#kahina

The Madam Kahina is clearly very happy with the start of your time in her service.

Allow me to introduce Queen Dihya "Al-Kahina (Arabic: الكاهنة)"

A Gallery of Ancient, Medieval, & Modern Warrior Women

The first female warrior attested to historically is Queen Ahhotep I of Egypt (l. c. 1570-1530 BCE) who put down a rebellion by the Hyksos when her son, Ahmose I, was campaigning against the Nubians. In literature, the first mention of women warriors comes from Homer's Iliad (8th century BCE), which references the Amazons.

Whether attested to by historical or literary documents, women warriors are nothing new. According to Greek mythology, Epipole of Carystus disguised herself as a man to fight in the Trojan War, and the Assyrian queen regent Sammu-Ramat (r. 811-806 BCE) is said to have led troops and is also believed to be the inspiration for the legendary warrior queen Semiramis. It is possible that Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt (r. 1479-1458 BCE) did the same long before Sammu-Ramat, but this has been challenged.

Recent criticism claiming that women warriors are somehow an invention of 21st-century revisionist historians is untenable as historical and literary works spanning thousands of years argue otherwise. The following image gallery presents a sample of ancient, medieval, and modern warrior women from around the world.

{Geralt x f!OC} - Tasteful Intimacy

Link to Ao3

He had seen passion expressed a hundred ways - through noise, through haste, through need that mistook itself for hunger. None of it prepared him for the quiet that came with her.

Kahina moved as if silence were an element she had learned to breathe. The candlelight caught the dust of the road still clinging to her sleeves, the faint scent of osmanthus and spice that was always, somehow, a promise. When she touched his face, she did not seek; she recognised.

He thought of the first time he had seen her - how she had stood before the Ofiri envoys and spoken for herself: no court, no coin, no father’s bargain. She had refused a place in any man’s harem and walked north alone, carrying her ink and her perfumes and her impossible calm. Even now, with his heartbeat echoing against hers, he could feel that same steadiness beneath his hands.

The world outside their window murmured: vines shifting, a nightjar calling from the slope. Within, there was only breath. Her head turned; her hair brushed his cheek. Her hands found the scars across his shoulders and traced them as if reading a language long forgotten.

“Geralt,” she whispered - not a plea, but a remembering.

He closed his eyes. The walls seemed to widen. The act itself dissolved into something simpler - two lives meeting at the seam where pain and solace cancel one another out. When she trembled, he held her, not to steady her but to be certain she was real.

He had expected want; what came was recognition. When she touched him, it wasn’t searching - it was as though she already knew the map of him and was confirming the memory with her hands. Every breath she drew found its echo in him. The world narrowed to the soft pull of air and the muted beat that passed between them.

He forgot the difference between yielding and leading. She melted against him - but not in surrender; rather in trust, like something precious left open to light for the first time. The small sounds that escaped her were not cries, but the body’s way of saying yes.

When he moved, she met him - a rhythm older than words. The candle’s flame bowed in the draft, painting their shadows as one.

He’d meant to be careful, the way habit taught him. But the moment he felt her whole body arch toward him, heard the breath leave her in a single sound - half gasp, half surrender - he froze, stunned by how alive the silence around them became.

No one had ever met him like that, without distance. He realised he was holding his breath. The instinct to withdraw - to shield himself from the depth of it - came first. Then he felt her arms tighten, her head turning against his shoulder, the tremor that was both joy and fear, and the instinct faded.

He whispered her name once, only to hear it steady her. After that, every movement changed: slower, almost reverent, as if he were learning her language one heartbeat at a time.

Time lost its measure; even breathing became something shared - like the rise and fall of the same tide.

Afterwards, the air tasted of iron and honey. She lay against him, heartbeat calm again, and he realised that nothing in Kaer Morhen or on any battlefield had ever taught him how to hold peace.

And then there was only stillness: a long exhale, a hand tracing the line of a shoulder, the faintest shiver that might have been laughter or prayer. He felt her tears before he saw them - warm, silent, unashamed. He brushed them away, and she caught his hand, holding it against her cheek.

“You make me forget where I end,” she whispered.

He kissed her hair - slow, almost reverent.

“That’s where you begin,” he said.

“Does it frighten you?” she asked quietly.

“What?”

“Feeling safe.”

“A little,” he admitted.

She smiled against his skin.

“Then we’ll learn it together.”

The cold of the night did not touch them, the warmth they had created filling the space with promises unspoken.

A while later, barely louder than the crackle of the fire, she asked,

“What do you call what we do?”

He turned his head slightly, a half-smile tugging at his mouth.

“That a trick question?”

“Maybe.”

She kept her gaze on the ceiling.

“People have so many names for it - sex, ploughing, coupling, making love. I wonder if any of them mean what they should.”

He was quiet for a beat, then said,

“Most don’t. They make it sound like something you win or survive.”

“And love?”

He shifted onto his side, propping himself on one elbow so he could see her face.

“That word’s worn thin from overuse.”

She smiled faintly.

“Then what would you call it?”

He thought for a long time - the kind of silence that felt like work. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost unsure.

“Peace,” he said. “When it’s right, it feels like peace. Like the world’s quiet for once.”

Her eyes glistened in the half-light.

“Peace,” she repeated. “That’s… better than love.”

He brushed his thumb along her cheek.

“Maybe it is love. Just not the kind anyone bothers to name properly.”

She turned toward him then, forehead resting against his jaw, her whisper nearly lost to the fire.

“Then I suppose that’s what we make. Not love. Peace.”

The fire had burned down to embers. Their breathing had found the same rhythm, the kind that made the world feel smaller, softer.

Neither had spoken for some time. Geralt thought she’d drifted off - her body relaxed, her hand loose against his chest. He was half-asleep himself when her voice, quiet as a thought, reached him.

“You bring me peace, then.”

His eyes opened. The words hung there, fragile but certain, like something she hadn’t meant to say aloud.

He turned his head just enough to see her profile in the faint light - lashes brushing her cheeks, lips barely parted.

For a long moment he didn’t trust himself to speak. Then, low and rough:

“I’ll take that over love.”

She smiled, eyes still closed.

“It’s the same thing. Just rarer.”

He let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. The sound was quiet, almost reverent.

He brushed his thumb against her knuckles, tracing the pulse there, then murmured,

“Then I’ll do my best to keep it.”

No more words after that - just the quiet certainty that, for once, neither of them needed more.

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so if you've been sitting around thinking wow. the myth of atalanta is actually queer as hell. now you can listen to my wildly indulgent sapphic take on one of my favorite greek myths!