“Did you bring it?” she asked me.
“Of course.”
With flick of the finger, I brought forth a clay sculpture of a lovely young woman. She was gentle-looking and frail, beautiful and timid. One minute the bed before us was empty, another minute, there she was. A lovely statue in repose. A bit of art to be proud of.
“I assumed we would be calling it a she by now,” I said with a tender affection as I gazed down at my creation.
“Not until I’ve had my say,” she replied, leaning down to the motionless creature.
She touched the clay girl’s delicate features lightly with one finger, tracing the fragile lines of her arms, shoulders, and face. It gave me bumps all over my burnt flesh to watch her touch my sculpture that way. It was as if she were touching me instead.
“She really is beautiful. Your best yet,” she mused.
With a gentle movement, she leaned down to be face to face with the girl. A sudden clench of fear hit me, and I stopped her.
“Is this wise?” I asked her with one hand on her shoulder.
“Dear love, don’t let fear weaken your resolve. Fear is such an ugly thing, don’t you think? Useless really. Honestly, you used to be so brazen.”
I removed my hand and stepped back.
Without a second’s hesitation, she leaned back down to the clay girl. Their lips almost touched. She took in a deep inhalation of life-giving air, making sure to filter out the negative bits, and kissed the clay girl beneath her. Her lungs blew all of its contents into the lips of the sculpture, filling her up with life.
The girl’s clay skin softened into flesh, her chest and belly rose with her first inhalation, and she marked the moment of her birth by uttering a sigh. When it was all over, the clay girl was no longer clay but all girl. Her flawless flesh became as pale as porcelain, yet soft and malleable. The baldness of her head stayed that way, but the eyebrows on her face took on the color of a mousey brown. Both of us looked down upon our creation with pleasure.
“Now, it is a she,” she said with a triumphant smile.
“She seems so fragile. Are you sure it was wise to make her so?” I asked while covering the girl with a nearby blanket.
Now that she was alive, it seemed only right to treat her with a modicum of decency and care. She twitched a little at the sensation of a blanket touching her new skin but remained asleep all the same.
“I think it’s perfect. She will attract the good kind of followers.”
I nodded imperceptibly. Being so fragile, the girl would attract kindness. Even the color of her pale skin was a done with a purpose. Porcelain and egg shells, these were fair things that broke easily. They were things to be held gently. Precious treasures to be treated with kindness and love. Of course, it was her skin that would cause fear as well. That thought made me shudder and feel that old, familiar anxiety.
“When did you tell him to get here?” I asked.
“I’m already here,” he said in a deep voice.
A brown-skinned being appeared behind us. His face was fierce and had the molded snout of a ram. Likewise, his dark cords of hair curled into a spiraled pattern around his cheek bones. He was not in disguise; thus, he was bare-chested and skirted in gold and blue. Somehow, despite the animalistic quality of his features, he still seemed handsome in a way only the Egyptian Gods could manage.
She acted startled in a flirting way as she turned to our comrade. Best to make him think he frightened her a little. Playing to a man’s ego was second nature when it got you what you wanted. I chose to not play along, crossing my arms over my chest with a scowl. Old grudges died hard, even among Gods.
“Khnum, how good of you to come,” she crooned.
“Athena,” he said by way of greeting with a smile.
“How I do love the old names. Don’t you?” she asked. “As if we are still the same beings in the books they read.”
“Indeed, but I do not understand this gown you are wearing,” Khnum said with his hands on her hips as he viewed her in full. “It is not flattering. No offense intended of course. I just prefer you as I used to know you, in golden armor and smeared with blood.”
“I see. So you were not so impressed with me when I was surrounded by books. Only when I was bloodied?” she asked, not sounding offended at all.
“I loved you then too, but it was quite something to see you in battle.”
“I think you just liked my helmet,” said Athena as she leaned into the flirtation with her body.
They hugged as old friends might, and then as lovers might. She wrapped one arm serpent-like up the back of spiraling ropes of hair. The Egyptian God held her waist and pulled her in closely. She tilted her head upward to meet Khnum’s face. They kissed long and tenderly.
I was helpless to stop them, but I was also helpless to turn away. A form of torment that.
When the kiss ended, they released one another. Athena wore a coy smile on her lips as she untangled herself from the handsome Egyptian God. She drifted back over to me and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. Khnum took note of the gesture between us and greeted me with a smile.
“Prometheus,” he said by way of a greeting.
“Khnum,” I said with a snort.
Tense air choked what little good air was left. In an attempt to move forward, the Egyptian God gazed about the ordinary-looking hospital room with his painted eyes, looking for something in particular. When he saw the girl, he smiled again.
“This is her?” Khnum asked.
“Yes. Isn’t she lovely?” crooned Athena.
