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As she kisses Emet-Selch, traces the lines of his earlobe with her tongue, takes his hardening cock in her hand, Venat wonders again why she’s doing this, and thinks (for the twentieth time, or the fiftieth) that it’s probably to stave off boredom—the boredom that often accompanies long forays to Elpis, when a colleague is charged with observing an unruly new concept, or when a new Convocation member is to be chosen from among the observers. Venat—not Azem, not anymore; she sometimes misspeaks, forgetting she stepped down from the Convocation years ago—is the first her peers come to in such situations. Your aether is boundless, they say, surely you’d be a wonderful companion; besides, Elpis is so beautiful, isn’t it? What better place to rest and relax, to get some research done? To ponder life’s mysteries and ruminate on how best to improve the star?
The heart of the matter is that Venat has always been restless. So too has Emet-Selch. That was what first drew her to him, she realizes: that aura of tension, aetherial and emotional, and that aching palpable need to be constantly in motion—whether in mind or in body. But look at him and the truth leaps out. His hair is always slightly disheveled, his robes dusty and wrinkled, his fingers ink-stained (he smells like the ink he favors, seems to carry it around with him: a curiously primitive iron gall mixture). Venat, rushing hither and thither in her capacity as Azem, had often benefited from Emet-Selch’s copious knowledge. Still, she could not help poking fun when the occasion arose. No time to straighten your robes? Venat would tease. It would take just the smallest bit of heat. The tiniest flicker of Fire. Emet-Selch—Hades, back then—would simply smile and say, Why waste my stores on so trivial a thing? Better to utilize aether only when it matters. Venat would nod in response, because it did make a sort of sense, no matter that it was said so tartly. (And looking down, she could see quite a few wrinkles in her own robes, and dirt at the hem, and dents in her shoes...). From the first she had sensed a kindred spirit in the man.
Yet even as she catches Emet-Selch’s lips in her teeth—even as he takes a finger to her opening, running it long and slow up the soft, tremulous edge—she wonders if this will be the last time they do this. She always wonders, and she’s always wrong.
But it’s not as if she can remember their first time together either. They both have other lovers, discouraged as the practice is in Amaurot (though only publicly). The muses know Emet-Selch has a bevy of women and men at his beck and call. And there is a reason for it, Venat suspects: all those men and women—all those bodies—are a bulwark against the thought of the current seat of Azem, the giantess in the room. It is she who Emet-Selch truly wants, though he has never been able to ensnare her as he has so many others, and that’s what rankles him, that’s what draws him to Venat on close hot nights when the stars burn in the sky and the wind whispers high ‘round the eaves. No one wants to be alone on such nights, especially not on Elpis (as beautiful as it is, it is achingly, hauntingly quiet), and so Emet-Selch seeks her out. A murmured word, a touch on the cheek (or under her robes)—just like that—and they are away, to an empty meeting room, a sheltered portico, a distant patch of grass. Sometimes Venat wonders if it’s her he’s thinking about when he comes, stuttering, grinding against her belly, her back, her breasts.
It doesn’t bother her. Not really. Venat doesn’t want anyone in particular, and yet she doesn’t not want him. Their link is many things all wrapped up together, none of them simple. They share something closer than friendship; they are more than lovers, in a way, but also somehow less. And of course she doesn’t want to bond with him, heavens no; the thought alone makes her want to laugh, prickles her nerves to hilarity. Them, together until they return to the star! There isn’t—she realizes—a specific word for what they have.
Afterwards they sit in the cool night air, bodies still hot under their robes. They gaze out over Elpis, out across the dark blue sky and the myriad islands it holds. They talk a bit, but mostly they rest, and look, and think their own secret thoughts. At length Emet-Selch pulls a long-stemmed pipe out of one of his deep pockets, along with a packet of tobacco (grown on Elpis, and harvested by the chief botanist himself). He stuffs the tobacco into the bowl, lights it with Fire aether, and sucks on the stem. With a sigh he exhales a cloud of smoke, then passes the pipe to Venat. Venat, much less accustomed to the habit (she only ever smokes with Emet-Selch), coughs a few times before she gets a handle on how to properly inhale. They don’t speak while they do this, but it is a way of talking: a way to share feelings, if vaguely; a way to comment on the day’s events; a way to silently, unobtrusively drink in the peace of Elpis. Together.
They pass the pipe between them, and Venat’s thoughts drift. She thinks, somewhat strangely, about how Amaurotines don’t need to have intercourse to procreate, not with the power of creation magicks at their disposal. Most of their people create children by weaving their magicks in tandem with partners. Only a few choose to conceive children the “old” way—though supposedly the practice is steadily becoming more common. Thinking of her many trysts—of various men and women writhing underneath her, of Emet-Selch’s lips at her neck, her breasts, of his urgent cock prodding between her legs—Venat can see why.
“Could you perchance go again?” she asks all of a sudden.
Emet-Selch puffs at the pipe, eyebrows raised as if considering something. Then he turns to her, and with the barest hint of a smile on his lips, he says, “I could.”
