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“Have you ever witnessed a World Devouring planet?”
“No,” Veritas tells her, a hint of alarm in his tone, “I pray that is not where you have taken us, Ruan Mei. We will be leaving immediately if that is the case.”
She faintly smiles. “You are a praying man? Isn’t religion the antipode of science?”
“Hmph. If you would like to discuss theology with me, you’ll need to choose somewhere warmer.”
“Ah. Forgive me. I sometimes fail to remember that you aren’t accustomed to it like myself.”
Taking out a portable warming device she made herself, she activates it with the press of a button. It floats in the air around them and emanates a heat suitable for living creatures, keeping close even as they ascend icy mountain stairs. The frigid winter ebbs, staved off enough that she sees the frost melt off his dark lashes.
“Better?”
He huffs, pulling his thick scarf higher over his face. “I suppose.” After scrutinizing the little machine, he looks down at her with an arched brow. “I didn’t realize you’re an inventor. I’ve never seen one of that design.”
“I’m not.” Taking his hand in hers, she intertwines their fingers, their gloves blocking skin contact. “I only made it for you. It’s a simple tool. Nothing advanced.”
“How thoughtful,” he hums, so low his voice is almost inaudible in the wind.
Convincing him to explore this planet with her was easier than she had expected it to be. He does not even fight her as she holds onto his hand, rather, he squeezes tightly. She wonders what has changed within him, what is different. He hasn’t been his contentious self around her, only with others.
There is a delicate silence between them that carries nothing and everything with it. Reminiscent of when she wakes before he does, tracing the lines of his handsome face as he sleeps while she remains restless, or when he is planning a lesson and she is plucking the strings of her ruan softly.
Memories, tangled together, unknown to the universe but precious to each other.
Under the ice, encased in hard snow, are dried bones of human-likes and monsters alike. He takes notes of them in his digital datapad while she collects samples, more used to dealing with the dangerous residual traces of Aeons than he is. In their contemplative silence, she realizes how comfortable she has become with him.
That she trusts him.
It is a horrible exposure, truly, to be known. To be seen. It is only Nous’ gaze she ever cared for, once, and now she finds herself searching in the darkness for golden-cerise eyes.
“To further elaborate on what you mentioned earlier,” he says, tapping on his datapad quickly, “I have never witnessed it myself, but I did read accounts of what happened to the Xianzhou Cangcheng. Why did you bring the topic up?”
“Would you ever be interested in watching its destruction?”
He glares at her, that familiar look of have you lost your mind? that fades into his natural confident demeanor. “You mean in your Simulated Universe, I presume.”
“Yes.” Kneeling in front of a patch of frost-kissed flowers, she plucks their petals and drops them into tiny jars from her satchel, preserving them in a viscous liquid. “Though, if I were able to recreate such a catastrophe somewhere in the real universe, I may be tempted. An abandoned corner of the stars, perhaps.”
He only shakes his head at her, stashing his datapad away to glance at the derelict chapel at the peak of the mountain.
Once she gathers all the samples and lifeforms she’s interested in, she seals them all carefully then returns to his side. Gently and tentatively holding his hand again, she leans against him, staring at him rather than the ice-bathed scenery.
“Afraid?”
He frowns a little. “No. I have already considered what will need to be done should either of us be threatened.”
“For every possibility?”
“Every one that I can think of, yes.” He sighs. “Anomalies are bound to occur with you, however, and with Aeons. I believe I have mentioned what unpredictable beings They are, even if it is only Their whispers.”
Gripping his hands tighter, she ascends another icy smooth stair. “Come, then. I am impatient.”
He follows behind her without reluctance, though, it is obvious he is watching for a reason to turn around. To make her leave. He says nothing and neither does she, the ice cracking with each stride together. More flowers and bones, and then there are winter-eaten vines creeping along the walls and floors of the chapel itself.
“What specimens are you searching for, exactly?”
His voice echoes in the spacious emptiness, louder and deeper in the profound quiet left by celestial power. The sound of him reverberates into her bones, echoing into her memories of him like a ringing bell.
Approaching the altar, surrounded by dead candles and vegetation frozen in time, she brushes her gloved hand over the flawless stone, sweeping away icy dust.
It is beautiful. Untouched by the ruin as if Fuli specifically left it alone.
“Veritas. I lied to you.”
He doesn’t respond to her, but she can feel him looking at her. An invisible connection. That is how far they have come together, and that too, she thinks, is beautiful.
