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Chapter Text

The Star Beagle Adventures                                                
Episode 9: Long Distance Runaround
Scene 2: Sheeux Vosq Nala

9.2
Sheeux Vosq Nala

Vosq was the most devout of believers. She was a Nala - she gathered seed to shower the sacred mound so that the Holy Ones need not interrupt their sacred studies in order to seek sustenance. She was, by many, many years, the oldest of Gathering Virgins. She had not been forced to withhold herself from mating by any defect in her looks or any deformity in her body. If she had been malformed, she would not have been allowed to serve. 

The time was coming soon when the effect of aging would require her to give up her basket, and the special role in serving the Holy Ones that the basket symbolized and find a mate. Or a mate would be found for her. And given her age, it would not be a choice mate.

Sheeux Vosq Nala had served the Holy Ones all her life, but had only been in their presence once. That had been the day she was confirmed as a Nala. On that magnificent day, she had been brought down into their nest, into pools of crimson light, between row after row of Holy Warriors up to the thrones of the Holy Regents. They never said anything. But they were humming, buzzing, a deep vibration at the low threshold of her hearing.

As she was brought deeper and deeper into the nest, the humming had become more and more powerful. So powerful that she had felt it up and down her spine, filling her with ecstasy. Overwhelming her with visions of distant landscapes that she had never imagined, but where these Holy Warriors had fought. Where they had been long ago bred. 

She had finally been brought to prostrate herself before the Holy Regents. The Holy Ones did not wear clothing. The Holy Regents, like the Holy Warriors, had a short tail that came from the bottom of their abdomens. A tail that ended in a venomous stinger. The High Holy Regent’s stinger was vibrating and weeping venom. As she had been taught, Vosq had brought this stinger into her mouth and suckled the venom, swallowing it. It had burned her tongue. It had burned her throat. It burned in her stomach.

Then the Holy Regent had reached down and grasped the fur on the back of Vosq’s neck, quickly bringing her to her knees and jabbed her stinger into the new Nala’s belly, forever branding her with a triangle. A downward pointing triangle, symbolizing the Nala’s place… A blade to set into those below her. A platform for the Holy Ones to stand upon. To stand upon her.

That had been 35 years ago.

Vosq had taken very good care of her skin. It was still black, shiny and supple, with no signs of the graying associated with age. But some black streaks were already evident in her purple fur. And today, for the first time since her confirmation, she had glimpsed a Holy Warrior. It had emerged from the nest and looked directly at her as she labored.

There was only one nest on Qualgaldi III. The vast majority of the purple went about their lives as if the Holy Ones were not there. Aside from the Devout and the Heretics, most purple had no contact or interaction with the Holy Ones. The Holy Warships came and went and never disturbed the Purple Fleet. Almost no one realized just how many Holy Warriors were in that one, vast nest.

Vosq walked across the baking grassland of the savannah that surrounded the nest. There was a compound for the Devout, built above ground from mud bricks. Just outside of the compound entrance was a large pile of books. All the same book. The Book of Heresy, penned by the greatest and most wanted of the heretics, Ben Urri Urri. So much a heretic that he had taken the word “heretic” as his given name and his title. 

Vosq avoided this pile. She could smell the fuel that had been poured on it. After sunset, the books would be set on fire. 

Vosq brought out her cell key as she entered the compound and walked down the halls. She unlocked the door to her cell and as she stepped into her cell and closed the door, Sheeux Vosq Nala lost consciousness. 

And another consciousness carefully closed and locked her body inside her cell…

9.2