Something reeks.
It's hardly the most dignified thought to wake up from a barren, empty sleep to, but smell has always been the most powerful sense, and despite floating in a lightless, endless void, the scents of my surroundings, still unknown to me, start building a map for me.
My breathing grows heavier. My chest rises and falls in steady, confident strokes, whether it's an earned description or not. There's something florid in the air--begonias or a field of flittering grasses. But it's concentrated, and thick, and heady, and there's something behind it too, something that wants to break free.
Sweat.
A musk.
Gentle. Not overbearing or oppressive. Light. Vulnerable. Thrilling. It wants to be wanted. It wants to be loved, like I can love. It doesn't judge. I lay there, breathing in the first true accepting sense in memory.
Memory.
Close.
The cave--!
My eyes fly open, and my suddenly clenched form stays plastered to the rocky ground. This is good, because the face looming over me with familiar, beautiful eyes, is perhaps a few inches from my own.
"Welcome back", Listener says softly, and smiles ever so gently. My hand slowly raises to touch her features. A warm, tight hand embraces my own, swaddling it in warmth I've craved forever. I let my eyes close, and simply soak in the sensation. More of me comes back; the digging discomfort of the rocks into my back is alarming, and there's a distinct sense of coolness in the air, like the both of us are underground. But those are problems for the next few seconds, the next few moments of self. Right now, Listener and I have the moment, the now. I exhale. A tired, relieved, loving gasp follows it. My eyes open again.
"Where's everyone?" I don't want an answer. I don't want to care. They don't matter in the moment, but the moment is changing, and I know I'll never forgive myself if I let my own needs come first.
Listener doesn't answer. She just holds my hand, rubbing it like she's trying to
bring feeling back to it. Her smile doesn't wilt like normal. It stays still, and yet dynamic. It glitters through her perfect eyes.
She's heard everything.
"That's not fair", I murmur to her, but Listener looks up, past me, past the most
vulnerable instant of my existence. I wanted to catch her, hold her tight, never let go. But she's already found something better, something that makes her want to look away.
A flash of red thrills through me.
"She's returned to us, Goddess", says Listener. Her voice is filled with quiet rapture, and a gentle lilt. She's pleased. All around. She's not evil.
But she's not my friend anymore.
The woman in red looks down at me.
I wish there were better words in my vocabulary. I wish I could slam a trillion needles of delight straight into your soul, and suspend you in a second of time that you never want to leave. I wish I could force the Goddess' beauty upon you, and the world at large, for it's not something you behold yourself by choice. It hurts too deeply, too richly. It's truth. It's sin. It's absolution. It's red velvet. It's sweet and savory and raw and cruel and biting and ferocious and sensuous and-
-and I know where that flowery, musky scent stems from. I dare not move--she'll hear the slickness in my thighs, the heat of my cheeks, the richness of me. The richness of me in her presence. Her presence.
"I see that, Tonya." Goddess smiles warmly, but there's a glimmer in her perfect green windows of the soul. Her lips, impossibly red with immaculate blood, are moistened with an alluring lick of her tongue. It's experienced. Tamed. My chest rises to her, an offering, a rapture.
Tonya. Her name is Tonya.
She'd never told me. No one on the team mentioned their true names. I should have realized it earlier, in the first cavern with the Twins. My clit throbs willfully at the mere thought of them, locked, vibrating, trembling, screaming voiceless screams of torturous, hungry pleasure. I grit my teeth. I have to focus. I didn't pick up on Goddess--the... lady in red... knowing their names, probably because I'd never met the Twins before. There was nothing else to know them by. But Listener... Tonya... It was like seeing her truly naked for the first time. Even in the locker rooms, where I'd tried so desperately to not take note of Penny's taut, mounded musculature, or Thundress' perfect nipples. They all deserved better than that, even if I wasn't afraid that Li... Tonya... would one day see through my mind's eye, and hold me in effigy out disgust.
And now... now that nakedness was nothing. Willingness of the flesh seemed... gosche. Easy. Fleeting. As Goddess and Tonya stared into each other's eyes, like maws of the soul, I can only feel a bubbling, acidic envy lacing my every breath.
Why do they get it? Why can't I just indulge in that, just once?
If I wasn't looking directly at them, I never would have noticed Goddess' surprised, delighted grin. She turns to me. Desire reveals what professionalism cannot hide.
"Why, you can", Goddess says, each word like satin to my ears. Her eyes entice. The red is gone, suffused. But they're no less entrancing. Green and pearlescent and perfect in all the unholy ways. She's willing. She doesn't have to hide Her truth. She IS Truth. With a capitol T. I am whatever She tells me to be. I feel my soul bending to meet Her standards, feel the willingness to burn the universe to the ground for a single moment under Her unyielding, inspecting gaze.
You didn't speak that.
I wonder whose thought that is. Goddess' smile grows infinitesimally wider. She's surprised. Delighted by the unexpected. That thought came from me, I realize. And either She can read minds, or She's using--
"Listener!" I gasp and turn away. The world becomes dark again. The hollow space underground returns to me with its cold and damp unwelcomeness. But Her Truth remains. Listener's name is Tonya. How could I ever forget that? How could we ever go back to how it was?
"You can't", whispers Goddess gently, from behind me. Her breath is warm and like fresh air to a suffocating soul. I want to listen to everything it says. Everything.
"We have to get out of here", I grunt. Whether I'm talking to Goddess, Listener or just to myself, I'll never know. But I do understand that, in the cavern with both of them, I'm not likely to leave on my own terms if I didn't escape soon.
"Fate has a habit of bringing us to where we've always needed to be", says Goddess silkily. I can't remember another name for Her. It wouldn't fit as well. I made it. An imperfect being made it.
"I don't need to be trapped in here to die", I say through gritted teeth. Part of me wonders if it's worth the energy of pretending that I didn't crave that very thing moments ago, so long as I died in Her gaze, in Her embrace, in Her presence.
I open my eyes again, and facing away from Goddess has made the confined world darker than before. We're in a brown, faded cavern, with a high ceiling and a rough-hewn wall. Around the room are dotted stalactites that have dripped for so long they've met growing stalagmites on the same course. Some are thick enough to bring the illusion of bars to the already confining scene. I scoff. Whoever was writing this chapter of my life had no subtlety at all.
To my left, the texture of the wall changes. Where before it's rough but cohesive, for a five or ten foot span across, there's a hodgepodge of rocks and stones of every size and shape. The collapse must have closed off the entrance. I look up, and feel hope sliding off me. It goes to the very top of the ceiling--hundreds of thousands of pounds of pure sediment. It's daunting, precarious, lethal if it tumbles down on all of us. And yet, it's the only hope of escape I can see. My powers are, I realize, likely what brought the initial collapse to the cavern before. How could I have been so stupid? How could Elogia, with her brilliant intellect? How could Thundress, who was so much better than everyone else?
"I'm gonna start pulling away stones", I say firmly. My knees are shaking. I'm sweating. No one answers. "It might be risky!"
Silence.
I turn to look behind me. Goddess and Tonya are gazing into one another, faces inches apart. A trickle of drool slowly leaks from Tonya's mouth corner, and drips unheeded onto her tight spandex. Her mouth hangs open, her eyes are lidded. A jerk and a shudder punctuate the motionlessness of both of them. Goddess' eyes are spearing Tonya's, filling them, draining them, giving them purpose. Giving them light no one else can.
I'm five steps closer to them before I pull my gaze away.
It falls upon a new sight.
A new horror.