He can read her truth, her lies.
“The remaining flora here is fascinating, yes, but I took you here for another matter.” Tapping her knuckles against the altar, she waits for a time, hoping foolishly that an Aeon may respond to her presence. “I wish to see into your memories of me, so that I may know what your “love” for me is.”
“Really now, Ruan Mei? This has to be the - ”
“Do not laugh at me, please.” A chilling gust of wind breezes through her hair. “It will be better than any simulation I could create. It will let me feel it exactly as you do. Then I will understand.”
“It will kill you. Or me. Or both of us.”
“Is death not a fair price to pay for such knowledge?”
He still laughs at her, his boots hitting the icy floor as he closes in behind her. “What worth is knowledge if you are dead, love? What good would it do you?”
“Death may not be the end.” She doesn’t turn around, nor does she turn her head. “What if we ascended beyond this realm?”
“The likelihood of that is less than ideal.”
“Yet not inconceivable. Lan was once mortal.”
He places his hands on her shoulders, leaning his head down to whisper in her ear. “We do not even know what Aeons are made of, or what manifests THEM. What makes you believe you or I could ascend to be one?”
Placing her hands flat on the altar, her muscles tense. The grace of the Aeon’s power is still seeping into this place. “I have done it in simulations.”
“That is only code.”
“It’s enough.”
He grips her tighter. “It isn’t. Your ambition will be your end.”
“You admire me for it, no?” Channeling some of her own icy influence into the stone, she closes her eyes and concentrates on the sensation of him behind her, touching her. “Or, have I misunderstood you? Are you simply scared that I will bleed into the stars and leave you behind?”
“I do not need you.”
“Oh? Hit a nerve, did I?”
He exhales sharply. “I need no one. I’ve said this.”
“Yet here you are, with me.” A light burns in her eyelids, erupting in the darkness. Gold and lavender, colors that remind her of him, tinted white by the Remembrance. “Ah. I’m able to resonate with Fuli, actually. How fortunate. Veritas?”
“No.”
“Don’t be obstinate. You’ve come so far. We are already here.”
“You will lose yourself chasing this.” He lets go of her, backing away. “I will not be part of it.”
“I can do nothing without you.” Opening her eyes, she spins on her heel. He’s still within reach, so she grabs onto his sleeve, closing the distance between them. “I will not force you, however. I will let this be your choice.”
He stares down at her, and it seems as if he is about to leave. She expects him to. Then he shoves her against the altar, kissing her, all fierceness and need.
His lips are warm and soft against hers. Melting some of the frost, the chill seeped into her blood. He parts from her unexpectedly and presses his body to hers, pinning her to the icy stone.
“Go on then,” he breathes into her ear, “look into my memories, take them.”
She smiles.
Him giving himself so entirely to her is addictive. It could be a facet of love, but she wouldn’t know. Not yet, at least. She is still crawling her way to it.
“Focus only on me. It will only work if we are concentrated.”
He nods, resting his forehead on hers with his eyes closed.
She takes a moment to delight in the intimacy of it then shuts her eyes, channeling her power into Fuli’s lingering influence. With him, it’s simple - their familiarity makes the process effortless. It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing herself, only scarcely distorted.
“Ah - ” He flinches. “Ruan Mei, I - ”
Cradling his face in her gloved hands, she slows her breaths. Smooths her thumbs over his cheeks. Hoping it has a calming effect on him like it does to the creatures she concocts.
“Shh. Don’t be anxious. It’s okay. Your heart will only slow for a moment.”
Fragments of locked away memories, of secrets he may not even remember, reveal themselves to her slowly. Love is so unknown to her that she doesn’t know if she’ll recognize it, but she tries. She tries and tries, aware of his breaths becoming heavier, deeper, strained.
The stress on the mind is severe. She’ll have to be quicker.
“Ruan Mei - ”
“A little longer. Only a little.”
Except the thread of their connection snaps. A fraction of a second. And then she opens her eyes to see vines and wild, icy flora creeping and growing at an accelerated rate. Unnatural.
The 'life' coils itself around his wrists, his ankles, his throat, yanking him toward the doors of the chapel, away from her. Her immediate instinct is to run after him, but something stops her.
A presence.
Imperceptible. Godly. Nonexistent.
Yet undeniably real.
“You wish to play as an Aeon?”
