But a Big Dream

So, though I hope the story makes it clear, all characters are older than eighteen (one is actually thousands of years old; he's also imaginary). There are two scenes, one a first-time, one not.

But a Big Dream

Chapter 1.

Sunlight, the Pacific variety, was always death for her. Maybe something to do with her name—but probably not. Late in the day, when her skin glowed and released its stored warmth, freckles coming into existence over her nose like the stars above the horizon, then she felt tied to the earth itself, its titanic history. The sun sizzled to a puddle on the horizon, with the wind pushing the palms and music coming from the beachside hotels—and she had a notion that she had witnessed the last and only sunset. On this otherwise non-descript day, on this otherwise non-descript beach. As if atom bombs were going off in the distance.

It's not sense, of course, it's a feeling, and like all feelings, so far as it actually meant something, meant something false; even now the night was coming nimbly, with beginnings sparkling over the archipelago.

It could be something evolutionary, she thinks, rolling up her towel into a neat bindle, poising her broad-brimmed ivory hat. The man who had been glancing at her all day was now sitting in the sand, listening to his wife cheerfully relate a story—it was in Dutch, so who knows what about. He seemed entirely absorbed in it, but his eyes still managed to look over his wife's shoulder to fixate on Chi's own not insignificant chest with a predictable regularity.

Suffering this for a few minutes, Chi finally paused and cocked her head with a weary, but gamesome smile. She was heading back to the hotel room, see which restaurant her parents had planned for dinner, judge whether or not that was to her taste, but she wasn't in a hurry, so she just met his gaze, which had finally risen to her face. He was a bit overweight, tan, chest furry in an attractive way.

This is something as old as the waves and sunsets,

n'est-ce pas?

She raised her palms upward, lifted her eyebrows inquisitively, and now the guy's wife might as well be speaking Ainu for all he's paying attention. He's not afraid of Chi, not at all, though he knows his wife will notice if he just keeps staring, so his eyes settle into a safe saccade. She can almost pick out that almond scent of an older man among the smells of blossoms and brine.

She shouldn't do this; not that the guy doesn't deserve it, but it is a bit cruel. Chi thought of herself as kind—she

is

kind. Just not to potential mates—which, granted, is a large pool. But hell, this might not even be cruelty at all, but a species of charity—a generous deposit to a stranger's spank bank (a term she'd personally reclaimed for womankind through constant use with her girlfriends). She twisted her shoulder strap in a finger and pushed it slowly down her triceps, as if checking for tan lines, though she is far too the perfectionist to ever let such things arise.

Waves everywhere, torrents of air, torrents of blood. She hoped the kiss she blew was enough to get the guy crystal-hard, but she couldn't be sure, so she added a little incisor lick as a post-script, then turned up the beach. Put you on rock, rock, motherfucker. There's a particular walk she can use when needed to really drive the point home, but she just wanted to be playful, not get raped. Again.

Something evolutionary. For most human history, she reckoned, artificial light was unknown, and the coming of night was conclusive. Here ends activity—most activity, at least. And her brain, crammed with pin numbers and Li Bai stanzas and other assorted crap, may have been a modern creature, but her heart was still of the Great Rift Valley and its millennia of tutelage. Yonder Dutchman's cock was forged in the same fires.

Is that a compound noun in Dutch, like German? Das Deutschendick or whatevs?

Then she stopped her slink cold. Beneath a giant parasol, off to the side of the path off the beach, someone was watching. A woman wearing

très chère

sunglasses tinted a crepuscular purple, pulled down her nose so that their eyes met. A glass of red wine, close to the same hue as her hair, was perched in her right hand, so precariously it looked as if a slight breeze could pluck it away and she wouldn't care. Her legs, folded at a right angle, glistened with seawater.

Her radiant teeth were pressing into her lower lip, and she had a smile of utmost merriment. She shook her head in a mocking reprimand, then mimicked the tongue lick Chi had thought so inspired moments ago, showing it to have been trite. As if to ask, "It was something like this, right? How very cute."

And now she felt like an utter moron. She blushed, and with the tan already keeping the blood right under her skin, her face felt like a radioactive experiment gone wrong. She gathered the shards of her philosophical musings and exited the beach, feeling of sexual mastery well and truly gone and replaced with the instinctive shame of some virginal teenager. Not a feeling she had any fucking nostalgia for.

