Maul's Journal. File 2: A Persuasive Tongue.

Author: Andrea Evans

E-Mail: cardassifan@eudoramail.com

Rating: NC-17 for sex.

Characters: Darth Maul/f

Disclaimer: Yes, George, I fully acknowledge that Maul's yours not mine
(and godknows I'm not making any money out of him),
but if you treated him a bit better maybe we wouldn't be quite so driven
to fill in the blanks...

Archives: DMEB, Sith_Chicks, others please ask.

Summary: The third* of a series of short vignettes from various points in
Maul's life.

*Yes, the third.  The files start counting from 0, the Prologue.


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We Azarbrak have always held that we are the sum of our experiences. The
story of
our lives is written on the books of our bodies and our faces for all to
see, as well as
on the hidden records of our memories. The lines of our habitual
expressions are
carved slowly into our faces by the claws of time.

Since ancient times, my people have taken this philosophy to its ultimate
conclusion,
and used blades and fire to sculpt new lines and scars into our flesh. We
have used
inks and subtle wounds to paint permanently upon our skins, the i0mages and
symbols
and words that define and summarize our most essential selves.

This is, of course, a vital and deeply personal ritual: both the designs
and their
execution are the sole responsibility of the individual. No other hand may
assist.
Children are not permitted to mark their hides permanently until their
horns have fully
erupted, at puberty. But childhood is spent playing with designs, painting
with inks on
the surface of our skins. As we find a path to follow in life, as distinct
personalities and
skills start to develop, we search constantly for images or poems that best
summarize
and express our unique selves. And the process only starts at childhood's end:
Azarbrak continue adding new patterns and refining old ones as their lives
unfold, until
an elder's hide may be covered everywhere he or she can reach. But these
days only
the shamans carry their dedication to self-expression so far: the pain of
the process
ensures that most designs are intricate miniatures or sparse, elegant
sketches of only a
few lines, rather than grand, mighty artworks.

The one exception to this practice applies to those of us with jet black
hides, like mine.
Of course, no ink or dye can ever be seen against such a background, so the
only
areas which can be decorated are those where the pigment does not reach:
the few
areas of exposed membrane. The glans and inner labia fall into this
category, but the
patterns there are always decided on by our chosen mates, and their
execution seals a
Bonding. That left me with only the inside of the mouth and the tongue. So,
I was at
least spared some of the agonies of choice: I knew, unlike most children,
which part I
would use for my first (and only publicly visible) work of self-expression.
All that
remained was to decide on what marks I would make.

Vai Shanu, the village poet, was as coal-black as myself, and he had
tattooed the
opening stanza from his most famous epic on his tongue. The glyphs were densely
packed, but surprisingly readable: "Now let all tongues be still, and open
your minds to
my tale." When I was eleven years old and starting to think about my own
designs in
earnest, I used to go to his hut, ask to study it, ask him how he had done
it, how long
had it taken to heal, and a hundred other questions. ...He was the most
even-tempered
man in the village, that poet. Somehow, he managed to put up with all my
questions
with a glint of good humor in his blue and grey eyes. He acted for all the
world as if my
company wasn't really the trial it must have been (but how on Irahdon could
anyone
really not mind me hanging around?). When I asked him why he'd chosen those
lines,
he grinned at me and said that it saved him time: instead of crying the
opening lines of
his most-requested poem at the top of his voice, as poets generally had to
do to attract
an audience's attention, all _he_ had to do was poke his tongue out at his
audiences,
and they could just read the lines for themselves, for a change!

He was able to tell me that tongues take less time to heal than most other
parts of the
body, and a few other practical things, but that was all I could really
gain from talking
to him. I was no poet then, and I am none now. And I certainly would not
submit, then
or now, to carrying around someone else's inspiration on my body for the
rest of my
life. So, I would not take Shanu's way; no poetry for me. ...But what?

***

The answer to my dilemma came to me a month after I spoke to the poet.

Her name was Siye Ferilan: a girl my age, all long slender limbs and tawny
golden skin.
Her eyes were a deep blue ringed with green, the colors of grass-bordered
lakes. As I
grew older, the girls' reactions toward me resembled less and less the
hostility-masked
fear of the boys. More often as time went by, I saw all of them cast lingering,
speculative glances my way. But there was always a bolder light in Siye's
eye. She was
the first to openly smile on me. When we were alone, she would even raise
her hand to
her temple as I walked by, her fingertip provocatively circling the growing
knot on her
scalp where a horn would soon erupt. The sight made the breath catch in my
throat,
though I should have been able to dismiss it with ease: had I not carried
the full horned
crown of a man from the moment of my birth?