She knows it isn’t an actual voice, or even an actual Aeon. She knows without a doubt that it isn’t and yet she listens, only staring as Veritas struggles against the relentless plant life that tangles and restrains him.
“What would you sacrifice?”
Anything.
Her heart feels as if it is being encased in ice.
“Would you give your memories? Yourself? Your virtues and your vices?”
Anything.
The voice laughs at her, a chill that could rip out her spine.
“Ruan Mei.”
It’s Veritas, clawing his way across the floor to her. Or attempting to. Choking and bleeding himself in the effort.
“Do not listen to whatever this is. It isn’t real. It isn’t - isn’t good. You must know that.”
He’s pulled back further, blurring into a dot of indistinct colors.
“You wanted to know of love? Of how I feel for you?”
“Yes,” she says, momentarily breaking from the trance. Crystals are forming on her lips, under her nails.
“Then you have to trust me, Ruan Mei.” He tells her, his breath icy and white. “Trust me over your instincts. Over anything else. Defy the logic in your mind, and that is love. If it hurts and aches and makes you want to tear it out, then give into it. Fall into me, and know that I will catch you.”
Death has never sounded so romantic to her, and it’s rather charming how he paints each aspect of her life in that rose-tinted hue of sentimentalism. How he always has, since the first roots of her fascination gnarled into beautiful obsession.
She can hear her parents calling out to her, screaming her name. Crying for her to look. She tastes her mother’s simple pastries in her mouth mingled with blood.
Something is trying to mess with her. And it’s working.
“Veritas - ”
“Do not look. Do not listen.” Flowering blossoms of - what she realizes is mara - are creeping along his body, caging him in place. “It’s not real. If you doubt me, we will both die here. Focus only on me and my voice. Come to me.” A shaky inhale. “Please. I will keep you safe, I promise.”
Is this how all of my experiments have felt? she wonders, a new understanding for her, the fear and abandonment and shameful humanity bleeding out of her as she takes a slow step, then another, and another, her high heels clicking against the celestial ice.
The hissing voice whispers directly in her ear.
“Will you choose him over Aeonhood?”
It stops her. Stills her. Controls her. She hesitates, and more vines burst from the cracked floor of the chapel to choke him. He writhes in pain and calls out to her, pleading.
“You must leave them all behind.”
Her hand twitches.
“You must abandon yourself.”
Ice and snow swirl around her in a small blizzard, her hair fluttering in the wind. She watches indifferently as Veritas tears and rips at the frozen vines to no avail.
He will die, strangled, if she lets him.
“You could be more. So much more. Give all of yourself away.”
The air becomes thinner and thinner, unbreathable.
“Ruan Mei,” he screams, “please, this is not worth the loss you will suffer. It is lying to you. You will not be yourself. You will not be anything. It will only take all that you are. And I - I will miss you.”
Miss her? and she understands that - all at once feeling small, like a child, then seeing herself dressed in all black as she mourns her parents that she failed to protect.
She misses them.
She would miss Veritas.
It would be another loss. She would -
Not again. Not because of her. She promised herself once that she would never make this mistake. The icy chains around her mind loosen and she breaks from the compulsion, gasping as she mentally crashes down from almost leaving her own body.
The thorny vines retreat.
The whirling shards of ice immediately stop, dropping and shattering to glinting pieces on the broken chapel floor.
She stumbles over to him and collapses, feeble in her knees. He catches her, holding tightly. Desperately. Cradling her head in one gloved hand.
“I’m sorry.”
It is the first time in her life she has ever truly, tragically meant it. That her body shakes with the intensity of it. That tears drip from her eyes and freeze on her lashes.
His neck is bleeding from the wounds the vines left. His flesh is blue.
Icicles crack and drop around them in his silence.
“I’m sorry,” she weeps, “I’m so sorry.”
He says nothing.
“Ruan Mei.”
“Hm - ?”
Her eyes are crisp with a layer of ice, frost stuck to her lashes as she blinks. Her vision is a blur of white snowfall, a dark cerulean sky, and strands of familiar lavender hair. She clings tighter to him, clasping her hands together to secure the position of her arms around his neck.
“An aurora.” His breath fogs white. “Look.”
He’s stopped his descent down the mountain slope, standing in place to admire the atmospheric phenomenon. Waves of light undulate in a myriad of infinite colors.
In her life, she’s witnessed far grander and more marvelous spectacles, but sharing this moment with him somehow makes it different. Better. Brighter. Another precious memory that would be worthy to cage in the Garden of Recollection.