Nor did being on a family vacation foment one's feeling of adulthood and independence. She is not here unwillingly, let's not be ridiculous. She loves her parents, she adores her brothers, and she treasures their interactions. But now for the first time, she missed Art, and wished she had pressed him a bit harder to join them, at least for a few days. Just as another source of gravity in the arrangement, something to validate her as something more than daughter and sister.

"As woman," she thought, and though the antiquated phrase sounded like one of Emma Goldman's delightful moral scoldings, it accurately encapsulated the urge. It was a lovely word,

woman

. Underappreciated

.

Velvety and earthy, a garment one could twirl and wrap themselves in. A garment that felt overlarge at times, but then skintight, accentuating every movement. She felt the latter way a fair amount.

Not now, though. The red-headed woman's silent laugh and its judgment had made her feel skinny and boyish again. A few golden young men and women in bodysuits passed her carrying surfboards, and she heard giggles a moment later, the kind that follow ribaldry. This, to be sure, increased her confidence instantly, but was, for the record, entirely unattractive, and compared quite unfavorably with Deutschendick, who had the good sense to simply cast appreciative rapey-eyes. It's comforting to observe older men better approximating what women want; makes one think that, though the sex is boorish, simple, and often downright stupid, it can be taught.

One of the men retraced his steps and tapped Chi's shoulder. She turned, and the smile lit her face, as if she was recognizing an old friend; actually, she did recognize quite a lot in him. Blond, with a rumbling bass voice, and three lonely chest hairs that set his age at nineteen to twenty.

He stuttered a bit—which made it even more admirable that he'd taken the plunge—and she let him put his number in her phone. When she placed her hand on his arm, he shuddered a bit. "I should let you know, I have a boyfriend."

"Oh. Uh. Is he the, um, jealous type?"

"Well, kind of."

"Kind of?"

She practically had to look straight up to maintain eye contact. "Kind of. But he's pretty woke socially, so he'd blame me for anything—not you."

"That's better?" he said, stepping back and screwing up his face. He was so tall she felt like she was beneath an immense parasol.

"Yes. But, it's ok. I don't mind the spanking."

His mouth did a sort of fish out of the water effect, but he had run out of vocabulary.

"I think your friends are waiting," she said, and spun around. There, see if your friends believe I said that.

She received the first text before she'd even gotten back to the hotel, which she deleted without reading. Just when she became a bitch in these situations was an open question; she didn't remember the transition. She remembered being seventeen, getting into drawn out text convos with even those guys who were too timid to identify themselves (stashing her phone under a pillow when her parents knocked). That was long ago.

She showered, as she preferred, in the coldest water she could endure. This is supposed to have some sort of dampening effect on lust, the cliché goes, something that in her trials was entirely without confirmation. When she was in high school and compulsively interested in her own ripening genitalia, committing sins so frequently and thoroughly that she actually feared heavenly reprimand and stopped going to church because of it, she had tried the cold shower trick repeatedly, only to find herself twice as sensitive when it was done, every sensation setting her ringing like a sheet of metal. After a few years, she regained control of her bucking body, but by then she preferred the cold water.

She emerged covered in gooseflesh, her breasts pimpled and nipples irritated by the fabric of the towel. But her mind was clear, her desires were sharp and separate, carefully poised and easily examined, like a set of knives in a block. Her periwinkle top she slipped into a plastic bag, and headed for her room. It opened onto the ocean, tropical bushes escorting the stone path to the rear door, with a fragrance of dill and pepper.

Chi had agreed readily to accompany the family that summer, on condition that she have at all times her own room. To her parents' credit, the only indication of resistance to the idea was one raised eyebrow on her father's face. He had exchanged a look with her mother, signifying a wordless conversation which Chi could read quite easily, though it lasted only a moment.

"My parents would never have allowed such a thing," her father's eyes said.

"She's a responsible young woman, and it's not easy for me either, but we have to put our trust in her," her mother's eyes said.

"Woman? She's barely twenty-one."

"She's twenty-two."

"She's

barely

twenty-two."

"My mother had two children by that age. Yours had three."

"You're trying to make me feel better?"

