It was only since his arrival in Ahiranya, where passages from the Birch Bark Mantras were painted on walls and recited by poets who used the brothels as cover to disseminate their politics, that he had come to understand that what he and his friends had blushed over as lewdness was a source of faith and defiance to the Ahiranyi, who joined stories of seductive beings of flower and flesh, of two men lying together, and of world-conquering glory on the same lyrical breath.
