ok so tumblr is probs the worst place to put writing ever but here’s the story i read last weekend. i classified it as “hard femme high fantasy” and prefaced it by talking about fantasy world and logic building being similar to assertion of a nonconforming gender identity. also this story is kind of the textual equivalent to a lesbian mom’s swirly pastel yoni painting. not sorry.
—-
as a youth i was committed to the study of a variety of associative and liminal practices. i was chosen for my crippling empathy and my porousness, my soft and sensitive nature which gave me the ability to understand metamorphosis, channel energy, and, occasionally, to give my body to ethereal beings seeking temporary physicality to complete their own appointed tasks. it was said i was born to carry these talents. i focused on my studies for the greater part of my young life and had come into some skill, not necessarily by hard work but rather through openness. nonetheless i somehow managed to trick everyone into thinking i had good work ethic and was often given license to travel. i was advised against questing, for my abilities, though varied and fairly developed, did not lend themselves to the pursuit of a singular objective. i preferred to wander anyhow. i wasn’t interested in heroism, i couldn’t fathom myself a protagonist. i was a translucent membrane, in and out of which flowed a vast and murky universal knowledge.
—-
on one such aimless trek i had managed to leave most zones of comfort, exiting the familiar forests where i had spent most of my time and investigating higher altitudes. i preferred to travel in ceremonial garb in case the need for my talents arose- dark spun garlands around my neck and shoulders, layers of buttoned wool tunics in cloudy blues and greys, thick black breeches, my cheeks rouged and my hair pulled back. they were made for movement and the cold and rocky climb was not difficult. i made my way across the mostly barren terrain until i found a sort of oasis among the twisted igneous. hidden in the craggy mountainside was a lush shade garden, huge succulents grew around black rock as if they were a single organism, labial flowers hung in clusters from dark thorny trees. in the center of the garden was a stone structure, a roughly hewn turret. this is where the gardener lived. she and her servant sat on a bench outside of the building, cutting stems off of figs and dropping them into a basket. i got down on one knee, as i was supposed to, and held out my palms to show her the marks which described my training. she inspected them, holding my wrist, and looked into my eyes.
“you’re precocious, but you’re naive,” she said. “you lack the ability for introspection.” i blushed under my rouge, enchanted by her presence and experiencing a twinge of inferiority for the first time. “i have need of your gifts,” she said, “and you would do to learn from me as well.” so i agreed.
—-
she was exquisite, adorned in high collars of soft lavender and lace, a green/black breastplate that looked like it was covered in writhing beetles. her features and motions were spare, severe, and defined by a potency that builds, i learned, with age. and i was literally a child to her, my round baby face and my round baby collars. it was some greek poet shit, a power imbalance i wholly embraced, and i was terrified i’d fail her, afraid my study was insufficient. she demanded of me the sort of poise and formality i was not and never will be prepared to give. the external manifestations of my neuroses in her presence seemed insults to her grandeur. she looked about seven feet tall in her heeled boots but i have no depth perception so i’m probably exaggerating. no descriptive attempts seem to make sense now, they never have, she was beyond me.
—-
during the day i watched her garden and helped her with menial tasks, peeling pods apart to gather the filmy seeds, pulling and decocting roots, gathering and drying. in the evening we would take steep narcotic flowers and she would read to me, her words still crisp and exact as i slipped away. she let me sleep with my face in her pillowy thighs and when i was colicky and sleepless i would be allowed to take the seeping parts of her into my mouth, gently. we slept in her garden and would wake up early and laze under the flowering trees swollen and heavy with pollen. she said, ” i fell asleep dreaming of psychedelic gay betties and veronicas and woke up wanting to make a porno and found out GB Jones did it already… is there an innate primal thread of dyke consciousness?” and i told her i had no idea, i wasn’t one, and she laughed at me.
“it’s true,” i mumbled, defensively, irritated at her plowing over my assertion.
“you’re here with me, so you’re a dyke,” she said. i was pretty sure identity didn’t work that way but i ceded to her on these matters.
—-
i was there three days but they were long enough for me to become lost in her. i had never understood a body to be so full of contradictions, power, sustenance, the strange hell of beauty. but i couldn’t stay forever because i am not static and i never stay content. because stories about dykes never end happily. on the third day she told me that it was time for me to perform for her. at the details of her request i reeled, my stomach dropped out.
“i didn’t think that was what you wanted. i thought you desired me.” the sickening tumult of having to verbalize my longing, and my misgivings. she looked frustrated. “you know nothing about my desires.” she said, and i winced. “this is what you can give me. you’re trained in transformation and i am bored of my body. it is your duty to assist me.” and that was the truth, and so i did.
—-
the details of her dissection are banal, my misery is boring. and i don’t want to talk about it. her servant severed her with a stone blade as i held her wrists. i concentrated as intensely as i could, called upon everything i had learned fluidity and the universe, but i think that even if i hadn’t been there she would have transformed. she couldn’t exist as fragments, she liked monique wittig too much. each part turned fluid and sunk deep into the soil and and erupted in all directions. over time the traces of her movements began to surface, like bruises, and opened gaping wet gashes in the ground around where we pulled her apart. i hated to look at them, deep voids that seemed almost obscene. they sickened me. i tried to spoon the dirt back inside but when i got too close i would sway vertiginously on the edge, terrified of falling. underneath my fear and disgust was an extreme desire to enter them, and so i found the one that seemed most shallow and i crawled in carefully. after about eight feet of slipping down rich stinking soil i reached a sort of cavern filled with crystalline forms. unlike the inky jagged rocks covering the surrounding terrain these seemed both to trap and to emanate light, despite the cave’s lack of light. at the sight of them i clutched at my breast and gasped like a princess would. i lay myself down amongst them carefully, taking one in each hand and wrapping my lips around another. the cave seemed to close around me, crystal points pushing into my skin or else caressing me with their smooth sides. i felt as if all the air was forced out of my lungs, at turns desperate and ecstatic. i would return to suckle occasionally but it was like picking at a scab, satisfying but self-destructive.
—-
i returned to my home and to a life of scholarship, seeking expertise in a fusion of alchemy and resurrection. but it didn’t matter, she had moved beyond me. so i championed her absence instead. i wear my grief visibly because i don’t know where else to put it. it feels histrionic and vulgar, like it’s not mine to parade about. but it manifests nonetheless, chrome-ish orbs cold on my chest like hematite beads but less weighty, more like pearls, and foggy. so many great queens i can’t begin to explain or embody, only their lack made visible.
—-
i am skilled at what i have been trained to do. i can open myself up to forces outside of me and i find solace in that. i lack introspection but i see and feel everything else at extreme levels of intensity. i can perceive the threads of existence along which the most potent powers flow. this is a great honor, only just below flowing along with them.
a cosmos tirelessly traversed by eros. an immense astral space.