When I woke up I was full to the brim with the good stuff.

I was saturated with it, overflowing with it.

I was full of the Honey of the Gods, the Divine Fluid, the Sacred Elixir.

I was so full of the Divine Essence that I was quite lost amidst it. I did not know myself.

Its richness was beyond measure, beyond telling.

There was nothing like it.

For a while I lay there, suffused with the ethereal inner glow of the Nectar, marvelling.

Then I started to become uneasy. I started to worry:

Suppose somebody wanted to take it away from me?

Suppose others knew of the Honey of the Gods, and knew that I had it?

Suppose they wanted it for themselves?

Suppose there is a power out there, an agency which could reach out, and with the power that it has in it, puncture me, and drain off the Divine Fluid, the Nectar, the Ichor, leaving me empty?

I grew afraid. A great fear, coupled with a dark shadow of anger, was born within me.

I raged: They will not have it! They will not have it! I will not permit it! I will fight them, I will outwit them…

The elixir is mine – none will take it away from me.

I became afraid and indignant in turn.

I became troubled in my mind.

Waves of confusing emotion took hold of me – arrogance, timidity, rage, terror, avarice, pride, paranoia, anxiety…

Before I knew it I had been swept up into a tormented tumult of thoughts and feelings – pulled this way and that.

Locked up in inner conflict.

Different inner states warred within me, striving for victory.

After a while anger, greed and pride won out, forming a shaky alliance against the others.

It’s mine! It’s mine! It’s mine! I repeated to myself.

The Honey of the Gods is my birthright.

The Divine Fluid my rightful possession.

I am the container for the Sacred Fluid, the Ambrosia, the Nectar, the Golden Ichor…

It was ordained. It was my right.

None other shall take the Honey, the Elixir, The Ambrosia.

It shall be mine forever…

Then the etheric fluid turned sour within me. It turned. It went bad in the twinkling of an eye. It grew rotten and started to stink…

I was cursed. That which had been Holy was now an unspeakable Horror.

I lay paralysed in a grave of putrescence.

I lay there for numberless years. For centuries.

Rotten to the core.

The Raven sitting by my head.

I passed into a morbid state.

I putrefied.

The Ichor within me putrefied, releasing unspeakable poisons.

It congealed, became like wax.

The wax embalmed me, in a state of living death.

And then, after the slow centuries had passed, an army of great shiny beetles marched upon me.

They had glossy carapaces, iridescent, full of rich green tints.

They marched upon me, like the Sacred Dung Beetles of Ancient Egypt.

Like the Scarabs.

The Khepera.

The Emergent Ones.

These beetles marched upon me in slow solemn shining streams, each taking a portion of the crystallized golden Ichor, and bearing it away.

The procession continued, without haste, for many days, until all the congealed Divine Fluid had been retrieved.

Then they left me.