Her heart is beating too loud. Her emotions are not as indifferent and incongruous as she prefers them to be.
“You follow the Path of Harmony, correct?” He hums thoughtfully. “It seems Xipe has noticed you. Their authority is in the air. My heart is singing - what a unique sensation this is, truly. A thousand voices all chanting in unity.”
“How do you know it isn’t because of you?”
“Aeons never take notice of me.” A pause, where there is only harmonic silence and snowflakes. “You, however, are a genius in ways few could ever even comprehend. Or dream of. I am merely another mundane speck of dust in the stars.”
“I can’t tell if you are being serious or not.”
“Hmph. Good.”
Time is meaningless, then. Seconds or years could have passed. A day or an eon.
He holds her firmly and never lets go, though she knows his muscles must be exhausted by this point. She shifts her gaze from the stars and lights to stare only at him, his profile ethereal against the canvas of endless white.
“Where will you take me now?”
He blinks, snowflakes stuck on his dark lashes. “To my home. Unless you’d prefer the space station over my company.”
“No,” she murmurs, tiredness laced in her weak voice, “I don’t want to be alone.”
Harmony blesses them with an everlasting bond, tying their hearts, bodies, and minds together for eternity. A piece of her soul is put in him. A piece of his is put into her.
She can feel it etching into her, deep and permanent. Herself tethered to another. An Aeon’s concept of favor.
It will never be undone.
You have made your choice, and she, for all her knowledge, does not know what to do with it.
“I believe I’ve thought of my next research project: Why A Genius Can’t Seem To Take Care Of Herself Properly. I suppose it is my responsibility to educate you on the skill of tending to your own needs.”
He took her to the safety of his apartment in the Guild’s main space station. He brushed off the snow and started a fire for her to warm herself. He cooked her dinner and spoke of nothing at all.
She could only sit and wonder what voice it was that whispered to her, locked away in her thoughts.
There are carmine scratches around his throat and wrists. The vines of her creation had scraped over his flesh, about to suffocate him, and the memory is a ghost in her mind, a hallucination that won’t leave. She can’t unsee it and he will never unfeel it. Yet he appears unfazed by the entire ordeal as if it didn’t happen. He does that better than her, that he can compartmentalize so meticulously that his “real” life remains unaffected by whatever difficulty she traps him in.
While for her, reality and delusion have blurred together, with no dividing line. She is only more and more desperate as he remains unchanged.
She watches him as he casually picks and prods at his food, eating none of it while he reads a book held in his hand. The lenses of his glasses reflect the fluorescent lights and astral maps floating overhead.
It’s so normal that it bothers her. That her skin itches, needing to be scratched or torn off or remade. If only she were an Aeon, then she could remake herself. If only failure didn’t constantly haunt her.
“Veritas.”
“Hm?”
Crawling onto the dining table, she pushes the plates of food and glasses of water aside, cupping his face in her trembling hands after. He’s warm and alive, blinking indifferent but caring golden eyes at her.
He sets down the book calmly.
“Hurt me. As I hurt you.” Equilibrium. It will fix her. It will balance things between them again. “Do something to me. Inflict pain onto me like I did to you.”
He seems offended by the offer, scoffing. “I do not harm women. Even those that nearly kill me in their demented study of godliness.”
“I am giving you permission.”
“I do not want your permission.”
“Why?”
His brows knit together. “It is crude behavior. Particularly to a woman I find rather divine.”
She pouts at him.
He claims it is not love, that it is simple desire, what he feels for her, but that is a lie. He is what makes her vulnerable, and it is heavenly.
The way her ribcage feels like it is pried open when he whispers her name, the way her heart cracks with only a glance from him, no matter their distance or who stands between them.
She has felt closest to the Gods in his presence.
The mania of divinity that has stained her mouth and hands with the blood of flowers, the essence of lifeforms, the sin and sacrifice that comes with chasing what is beyond mortal reach. Her veins are corrupted with ice and apathy. It will never leave her, and now she fears what such a want will do to him, all because he would let her.
Sticking her thumb past his soft lips, she pulls down on his lower one, exposing his white teeth. “Bite me.” He doesn’t react at all and she frowns. “Please. I’ll take anything.”
He turns his head and only gently kisses her palm, closing his eyes for a moment as he does. Conveying unspoken emotions she yearns to devour for herself, if it would let her know them.
