Beautiful Creature

Author's note: this is a gay story, and contains human-nonhuman sexual content told from the nonhuman perspective. You have been warned.

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On the balcony far below me sits one of the beautiful creatures. I lean forwards over the parapet to see him better, wrapping my tail around an iron chimney for support. I know this one. He is a fine example of his kind. He has sandy hair that flows like wind over a beach, and skin as smooth and perfect as a pebble washed smooth by the tides of centuries. His body is thin and supple, like a palm tree bending its crown over the ocean.

How can such a creature come to look so sad? He is everything I ever craved, and craved to be. And yet, at the same time every day he comes out to this lonely balcony, wrapped up against the bitter cold, his back turned to the light and heat and laughter spilling out from the windows behind him. Every day he clips open his tin box packed with food, and he unscrews his metal flask full of a hot brown liquid whose scent drifts up to the rooftops and fascinates my nose. Every day he eats, and he drinks, and he says not a word but stares out into the darkening night at the rooftops and the clouds and the comings and goings of birds. And when he has eaten, and drunk, he tips out the crumbs from his box for the pigeons, he screws shut his flask, and he steps wearily back into the light.

I feel a kinship with him, if I may dare to provoke the anger of the cosmos by declaring any possible kinship between an abomination like myself and a fair beauty such as he. I am a creature of the darkness hypnotised by the light. He is a creature of the light hypnotised by the darkness. Sometimes I think to show myself to him, but of course I do not. I show myself to none of the beautiful creatures. I would be ashamed.

But not for much longer! Tonight is the culmination of years of magical preparation. Tonight - and only tonight - I shall be beautiful. I shall dance the dance of the creatures of the light amongst them, and they shall not know me but as one of their own. Tonight I shall shine.

The hour is now. I take my place on the highest tower, amongst the antennae and the great metal ears. I say the words of transformation, and the full moon shines upon me, and I feel it change me. And it hurts! Oh, but it hurts! The searing of skin, the folding of bones, my wings and tail burning completely away to ash, the agony is exquisite! But I bear it, because I must. And in the end I stand there, gasping in the night air, shaking but alive. I look at my paws... no, not paws, my hands. There is no midnight black fur, no horrendous claws, just a beautiful pair of hands. I turn them to study my palms. I flex my fingers. Powerful hands, but capable of such delicacy.

I exult. It is done! There is no time to waste. I must join with my new brethren.

I leap, swift and sure as a shadow, from rooftop to drainpipe to balcony to streetlight, and land on the cobbles of the alley below. Something of my old agility remains even in this form, of that I am thankful. A pool of oily water sits on the ground below, and I look down to see my reflection staring back up at me.

I am completely changed. Gone is the thick matted fur, except on my head, and in patches on my chest and groin. Gone is the tail, also are the wings, the horns, the claws, the slavering fangs. What is left is beautiful. A tall, muscular figure with a straight back, firm in chest and buttock. I see myself smile.

And yet, I am not completely changed. The magic is not perfect. My hair is still as black as coal. My eyes are still as dark as night with the same glint of fire when they catch the light. There is still something lurking and dark hidden in the features of my face. I am still a creature of the darkness. But, I will suffice.

Enough time wasted on self-admiration! The night is short! I must go out and join my fellows in the dance!

I stride out into the street. A brightly-lit place fronted by brightly-lit rooms and crowded with brightly-lit people. I walk amongst them. I spread my arms in a gesture of goodwill and beam out at the shining faces. But nobody welcomes me. I see looks of horror as they see me. I see eyes turning sharply elsewhere. They move away, pulling their loved ones along with them. One of them screams.

Has it failed? Can they see me for what I am?

But no. Two of them laugh and point, and I look where they are pointing and it is at my naked groin. I look around me again and notice that all are clothed while only I stand naked. I have found the cause of the creatures' alarm, but still I do not comprehend. Is my cock not of good girth with a fine swing as I walk? Are my balls not fulsome and pleasingly formed to the eye? Why would they be the object of horror or of mirth? I shrug. I cannot hope to understand everything in one night, I can only adapt. There is a place nearby behind glass windows, with lines of clothes hung upon racks. I enter, and spend a moment choosing, but a moment only, as time is wearing on. I select a fiery red shirt, and trousers and jacket of a deep and relentless black. Putting on the outfit, I admire the effect. It matches my eyes.