"What can you do?"

"Hmmm. Shee-yit."

There was another raised eyebrow when Chi specified that her room was not to be adjacent, and her mother made some joke about her father's snoring coming through the wall, and the three of them laughed, though not one believed it was the reason, and not one was dense enough to think the others did.

Honestly, she had never heard her father snore anyway.

Probably the saving excuse was Arthur: although an inchoate idea to them (they had yet to meet him), they assumed the relationship would keep their daughter innocent of any sort of extracurricular depravity. He wasn't Japanese, but her parents learned fast during high school years that that particular rule was not one their daughter intended to follow, and that if they insisted, she would rule out marrying all Asians as a matter of principle. Hence, Art would do... for now. And for now the mere suggestion of him sufficed with the parents: powerful job, clean-shaven, no tattoos or piercings visible in any Facebook photo they viewed (or that Chi had ever found through personal exploration, though there was a delightful birthmark shaped like—her parents would approve—Honshu, that marked the skin under his cloud-white left buttock).

Her phone chirped several times in quick succession, while she examined the effect of arranging her auburn mane around her breasts in some

Blue Lagoon

tribute, which was even more tantamount to juvenility, and a shitty movie besides, but it actually felt surprisingly mature. She learned young what most women cotton to at some point: nudity can be weaponized. The silk of her hair, riffled by the sea breeze, developed a pleasurable friction there. Danae must have felt this way in her entombment, getting rain-fucked by Zeus.

She said fuck too much, even mentally.

Rain-ploughed. Rain-reamed. Rain-ravaged.

She smiled quite genuinely at the mirror as she divided her hair into tributaries over her chest, separating her pelage in braided rivers, three, two, all left, all right... nice to have tit enough to hold a pigtail. She gingerly scraped her legs and hips with her fingernails, freshly-lacquered, an indulgently baroque pattern that resembled—intentionally—Van Gogh's

Starry Night

. Her body had all these wonderful parts, all so completely different from each other. Corn silk, dark honey, ripe fruit, bashful mollusk, all yoked together into one lithe machine.

Rain-raped. Rain-rammed.

Precipitrated.

Now she's even picturing Zeus, who stalks through the French door, dripping with sudden rain, as lightning flays the sky behind him. Vines of gray ringlets in his beard, French curls in his hair, granite chest, pressing his full lips to hers, a smell of ozone wafting from his skin. Unfailingly gentle even though he could snap her in two with a twitch.

She spread her arms like a crucifix and fell backwards onto the bed with a flump: her eyes closed and her breath increased. The waves outside crashed with an accelerating ferocity.

The thunder god moved a trunk of a leg between her own, as if to force them apart, but they opened wide at the merest suggestion, like a dandelion spilling its seeds to the wind. Her vagina was diluvian. His hands on her shoulders were meaty, imprisoning, and those sky-blue eyes willfully told her that for all the omnipotence crackling through his muscles, and his complete mastery of creation, he had lost control of himself. Their thighs met in thunderclaps. The mirror fractured and then burst outward, its pieces scattering tiny rainbows around the room; the TV turned on, displayed deafening static, then erupted into a debris cloud of sparks and pixels. Her every movement was a provocation.

And his chest, she noted, was delightfully hairy. She stopped him for a moment by pressing her spindly fingers against it, enraging him. This produced an interval she savored with a few deep breaths, before she invited him with a fingertip to resume his rutting and give her everything he'd been holding back, which turned out to be a considerable reserve. As the sheets ripped and the bedframe splintered beneath them, a plume of fear thrilled through her, and she wondered if she'd even survive this, but nevertheless continued to slap her crotch against his with gusto, cause if you're gonna go, go doing what you love.

Her panting subsided, and she gave off a tiny cry and turned to the right, her fingers clenching inside her. Her clitoris was aware of each contour line that made up her thumbprint. The rhythm of the breakers diminished.

"I suppose, if you're going to fantasize, might as well aim high," he said, curling his endlessness around her, cock limp but gargantuan against her buttocks. "How do you feel?"

"Rain-fucked," she said, opening her eyes. The world was very still. She studied the intricacy of the thatched roof. She listened to her own breathing slow. She probed the sudden forgetfulness, the desire faded, echoes of thunder and their twin defeats. She pushed her fingers into her mouth up to the first knuckle and sucked. She kept them there thoughtfully, then reached for the phone with her other hand, thumbing through the missed texts.