She began to haunt me like a vengeful spirit, robbing me of vital
concentration, robbing
me even of sleep. I would wake in the night, rock-hard and covered with sweat,
forced again and again to take myself in hand, milk the frustration from my
body in
liquid spurts, before I could hope to gain some sort of rest. I would see
her in my
mind's eye instead of the tender herdbeast, even as I raised gun or spear,
endangering
my focus on the kill. Thoughts of her even came between me and my training:
a loss of
concentration left my skull ringing from the blows of a youth I had bested
many times
before, and as I left the warrior's hall that evening, my mood was blacker
than my hide.

This had to cease. One way or another, I would be free of this festering
longing. I
would reclaim my self from her machinations.

Perhaps it was the Force itself that led her to take a twilight walk
through the band of
woodland that lay between the hall and the village. I remember how my heart
seemed
to stop beating when I saw her slender form appear among the trees, as if
my own fury
and longing had summoned her to me, as if I had created this shining vision
out of my
own balked lust.

I closed the distance between us, advancing on her, inexorable as the night
that was
falling all around us. I was focused on her utterly: I _knew_ her thoughts,
with a clarity
I had attained only in rare flashes before. My thwarted passion raged in my
blood:
never before had I felt so powerful, so _alive_. I could sense the tangled
mixture of her
fear and desire for something so much stronger than herself. In a dizzying
flash of vision
I actually saw myself as she saw me: a looming and ominous figure, in her
eyes already
as broad and strong as a man, powerful, merciless. And with a shock, I
tasted the
desire that radiated from her, stoked all the higher by her fear.

I think that was the first moment in my life that I knowingly tapped what I
would later
come to know as the Dark Side of the Force: the first time that I deliberately
harnessed its power to my will.

Our gazes locked, and I reached out to her, captured her mind, bent her
will to my
own. Her terror howled into my mind as my control clamped over her, genuine and
intense: Azarbrak bond for life and we expect these bonds to be unsullied
by prior
experience. There is only one penalty for breaking this law, and that is
death. If she
was taken now, then any bondmate she might later take would try to kill
her, as soon
as he discovered the truth. But for months now I had been driven to the
ultimate edge
of desperation. I was in such a state that I could not sleep without being
haunted by
dreams of her, I could not hunt, I could not train; my inmost thoughts were
no longer
my own. It was all her fault, with her slow, leering smiles and her
teasing, circling
fingertips.

So, ruthlessly, I reached out, took her mind in my grasp, and crushed the
resistance
from her, felt it seeping away like warm blood between my fingers.

This total, absolute domination of another being took less time and effort
than a single
beat of my heart.

I closed the last distance between us, and reached out. For the first time
I touched her,
cupping the flaring line of her cheekbone in my palm. The blackness of my hand
seemed even more intense against the gold of her skin as it glimmered
softly in the
evening gloom. Her eyes were bluer than I had ever seen them before: as I
watched,
tears of terror and desire spilled over, ran trails of quicksilver down her
cheeks.

I could not resist. I leaned in, drawn as naturally to her suffering and
need as steel is
drawn to a magnet. With delicate flicks of my still-unmarked tongue, I
licked her tears
away, tasting the warm salt, memorizing it. Slowly, my arms wound around
her tiny
waist, feeling her panting breath moving the delicate vaulted arch of her
ribs. I could
have snapped her spine with one hard clench of my arms, and my grip on her mind
was so absolute that she knew it.

I sank to my knees, drawing her down with me, leaning forward to let her
down on the
ground with a rustle of dry leaves. With careful hands I found the knots at
shoulders
and waist that held her simple shift together, and untied them slowly,
drawing out the
pleasure, reveling in every unmarked inch of her skin as I bared it to the
cool night air
and my own heated gaze. She was beautiful to my eyes, beautiful beyond my
imagination. I could feel the vision of her -- naked and spread open,
helpless and
terrified and frantic with lust -- burning its way into my brain, with the
terrible intensity
of the first time: never forgotten, never to be repeated.

Ahhh, how I wanted to stab my throbbing length to the hilt; impale her in
one savage
thrust, pound into her until I tore her apart. But something made me pause,
even as I
knelt before her, forced her thighs apart with my knees, bared my rock-hard
shaft to
her terrified, longing eyes.

I like to think now that it was the first dawning of subtlety in me. If I
simply gave in to
my instincts and fucked her like an animal in rut, I would be killing her,
as surely as if I
strangled her with my own hands. That had its own enticements, certainly,
but it would
be over as soon as she lay with any bonded male, and any speed is merciful. How
much more subtle and exquisite would it be to sow the seeds of a whole
lifetime of
hidden torment, long decades of unspoken, unhealing misery? To feed her
poison that
would gall her for all the rest of her days, and coat it in such sugar that
she would be
hungry for it, accept her doom greedily from me? Ohhh yesss. The thought of
that
triumph sang to me, in a voice powerful enough even to drown out the roar of my
aching flesh.

