Liturgy of the She-Goat
Short Story
by Dani Arieli
MY SOUL, DEVASTATED BY WHAT WAS ONCE ITS OWN, longs for the liturgy of your embrace! And it was said there was a peculiar stable, one on a riverbank near dank reeds and past the raspberry bushes, wherein a white goat and an ivory lady bleated in harmony throughout the night.
They called her Vavata—the clergymen and the farmhand, for even knights of sterling pauldrons and sanguine-diluted gauntlets would visit her amidst the forenoon. Come nightfall, the farmhand—older than even a proper archbishop within the annular prairie—would disappear within the wych elm hovel and no one, not even the flock of ravens that pecked leisurely at the carrion strewn around the farm, would see him emerge until sunrise. Every forenoon, when the knights rode by on their loyal steeds and greeted the farmhand with a proper greeting, talk of the alleged depravity within the hovel never fell upon deaf ears. The Surly Knights of Camelot! The Depraved Virility of Liturgy! Oh, none of it mattered to the farmhand; for he had Vavata and his goat.
However, when Archbishop Lóegaire appeared in the farmhand’s scoliosis-sunken doorway, drenched solely in the tears of the violet sky and the grime in which the prairie nourished in bold, it was clear that Vavata would soon retreat to a new home. No man argued with Archbishop Lóegaire, and the farmhand only grimaced as he stepped aside—clad in his pale, linen garbs as though he were deep in slumber moments prior—allowing the archbishop to admire the rudimentary air of the quaint, little farmhouse. And he asked the farmhand: ‘You live without unrest on this verdant land, yet there are no oxen or boars! Is it you who fertilises the soil?’ And he turned to him, to sneer at the farmhand, as he finished, ‘Or is there another of whom we shall consider?’
The farmhand replied with haste: ‘You speak of Vavata. Come, I will lead you to her,’ beckoning forth the archbishop as he hurried outside and toward the wych elm hovel. The dark rain that fell from the clouds only drenched the farmhand and his late-night visitor, but neither seemed to remark on the arrogance of nature. ‘The hour is late, Your Grace. I fear she may not take well to any visitors.’ And it was clear that the archbishop had come to visit under the most shrouded of circumstances, as haze-addled clouds of perforated blight and needle-driven speckles of rain plagued the prairie in a way no sane man would have left his abode—not even for Vavata. But this member of the clergy only saw the scourge of the weather as a grin from God.
And so, the archbishop asked the gangly farmhand: ‘Does she usually take well to visitors? How about those who are brought forth by the apostles? I am certain she will not dissent in my presence,’ and he raised a bushy brow, ‘or my efforts.’
The farmhand dropped his head in a show of fatigued respect. ‘Aye, Your Grace. She will not dissent before a man of God. She has been rigorously fed, herded, and shorn. Vavata is a good girl—you will see.’
Archbishop Lóegaire only frowned in turn as his jackboot grazed a sludge of shit. ‘Of where do these droppings come from from, I wonder, if there are no animals to be seen?’ But the shrill bleating that then sounded stole the archbishop’s hardened gaze from the farmhand, and instead, he bent down to smooth his fingers over the coarse exterior of the hovel. The farmhand looked down to the archbishop’s pristine garbs—much like Vavata's stark complexion, each threading and filigree was of ivory hue, but the grime that now embraced the vestal hems caused the farmhand to grimace. And the archbishop asked: ‘What bleats in the night with such fervour?’
Following this vain inquiry, the two stood there in utter silence. The farmhand only waited for the clergyman to first move, and when the latter began to pick at the slender shavings of wych elm along the surface of the structure, it was clear that Archbishop Lóegaire was ready—and rather impatient—to enter the hovel.
‘I must ask,’ the archbishop hissed, ‘is she with child?’
The farmhand only smiled—his teeth rotted with urine-imbued varnish.
At this, the archbishop frowned; though, his display was devoid of teeth. ‘You will not see me leave, come morning. Goodnight to you.’ And of this remark, Archbishop Lóegaire was certain. Then, with a curt nod to the farmhand, his half-bent stature disappeared amidst the wych elm.
As the knights had once whispered amongst the clergy, rumour was actualised: Vavata was a radiant, sentient painting of adolescent beauty. Her ivory locks spiralled down past her small-sloped mammaries and around her glistening, slender thighs. Hushed whispers percolated amidst the infantry that the farmhand used scented starch to colour her locks a snow-crested tinge, and the archbishop only sighed with a haughty smile as he fell to his knees and thanked the Lord for such a thing to be true. And he introduced himself—as Laoghaire Lóegaire—as he ground his palms into the dirt in which the wych elm lay, but Vavata did not speak a word in turn. Like Medea, she sat there, sprawling legs spread and conceited arms at her sides as she watched the archbishop bow and whine upon his knees. Vavata—she was a presbytery in her own right. But her eyes, with the hovel being much too dark to discern the true nature of, remained unblinking, before the archbishop merely gasped as he took notice of her left eye.
In place of vestal dimples and frail eyelids, a perforated sheet of swollen epidermis resided. It was utterly crude—the amalgamated nature of the frailest feature of all—for how would he look at her, Vavata, as he took her through the night? Then, the archbishop recalled: Vavata wished for her eyes to match those of a goat; she entrusted a scalpel to draw the iris out into a horizontal line, but she only caused herself partial blindness and a permanent clot of disfigurement. He could always rely on the veracity of knights through their vestigial banter.