Arthur Molyneaux: How's Hawaii?

Chiasa Sato: Dude, it's fucking Hawaii. I swam with sea turtles yesterday.

Arthur: You hate reptiles.

Chiasa: Untrue. I tolerate you.

A lesser mortal would have sent an emoticon at this point, but Art liked his texts like his emails, and he liked his emails like epistles of a bygone age: properly punctuated, exclamation points unheard of, no foolishness beyond the meaning of the words themselves, which were to be assembled when at all possible into proper junctions of subject and predicate. She had appraised this style dispassionately, found she approved of its veneer of business, and made it her own.

Arthur: Cheating on me yet?

Chiasa: Does anal count?

Arthur: Penetrator or penetratee?

Chiasa: Both. It was a conga line type scenario.

She realized she was still sucking her fingers, which now seemed kind of

gross. Not the first time she's done that though. She popped up and hunted down a pair of jean shorts. When it came to whether or not to throw on underwear, she could go either way, but eventually decided to put on something simple and pink. Modesty was no issue; she liked the color.

As usual, the onanism had drawn tears, meaning she had to touch up her makeup. She preferred an inky blue around the eyes and something to deemphasize the irrupting freckle population.

Arthur: Hell, as long as you're not flicking it to that weird Greek God scenario you talk about.

She smirked. Always share your fantasies, lest they fester. She shuffled outfits in the closet. Chiffon top, with Peter Pan collar and puff sleeves. Peach colored. And we are ready for most conceivable situations of tropical nightlife.

Chiasa: Dirty prick.

Arthur: So we're back to anal then?

Chiasa: I miss you. Fuck off. I miss you.

Arthur: Miss you. Call me when you're in between blowjobs.

Must review those procedures designed to prevent parents from having any access to her cellular telephone. You would think standard techniques would suffice, but you would be in error, as they are frightfully clever, quite determined, and believe curiosity to be a paramount virtue, particularly as it concerns their children's goings-on. A fingerprint authentication would do the trick with most mortals, but consider that should you close your eyes for a power nap, one's mother is not above seizing the opportunity to liberate the phone from your purse and covertly press it against your thumb, with a dozen excuses ready should you choose that moment to wake up.

"So," Chi said, slipping into heels and squeezing the phone with considerable effort into her skin-tight back pocket, "I'm going out. You're sticking around?"

Zeus had his giant legs crossed, sitting in one of the room's chairs with

The Times

spread open in his lap, twirling a Montblanc. The room smelled of his cardamom-scented cum.

"Yeah, I'm good. Tell me something, love." He uncrossed and recrossed his legs, shifted a bit, and a theophany occurred, smacking against the inside of his thigh like the clapper of a bell. His voice had the wuthering sound of a gale through a canyon. "Six letters, Matthew McConaughey vehicle."

"Give me a hint."

"Third letter, H."

"

It's a Wonderful Life."

There was a clap of thunder. "You know, you'd do well to watch yourself, or I will start psychoanalyzing this whole fucked up thing we've got going here. We'll examine whether I resemble your father. I will get fucking Freudian on your ass."

Christ. They had the same eyebrows. Way past time to get out of here.

"

Sahara,

" she said, inspecting her profile in the quite unshattered mirror.

"All righ', all righ'. Hey, tell me something else—is there not some thunder god in Shinto that you can summon up when you're feeling randy?"

"One, they're called kami. Two, I know nothing about that shit and it's kind of racist you'd assumed I would. Three—you're complaining?"

"I could use a break now and then. You wear me out, nymph, and I have important things to do. Like figuring out twenty-five down. Also, scheduling typhoons. And you know, next time you have one of these filthy fantasies of yours, maybe we could invite Thor, Ba'al and ye olde Samurai Storm God, and tag team that mathematically ideal ass of yours."

"Well, four men—quote unquote—are technically, according to the DSM-IV, a gang rape, not a tag team. But it's an idea. You were... all right, today. Pretty good even. If your wife starts hunting me down, promise to turn me into a humpback whale or something graceful, please? Not a cow." She batted her eyelashes.