Ghost Queen in the House of Love

33. Hedone

"When I love / I become liquid light" -Nizar Qabbani

In my languor, I neglected to see that autumn, once only slightly present, slowly creeps its gold and saffron into the trees the deeper we went into the swamp; I pretended it hadn't come at all, that we still had plenty of time. As she comes painfully close, and all I want to do is bury myself in her arms, Melinoe pulls a crinkled leaf from my hair, and I pull back and laugh.

She looks down at her pomegranate and, more experienced than me with this complicated fruit, picks the seeds and eats them. I watch as her tongue accepts them. I follow her deft example, but even with how tiny some of the seeds are, I find my mouth overcome with their juices. As if with each seed, I am a cup almost spilling at my brim. This peaceful space between us, it's another kind of intimacy.

We get both our pieces about halfway eaten before the twinges in my wet fingers worsen; I feel my blood everywhere, hot and buzzing in my ears with the thrum of life and undeath around us.

She parts her lips, waiting, and I lean forward, closing the distance between us.

The kiss is soft and yielding, as if we're afraid to do anything more than that, to press the other too far. Brief, when I pull away and rest my forehead on hers; she's leaning down, our noses glancing against the other's.

"I want new, better memories." To kiss her and love her and have that be a new language I taste on my lips, and it tastes of pomegranates and smoke. To not only have sex to forget and reclaim, but to reinvent how I look at my body. As if gazing into a mirror, but I'm framed and shifting like mercury in her dark, ponderous eyes. "Do you think that's silly?"

Cupping my chin in her slender fingers, she rasps against my hair, "No, of course not. I just—I just want you to know there's no obligation. Ever."

"I know."

When I nod, she gently grips the front of my chiton and my right shoulder, pulling me into a kiss that's more ardent, that consumes me with the pomegranate juice that fills our mouths as the kiss becomes messy, unguarded when our tongues brush, and my teeth tease the bottom of her lip, and she releases a soft gasp. I'm overwhelmed by the sharpness of her taste, alongside the smoke and the old salt of the petrichor outside.

We find ourselves up at the pillows, and I let her settle over me as she presses her lips to my chin, and we have another deep kiss, my hand furled in her curls. She eases to the side, and we continue like that, my body flush against hers, my knee skimming her hip.

"What exactly do you like about sex?" she asks me. "I suppose it's difficult to imagine, even with the 'educational' scrolls."

I think about it. "It feels good. It passes the time."

"Is that all?"

"When you care about someone, you take pleasure from theirs. From feeling how happy they are." I take her hand, coaxing circles into her knuckles. "Why do you think you'd want to be with someone? Or do you at all?"

"I think I would like to feel that, the shared happiness. That closeness. It isn't that I never feel like it, but I need that bond to want to. The need is there, only less common." She leans down more, our noses touching. "Maybe I am curious."

I whisper, "You never need to act on anything at all."

"I'm afraid I might not be very good. All I know, I've read from books. And what I would do alone."

I tuck a curl behind her ear and press my nose to hers. "Don't worry about being good or bad. Just be. Just explore."

"I should let you know I can, I can change what part I have. Some descendants of Aphrodite can do that." Not all. In the stories, Father does. I'm not sure if Phobos, Deimos or Harmonia can. By default, while I'm a woman, I've always had two sexes, something a goddess can have, but not usually a mortal, since I can only imagine the vertigo when they experience any sort of arousal and the blood drains from their head. "You can choose for me to be whatever you wish."