A wail and a flash of blue lights outside. Two of the creatures come inside, dressed in thick black and fluorescent yellow. I sniff the air. They don't smell friendly. Quick as a flash of thunder I leap between them, through the door, up to the second-floor balcony and up, up to the safety of my rooftop.

My adventure was not a success. But I will try again.

This time I drop down on the opposite side of the building. The street here is darker and narrow, and only a few of the creatures grace it with their presence. They glance at me, and they look away again, casually. They do not run or scream. It has worked! I am accepted!

But what now? There is none of the warmth, the bustle, the gaiety of the world of light here. This street is full of shadows. The beautiful creatures are few, and they do not dance. This is not what I came for.

I turn. I see something new.

A door, and spilling out of the door a dazzle of wonderful lights and marvellous noise, as though the room beyond could not contain it all. A place full of people, and laughter, and strange smells, and colour. There above the door, a piece of cloth flapping in the breeze, its design a spectrum of rainbow colours. Its meaning is clear: this is a temple of light.

I walk in, and I see dancing.

I see many things. I see warmth; I see shining, colour-shifting lights; I see deep, pulsing music. But none of these are important, because I see dancing. The beautiful creatures, basking in the light and the noise and the heat, waving their limbs, flexing their spines, shuffling their feet, in rhythm with the beat of the universe. This is what I changed myself for. To join with them in their strange, wild worship of all things beautiful and divine.

But I do not dance. I do not dance because I see something that makes me forget even about dancing. I see a beautiful creature. My beautiful creature. The creature from the balcony.

My creature doesn't dance. He sits at one end of a long wooden bar that runs one end of the room, away from the dancing, almost in shadow. But he watches the dancing. He is hypnotised by it, just like I. I wonder why he does not join with it.

I go to him. I stand beside him, my arm resting on the bar. He looks at me, and I notice for the first time that he has bright blue eyes, like the reflection of a summer sky in a tranquil ocean.

He looks at me and I do not know what to do. For some reason I cannot rationalise, I want to connect with this creature above all others. I want to, but I do not know how. How do the beautiful ones greet each other, talk to each other, bond with each other? From my high vantage point I could never see these little details. I only saw them from afar, moving to and fro through the streets below, weaving and winding around each other in their endlessly complicated dance.

I look to the creatures around me to discover their customs. On my other side two of them stand in close embrace, their lips pressed together and their hands sliding across one another's backs. Very well, I shall try it.

Imitating our neighbours as closely as possible I swing my creature out of his seat and pin him against the bar, planting my lips firmly against his. I worry at first that I have made some mistake in this intricate greeting ritual for I feel him jump and then struggle as though in shock, but my confidence is restored when he settles down and wraps his arms gently around my back, just as mine are wrapped around his.

A strange thing, this greeting, but a much more pleasant thing than I had expected. How enjoyable a sensation it is to rub one's lips slowly over another creature's, I never would have expected. How tightly the mind focuses on every slight movement, every touch of pressure, every flash of cool wetness. And how gently my creature touches me in return, his fingers like the wings of starlings, his lips like the first drop of rain on a thick and heavy summer's day.

I feel a change, his hands pushing me gently away instead of pulling me closer, and I pull away. It is a surprise when I notice that my cock is considerably erect. It seems that this touching of lips awakens the rutting urge. I am curious to know if my creature has experienced the same odd effect, but from the hang of his clothing it is difficult to tell. I notice him glancing briefly down at my own bulging trousers and he does not appear surprised, but perhaps interested. A mystery.

He speaks some sweet-sounding words, but I do not understand his language: a problem I had failed to anticipate. I ask him if he speaks my own language, but of course he just looks at me in confusion. I am glad. To have heard the foul words of my own guttural tongue emerging from his luminescent lips would have been an ugly rip in the order of the universe.