It was then that Vavata's lips, frigid and chapped, took the archbishop’s ear lobe between her teeth as she whispered—voice shrill and blighted by viscous rasp—not once to be repeated: My soul, devastated by what was once its own, longs for the liturgy of your embrace. Where had he heard that before? But by the time his own features had washed over with bewilderment and unease, Vavata's malnourished stature utterly melded with his own—thighs clinging taut to his plump waist, skeletal fingers reaching greedily toward his groin; and perhaps Archbishop Lóegaire was further clothed than any man who had crawled into Vavata's hovel, for the young female groaned and ground her teeth as she attempted to bury her digits amidst his trousers. Archbishop Lóegaire only watched in mere dissolution as his desire contorted to life at the pulpit of her dissenting fingers.
Suddenly, his warm, calloused hands gently took hers within his own—as though to quell her haste, to tell her to slow down, to pace herself, regardless of her being in the hovel. But Vavata nipped in retaliation.
‘You bashful whore!’ the archbishop yelled. ‘Burning shame! Where are your manners?’ Vavata nipped, again, at his hand, only this time, he countered her canines with a slapdash slap across her mouth. He hissed and his lips swelled as his hairy fingers gripped at the young woman’s chin, tugging her toward the liturgy of his embrace. ‘Where are your manners,’ he whispered—again, ‘where are they?’ But her eye—the one that had not been seduced by a scalpel, a human one, the she-goat’s transfixed eye of anthropoid piety—burned into the archbishop’s pale, whiskered skin. Here, he whispered once more: ‘Why do you reject my embrace, she-goat?’ And she bleated.
Here, Vavata rose from the soil and reached for a silver pail that lay in seclusion in one of the four, dank corners. Eye bearing straight into the archbishop’s, she positioned the pail between her legs and squatted atop the annular farm tool, before a stream of steam spiralled down in a gilded frenzy. She carefully took her nipples—one at a time—between her fingers, but the archbishop was quick to rise to swat her own digits away; and he assumed this role, squeezing gently at the tender buds as he watched Vavata throw her head back and groan. With far more desperation than he had anticipated, Archbishop Lóegaire cradled the she-goat and brought her back down upon his waist. Without any form of protest, she then ground her hips against his clothed groin—before beginning to bleat without end.
‘My soul, devastated by what was once its own, longs for the liturgy of your embrace,’ she whispered. Then, she moaned: ‘My soul, devastated by what was once its own, longs for the liturgy of your embrace.’ And she cried: ‘My soul, devastated by what was once its own, longs for the liturgy of your embrace!’
The archbishop pushed the young female off with a disorderly haste, and he grabbed at his chest as he began to cough and attempt any way to clear his throat and nostrils of the vile stench of the hovel. In his haste, the pail had spilled all over the squelching soil, and Vavata screeched at this blunder. Practically pouncing on the clergyman, the she-goat wailed as she sicced her teeth onto his laryngeal prominence. Again, she grasped at his hands—his large, hairy, shaking hands—and she slapped them against her pale mammaries. She pouted, and Archbishop Lóegaire could not bear such an unseemly sight of a young lady. So, he used his manly hands—his God-given gift, the Reaper of Vestal Epithelium—to milk her.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
The forenoon carried a bitter scent amidst the prairie-air—a concoction of urine and damp soil—and when Archbishop Lóegaire awoke, he watched the goat and her pale complexion as she butted against the rotting and perforated door. Wearily, the archbishop rolled over onto his side, grimacing at the dirt smears along the white of his linens. But the ethereal sight of the goat, as her legs wobbled and her head rubbed against the coarse surface, stole away the archbishop’s frustration. His trousers were buried beneath the empty pail in the corner, and he made quick work of brushing his hand against his frigid manhood; it looked as though it had been hanged by a careless headsman—full-moon welts branded into the skin with the curvature of some diagonal-diseased cross, slithering all the way down the girth into a tangled pubic mound. With a sleek hiss, Archbishop Lóegaire allowed his length to fall from his grip, and he hobbled over to join the goat. Patting her head, he slapped the tip of his hanged member against the bleating animal and watched that damned muscle spring back to life. He cursed himself into the soil and he swore to repent for his curiosities. But Vavata had become something of an apostle within the hovel, and Archbishop Lóegaire couldn’t seem to bring himself to weep at his betrayal of celibacy.
When Archbishop Lóegaire left the wych elm hovel, he took careful notice of the farmhand, who was seated in a nearby pile of sopping forage. The latter grinned at the clergyman, beckoning him forth as he cupped his grime-speckled hands in the shape of a half-crescent moon. ‘Good-morrow to you, Your Grace.’
The archbishop smiled in turn, placing the silver coinage in his sweat slick; in his other hand, he held the leather lyam. ‘Yes, it appears so.’ He opened his mouth to speak another remark, but he decided against this as the farmhand stood and looked down to the she-goat.
The farmhand twirled a string of forage between his fingers, humming as he spoke, ‘Aye, take care of her. Make sure to milk her twice a day. Remember, Your Grace—she’s a milk maiden, so you won’t need to impregnate her.’ And the archbishop only bowed his head at this—a show of unwavering respect, for the farmhand did not demand any sort of acknowledgement from the clergy; Vavata's voyage to the presbytery would be kept secret. ‘That is all, then. Farewell to you, Archbishop Lóegaire.’
Clicking his tongue, the archbishop turned on his heel and headed off through the prairie—the rollicking grass of Boyne Valley, the uncharted marshland, until Scurlogstown could be seen. His goat never once bleated during the trip. Verily, Archbishop Lóegaire would forever remember the liturgy of her embrace—for once they arrived inside the gilded annals of God, the archbishop collapsed to his knees and bleated. Vavata hobbled past him, and then, his God-given vision blurred; for the last thing he saw was a goat trapped amidst mosaic tile and mural-fettered glass.
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