“I haven’t seen her like. Well done, Prometheus.”
I made a grunting noise.
“So, I must ask, Athena. Has your father—”
“My father is enjoying his retirement far too much to care about what I am doing. The affairs of mortals are no concern to him,” she said.
“I see. And the newest God, the one they’ve been fighting over for so long?”
“The last time I saw her, she was stomping off toward the mountain. Mumbling something like, ‘if they are so fond of judging one another, I’m going to leave them to it,’” she said, laughing.
“I always thought it was a he,” I retorted.
“Those omnipresent mono Gods always seem to be both. All that pressure of being omnipotent. You have to be everywhere and all things. It gets to them. Identity crisis and all that,” added Khnum.
“I think she’s done with the lot of them,” said Athena.
“That’s why I’m here, I take it?”
“Absolutely, Khnum. Did you bring it?”
“Of course I did.”
Khnum took out one large hand and in it was the tiny body of human fetus sculpted in clay. Athena peered in his palm to look at the creature, so small and perfect. It looked like a sculpture of something aquatic from the depths of the sea. A tiny fish as it were with nubs where appendages might someday sprout forth. Even I had to admit it was lovely. Of course, I’d never tell Khnum as much and give him the satisfaction, but I thought it all the same.
“Are you positive you want to do this?” Khnum asked them. “When it’s done, there is no going back. It took quite an effort to make this one. I’m not what I once was.”
It had to have taken a great deal to make something so tender and small. My jealousy over the older God’s ability electrified the very air around us even though I tried to keep it in check. Athena would never understand this rivalry with Khnum. I had made the girl, after all, and was she not lovely enough? No, it wasn’t about the girl. It wasn’t even about the fetus. I hated Khnum for reasons that had nothing to do with clay.
“It’s perfect,” I admitted with a sour taste in my mouth.
“What if this doesn’t work?” asked Khnum.
“It will. It did before,” she said.
“All right,” said Khnum handing the tiny sculpture over to Athena.
She cradled the miniscule fetus in her hand, and smiled down at the thing with all the
love of a mother. The force of the air she breathed into it was nothing compared to what it took for the girl. It was such a small being, but the intensity of the effort behind it was staggering. That breath was concentrated with intentions and love and power. The density of it could collapse whole worlds and make a black hole from the sun.
The fetus became not clay but flesh. Though it looked like little more than a tadpole, I could hear the sudden and ever present thudding of its tender heart. She gently laid the tadpole inside the belly of the girl sleeping on the bed. There was no incision or blood. Athena merely moved her hand and its contents beneath her skin. When her hand was removed, the fetus was gone, tucked gently into the girl’s abdomen.
“It’s done.”
Everyone breathed in relieved air. Even I smiled at the liberation of the deed being done. There was no turning back now. Khnum studied the two of us with curiosity.
“I never have understood you two and your obsession with the mortals. Why are you doing this?”
“Because their God left them,” said Athena.
“We all left them at one time or another. Either the humans moved on, or we left on our own accord. What’s the difference?”
“There’s always been someone to take over before,” I said. “The people are not doing well on their own. Things have not been balanced since their mono-God abandoned them.”
“And this girl is going to fix it?”
Athena reached out and patted the girl’s flat stomach as gentle as a kitten. If skin, with all its pores and flaws, could ever be called perfect, this sleeping girl’s would be. It was like petting porcelain with a pulse, warm in all the ways stone was cold. Even though the tiny thing inside this womb could do little more than have a heartbeat right now, I imagined it moving toward her outstretched fingers.
“No, but he will.”
About the Author
Michelle Rene is a creative advocate and the author of a number of published works of science fiction, historical fiction, humor and everything in between. You may have also seen her work under the pen names Olivia Rivard and Abigail Henry. She has won several indie awards for her historical fiction novel, I Once Knew Vincent.
Michelle’s favorite places in the world are museums, galleries, and libraries. Everyone who creates tells a story of some kind or another. Whether she’s painting, writing, or making a video game, Michelle is dedicated to her obsession with storytelling.
When not writing, she is a professional artist and all around odd person. She lives as the only female, writing in her little closet, with her husband, son, and ungrateful cat in Dallas, Texas.
About the Publisher
Annorlunda Books is a small press that publishes books to inform, entertain, and make you think. We publish short writing (novella length or shorter), fiction or non-fiction. Our publication criteria are simple: if we like it and it taught us something new or made us think, we’ll publish it.
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Taster Flights
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Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Michelle Rene.
Cover design by Jessica Bell.
Editing Services from Nerine Dorman.
All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without express permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations.
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Published in the United States by Annorlunda Books.
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First edition.
ISBN: 978-1-944354-37-4
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