He turns to speak to another creature on the other side of the bar, and I worry that I am forgotten. But the other goes away again after taking a few small metal disks, and returns only briefly to deposit a pair of glasses filled with golden, bubbling liquid: one in front of my creature, one in front of me. I look at them uncertainly. My new acquaintance sits, and gestures to the seat next to him. I sit.

Picking up the glass before him, he imbibes a small amount. Still very unsure of the manners of this world, I am eager to learn by imitation, and drink from my own glass. The taste is a surprise to my mouth. I had expected the sweet nectar of the heavens in a place such as this, but instead it is bitter and noxious. What is stranger is that despite this, it is drinkable. It is even, after a few sips, seductive.

My tongue feeling oddly loosened, I find myself speaking. Even though he cannot understand me, even though the very syllables of my wretched tongue are unfitting for this temple of light, I speak because I feel the need. I tell him that his eyes sparkle like molten sapphire. I tell him that his hair is more exquisite than a cobweb woven by a thousand enchanted spiders from golden thread. I tell him that his hands are such perfectly formed machines that anything coming forth from their work must be a masterpiece worthy of the highest planes of existence. I tell him these things because they are true. And he nods, uncomprehendingly, sipping his drink, smiling, as though my words were not eldritch squawks but melodious music to his ears.

It is weirdly pleasant, just sitting here talking at this creature. But I have not forgotten the dance. I cannot help but glance over my shoulder at the great swaying, flexing mass of creatures behind us. Perhaps my creature notices these glances, for now he is standing, gesturing towards the dance, and holding out a hand in invitation. I am thankful, and take the hand in my own. It is warm and squeezes me gently. I follow, my excitement rising, as he leads me into the throng.

I am excited, yes, but also I am nervous. I am unsure how to dance. Shall my creature be horrified if I move my body in an incorrect way? Shall I be ejected from the temple of light for sacrilege?

My creature starts to dance. At once I am nervous no longer. It is obvious, even to me, that he does not know how to dance either. Comparing him to his fellows, he is all elbows and no rhythm. But he has a grace of his own, and looks to enjoy himself, and nobody ejects him from the temple in horror.

I dance.

I am perhaps an even worse dancer than he. I have no grace at all. My knees and arms appear to be at battle, despite my efforts towards harmonious co-operation. But he does not seem to mind. He laughs in a gentle way, pats my shoulder, and dances harder.

I find that I am enjoying myself. Dancing is everything that I hoped it would be, perhaps more. The beat of the music is fast and vigorous, driving my feet on to attempt wild, overambitiously complex patterns. And yet I do not think I would have taken so much pleasure from dancing had not my creature been there alongside me. We rotate and flex and oscillate, trying to outdo one another in exuberance. We laugh. An empty space develops around us on the dancefloor, a few turn to watch and smirk, but we do not care. Why should we care? We are in an ecstatic rapture of dance. I wonder if perhaps we are the only two creatures there who really understand how to dance.

We tire. The music changes to a slower, softer beat. My creature wraps his arms around my waist and nestles his head against my chest. I pause, uncertain of what is happening, and then I place my arms around his shoulders, holding him tight. I notice we are still dancing, but only with our feet now, in a soft, swaying rhythm, like trees blowing in the wind. The space around us closes in.

I like this dance even more. I feel his hands stroke softly across my back. I feel his face cushioned against my chest, moving ever so slightly in rhythm with the ebb and flow of my breath. I touch his golden hair and I feel the delicate strands flow like velvet rivers of sand between my fingers.

He reaches down a hand and touches the bulge in my trousers. I did not realise, until this moment, that the rutting urge is strongly awakened in me once again. But I never knew the urge could be so soft, so warm, like my blood has turned to hot thick syrup. His hand gives my cock and balls a quick squeeze, and my heart beats faster. I pull him closer. My own hand drifts down to touch his rump. It is soft and round and pleasing. I lay my palm flat over his buttocks and just hold him.

The slow music ends; another fast, lively beat takes its place. Are we to begin our wild dancing again? No. He takes me by the hand and leads me away. I follow. He takes me out of the room with the light and noise and colour, through a narrow passage and now into a small room, its surfaces hard and white and clean. He guides us into an even smaller room within the room, so small that we barely fit in it together, and closes the door. And locks it.

