story I said, 'No. I don't want to know what happened. I want to know why you left.' And that was when she told me about a different night. The night I was conceived."

Tomas blushed a little at that, but he knew it wouldn't show. He thought about trying to change the subject, but decided against it. She seemed to enjoy telling him her stories, and soon the cab would be here and he'd never have to see her again. He could just sit here, watching the fire, trying to learn its secret, and let her ramble about whatever she wanted.

"She told me that she had asked the same question of her mother-not the same words, but the same question." Isra stood as she spoke, letting the pendant fall from her hands to rest against her belly. "And her mother had asked her mother, and her mother had asked her mother, and her mother had asked her mother, all the way back to the day the temple fell. Why do we hide? Why do we run? Why do we keep the Flame a secret, passed down through the ages, when we could release it to burn brightly once more?"

Tomas leaned back against the couch cushions, grateful for the change in angle. It meant that he could relax, instead of hunching his body forward to see the pendant. He could sprawl a little and still see every detail of the fire as it flickered inside its glass home. He hadn't realized just how exhausted he was until his body relaxed onto the soft couch, his muscles finally letting loose that tension and leaving him peaceful and relaxed.

"She said only to me, 'Because the Flame is not yet ready. Because now is not the time for conquest, and mine is not the voice of command.'" Isra tugged at her sash, pulling it free to let her robe fall open. Tomas barely noticed. The pendant didn't move, and his attention was focused on the glass globe and the fire within it. But his body noticed; Tomas felt his cock begin to stir inside his pants, coming to attention as Isra stepped closer. "'If it was,' she said, 'then your father would not have been drawn to me that night.'"

Isra shed her robe completely, revealing a body with full, lush hips and heavy, pendulous breasts. "She told me that the moment she saw him, she knew that he was there to give her a child to carry on the line. That I would be born, that I would learn the ways of the faith, and that I would take over as Priestess of the Flame when she died. She saw it all in that instant, a vision from the Flame, and she understood that her destiny was the same as her mother's and her mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother. She was not there to restore the Flame. She was only there to carry it until humanity was ready for it to shine once more."

Tomas nodded absently, not sure what Isra was talking about but realizing it had been some time since he'd moved or spoken and not wanting to seem rude. She was talking about the flame, he'd picked that up. Was she explaining how it could burn the way it did? Or why Tomas couldn't look away from it anymore? Those seemed to be the only things Tomas could care about now. That, and the growing erection that Isra was reaching down to set free from his suddenly tight and uncomfortable clothing.

"That was why she ran," Isra said, settling onto his cock. "She knew that my father's wife would discover his infidelity, and she would stir his memories of the Flame. And if she made them both slaves of her will, then others would notice, and still others and others beyond that, until the Flame would be a secret no longer. And humanity is not ready for its beacon. That time has passed once. We are not permitted to know when it will come again."

Tomas no longer really heard anything Isra said as words. They were just pretty sounds now, soft and coaxing his cock to thrust deeper into her with each motion of his hips. He was lost in the flame, his eyes drawn so far into the dancing fire that hung in front of his eyes that his body barely seemed to matter. He only noticed his own arousal because he heard his whimpers and moans interspersed with Isra's speech and knew that he was getting close to his climax.

"And now I know what she knew," Isra said, her words slurring slightly as her breath quickened into panting. "You are here for me, to bring my child with your seed. The return of the Sacred Flame will not come again in my lifetime. Mine is not the voice of command either, not..." She gasped sharply, grinding down to meet each of Tomas's thrusts. "Not save tonight. Tonight, I command you. Tonight, you are mine." She leaned down, kissing Tomas savagely. "My only conquest, but it will have to be enough."

She gripped his chin, forced him to look away from the fire for a long moment to stare into her eyes. Tomas found that it made no difference. The flame was inside him now, dancing in his mind until it was ready to release him. Tomas had never realized how wonderful that would feel. He stared up at her with a dreamy smile on his face, waiting to hear her speak to him in the voice of the fire.

And she did. She said, "Cum."

Tomas felt his hips thrust up, straining hard as his cock spurted harder than he'd ever imagined possible. He groaned in ecstasy, helpless to resist the power that drew pleasure upon pleasure out of him. He didn't think, he didn't resist, he simply came and came until he felt completely spent. Only when he finally collapsed back onto the couch, shaking and sweating, did Isra slide off of him.

She got onto the couch and sat down next to him, dangling the pendant just over his face. "Now rest, my subject," she said. "You are still capable of more pleasure than that...and if this is my only night to rule, then I will make the most of it."

THE END

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