"I am corporeal only to you, Abby," Ixazaluoh says. "The light passes through me."
And when Abby looks, she can see that the bed isn't sunk, either. There are no wrinkles around Ixazaluoh, no dents in the sheets that show that she's sitting on the bed.
"Fair warning, I think I might be sick," Abby says, and gulps some more air, swallowing it down to keep her stomach where it should be. She doesn't fancy finding out what the sweet burn of tamales is like in the other direction.
"No," Ixazaluoh murmurs and stands. She takes a step towards Abby, arm outstretched, and Abby skitters back, terrified. Ixazaluoh keeps coming, though, backs Abby right up to the wall beside the patio doors, until there's nowhere left to go.
Abby can't get enough air in her lungs. Her throat is screaming for water. The soles of her feet itch with the desperate desire to flee and her fingers ache where she's balled them up into fists. People can't really feel their pupils dilate, but she can imagine she can, in this moment. She is so hyped up on fight or flight that she feels like she could stop time itself if she had a mind to.
"Don't touch me, don't touch me!" Abby screams, flattening herself to the stucco, and Ixazaluoh ignores her.
She lays one smooth palm against the naked skin of Abby's stomach. Abby sucks it in, trying to keep away, and then warmth bursts under her skin. For a second Abby feels like she's on fire, is terrified that the creature in front of her has immolated her for her disobedience, but the heat immediately dwindles into the soft radiating warmth of a hot water bottle on an upset stomach. The nausea vanishes immediately.
Abby forces herself to stay still, stay still, don't provoke the predator. When the heat dissipates, she looks up, up, up into Ixazaluoh's dark eyes.
"How… how did you do that?"
"I am Ixazaluoh," she says, softly, gently. "And you are mine."
Ixazaluoh takes a step back, the soft pat sound of her soles on the tile floor unbearably sensual. She holds her hand out to Abby, palm up, fingers in a loose, non-threatening curl.
"Come back to bed. Please," she says.
Abby feels her shoulders curl towards her lover without her conscious input. Two days and already tamed. She unclenches her fists and chews on her bottom lip.
"Are you human?" Abby asks. It seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to say out loud. The kind of thing only asked in fiction novels and blockbuster films. But Ixazaluoh has no shadow.
"No," Ixazaluoh says, and smiles. It is the more smile, the one that fascinated and enraptured Abby from the start and she feels some of the fear uncurl from around her heart, flowing down her limbs and out across the floor.
"Will you… are you going to hurt me?"
"No."
"Do I have any choice?"
Ixazaluoh hesitates. "No," she says at last.
Abby takes her hand and lets her pull her back towards the bed. Ixazaluoh arranges her under the duvet, like a doll, and Abby can't untense, doesn't like when Ixazaluoh gets behind her where she can't see.
"Relax," Ixazaluoh whispers in her ear as she snugs up behind Abby. Yesterday, when she did this, it was sexy. Now it's scary. Now Abby feel trapped and isolated, alone and cut off from the herd. She tries to wriggle away and Ixazaluoh clamps down with her thighs and arms and Abby can't move, can't get away, can't breathe.
"Stop, let me up, stop!" Abby cries.
Ixazaluoh wraps a hand in Abby's hair and pulls her face back and kisses her silent. Kisses her until Abby has no air, goes limp because she has no other choice. Terror jackrabbits beneath her sternum. Ixazaluoh releases her grip on the back of her head, presses her mouth against the love bite and nibbles. Abby sucks on the air.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me," Abby says, and she can hear the petulance in her own voice but she can't seem to moderate it. She feels petulant. She's scared and she's desperate because she can feel the choice melting away from her, feel the agency turning into steam, and she needs to cling to the illusion that this is something she can negotiate, this is something she can choose, while she still has the time to choose it. Petulant because she's being asked to trust, and she wants to trust, but how can she trust if Ixazaluoh doesn't keep her word? And even if Ixazaluoh didn't keep her word, then what?
Abby has no choice.
But wouldn't be better to have the illusion of a loving relationship than the truth of force? Of...slavery?
"You hurt me," Abby says again. "Please, don't."
"Relax and I won't," Ixazaluoh says, words smearing against Abby's shoulder, like honey and oil. "I'd rather not. I'd rather if you were... happy."