And now it is he who is pushing me against the wall, standing up on his toes to press his lips against mine. I had thought this strange meeting of mouths to be a ritual of greeting, but I must have been mistaken: here we are performing it, and we have already met. What then is its significance? Or perhaps it is something done simply for its own sake? I hope so. I enjoy this ritual very much. But now, it is not quite the same as the first time. It is somehow more vital, more demanding. And what is this? His tongue probing wetly against my lips, its tip probing slightly in-between. Curious. Following his example again, I thrust my own tongue deep inside his own mouth, hoping I am performing my part correctly. He makes a content-sounding mumbling noise, and I infer that I am.

Another thing different from the first time: his hands do not whisper across my shoulders, but rather are busy removing my jacket, and now unbuttoning my shirt. Inconsistent, these creatures. First they are outraged by my nakedness, now I am being made naked as fast as his hands can do so. I shrug my unbuttoned shirt off my shoulders and it joins my jacket on the floor. My creature pauses in his derobing of me to pull his own buttonless shirt off over his head in an extraordinary acrobatic manoeuvre of the elbows.

His chest is slender and beautiful, with wisps of golden hair like whirls of morning fog reflecting an autumn sunrise. Mine is dark and craggy, like a moss-encrusted cliff in moonlight. I wonder about the difference between us, but I wonder more about his hand, which is reaching down into the crotch of my trousers to grasp my genitals.

His hand is small with thin, delicate fingers, and my cock is long and broad. One fits pleasingly around the other, as though his fingers had been designed to circle my cock, or my cock had been sculpted to fit within his fingers. Either way, the touch of him dazzles me. I have never felt its like before. As he slides his hand up and down, it is like silken fire running through my veins. As he delves deeper to squeeze my seed-heavy balls, I feel a bud of lust bursting into blossom within my thumping heart.

I do not understand what is happening. I understand rutting, and this is not rutting as I know it. I have just come to understand dancing, and this is not dancing as I know it. But it has something of the quality of both. The grace and ecstasy of the dance, mixed with the fire and lust of the rut. The pleasures of the light stirred together with the vices of the darkness.

He squeezes my cock firmly and I find myself making a soft groaning sound against my will. I look at my creature and he smiles sweetly up at me, and squeezes harder still. I drop my trousers, finding that they are in the way of his attentions. My cock is hard and stands stiffly erect, well above horizontal. My pubic hair is wild and black, covering my groin and balls like a shadowy forest. My creature sinks his spare hand deep into that forest, stroking and cuddling my balls, while he works my cock up and down with his fingers, stimulating me so strongly that I must brace myself against the walls to either side to stop myself swaying on my feet.

Part dance, part rut. But a dance requires input from both parties. Not like a rut, where the rutter performs his part (mount; penetrate; hump hump hump squirt) and the ruttee's only expectations are to struggle and grunt. I sense that this thing we are doing together - my beautiful creature and I - is more like a dance than a rut. I have been passive this far, but no longer. I do not know the correct moves, but I hope that - like the dance - it matters little.

His trousers are in my way and I remove them, releasing the button and letting them slide down his slender legs to the floor. Another layer, a pair of tented white underpants, remains to frustrate me but I make short work of it, navigating the elasticated waistband over his upstanding penis and tugging them down towards his knees. I marvel, my attention divided between his naked loins before me and the escalating magic his fingers are still performing on my own eager member. His pubic hair is like a field of golden wheat seen from afar as it waves to the sunlight in the morning breeze. His cock is much smaller than mine, but more beautiful, and rises straight and buoyant into the air. His balls are full and round with little dangle, and look like they'd feel good to have cupped in one's hand. I cup a hand around them. They feel good.

I draw him close, my other hand around his shoulders. I stroke and toy gently with his balls, while his cock presses against my hip. As he stands on tiptoe, his cock reaches the level of my own and they rub one against the other, as though exchanging a fond greeting, or perhaps starting a dance of their own. My creature plants his lips on my own once again, briefly, softly.