Calliope - In The Arms Of Morpheus

Chapter 4

Teleute had promised she'd be right back. Well, she wasn't, so Morpheus started 'to walk amongst the living'. But in much more comfortable clothes with pockets for the golden watch-like saculum and a large cowl. Ah, the joys of a huge and comfy black himation to hide the biker boots...
He sat on a large stone near the banks of the Hippocrene outside the temple grounds, resting to watch the waking milling about their lives.
A few feet away, the guy who had brought the linens to the temple was watering his donkey, singing a song about being kissed by a muse.
"Idios, you wouldn't even know where to find those, if they weren't in the temple regularly." The young maidnes from earlier sat a basket of dirty linens on a big boulder nearby.
"Ow, oi do. Oi'm just too poloite to buther dem."
"Really?" her friend straightened her back.
"Walk up a hippicon along hippocrene, and youw will foind their favoride cove."
The girls nodded and started wahsing their cloths.
"Boi laydies!" Idios' donkey had finished drinking, and they got ready to leave.
Morpheus stretched his long limbs, savoring not duties moment until Teleute would find him.
"Would you like some water, Sire? You look pale and exhausted." One maiden knelt down in front of him, scooped clear water from her bucket with a clay goblet, and held it out to him.
Morpheus tried to muster his fatherly voice. "Thank you, my dear." He just sounded his usual gravelly self.
Morpheus manifested a coin inside his cowl and gave it to her for the drink. "Keep it, girl, buy your sick mother a warm shawl." Her eyes widened.
Had that been too much coin? He could not take it back now, could he? He should remember, but that was such a long time ago.
"How do you know?" She whispered. "Thank you." She jumped up and ran to where her friend was washing linens.
It was useless to tell her, that he had met her mother in her dreams.
Morpheus sipped from the cool goodness in his goblet, and took a deep breath, letting the late autumn sun warm his skin. To his left, the girls whispered and giggled with each others.
"...he calls it 'marital bliss'." The other young woman said to her kind friend, slapping wet cloth onto a stone.
"Explain this to me. I have never-..." the kind one asked.
The young woman laughed drily. "When you are married, in the night, well, you must know, surely?"
The unmarried one shook her head. "I have never even kissed a man." She sounded sad.
"Oh the kissing is fun. It gives you... feelings." She moved onto the next item of her laundry. "Desires. A Kiss is like a promise."
"And marital bliss?"
"Doesn't hold the promise. When you're married, in the night..." she looked up into her friend's eyes. "My husband comes onto me. The first time, he laid atop me, and forced himself between my legs. It hurt."
"I heard of that. But the second time, or the third?"
"A kiss, but then force again. So much... then he grunts and collapses."
The unmarried woman stared at her wide-eyed. "How can this be bliss?"
Her friend sighed. "Apparently his father told him once, that women do not feel anything during the act. He told him they were incapable of doing so. Marcos said that it's part of my marital duty and that I should hold still for him to enjoy."
Misconceptions were taking root, passed down from generation to generation. First, one man noted that their wife seemed to not enjoy. this got shared with other not so skillful men and morphed into the kind of misconceived wisdom, that ended up hurting women. He knew that they were perfectly capable of orgasming. He'd enjoyed every single one, his previous lovers had come upon.
"Is that so, Chloe?" the other girl asked. "Then, I never want to get married." She continued wringing her clothes.
"No." Chloe, looked up. "It doesn't have to be like this. But if I had known, then I would have never married a man. They seem to be incapable of tenderness!"
If Morpheus had a heart, it would have sunken by now. Men, incapable of tenderness? How on earth did she come to that conclusion? Probably by her own, who took the easy route, after his father had told him that it is of no use trying. And he would tell his son... A vicious cycle in need to be broken.
"How do you know that this is how it has to be? Without bliss, I mean?" Chloe's kind companion stopped slapping her linens.
Chloe pressed her lips together. Then she inhaled. "I can be tender to myself," she stated with a determined look on her face. "It's better than anything a man ever did to me. It's..." she looked up into the sky and thought for a moment, "It's satisfying."
Maybe this was worth using his spare dream-building power for. To create a dream for all those women, to teach them what to expect of their husbands.
"Dream, did you walk among the human?" Teleute said with a laugh, as she approached from direction of the temple's gates. "Any inspiration yet?"
He nodded. "I know now the purpose of my next dream. It will be about the wooing of a woman."
Teleute sat beside him, one eyebrow slightly risen. Silently, she handed him a chunk of her bread. "You may want to ask the muse Erato for help, then. She is the expert in your field of dream."
He held the bread mid air, stopped by his thoughts.
A goddess had recently foretold it: a Muse it was.
"Thank you, Sister."
He handed her the loaf back, without haven eaten anything. There were things to do, ideas to be conceived.
"Farewell, dear Sister. Thank you for taking me to ancient Greece." Morpheus rose and nodded to Teleute.
She took the bread back, turning from side to side, as if she was looking if anything was wrong with it. "You're welcome."
For Morpheus, it was time to walk along the Hippocrene, approximately for the disctance of a hippicon, to the cove where the Muses dwelled.

(Are you guys ready for the first meeting? Vote for this chapter, and then go find out what Callopie thinks of Morpheus.)