Abby closes her eyes and concentrates on unwinding, works her way through a breathing exercise she learned in one of the resort's yoga classes, and tries to ignore the thing hovering just at her back because the moment she thinks about it she's going to tense up again. Calm flows across her skin like rainwater. Ixazaluoh kisses her shoulder, a sort, sweet pucker, and Abby exhales sharply.
"Much better, Abby," Ixazaluoh praises. She runs her hands down Abby's side, cups her bottom, and it feels a bit like being petted. Like a cat. "Good girl. You're so clever. You learn so quickly."
"What now?" Abby whispers.
Ixazaluoh sighs. "Do you remember who Ixazaluoh is?"
"Goddess of water and weaving, of women's arts," Abby answers, obedient. Terrified.
"Yes."
"And that's you?"
"That's me."
"You're a goddess."
"Yes."
"That's crazy!" Abby blurts before she can reel it in. She goes still, screws her eyes shut, waits for a slap to fall or a fist, for a bite, for punishment. She holds very, very still. And when nothing happens, she slits her eyes.
Ixazaluoh is curved above her, looking down, a great, heavy sadness sloping her shoulders, hanging like dew in her hair. The lamplight has created a blue-black halo of her frizz.
"You really do fear I'll hurt you," Ixazaluoh breathes.
"…yes."
Ixazaluoh leans down and kisses her softly, kisses her gently, kisses her pliant and slick and open, until Abby has rolled onto her back and spread her thighs, welcoming her lover into the cradle of her hips and not realizing that she's done so. Tamed. So quickly.
They part and Abby takes stock of their positions and determinedly does not tense up again.
"I love you," Ixazaluoh says. "And I need you. I will never hurt you."
"As long as I do as I'm told?" Abby challenges, feeling more confident the longer this goes on. Ixazaluoh still feels like flesh to her. And flesh can be hurt back if she has to. She doesn't want to, mind, but she will if she has to.
"I am not an abusive spouse," Ixazaluoh spits, suddenly rigid with affronted anger. "I don't beat or bleed my devotees!" Betrayal and pain lance across Ixazaluoh's expression. "Is that what you think of me? That I am no better than a Panther god?"
Abby reaches up, tangles her fingers in Ixazaluoh's hair and pulls her back down for another kiss. "No," Abby says, because the hurt on Ixazaluoh's face was real. And harrowing. "Devotee? Is that what I am?"
"Will be, soon," Ixazaluoh murmurs against her mouth. "Tomorrow."
"At the solstice."
"Yes."
"And what does it involve. How much of me do you dictate? How much do you take?"
"Your life is your own to live, Abigail Irene Williams," Ixazaluoh says. She sits up, kneeling between Abby's legs. "Your choices are your own. You may go where you wish and do as you wish."
"Then what do you get out of it?"
Ixazaluoh reaches down and takes Abby's left hand and brushes her fingernail against the bruise on the meat of her thumb. A shiver of pleasure so intense crawls across Abby's skin that she actually bucks, her eyes rolling back in her head.
"Your knowledge of me keeps me strong. Your belief in me keeps me alive. And whatever you care to dedicate to me sustains me—a meal, a creation, an orgasm."
"You mean, me fucking someone else will feed you?"
; "Yes." Ixazaluoh is grinning at how crude and incredulous Abby is. She can just tell.
"And that's it? I say yes, and I come 'home' with you tomorrow, and then you let me go?"
"No," Ixazaluoh murmurs and shifts closer, pressing Abby's thighs open wider, brushing her other hand over her mons, cradling her sex gently, possessively. "No, I will never let you go. But you may leave, and that is what you meant."
Abby thinks about it. She thinks about it for a long time, and Ixazaluoh lets her. She simply strokes her thumb across Abby's palm, soothing, gentle, patient. She doesn't move her other hand, and it feels… safe. Caring. Protective, instead of possessive.
"I want to say yes," Abby says at last. "But it doesn't really matter what I say, does it?"
"No," Ixazaluoh admits. "It has already begun and you are mine. But I would prefer that you enter into it willingly and with an open heart."
"Okay," Abby says. "Okay. Yes."
