Ceteroquin: The Lovers' Respite
This is the twelfth part of The Trapping of the Ceteroquin. This story appears in full in M/U's 2020 speculative fiction anthology, Demiurges and Demigods in Space, Vol. 1 and will be run as a serial online every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months and each entry can easily be found here. To read this in its entirety, along with all of the other brilliant pieces included in the collection, you can obtain paperback and PDF copies in our store, with Kindle versions available on Amazon.
They never made it to the promised briefing.
All of them had meekly retreated alone into their respective quarters – all, that is, but Ben and Molly. Without exchanging a word, these two each understood that if they were to retire together, they had to abstain from the kind of undue emotional intensity that might prevent the Blue Striper’s thread of insanity from being severed. Their estrangement over the last several days, almost regardless of its specific and varied causes and effects, had taken a toll on each of them that could only be rectified through proximity and intimacy.
Once the door slid shut and they were alone, instead of disrobing as usual, they collided in a furious embrace that lasted several minutes. When they released one another, they remained where they stood, facing one another, close to one another, as they spoke.
“I feel very calm about the whole thing,” Ben confessed softly, “almost eerily so. I worry that it’s almost a coldness.”
“I don’t know what to feel and I’m definitely not going to pass judgment on whatever must be running through your head. And heart.” She gently stroked his forehead with one hand and momentarily placed three fingers upon his heart.
“All I’ve got is this sort of blank sense of duty or something.”
“In what way?”
He shrugged without malice. “This is the path and the mission I’ve chosen. All of us. This is the path and the mission we’ve all chosen to dedicate ourselves to, to offer up a hunk of our lives to, maybe for some of us our whole lives.”
“Of course,” she said quietly.
“We have to take what comes. I don’t feel bad about it, at least in that regard.”
“I…I really don’t know what happened on that station, and I’m not just saying that. I can’t explain or account for myself hardly at all, and you know I’m always in better control of myself than that, and I don’t know why…I don’t know why. But I’m sorry. I hope you at least know that.”
He reached up to touch her cheek. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I don’t know what happened either. But we both know it’s not like that. That station is…possessed by something.”
“Yes, it is,” she nodded. “It’s evil.”
“But even if you were not possessed, and remained in control, and things played out like that – maybe that happens. We’re not to waste our energy feeling bad about that, not from my side and not from yours. But let’s not do this.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure we ever need to do this at all. But you know we can’t now. We’ve got to take it and put it aside.”
Without moving away from him, as though suddenly reclaiming her usual grace, she removed her outer garments and her underwear and stood before this man willingly exposed in ways far deeper than simple nakedness. “I need you now,” she said, a gentle but hungry plea.
He said nothing as she lithely helped him disrobe, watching this exposed soul before him, for a moment catching a glimpse of all this, of the two of them, from some higher vantage point, saw his shipmate and partner for who and what she was, and what sort of flaming shape they formed together. He was so lost in it, for just a minute or perhaps even less, that he could only mutely follow as she guided him to the bed.
“Love me slowly now,” the plea continued, “love all of me, penetrate into my soul – and repeat everything you just said in that language.”
Without a word, that’s what he did, and they immediately fell soundly asleep with light hearts – at least for a little while.