THE END OF THE DREAM

The sun hadn't long dipped below the horizon when I filled the bathtub with warm water, adding bath salts (Rocky Mountain Meadow) to give the water a delicate scent for the ritual I had planned.

I carefully placed the mirror with the words inscribed in eyeliner beside the tub as it filled, and after removing my clothes, I lined up the seven candles - in the colours of the spectrum - around the bath. After lighting them with care, I paused, taking time to savour the delicate dance of the candlelight on the tiled bathroom walls. I unbound my long hair and stepped into the warm, scented water, and placed my ritual dagger on the bottom of the tub as the ritual prescribed.

Outside in the warm summer evening, the raucous screeching of the cockatoos gradually faded away, leaving a velvet silence unbroken by anything save the gentle movement of the rustling of leaves on the tree outside the bathroom window. I smiled and lay back in the water, enjoying the delicate feel of it lapping around me as I settled.

The particular ritual I was performing included a very specific meditation through which were woven specific Words of Power. The meditation involved imagining myself to be the Lady of the Lake, naked and joyously free as I swim, darting through the clear, deep waters of the lake with the speed and agility of a dolphin. All around me are the turrets and battlements of ageless buildings, sunken in a time long past. To me, they seem almost alive as I swim, rolling and diving this way and that. In one electrifying instant, I am the Lady of the Lake; the "meditation" has become the reality and a surge of ecstasy riots through me, almost unbearable in its intensity. I am no longer in the bathtub, I am under the water, in this place no other had seen for millennia.

And then, just as I thought I would shatter and split into a million brilliant shards of light at that which filled me - I found I was no longer alone. I turned slightly. And he was there. The most breathtaking man I have ever seen. In another instant, that was no less earth shattering than the last, I took in everything there was to see about him; the face that was at the same time utterly masculine and utterly beautiful; the lean but well-muscled body that was perfection itself; the dark eyes that now gazed back at me with such overpowering promise - he was perfect in every way. His full lips smiled at me now, luring, enticing. His right hand stretched out lazily towards me in the water, beckoning.

And I went to him. His large hand caught mine and pulled me close. With a surge of water, I found myself up against his hard body. He smiled down on me, his dark hair floating freely around his head and creating such a sight that my body involuntarily clenched in spasm after spasm. He had barely touched me, and not in the least intimately.

Yet.

We slowly began to turn in the warm water. My own long hair drifted free and slowly beside me as we turned in our water dance. His long, muscled arms slide around me, pulling me even closer, if that were possible, and bringing me up against the hardness of his erection.

I looked up into his eyes, wanting to say something. But here, in this place, at this time and with him, there was no need. There would never be any need for words between us. His head lowered and his lips touched mine. With an untold quantity of water above, below and around us, we kissed thirstily. His moist tongue slid into the welcoming sheath of my mouth. I closed my eyes, beyond thought, beyond emotion, beyond existence. I was in another place altogether, and he was there with me.

His hand slid between my open legs as we hung suspended and lazily rotating in the water. At his first touch, I threw my head back in a silent scream as my body convulsed.

Then he was entering me. Sliding slowly and leisurely into my cavern. This was no frantic heart-pounding thrusting. This was long and slow, and with each removal and reinsertion, I wanted to scream again and again. He held me up as all control left me and yet again my body erupted at the feel of him moving inside me. I thought I might die from the pleasure.

And then, with a last powerful, yet still slow, thrust, he sent his warm fluid deep within me.

I looked up into the beautiful face to find him smiling, slightly, almost quizzically down at me.

Then he began to fade, as did the water borne scenes around me, and I found the water in the bath had grown cool.

I felt boneless.

What had happened? Did I dream it? No previous meditation had ever been so real.

Stilling my suddenly shallow and rapid breathing, I brought myself back to the ritual. Beside me in the water lay the ritual dagger. As was prescribed, I brought it forth, and raised it, dripping, from the water. As the blade shone in the light from the candles, I said the prescribed words: "The blade of light, truth and power belongs to me."

"No," he said, from beside me. "You belong to me, as does your blade. It's been so for countless centuries, my dear."

The blade fell from my fingers and sank back into the water in the tub as I spun to face him.

Of course, he was right. Out of nowhere - or perhaps out of a long-locked chamber within me - memory came pouring forth.

Ares.

He was clad entirely in the black leather that had eternally been his uniform. As I gazed up into his eyes, his mouth twisted in a slight smile, and he leaned down to lift me from the water. I was instantly dry.

Funny, I thought, he knows the way to my bedroom, yet he's never been here.

"My sweet, I've always been here. You just haven't been looking in the right places," he said as he placed me on the bed. He stood gazing down at my naked body. The contemplative look on his face as his eyes roamed my body at his leisure had me swallowing rapidly.

"Ares, please. It's been so long."

He smiled now. With the passing of barely a heartbeat, he stood naked above me.

This time I moaned aloud in my need for him.

As he came down on me, I had to ask.

"Was it real?"

He wasted no time in sliding over and into me. And as my body clenched to receive him, he murmured close to my ear, "I think you know the answer to that, my dear."

And he was right. I did.