“Pain will not be enough to distract you.” He speaks coldly, as though he’s giving her a medical diagnosis. “Your suffering will not be undone by me. Only yourself.”
“Then what do I do?”
“A genius is asking me for advice?”
“For succor,” she pleads, “you are a doctor, so fix me. Make me better. I am too heartless. There is something wrong with me and I am not in control of it.”
He laughs at her, deep and a hint sadistic as he takes her smaller, delicate hands in his. He strokes his thumbs fondly over her skin then removes them from his face, standing from the chair.
She’s left kneeling on the table as he towers over her, looking down at her over the golden rim of his glasses.
“I have warned you,” he says, bitter, “I told you love is terrible.”
“And beautiful.”
“Yes.” He grabs his own wrist, rubbing it as he flexes his fingers rhythmically. “Yet. What if you feel it and there is only regret? What if it only disappoints you?”
“Then I can only blame myself.”
He stares down at her and she stares back up at him, neither of them saying a word. He tells her to finish her dinner and she does, and after, they clean the table together in complete silence. Guessing that he is about to throw her out, she sends a message to Herta about the Simulated Universe.
She can lose herself in it. She can forget this.
For a while, at least.
“You’ll have to beg me, if you wish for me to do as you ask.”
Glancing up from her phone, she sees him leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. She ignores all of Herta’s texts and turns off her phone, setting it down on a table covered with neat stacks of books.
“Properly,” he adds.
She’s good at pleasing others when she needs to, when it’s to lead her to what she’s after.
Getting down on her hands and knees is not below her. Crawling over to him and placing her hands on his thighs, bending her head back to look up, as if he is a deity.
“Please,” she begs, “teach me of love, cure me.”
He shakes his head, tousling his lavender hair, and laughs at her.
“What is love, but a kinder word for control? Obsession?” He kneels down, rolling the pearls around her throat between a thumb and a finger. “It’s humiliating. You won’t want it.”
“Please.”
He sighs, despondent.
Then he stands and holds out a hand to her, palm upturned.
“Get off your knees, love. You are too refined of a being to fall so low.”
He makes her bathe with him in hot, floral scented water. It is not so terrible, as he massages her shoulders and neck - but she is eager, restless. Her body quivers at his touch. Her heart aches when she listens to him ramble on about some of his students.
Later, once the bath is drained and she is naked and soft on the bed, she tells him what a dazzling creature he is. How he shines so brightly amongst the dull minds he is forced to exist with.
“I am nothing,” he states, solemn and self-deprecating.
“Do you really believe that?”
Taking off his damp towel, he never takes his golden eyes off of her, and she takes the chance to touch his lips. He flicks his tongue out and licks at her finger, hungry like an animal. Like he aches to bite her, and oh, would she let him.
She wants to observe him as he gives in to the desire that she has felt burning hot in his blood, so different to hers. She wants to be known in secrecy. She wants and wants and wants, and it is refreshing as the first bloom of spring is, as droplets of winter melting into soil to bloom fresh life.
His teeth could bite the flowers that bloom from her body. He could taste the sap from her veins. If she remade him into a monster, and herself into a delicacy, she could tame and test him, and he could edge the line of devouring her.
A tempting experiment. To see him unraveled and undone, devoid of his normal composure. Eating away at her with his love.
“Yes.”
“Hm.” A coating of ice spreads over the covers and pillows on the bed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d assume you follow IX.”
“Lan personifies resolute determination.” His chest is bare, dotted with the warm bathwater, and she admires his muscular physique, dragging her nails down his skin. “A decision made that is both salvation and destruction. Pursuit inconsiderate of the consequences. Unyielding no matter the cost.”
“And that makes you nothing?”
He blinks at her, slow and soft. “No. It is myself that makes me nothing. I am gifted. Yet I have hunted knowledge my entire life, and I am worthless for it. Unseen by Nous. It is all that I am. All that is known of me. Which I have since long accepted.”
She rests her hand over his heart and only stares at him, silent as he speaks to her in a whisper. He crawls over her, forcing her to move back.
Predator and prey.
Who is who, though?
“The Aeons adore you, Ruan Mei. How many have glanced in your direction?” He teases his lips against hers. “How many have you simulated in that little Universe of yours? How many times have you birthed and ended THEM with your own flowering hands?”
