maybeElse

“Here, my dear. Take it.”

The glass is heavy in your hand, solid crystal and the flickering liquid within. You're not shaking, not yet, but it moves as if you are, shuddering against your skin just like you shuddered under her as she prepared you for this.

It takes so long to wring the sin out of someone, especially someone like you; you can't help but blush as you think about it, eyes downcast and thighs pressed together, but that's okay. Shame and desire aren't sins—she wouldn't lie to you about that.

Her finger on your chin, tilting your head up, lifting you up out of your thoughts; her big black eyes staring into yours.

“Drink it, dear. You don't need to wait any longer.”

So of course you do.

The glass is warm against your lips, the same warmth as her lips, and the liquid slips into you just as smoothly as her tongue—but it's cold, so shockingly cold, a breath of the forgotten void between the stars. It reeks of deep time, sweet and earthy and metallic without a hint of life or love.

It tastes nothing like her.

She holds your gaze as you swallow, your eyes involuntarily lidding as your throat rhythmically pulses, as you welcome it into you—

A wave of cramps catches you unaware, your stomach withing in holy revulsion; she plucks the glass from your hand as your fingers spasm, arms curling up against your body.

You gag and retch, thick saliva pouring from your spreading mouth, but nothing comes; your body denies you even the smallest scrap of thin yellow bile.

She bends down to pat your head, heedless of the puddle spreading beneath your fallen form.

“Don't fight it. Just let it happen, dear. You won't remember a thing after it's done.”

Her words aren't comforting.

They never are, no matter how she tries; it's hard for a being whose presence makes humans shiver and shy just as surely as a hawk's wide shadow whispers panic into leporine ears. No matter how sweet she makes her voice, no matter how her eyes crinkle or how carefully she hides her horns—

Pain shoots through you, an angry briar growing and dying in fast-motion, stabbing out from your stomach no matter that the seed isn't there any more—it's in your blood, splintering and spreading, soaking in to your cells and curling around your brain.

Your body clenches, muscles shivering; she doesn't give you anything to bite down on. What would be the point? If your teeth break you'll grow new ones. If you claw your skin away something better will replace it.

Knowing that doesn't make it feel any better.

Your body rings like a shattering plate with every heartbeat; each noise of her hooves against the stony floor is an explosion, a hammer ringing against the cold metal filling your bones. You whimper in pain, your face hot with tears and snot and blood; scouring heat and shocking cold wash over your body like spreading fungal blooms, crinkly and ragged at the edges and dying to nothing in their hearts.

Time loses meaning as you lose yourself, your mind cracking as your body breaks; you can hardly remember enough to regret the choices which led you here, to regret letting her take you and do this to you—

If you could think, your mind would be full of sin: it is a mercy that you cannot, that pain has emptied you more surely than her wandering hands and curious mouth ever could.

Somewhere beyond you can still feel her presence, a bright and fearful glimmer lingering on the edge of your perceptions as your skull cracks open and your twisting bones break; somewhere you can hear her voice calling to you, her scent daring you to follow it—

So you do.

It's not easy.

Nothing good ever is.

(Although you don't recall her warnings about that.)

You struggle and fight, swimming back up towards the surface, back towards the world, the thing in your chest which is no longer precisely a heart beating faster with every moment, your body fraying and reknitting itself against the corrosive nothingness; your mind is a sieve washed clean by its passage, pure and pristine—and it feels so fucking good!

You break the surface like a comet, blood streaming away from you in thick chunks, a shell cracking around your spasming body—

And she's there holding you, her many arms cradling your shaking body, her breath hot in your ears, her hands touching parts of your body that you never knew you had before; her marbled skin and your freshly grown scales, her vast dark eyes staring down at the wonder you have become, her lips parted in joyous hunger—

You rise to meet her on limbs which can't possibly be moving the way your body is telling you they are, your body buoyed up on a swarm of slender muscles; but there's no time for that, not when your lips are pressing against hers, not when your many tongues are slipping between her lips and into places you could never reach before, not when her fingers are tangled in your horns and her hair is rising to envelope you in a wave of hissing mouths and flickering tongues and sparkling eyes filled with curiosity and love—

Later there will be time to consider what your body has become, and who you will become with it: later there will be mirrors and laughter and tears.

But right now there's just you and her, and your body and hers, your skin meeting hers in holy celebration;

Right now you've got all the time in the world.