Casually, I slithered out of the short fighting robe which was all I wore,
rotating my
shoulders in a deliberate display as I let the dark fabric slide away. I
leaned down to
her, propping my weight on my hands as I angled my hips. I just brushed the
very tip
of my cock against her hot folds, sliding teasingly up, down, then lifting
away. Her
whimper of frustrated lust sang to my soul. With a low, mocking growl I
bent myself,
pressed the whole length of my body to hers, stroking her all over with
hard, heated
skin. Undulating over her like a black wave, I slithered downward, sucking
at her
throat in a way that would certainly leave bruises, biting cruelly at her
taut nipples,
suckling blood from her breasts like milk. At last I reared back, poised
over her
spread legs. I panted, stroking her wet folds with the gust of my hot,
humid breath. She
whimpered again, arching her hips off the forest floor with a rustle of
dead leaves as
she writhed, beyond shame, beyond herself, eager only for my slightest
touch on her
most delicate flesh. The emotion rolled off her like coils of steam:
delicious shame
buried beneath rising, cresting waves of rabid, animal lust. She knew the
consequences
would be fatal, but she was beyond caring. She was desperate for me to fuck
her,
even if it meant her death.

The summit of power I reached in that moment was as sublime as any orgasm.

Growling, I opened my mouth to her, lowered my head, buried my tongue
against her
wet folds, and gave her a slow, lascivious lick with the full flat of my
tongue. I suckled
hungrily at the thick, sweet slime of her excitement as it oozed from her
virgin-tight
opening. With tantalizing slowness my tongue moved upward, finishing with a
single
hard flick against her taut bud. At her thin scream, at her frantic
pleasure radiating into
my mind, I purred and started to lick her more thoroughly: swirling my
tongue teasingly
around the opening still mostly sealed behind a veil of skin, without ever
quite sliding
more than the very tip inside. At last, when I sensed that she was nearing
the absolute
limits of her physical stamina, I decided to end it and settled my
attentions on her
sensitive nub: by now it was as hard and slippery as a hesh fruit seed, and
as richly wet
on my tongue. I closed my lips around it, suckling and swirling my tongue
around it,
alternating a hard pressure against my tongue's rough upper surface with
the slippery
coiling touch of its underside. Her trembling, muscle-locked stasis broke
at last and her
hands clamped down on my skull, her fingers clawing at my horns, hauling on
them
with a glorious, merciless grip. I reached for her mind, planting the
suggestion deep:
*You will never feel this good again, never with anyone else, never in your
life.* I
pressed my open mouth to her luscious flesh as she threw back her head and
screamed like
a dying beast, thoughtless for who might hear her, caring for nothing but
the sensations
I was giving her.

With an imperious wrench, I twisted my head out of her hands, reared back to my
knees, regarded her coolly. She lay panting below me, her skin flushed to a
deep
copper, her eyes wet and frantic, glittering with unshed tears of bliss and
frustration.
She held out her arms to me, hands outstretched, clawing spasmodically as
if trying to
press my head to her aching flesh again. "No! Oh no! Please! I want it! I
want you!
Fuck me! Now!" she gasped, her voice as ragged as her pride.

Slowly, I smiled at her. And stood. And scooped up my robe from the ground, and
shrugged into it with a few casual flicks of my arms. As I retied the sash
around my
waist, I looked down at her, with absolute hauteur.

"Whatever made you think _you_ were worthy of _me_?" I purred, fixing her gaze
with mine, hammering the absolute intensity of my disdain, my contempt for her
weakness, into the innermost depths of her psyche. Without another word, I
turned on
my heel, and walked away.

The distant echoes of her weeping seemed to serenade me all the way back to the
village, though not even my ears could reach that far. I know now that it
was my
sensitivity to the Force that carried the sweet news of her loneliness, her
yearning and
her shame, back to me.

She never met my eyes again after that night, and never again sought to
enslave me
with her smiles or her wanton gestures. And after that night, my sleep was
again as
untroubled as a baby's, and my concentration in the hunt and in training
was even purer
and less able to be broken. From that day on, I began to extend my grasp,
to reach for
others' minds more and more often, learning first to listen, then to
anticipate, and then
to exert subtle, silent control.