She collapses onto the soft pillows and blankets, letting him surround her. Sinking into the mattress, she only touches him, gentle and fascinated strokes with her knuckles, her manicured nails.
“What is it you are after?”
It’s not a question that needs an answer. He already knows. It is only being asked to taunt her.
He smirks, leaning down closer, and his fragrance of parchment and bergamot fills her. Flows into her. His teeth graze her ear and she tenses beneath him. “Do you even know anymore?” A low chuckle. “What if, my dear woman, you have already found it? What if it was you all along?”
“Me?”
“What if you are the essence of life itself? Would you even be aware of it?”
Normally when she is considering such notions she is in her lab, not naked, and not with someone else. She has never wanted to share herself with anyone, and now that is all she can do. Being alone has never seemed so bitter.
Sliding her hand into his hair, she pulls his head down, brushing her lips over his. “You ask me questions at the strangest times, Veritas.”
“What finer time would there be than when we are vulnerable to one another?”
“Hm. When I can focus.”
He shifts a leg between her thighs, pressing his knee against her dripping cunt. “Oh. You’re wet already.” His smirk turns into a grin, white teeth glinting in the dim artificial mock of candlelight. “What could have you so excited, love?”
Honesty is so easy with him. Too painless that it spills out of her, unbidden. “I am thinking of turning myself into a flower, and letting you eat me.”
He breathes out a humorless laugh.
“You certainly are an unfathomable woman, do you know that?”
Pressing her hands against his shoulders, she coils her legs around him and switches their positions quickly. So that he is pinned under her. “If you were disturbed by my thoughts, then I would not share them with you.” She dances her sharp nails over his flushed skin. “Yet here you have been with me, for far too long to be considered merely of academic interest.”
He grabs onto her hands, halting her exploration of his body. “Tsk. You think you can take control so readily this time? You asked me to fix you, did you not?”
“Then do so.”
The slickness from her cunt is smearing onto him as she sits atop his supine form, grinding her hips down. He ignores her, reaching into a drawer of the nightstand. A smooth piece of black cloth is taken out, one that she left there from when she had practiced her embroidery as he slept.
He rises enough to wrap it around her head, plucking the hairpins out of her hair as he does. She is blindfolded, a tender knot at the back. Sunken into darkness, but she can hear him move and the metal of the pins as they are put down somewhere.
“There is a parasitic flora that once existed amidst the Xianzhou Fleet.”
He traces his warm fingertips over her cold skin, mapping the curves, lines, angles, and dips of her body as if committing her to pure memory.
“I am certain you have studied it?”
“Yes.”
His hands are on her hips, then drift higher until he’s touching her breasts, brushing his thumbs ever so lightly over her hardened nipples.
“It could consume entire civilizations, if left unchecked. It fed off the mara. Off of the dead and dying.” His lips press against her collarbone, her shoulder, the line of her throat. Gentle, deliberate kisses. “It would rot those with mara from the inside out. By the time it showed visible symptoms, it was too late.”
She arches her back. “Is this meant to arouse me?”
He huffs a breath against her icy skin. “You wish for me to eat you. Am I not enticing you with this imagery?”
“Mocking me is hardly proper.”
“Not mockery. I am letting myself envision what attracts you.”
Her senses are heightened by the lack of sight. It takes very little to have her gasping or twitching as he touches her, teeth and lips, fingers and nails. He is too careful with her. Treating her like one would a delicate flower, unplucked. The methodical manner that he adores her with has her cunt clenching around nothing.
“Eating you … ” He grabs her under her legs, laying her flat down on her back on the bed. “Devouring you … ”
His power tingles over her skin, Imaginary force prickling her nerves. A wave of peculiar energy washes over her, light and fleeting in its nature, but intense regardless.
She has no guess as to what it did, what he did to her. The connection of Harmony that binds them together has her feeling complex and inexplicable sensitivity to his every touch.
“So if you fail to become an Aeon, you would be a flower?”
“A simpler life, perhaps,” she muses aloud, her eyelids fluttering behind the blindfold.
“Indeed.” His hand is around her throat, then cupping her face, then his thumb is pushing into her mouth. “Too boring for a woman like yourself, I imagine.”
“Would you let me blossom? Or pluck me from the earth and watch me wither?”
He kisses a path down her body and she writhes, muscles taut when he settles between her thighs. Her hips are lifted a little higher, his hands strong and warm under her. He blows a single puff of air against her exposed cunt and she squirms, eliciting a laugh from his throat.