Ixazaluoh leans down and kisses her again, gentle and sweet and Abby thinks she might be crying, but she isn't sure. Tears mat her lashes, roll across her temples, but they may not be hers. When Ixazaluoh sits up again, she raises Abby's hand to her mouth and kisses that too, sending ripples of pleasure radiating out from that point, across Abby's body.
"H-holy sh-shiiiit," Abby pants.
"It gets better," Ixazaluoh says, and produces something small and thin from nowhere.
"What's that?" Abby asks, getting her right elbow under her so she can get a good look. "Is that a needle?"
"Cactus needle."
"Oh, I'm not…" Abby stutters, flushing. "I'm not into pain-play. Please."
"This is not for sex. Shhh. Trust me."
And, for reasons that Abby isn't entirely sure of, she does. So she goes still and waits, and watches.
Ixazaluoh pricks her with the cactus needle, directly over the pen-cap bruise, and right before her eyes, the dark stain grows, shifting under her skin like a living thing. Abby spasms in fear, yanking her hand away and shaking it as if she could dislodge the ink in her flesh like an errant spider. It only makes her wrist hurt.
"Abby, watch," Ixazaluoh says, grabbing her arm and holding her still.
The ink grows into a bigger blotch, gets a bit thin and long, like a cylinder. It stops growing, pulses a little, and then settles. It looks like a faded tattoo.
"It doesn’t look like anything," Abby says. "It doesn't… I can't feel it. It doesn't hurt. What is it supposed to be?"
Ixazaluoh leans down and kisses Abby's palm, and then tongues the stain. Abby can feel that, holy hell, she can feel that, all the fucking way down. She gasps and sways into Ixazaluoh's body, presses her face against her lover's neck, and struggles to catch her breath. Ixazaluoh chuckles and releases her hands, winds her arms around Abby and pets the back of her head, soothing.
"It will be clear tomorrow, my dearest," Ixazaluoh says. "One more night. Say you'll come. Say I may keep you."
"Yes," Abby says, in a fit of bravery. "Yes."
Because if she says no to this, if she refuses this adventure, then what kind of travel writer is she?
☼
Abby meets Ixazaluoh out by the main gates, at the employee bus stop. Nobody looks at Ixazaluoh, though Abby gets a few strange glances. She is dressed in the only other nice outfit she brings to resorts—a breezy white cotton sundress with a square neck and butterfly sleeves. It's very flattering to her cleavage, and it skims her hips in just the right way to show off her curves without betraying her belly. It swings full, just covering her knees. She's got her regular brown leather sandals on, though, instead of her strappy heels, because Abby has no idea where she and Ixazaluoh will be walking. Maybe she should have worn her tennis shoes, but they clash with the dress and something in Abby wants to be pretty for her lover. Goddess. Whatever.
She grabs Ixazaluoh's hand for courage as the bus pulls up, and instantly the people around them seem to forget she exists.
"Oh," Abby says as Ixazaluoh pulls her onto the bus. The driver doesn't look at them, doesn't ask for fare, doesn't watch them sit. "You don't actually work at the resort," Abby asks as they take seats in the very back of the bus. Nobody around them can hear her, either.
"No," Ixazaluoh says. "But there are many, many people at resorts, many more than there ever are in a town. And so few of our children still believe. The Christian pantheon, they are greedy. They gobble up the world. We have become like poachers, we must find those capable of seeing amid the flocks of others. We are made so small, Abby. We fight for everything we receive."
"I don't believe in anything, though," Abby says.
"You believe in yourself."
"No," Abby demurs.
"You do," Ixazaluoh insists. "You have just not acted upon it. And you believe in doing right by your brothers and sisters. You believe in honesty. You have a strong heart and a good soul. You have a faith and so you can see."
"But why resorts?"
"I cannot leave my homeland. But the world comes to us. People come and go in great waves. I can meet thousands, millions of people very easily. I can touch them all. Very easily."
They are silent for the rest of the bus ride. Abby tries to decide how she feels about being actively hunted by… by whatever it is that Ixazaluoh is. About being prey. Something crawls up her spine, splashes against the back of her neck in a hot-cold surge of prickling sensation and she realizes that while she's scared, while the thought of being stalked and seduced and owned is terrifying, she also very, very turned on.
