Page 96 of The Shape of Monsters
Slowly, Lyric shifts his body to fully undress. Maimeri barely seems to notice except ahz hands trail after Lyric’s, touching each new expanse of skin. Lyric is cold everywhere Maimeri doesn’t touch, and the contrast really works him up. He’s panting slightly, one hand in Maimeri’s hair—just holding on, fingers tangled, not directing, not asking. Maimeri explores Lyric’s chest and ribs, licking and nibbling, and nuzzles ahz nose into the hollow of Lyric’s hip. Ahz hair brushes Lyric’s tense belly and very hard cock, and suddenly Lyric is being pushed over onto his stomach.
He makes a littleoofand Maimeri kisses the small of his back. Lyric shivers throughout his entire body as Maimeri licks up his spine and rolls on top of Lyric, covering him completely. Lyric melts into the blankets, lets his eyes flutter closed and stay that way.
Maimeri vanishes and Lyric frowns at the abrupt cold streaking skin pebbles down his body. He tilts his head and asks, “Little Rabbit?” only to receive a soft grunt in response and then Maimeri is climbing back up his body—also naked.
Lyric shudders at the touch, and Maimeri tucks ahz nose against the base of Lyric’s skull, sliding a hand down his arm. Ahz cock pushes against Lyric’s ass, the head hot and a little sticky against the hollow of Lyric’s back. Maimeri moves, pressing down against Lyric.The trailing length of ahz hair spills over Lyric’s shoulder and arm and Lyric grasps at it, tangling his fingers through the soft strands as he pushes back against Maimeri, rubbing his own erection into the bed. Lyric gasps at the feeling of being pressed down, pressed between, as Maimeri kisses his neck, his shoulder, and moves against him, panting, rutting sloppily. It’s so unrefined, feral like everything about Maimeri, and Lyric barely does anything except to make his body move with Maimeri, letting it be a wave between them, back and forth, uneven and stuttering.
“Lyric Aharté,” Maimeri says, ahz voice tight, moving faster, and Lyric is hot suddenly, his balls tightening. The angle of his cock is not ideal, but chasing the right pressure, the right angle while this just happens mostlytohim, around him, makes it so good. He reaches back and shoves his hand between his tailbone and Maimeri, pushing on Maimeri’s cock, and Maimeri gasps again and again, pretty little sounds that dance ecstatically under Lyric’s skin.
Maimeri comes without warning, surprising Lyric with a choked-off noise and splatter of warm semen. Lyric breathes hard, shivering not from cold but sensation. He doesn’t move while Maimeri keeps slowly pumping against him, face against Lyric’s neck, something wet up there, too, spit or tears. Lyric gently moves his arms under himself to lean up and tips Maimeri over. He turns, catching Maimeri against him.
In the candlelight Lyric sees little flecks of tears at Maimeri’s eyes, and also blood on ahz bottom lip. Az bit ahzself hard enough to cut. Lyric is overwhelmed by fondness, a big bloom of it. He leans up and kisses at the blood, Maimeri’s red eyes wide open, staring at him. Lyric kisses ahz mouth open, tasting the bright, bitter flavor, and slowly, slowly Maimeri begins to kiss him back again.
Lyric’s orgasm rebuilds just as slowly. He holds Maimeri’s face, kissing deeply, and Maimeri grips one of Lyric’s wrists, while theother arm props them up. Lyric’s breathing picks up and the head of his cock brushes Maimeri’s taut stomach again and again and again—light and torturous, but Lyric resists shoving higher, harder, won’t touch himself. This is good, strange, almost painful, but good.
Then Maimeri lets go of his wrist and drags fingertips over Lyric’s collar and nipple and belly, and grabs his cock in a full hand. Lyric comes with a cry. Maimeri bends away and kisses Lyric’s hip as the orgasm trembles through him. Lyric is barely aware of Maimeri licking at the seed, running ahz hand down Lyric’s cock to finger his balls, stroking with a thumb, and Lyric moans, eyes snapping open. “Rabbit,” he gasps, but instead of knocking Maimeri away he throws his arms around ahz, pulling Maimeri down onto his chest. He wraps his legs around Maimeri’s, too, trapping ahz.