They are back inside in seconds, in one of the fully furnished guest chambers in Poieten Oikos. Emet-Selch pushes Venat onto the bed, and they don’t even bother to remove their robes, just rip them aside in their haste.
They settle into one of their typical routines. Venat fishes his cock out, wets it with her tongue, sucks and mouths the tip until Emet-Selch curses and groans, and finally spreads her legs apart with his own hands, eager to get his mouth on her too. (The fact that he seems loath to voice his pleasure until he’s nigh at his wit’s end has always set Venat’s loins aflame. He’s—he’s so curiously attractive sometimes.) Emet-Selch hunches over her, and with naught but a cocky smile he begins to kiss and lick and suck at her folds, sending her arching into the sheets. “Does that feel good?” comes his voice a moment later, amusingly serious, gravelly.
Venat shifts on the bed, spreading her legs even further apart, hoping to encourage him. “Mm. Yes.”
He grunts in acknowledgement and rocks against her for a while, using only his lips and tongue. Sometimes he grips hard at her thighs, draws tiny red lines across her belly—just enough to hurt, but only in the best way, the way that gets her toes curling. He remains between her legs for so long that Venat thinks he means to stay there—not that she would complain—and for a while all she can see of him is his silvery hair, swaying this way and that. But then, rather suddenly, she feels the tickling of something new about her ears, something warm and insistent. “How about that?” he asks.
“Uh?” she says uncertainly. It takes her a moment to realize those are… tendrils of his aether touching her. They are purple, the color of his soul: a purple so deep as to almost be black. She’s unsure of their purpose. She knows he wouldn’t hurt her, not intentionally, but he has ever been a strange one…
“Relax,” Emet-Selch drawls. And the aether tendrils stroke her neck, curl around her breasts, snake down and down to brush between her legs. Gentler than she would have expected.
“What—what gave you the idea to—”
She feels him smile against her mound. “‘Twas a passing fancy, nothing more.”
He leaves it at that. He uses the tendrils in such an interesting way, flicking across her nipples, rubbing strong and fast against her clit, joining with her—her skin, her soul—and soon she’s not nervous at all anymore. In fact she’s grinding against his face, pushing as hard as she can, and they’re both gasping and groaning and falling into each other. Emet-Selch’s aether surges, calling to Venat’s own, making her feel gloriously, thunderously alive. She straddles him in a flash of giddy movement, using her free hand to guide him inside of her (he slides in so easily; the rush of aether has made her wetter than she’s ever been), and she begins using her aether to touch him, stroke him, rub him as he thrusts. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. (Mayhap it is.)
It is then that Venat suddenly remembers what Emet-Selch told her years and years ago: Better to utilize aether only when it matters. And she laughs, high and clear and loud, and he gives her a quizzical look—he can’t possibly know what she’s thinking, and this is hardly the time to explain. All for the better, for she doubts she could form words right now even if she wanted to.
Melding intercourse and aether… that was something she had never considered before. But gods, what a sensation! She twines her aether with his, puts tendrils down his throat, around his arms. Like vines curling up a tree, like twinned crystals, their aether strands converge, leaping and rippling back and forth between their bodies. Stoking the fires of their arousal, fanning them as high as they can go. Higher. And higher. His cock feels incredible inside of her, thick and throbbing, and when he comes, filling her up, she can’t help but cry out in ecstasy—his aether touching just the right spots, suffusing her skin, whipping her nerves into an unbearable thrum. Creating the sweetest aching tension she’s ever felt, and then releasing it all in an explosion of bright hot pleasure. She feels his seed leaking out of her as they both collapse into the pillows, spent and sluggish.
And yet. Even afterward, in his bliss, in the wake of what they’d discovered, there is a look in Emet-Selch’s eye that tells Venat he is still forlorn over Azem. Not her concern or her fault, certainly; and she knows then—knows without a doubt—that what they have isn’t love, for she has never felt especially warm in Emet-Selch’s presence, or flustered, or shy. She does not confide all her deepest feelings to him. He does not comfort her, and she does not comfort him, because there is no curing his particular brand of lovesickness. There is some joy in what they share—not an insignificant amount at all, no—but what else? As they rearrange their robes and settle down for the night, it occurs to Venat that perhaps Emet-Selch conducted this “experiment” in the hopes that he might one day be able to do the same with Azem. Indeed, there might be a hundred such reasons for his actions—for his attentions—each one more selfish than the last. Not that Venat begrudges him that. Because despite everything, he has afforded her a kind of solace in this lonely place—as she has him, she thinks—and that feeling cannot be feigned or obscured. It is as if they are both lost, but lost together.
They sleep, and come morning Emet-Selch is gone, as Venat expects him to be (walking his own path at his own pace, just like her). But when she inhales, absorbs the warmth of the sun and the soft lingering remnants of him, she cannot help but smile. He has left her with that same old ink smell, stark and uncomplicated. As he always does.