“I would do neither,” he tells her, “I would find a way to turn myself into the light that nourishes you.”
To resist the urge to take off the blindfold, she claws at the blankets, inhaling his scent that’s all around her, the clean oxygen of his living space that has also become hers.
“It must be so lonely. Chasing the inconceivable all your life.”
He parts her wet folds with his tongue, licking up and down. Her mind blanks. Clean with nothing at all. Icy white and blinding snowfall.
His tongue rolls around her clit, circling the sensitive bundle of nerves over and over. All she can do is hold her breath and wait. It would not be becoming of her to beg so hurriedly.
The way he pleasures her is painstakingly slow. Oddly disciplined. Distinctly him. A form of torture, which she may deserve. It is not beyond her that she has made his life far more difficult than it once was.
“I was never lonely until you,” she confesses.
And she forgets to breathe, until her lungs choke it out of her.
“You should see yourself,” he purrs, “so beautiful, being denied what you want. It must feel unusual to you. Not knowing what to do when I tug on the leash you hold.”
Ice bursts out from her hands, and she can’t see it but she knows the bed, the walls and floors, even the ceiling are likely all covered in it. A biting frost that creeps out from her, and he does not fear it. He does not pull away or run. He pushes his face harder against her, fully committing himself to devouring her as she asked.
She can hear him breathing through his nose, heavy and measured, keeping control of himself, and in the tied knot of Harmony, his heartbeat pulses into her, through her bones.
Their bodies in tune with each other, like music. Never again will either of them be severed. It is eternal.
Scents of flowers mingle with the heady aroma of sex. Morning dew upon soft petals and his tongue lapping at her, drinking in her arousal like a sweet nectar. It all blends together, him and her, veiled in ice and dotted with snow.
In her dreams, he is rougher, he is cruel - he is his most known self, gruff and inconsiderate. He leaves after. He does not say anything sweet. It would give her a reason to not think of him, to avoid him and keep to herself as she always has.
Yet in reality -
He is giving without a care for himself. He is telling her lovely things. He is selflessly bringing her to an astral high and then catching her once she falls.
His tongue is still swirling around her slick folds as she comes, his fingers curling against a spot inside of her that makes her knees draw close together. She moans loudly and he laughs in prideful satisfaction.
Her body is crystal ice. The only heat is from his mouth and the blindfold over her eyes.
Her skin is cracking in her mind, and long extinct Cangcheng plum blossoms sprout from where she shatters. Impossible, but seeming possible then.
The blindfold is pulled off of her by her impatient hands, tossed onto the floor. Shaking.
She blinks and as the watercolor blur disappears, she sees that her imagination has manifested into an illusion in reality. Her skin is a pale blue and broken, flowers taking their place within her flesh. He is gaping down at her, mouth shining with saliva and her slick as he gingerly touches one of the blossoms.
“So this is how you see yourself,” he says, sounding distant.
The Imaginary power she felt earlier has shown itself. Painted by him. It is a deception but it looks so real, that the petals of the flowers react to his fingers on them.
“You did this.”
“Yes. It is not real, do not panic.”
Her chest is heaving from the pleasure he twisted out of her. “Why?” She could suffocate on her tongue, dripping with the taste of a home that has been eaten and destroyed. “Why do you want to see - ?”
“You?” He scoffs, cutting her off. “Why wouldn’t I, love? I want to know you. I want to understand you. It is the only way I will be able to “fix” you as you wish for me to.”
“You know how?”
“No,” he admits, impassive, “but that does not mean I will not give everything I can in the attempt. It starts with this. It starts with trust. Such is the foundation of love.”
He remains kneeling between her legs as he touches each of the flowers, not plucking or picking them. The last one he gives his attention to is under her ear, and she shudders as he strokes it gently.
“Does it feel good?”
“It’s not real,” she sighs, looking only at him as he examines her intently.
“Hm. That didn’t answer my question.”
Clicking her tongue, she shoves him down onto the bed, taking control again. It’s instinctual. In her blood. She was created to take what she desires with a terrifying perseverance. He is no different from her pursual of life, of Aeons, of matters that mortals should not even consider delving into.
His concentration breaks. The illusion of her skin as ice and her veins blooming with plum blossoms vanish.
The frost on the walls, floor, ceiling and bed remain, however. That is real. That is her, and he has been turned colorless by how cold it is, his skin pallid.