They lay there, smearing together, and Lyric realizes he’s really been very spoiled. There are no attendants here, no massive in-floor bathtub. He’s going to have to wash his own sex-filthy blankets for the first time in his life.
He starts laughing again. Tiny giggles that grow into open-mouthed huffs. Maimeri tries to look at him, but Lyric shakes his head, laughing, and hugs ahz tight.
The next morning Maimeri wakes Lyric up by flicking ahz tongue over one of Lyric’s nipples, ahz hand grasping Lyric’s knee to pull his leg over Maimeri’s hip, and Lyric thinks yes they should do it again before they get to cleaning up. By the time they finish and Lyric shoos Maimeri out to the cold lake with orders to carry in water to heat Lyric’s bath when az’s done, there’s the smell of fire coming from the kitchen and claws scratching the floorboards. He can hear Setka chatting with someone, a single-sided conversation, so it mustbe griffons. Before heading out to start his day, Lyric wraps his coat around his shoulders and just sits on the bed, existing in the domesticity of the moment. He has no plans except the chores he needs to see to immediately, and perhaps later to ask Maimeri to take him on a hike to the rising force peak. There’s nothing life-threatening, nothing desperate, nothing pulling him in seven unbalanced directions. Just the cold winter air on his nearly bare scalp, his warm, relaxed body, the rumble of hunger in his stomach, sounds of splashing and distant birdsong, and the tingling numbness in his fingertips.
It takes nearly a quad for Lyric to visit each of the four peaks with Maimeri (and occasionally Setka, Turo, and a handful of griffons leaping and soaring after them). He meets the deer chimeras, who are no more intelligent than their animal counterparts, but gentle and willing to nibble alpine weeds from his palm. The snow foxes slink into the house one evening when the moon is rising again at night, planting themselves on sills and tables and the small dug-out oven to stare at Lyric with huge blue eyes, striped tails puffy and bright. Maimeri says they’re trying to intimidate Lyric, so Lyric offers them scraps of food and doesn’t try to touch one until it crawls into his lap demanding scratches to its ears. They have tiny sharp teeth and aren’t afraid to use them to get attention. Though they can’t speak a language Lyric understands, they are so good at working together it occasionally seems as if they’re one mind with many bodies. It’s creepy and Lyric feels like he’s in a fairy tale.
The furry human chimera in the forest slopes of the falling peak has never told Maimeri their name. They’re small but proportionally adult-looking, covered in fine fur, and their nose resembles a bear according to Maimeri. Lyric doesn’t see them until after the first time it snows.
(And oh, that snow. It falls gently, without gusting or storm, and hardly any ice. Lyric stands outside letting it drift down around him, freezing and in awe. The gentle sound of it and the peace it lays down feels like someone put a deep lake inside Lyric’s stomach, endless and filling, like he could stand there and onlybeuntil the end of the world.
Setka hates it.)
As they walk the valley, Lyric asks Maimeri about ahz childhood, about leaving the crater city and finding this home. In return, Maimeri asks Lyric about Iriset who traded her eye to him, and about how they met, and Lyric finds himself describing his sister, Garnet, his disappointment with his mother, and his almost-fear of his father. He lets himself be sad, lets Maimeri hold his hand while he chokes on things his mother said, tries to explain how kind she was, how good he thought she was. Diaa of Moonshadow gave him his first copy ofWord of Aharté, encouraged him to transcribe his own. Held him when he needed comfort, treated Garnet like her own, hoped he would be happy, told him it was good to be strong but better to be true. At least, that’s what Lyric thought until he found out she killed his wife, because she didn’t actually trust Aharté, didn’t believe in the promise of the Holy Design. “I’m not sure anyone in my family ever treated me like I could make my own choices,” he confesses to Maimeri. “Until Iriset.”