It is the most amazing feeling on the planet to be wanted.
☼
The bus is empty when the driver stops on the side of the highway. He just sits there, door open, and Ixazaluoh pulls Abby out into the warm night air.
"What was that?" Abby asks, watching the bus vanish down the empty road.
"He thinks he was stopping for railroad tracks."
"Did you do that?"
"Not me, no. It's not my… area," Ixazaluoh admits with a glinting smile, the more smile. "Come, this way." She leads them to a dense row of trees and Abby realises that this is the boundary between the road and the true wilds. There is a mature forest behind this line, dim and shadowy. A jungle, dark and packed and dangerous. Abby feels absurdly foreign and very, very fragile.
"There's no path," Abby protests. She's wearing sandals, she's going to trip on a rock or get stabbed by a branch.
"Yes, there is. Trust me, Abigail," Ixazaluoh says, and Abby does. Because she's been asked to.
They walk in silence for a long time. Abby isn't sure if it's minutes, or hours, or days. She doesn't trip on anything, and eventually she cranes her head back and watches the stars through the canopy.
Eventually she becomes aware that they are being watched. She doesn't see the eyes in the shadows so much as feels them. The way they look at her is like caresses. They stroke up her exposed calves, down her naked arms. They slide over her breasts, linger on her cheeks, dip into the hollow between her thighs. The gazes are physical things and she sucks in air through her teeth, shocked and so fucking turned on that her legs threaten to go out from under her.
"Patience!" Ixazaluoh snaps at the darkness, exasperation thick in her voice. "Brothers, sisters, please. Patience."
The eyes blink closed. The touches recede.
Abby clings to Ixazaluoh, hands wrapped in her brown shirt, only when she opens her eyes, Ixazaluoh not dressed like a resort worker any more. Instead she looks like she stepped straight from an anthropology textbook. She is wearing a top of woven blues and greens. The patterns look like waves, and it is squarish, sticking out from her shoulders, making her look large and powerful. She's got a beautiful necklace on, thick and large, almost like a collar, and it is blue too—blue stone, blue beads, and blue sparkles, like the sea at midday. Her skirt reaches the ground, tubular, slightly stiff, woven as well. Her feet are bare and incongruously, her toenails are painted a bright, beautiful sea-green.
"It's a nice pedicure,"
Ixazaluoh says, following her line of sight. "I want to keep it."
Abby laughs, but it comes out small and strangled sounding. It echoes in the open air around them and Abby looks up, startled. They aren't in the middle of the forest any more. They are in a clearing. Well, barely a clearing. It's less like it was man-made and more like the trees are too scared to encroach. In the middle of the clearing is a low stone bench. It looks nothing at all like a slaughter stone from a ziggurat or Stone Henge, but all the same, Abby feels like a sacrifice when Ixazaluoh leads her to it and encourages her to sit.
Abby clings to her fingers. "You promise you won't hurt me?" Abby is trembling, sweating, her hands feel clammy and her forehead itches with it, and god, she's never been so scared and so turned on in her life.
"I promise, my love."
"I just... it's just that..."
"All those stories of human sacrifice?" Ixazaluoh asks.
Abby nods.
"Some supplicants were slaughtered," Ixazaluoh admits. "But some only suffered what the Europeans, in their ridiculous desperation for prudery, called the little death."
"Oh," Abby breathes.
"But if it will make you feel better, I will give you three requests."
"Requests?"
"You may give me... rules, if you like," Ixazaluoh says. "I will follow them if I am able."
"But you won't if you can't," Abby says. "Or... don't want to."
"Correct. But I will try. Is that not reassuring?"
Abby swallows. "Yeah." It's not exactly the explicit relationship negotiation she's used to. Normally if people intend to break their promises and punch through their partner's hard limits without their say so, they usually don't admit it. Which, perhaps, is more honest. Makes Ixazaluoh just a little bit more trustworthy.
And is, if Abby admits it to herself, is sort of part of the thrill. She can ask, but her lover will still do exactly as she wants.
"Don't kill me," Abby says. It's perhaps a bit redundant, a bit moot, to request that when her goddess has already said that she wants Abby happy and alive; needs her to be so. But, Abby feels that she should be clear.
Dear Abby Page 5