“Yes. Everything feels good with you.”
Crawling onto him, she kisses him with abandon. With fervor. With emotions that she didn’t know were within her, a passion that is as surprising as it is uncontrollable. His cock slides smoothly into her when she slams her hips down, fitting their bodies together as is familiar, as is inevitable.
His thrusts are frantic as he makes love to her. He has lost his control. She is no better.
Trembling in his tight embrace. Surrendering to this all-consuming love. She feels it through him, pouring into her, numbing in its bliss and white like an exploding star.
“I love you, Veritas,” she gasps, testing how the words sound on her lips, “I love you.”
He chokes on a moan that turns into a sob, breathless with her name as he tells her a burning I love you in echo.
Golden light swathes her, engulfing her into what she can only assume is a fleeting glimpse of love.
How boundlessly beautiful it is, even as it fades into nothing.
In the artificial morning he wakes to find himself alone in the rumpled, stained sheets. The ice has all melted, yet there is a trail of snow-kissed footprints leading out of the bedroom.
He yanks the dirtied blankets and sheets from the mattress as he gets off of the bed, dragging them onto the floor to wash later.
He finds her in the kitchen, sitting elegantly with her legs crossed at the counter. Still naked. Painted in lovebites and bruises and a sticky, burgundy juice that drips from her lips, her chin, her fingers.
“Pomegranates?”
She doesn’t react to his voice, or his presence. A sleepy dawn for her, then.
He walks over to her, inspecting the round fruits that she has cracked and sliced open. He’d admonish anyone else for the stains splotched on the marble, sliding down her arms. Yet it’s her, and he can only take her by her wrist and lick the juice from her skin, slow and intentional.
“I’m fond of them. So I ordered a few while you were asleep,” she yawns, smiling softly at him after.
“Aren’t the seeds bitter?”
She is eating the seeds, pushing them past her lips to pop in her mouth. Oh, to be bitten by her teeth, licked by her tongue. She has turned him into a mad fool.
“Never tried them?” She doesn’t wait for his response, holding a dripping seed in front of him. “Here. Open your mouth for me.”
He moans as she pushes the seed onto his tongue, pressing her fingers down before pulling them out. Dripping with his saliva and the blood-red of the pomegranate.
She looks like a woman who just ate someone’s bleeding heart.
There’s a burst of sweetness. Then a tart flavor. He wants more, but doesn’t show or confess that. In the fake sunlight from the tall windows, he still has his dignity. The shadows of night are for her.
“Decent,” he hums, swallowing, “seven points.”
“Out of what?”
“Can’t tell you.”
Rolling her eyes, she eats another seed, the turquoise around her pupils shimmering. “Hm. You know, I had assumed you’d scold me for the mess.”
“I should.” He takes her hand in his, leaning close to lick her slender, cold fingers. “As I’ll be the one cleaning it.”
“Yet you look like you want more.”
“Do I?”
Fluttering her dark lashes at him, she picks up another seed and feeds it to him. “Give in to your appetites. Suppressing them only diminishes what little life we have left in us. And a scholar such as yourself lives a rather dry existence already.”
He rolls the seed around in his mouth, tasting ice on it. Tasting her. Then he chews it and the juice spills down his throat. “Mm. Is that so? And how far should I let my greed take me?”
“As far as you’d like. Assuming you’re willing to pay the price.”
He grabs her by her chin and pulls her into a kiss, lips and fingers stained with blood-red juice. Her hand finds its way to his throat and closes around it, nails scratching over his skin.
He bites at her tongue as punishment.
They break away panting for air, their breaths somehow sounding sinful, scented with fruit and her floral perfume. He brushes her unkempt hair with sticky fingers, smudging the juice onto her pale skin. He could eat her, he thinks, and it’d be like biting into a succulent, forbidden fruit.
He laughs with a tempered madness at that ridiculous thought, planted in his mind by her. Aeons are no match to her damning influence.
“Veritas.”
She sings his name with a saccharine sweetness he isn’t used to, but could be. He could get used to all of her, all of whatever keeps bringing them together.
“Will you continue teaching me of love, no matter the price?”
“Naturally,” he tells her, feeding her a syrupy pomegranate seed, “it wouldn’t be good of me to turn a blind eye, would it? We have come so far, after all.”
She lightly bites the hand that feeds her, licking away the sting and the stain of the juice on his skin after. It is the most divine she has ever looked.