“My mother didn’t want me to go,” Maimeri says, “but allowed it, because I was suffering.”
It does surprise Lyric to find out the gratuitous, cruel, bizarre Moon-Eater was a good parent. He cannot bring himself to say they’re going to unravel him.
But carefully, once he’s been to each peak and has a better understanding of the natural balance of the valley, Lyric begins to tell Maimeri about Moonshadow City and Aharté’s Holy Design thatpulls the forces of the world into alignment much like this valley and the anchor necklace Lyric made. To Maimeri it obviously sounds like a distant heaven, an unlikely but wondrous place. Lyric dislikes painting it in too pretty of colors, because he knows how terrible it could also be, but he does miss the Silent Chapel and the Color Can Be Loud Garden, his sister and Garnet, especially Garnet. Maimeri asks more, for more details about Lyric’s family, and doesn’t seem to mind hearing about Iriset and Singix, in abstract at least, interrupting stories to push Lyric down and kiss him like Lyric could forget everything else.
And Lyric allows it—craves it. They aren’t snowed in, drifts not even as high as Lyric’s knee, but ice keeps it all hard and dangerous. The lake freezes over, and Setka worries about the catfish unnecessarily. They’ve endured worse cold, Maimeri assures her. To stay warm they make fires in several rooms: in the unicorn’s, which is covered but open to the world in the east, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom, getting cozy and close. The griffons come inside, and the snow foxes, all of them huddled in the three main rooms. Lyric grows restless, unused to such a lack of privacy, and to the smell of so many living creatures.
To mitigate his restlessness he teaches Maimeri combat-design, how to disarm and disable, how to find inner design and reach for Lyric’s, to feel the rise and fall of breath and action, the flow of motions and ecstatic steps, ecstatic punches. It’s good for Lyric to refresh himself, and Maimeri learns fast, and even though it’s not as immediately satisfying as sex, they certainly aren’t doing any of that with such an audience. Unfortunately, Lyric notices right away that despite the balance of the valley and the lengthening number of days he’s been in the past, his body continues to deteriorate. More than tingling fingertips, more than nausea and headaches, everything feels simply off. Wrong. He believes he manages to hide it, as nobody inthis valley knows what he should be capable of, how strong he used to be and the level of his stamina for long hours combat dancing followed by walking meditation and impossibly strenuous meetings.
But Lyric knows, and it confirms for him a hard constraint of time. Even with the eclipse before summer solstice as a defined ending point to the work Iriset and the rest continue in the crater city in order to save it, Lyric might not have so long himself.
Would it be so bad to stay here? To let the future take care of itself and to lie in the shade of this mountain until he dies? No more arguing or fighting or governing or life-and-death-for-hundreds choices every fucking day. If he faded from existence because the future changed too much, so what? Nothing can keep Iriset down for long, even if he pretends for a moment his death might break her a little bit.
But it isn’t just him, is it?
“What are you thinking about?” Maimeri asks, with this look on ahz face that is not a smile but seems like one: With a change of muscle tension around ahz eyes, something moves across ahz brow, and az focuses ahz complete attention on Lyric. There is a pile of griffons and one alliraptor chimera snuggled beside them, feathers rustling and a few cute little snores, while Turo sleeps on his feet, one hoof tilted back like an ordinary horse. Sometimes when the unicorn stands in the open wall, he seems to block all the cold without stifling the moon and starlight.
“The future,” Lyric says, trying to study ahz expression in the flickering yellow firelight. “What areyouthinking about?”
Maimeri ducks ahz head. “Keeping you here.”
Lyric laughs gently, easy, easy. “I would stay,” he admits.
“If I asked you?” Maimeri doesn’t look back at him, red eyes soft on the fire.
