The Perfumed Baths of Demos
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This was piece I did inspired by an amazing image of @ohpeneloppe over on @SuicideGirls. The piece kind of inspired me to try and flex a little and see what I could do. So I added one thing and then another and I kind of snowballed into this. Since I didn’t know what to even call this I posed up a work in progress over on @SmashFicPodcast Facebook group to see if anyone else had any idea. @JoamtheScribblr came up with the title...and the he came up with the epicness here below to describe it. enjoy!
The Perfumed Baths of Deimos
I've heard that it was once said science sufficiently advanced was indistinguishable from magic. On my bifröst sojourns and slow cruises between this spiraling dust of stars and the next I've come to see that as a distinction without a difference. Long and long - as the phrase was once and sometimes is yet turned - have we made our magic in this verse of our, from the ever-cascading palisades of Nandarique 12 to the bug-eyed stone carvers of Saturn Ring. That was the real mystery, before we all moved on: How had it all come from a place so small, so inconsequential a rock as that Earth. Yes, in the way of things that story was told, how when things were small a human or six would climb into a metal tube and be blasted from what we have now come to call Primus Earth, once Octrag-3 for the 8 bodies of consequence surrounding it and unable to reclaim its first name, as there are so many other worlds who have since taken it as their own. First a cradle, then a home, then a ruin or a seat of gods, depending on how such things are measured and remembered. After that, the memory of a nightmare upon waking before being forgotten completely, a secret inscribed on chronicle dust inhaled and chased with sloe gin during a hazy celebration of nothing much in particular. It was a myth, an obsessive search for hope during the bad times; then it was found, unwrapped and shared with those who cared, a curio for small intimate units who may happen to be passing by on their way to grander locations in that part of the world. Now that we are passing on, it is proper that some of us return to where you might say this began. Or near enough.
When all things are possible, hemming in that possibility becomes a thing of beauty. It was for that reason that I set myself a final task before I leave consciousness behind for other things. I would recreate the first human form, yet do it badly. As my new, chromatically-limited eyes struggled to appraise my careful work in the mirror I had to stand so close to, the low cheekbones and crooked nose, the arms of ever-so-slightly different lengths ending in hands that quavered in anticipation of sustenance, down the subtly elongated torso to the cold-shriveled penis that I realized would never be of a satisfactory size to me, I wondered if I would have been thought beautiful. The unknowing brought me a smile as I protected my new body, boarding a metal tube of my own as the last energy passed out of the network of microstores that had contained me in sound and motion.
The Perfumed Baths of Deimos overlooked Octrag-4 as I lay in the quiet pool, a red sphere where dust blew over and through shattered domes and long-dry canals. When we left Primus Earth, that was the first outpost, a waypoint soon not quite abandoned but mostly forgotten as early vessels found less and less need to stop there to rest. Had I not made myself reduced, I might have seen the far-distant light glinting off the broken glasstique and swirling storms, but these eyes did not comprehend that detail and it was beautiful in the way simple things are beautiful, in the way that for my inability of my lean fingers could not feel the pours of the attendant's thigh made her skin so beautifully smooth. "What does this lattice represent?" I ask her, tracing the artwork of woven lines that decorated that beautifully smooth thigh.
"It is an old symbol," she replied, "To understand it would take understanding much else, and you have come to rest."
I nodded and let my arm, the longer of the two, slide away. There would be time for understanding, perhaps. I closed my imperfect eyes and was left in imperfect dark, and the imperfect warmth of the water was perfection of a sort and it was beautiful.
There was silence, for a time. It was a short time, but it felt long in my imperfect body. Without the fine control of synapse and thought I once had, time moved as it would rather than as I commanded. In that time, an image of the attendant came to my eyes unbidden. How strange, that, to have thoughts that I myself had not called, yet there she was, not as she had been but as my imperfect eyes had seen her, tall and gently curving, her hair a lighter red than the planet behind her and piled atop her head as she sat on the edge of my pool, slowly pouring in perfume. My memory focused on her breasts, which swayed slightly as she moved to stir the water, and I felt a stirring in my middle. I both could and could not feel my blood change course, slowly filling my slightly too-small penis. I smiled at the feel of the warm bath surrounding it in a new configuration, at the slight satisfaction of the fullness of the organ, and also at the twinge of shame that it had been made so small. I had done well in making this body badly, though only a little.
I opened my eyes to match the image with the reality, and there was the attendant, her eyes cast downward as she poured red perfume from an earthen jar into the pool. Her eyes were heavily lidded, made smokey with shadows and satisfied in their gaze. For a vein moment I believed her gaze was on my erect penis, but those content orbs were instead watching the perfume as it fell, spreading through the water in curling wisps.
"They say you are making life here," I said, feeling as though the moment had come to speak.
She nodded but did not raise her eyes from the twisting and expanding tendrils of perfume. "Something new, yes, but also something old. Something to spread across the stars."
I nodded too, though she would not have seen it. "Something to leave behind as we move on." I thought of my... I suppose it had been my body, which had hummed and spun my thoughts through the time and distance and now lay cold and without purpose, somewhere between... I had forgotten. I remembered, then, that this body had been made badly, and soon it too would like cold and without purpose, and I would no more then know where this body lay. "That would be a good thing to have, I suppose. Something living to leave behind when I move on."
Her eyes flitted to mine, no longer content but something different. "Would you like to?"
And so we did. She climbed into my pool and it did not matter that I had made this body badly, only that it was, to her, for a time, beautiful. We eventually left the perfumed baths of Deimos for Octrag-4 to sweep away the dust of people long past and make something new, something alive.
I will be moving on soon. When I see the life I have created... I have done badly, but not too badly.Click the link in my bio to check out my books.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀
https://buff.ly/2oLoTCb⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#wizard #exercise #beautiful #combat #WonderWoman #art #CoupleGoals #artistsoninstagram #WomenWarriors #fitness #athletic #wrestling #spear #speedpaint #MMA #femalesuperhero #magic #tattoo #Military #workout #cosplay #fanart #Warriors #tattoos #wolverine #flying #soldier #punkrock #ninja