Temple of the Four Winds; La reve d'Heloise

La Vielle Soeur Agathe, : autrefois, Madame Eugenie Agathe de Noirceuil, was no stranger to adversity. Having once known the pleasures of domestic connubial bliss as a married woman and mother of four.
An outbreak of plague had taken all her children & her husband, when she was but thirty years of age... This tragedy marked her for life,from that time onwards; effecting a cathartic devotional impetus to take orders as a sister of mercy.
Her tenure, well known, now over forty years in 'La Couvent de la Sang Precieux', as an exemplary votaress of the order., her long years of service were imbued with an innate compassion, warmth and sense of a selfless generosity towards her sorority and accolytes.
All who knew her, admired her quiet strength, personal fortitude and intellectual wisdom.
Skilled as a talented paintress, herbalist and medic... La Mere Marjolaine Valdevendage, held her in the highest regard, treasuring her presence in the convent as a pillar of strength, tireless worker, and teacher.

Sitting quietly and attentively at the bedside of Soeur Heloise , she embroidered a sampler, ( whose design ); a scene from the life of Ste. Genevieve...had occupied her hands in the evenings for some weeks now. The candles guttered as she worked the needles nimbly with aged fingers still deft. Careful, loving and attentive to every task she turned her hand to, she was the very picture of grandmotherly warmth...and nursemaid to the sleeping Heloise; whose ordeal earlier that evening had so alarmed them all.

The shadowy blue glow on the occluded orb , of a new sickle moon waxing, road the gently scudding drifts of whispering vernal stratus, beyond the open casement.
Heloise slept soundly , in peace, unaware of her guardians presence. In deep slumber, gentle fancies made a shadow lantern panorama across the minds eye of her meandering psyche. The threads of her thought wandered slow and aimless, like that of an ancient river, taking its wanton way; with oxbow lakes, moraines and eskers...and floating within it; were the dispparate elements of a mind oer wrought.

Here came gliding by her absurdly, a cow, wearing lunettes and knitting a shawl! Next came a silver boat, of subtle design, driven on by numerous tritons blowing into shelled horns & whistles of hollowed antler. They swam before her nimbly piloting the craft from the water with powerful thrusts of fins and tails. In the boat sat the blessed Virgin resplendent and surrounded by attendants...among these, were several angels with multicoloured iridescent wings, playing various musical instruments...there she sat smiling in her double crowned attribute as both ,"Mary Queen of The World", and the godess, "Venus Aphrodite"... beside her, an angel with long red ringlets, falling to his knees, dressed her hair with a comb, finely wrought of blue coral. A playful cupid, gingerly painted each of her well formed aureate nipples with rouge d'alkanet, while lastly a muscular young blackamoor, applied a powderpuff to the carefully manicured fringe of her golden queynte.

The muscles of this ebony Myrmidon, rippled visibly under the sultry sheen of strange oils and scented unguents. He stood perfectly nude; like a living Etruscan Bronze...and coyly, removing a golden cestus from the loins of his mistress; threw it into the hands of the waiting Heloise ,with a beaming smile.
Following attentively, this extraordinary tableaux vivant, her reverie continued in this vein...,but to even stranger phantoms appearing... Yet., despite the outlandish nature of her minds contrivances, throughout she observed it all dispassionately and with a mild internalized amusement. As if all that came before her was "right", "normal", and just as it should be. Nothing shocked or surprised her, and thus, the outward appearance of her benign,restful countenance did not betray any cause for concern or alarm on the part of Soeur Agathe..., who now yawning, ( as the clock had struck the half hour past midnight), ...decided to make her departure in silence. So blessing her sleeping patient, crossing herself , she gathered her accoutrements and rustled gently from the cell.
Heloise, was alone...
Alone with her burgeoning dream of a gradually swelling river. A school of smiling dolphins followed the silver boat of Venus...Behind this, 'hove a dusky barge', lit with firey braziers and torches, drums of a primitive, insistant cadence beat wildly. On the barge stood twenty hoplite warriors, crossgartered in kid, with breastplates, greaves and cuisses...but as was their wont,...nude below the waist... oil and sweat glistened on their mighty thews, ...their stalwart and finely tooled equipage stood fully erect in the dancing firelight and darting shadowplay. Each proud spear rose manfully & with obscure artistry, from a tightly knit copse brush; (varying in hue, from pure gold, to rufous red, to deepest ivory black). ....Heloise, had never seen such a delightful display, ( she marvelled inwardly ).... Behind this pulsing platoon, forming as it were a parapet of first defense around the edge of the craft... an orgiastic dance was in full throttle, joyful maidens and hoydens, entirely as nature had made them with fulsome breasts and hips; clothed only in sprays of jasmine and gardenia, disported themselves in abandon, cavorting and gyrating among showering clouds of fragrant rose petals and essence of frangipani.
In the centre of this firey barge stood a raised dais, upon which the resplendant Pan of her earlier epiphany at the Temple of the four winds...coupled in the full force of his amorous crisis with an ecstatic Maenad of unfathomable beauty. Radiantly ensconced on his fascinum, like a fallen star exploding... the Maenad rode the mast, with a look of exultant joy on her glowing visage.
Heloise bore this almost affront with not the slightest pang of jealousy, despite the fact that her erstwhile 'lover', had been totally taken up by this new conquest.
The drums beat wildly, Heloise became aroused in a tremulous state of soporific torpor...her fundament awakened to the earth pulse of her vulvic mound. Her engorged clitoris began to throb rhythmically to the ancient atavistic tremelo with a primal insistence undeniable.
Flashing in ecstatic recollection of that first bolt of erotic lightning that had struck her to her very core, the previous day...when the Ithyphallic Pan first cleaved her asunder with his molten fascinum of turgid hot Parian.

In a somnambulists trance of supernatural agency..., Heloise rose from her cot with an ineffable urgency driven on by the seductive phantoms of her ongoing reverie unbroken.
Reaching the fastness of her locked reliquary , into which she had yesterday, secreted the talismanic artefact, brought from the temple.... in joyful transports she grasped with both hands the marble fascinum from its hiding place....