***

I decided to commemorate that momentous day, when I first awakened to my own
skills in controlling the minds of others. It was my tongue which had
conquered that
smirking, taunting girl, had broken her will and robbed her of her last
vestiges of pride.
Meditating on what I did to her that day, the inspiration for the design
came upon me,
fully formed. A delicate, jagged branching of fine black lines, curving
laterally outward
from a central line drawn down the length of my red tongue. An ambiguous
image with
more than one meaning. It could represent a single scale of Shepassh, the
dark lizard
of lies, who slithers through the window at night, to breathe his poison
into sleepers'
ears. It could symbolize a single red feather of Harakh, the burning raptor
of lust, who
stoops and catches us by surprise in his stabbing claws, and bears us,
helpless in his
grasp, to the absolute heights of sensation.

Fired by my inspiration, I went alone into the deepest forest one night. I
returned home
as the night was growing thin, with a young kethiak captured in the hollow
of my palm.
Kethiak are tiny, savage, hot-blooded creatures, leaping to catch insects
on the wing,
packing a lifetime's hunting, mating, living, into a single turning of the
moons. Their
blood is the same profound black as my skin: it has been used from ancient
times as a
base for ink, and in its pure form, as a dye for tattooing.

I hurried into the house, grabbed the single polished sheet of metal that
served my
father and myself for a mirror, took it outside, into the clearing outside
the house where
the first full light of dawn would strike. As the low rays hit the mirror,
I extended my
tongue to its fullest stretch. My taloned hand moved with a terrible,
blurring speed as I
picked out the fine lines of the design I saw so clearly in my mind,
tracing them in
hundreds of needle-fine, even punctures in my tongue with the point of my
own claw. I
moved so swiftly, I had finished piercing the design before the first thick
droplets of my
blood started to well from the earliest punctures. And this was good: speed was
essential. We Azarbrak heal with incredible speed and completeness compared
to all
other races: any ink has to be applied almost immediately if it stands any
chance of
taking before a wound closes over. Normally even the tiniest tattoo has to
be done in
many separate sessions: the effect is almost always a little uneven, a
little ill-matched. I
was determined my markings would suffer from no such imperfections. So my
clawed
fingertip moved like a black blur, and the whole design was completed in
less than a
single, slow breath.

I held the kethiak up to my eyes. It blinked up at me with bright,
bead-black eyes.
Delicate feet curled and a feathery tail twitched against my palm. The next
moment I
slipped the little creature into my mouth, and bit down hard. The crunch of
skull and
spine and the tiny death-flurry in my mouth roiled my guts with the desire
to spit, but its
struggles were soon over. I could feel its hot blood seeping out from where
my teeth
had buried themselves in its flesh, oozing until it filled my mouth. It
filled my mouth with
the taste of rust and soot, bitter and intense and utterly unlike any food
or drink I had
ever had. Vai Shanu had recommended the use of conventional ink -- the
stored and
preserved form of the kethiak's blood -- he said it needed to be left on
the wounds for
a twelfth-day to ensure that it had penetrated the flesh correctly. I was
so determined
there would be no gaps in my marking, since the tiniest flaw would destroy
such a
finely detailed, symmetrical design, that I held the creature's body and
its blood in my
mouth for the entire day.

When night fell I at last swallowed the thick, sweet fluid that by now was
half kethiak
blood and half my own saliva, and devoured the creature's bony, chewed body
in one
hungry gulp. I took the mirror inside and positioned it in front of the
lamp. Drawing a
deep, nervous breath I opened my mouth, stuck out my tongue. The inside of
my lips
and mouth were as red as ever: they had no cuts to let the kethiak's inky blood
beneath the surface of my skin. But drawn across the entire upper surface of my
tongue was the design, exactly as I had envisioned it: every jagged,
spreading line
delicate and complete and perfect. An artwork. A masterpiece in flesh and
blood, both
mine and the lifeblood of the little creature I had hunted down. It was the
first of my
markings, and the only one that was ever done with any form of ink. I carry
it with me
still, and will do so until the day of my death. My tongue is a scale of
the dragon of
sweet untruths: a feather of the phoenix of desire.

However, in one sense things did not turn out as I had expected. My long
exposure to
the kethiak's blood had had a surprising effect. Its inky stain had seeped
into the
naturally yellow-coloured enamel of my teeth, spreading out along the minuscule
cracks that even the healthiest enamel show, streaking the surfaces with
black. I bared
all my teeth, snarling horribly at the mirror. My teeth were fearsome,
savage: they
looked for all the world like the striped, gnarled fangs of a savage gresha
cat, the most
fearsome predator on our world. I let the snarl lapse into a happy grin: it
was purely an
accident, but I was pleased by the effect, all the same. Just one more
useful way to
frighten and intimidate all who see me.

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