Textured Creations

“We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organised that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us. Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us. The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolical devices. Thought is the organising factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions. In that way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.” Albert Einstein

Watching her open her eyes and begin to speak, wasn't the revelation of accomplishment that I had expected. She lived, she breathed .. she felt. No longer broken. No longer unwanted. She was going to thrive as the beautiful creature she was always meant to be without ever knowing what had brought her to this moment. She did not even know to be graciously appreciative. She wasn't caught between Eros and Thanatos any longer. I don't know why that upset me so but it did.

The burns on my neck and chest that flared white hot made me cringe as I stood up. I have never known the agonies of real pain. I have never known the crushing weight of defeat or the sweet glories of victories. Orahjinn's bare nod of approval did little to salve anything ... anything at all. When I left the wagon the flashes of light and energy still blinded my sight. My eyes felt raw as if they had been poured full of salt, my skin so sensitive I could have sworn it peeled itself away from the sinew beneath.

I just needed air, the cooling caress of the breeze so a walk along the stream was just the thing. Managing to find a grassy spot on the bank, I sank into it as if I were melting into the plains itself. I only noticed the girl when she moved. A different slave: the one I call red hair. She moved toward me wearing her feelings on the outside as if they were painted on her skin. Her hunger a thin icy layer that flared my sense of smell except that it was buried underneath a different emotion ... fear. She settled to her knees away from me. Afraid. Afraid to come close.

Without turning to spare even a glance her way I asked her why ... why she came to me. Her answers told me what I already knew, she yearned to please me but her fears kept her from coming closer. I began to narrow the ledge she stood on until she had to balance there where I wanted her. Why had she chosen to bring her fears first and not her hungers to me? A razor's edge honed sharper.

She was raw, bleeding, oozing from every pore with emotions. It glistened in her eyes, it spilled from her tongue, it rose and fell with every breath she took now. My abilities allow me to feel the essence of what others feel but I do not know where they come from, the reasons they are there. Here I had a chance to submerge into what had created such delicious sensory delicacies. I pulled her closer, to lay her cheek on my thigh so I knew where she was. So I could control how much she moved and in so doing assault the already garish sensitivities I was experiencing. I gave her chance to explain. Why she was gathering rocks along the banks? She said she was gathering them for Fonce. Interesting but more so the why. Different cultures have different customs. I'd learned this during the Love Wars. She wanted to throw the rocks at her Master. It might have been odd to me that the slave would want to throw rocks at her Master but I knew enough about her so far to realize there was purpose beneath the concept. I would not presume to speak for his thoughts but I wasn't so sure that was a good idea. It is a lethal gesture here on the plains for a slave to try and harm a free person and that sounded an awful lot like an attempt. I didn't tell her not to, just to be prepared for the consequences. Fonce just might relish offering them to her .. the consequences that is.

There was an inherent beauty under what she was trying to tell me. In the places that she came from these stones were to bring good omens. She said she wanted to stuff them into the open hurts and pains of her Master .. into mine .. She wanted to be the fingers that pinched together every wound. Of all the things I have learned of healing the mind and the body this was quite an unique twist to modern medicines wasn't it? To fill the crevices of needs and wants with .. rocks ... with good omens. I gave the girl credit of such an imaginative approach. While I gave her permission to continue to give that "all" she was attempting to pour over her world, I reached up to pinch the flesh of cheek between my thumb and forefinger, pinching the wounds of the heart and mind closed just as she had offered for Fonce and myself. The tender flesh crushing, the vessels and capillaries breaking and collapsing to a dark bruise that would mark the place of this miracle medical cure.

She was pleased despite the pain. Eager to turn the other cheek for more.

Narrowing the pathway I was allowing her, I stood up abruptly and let her spill to the ground like a puddle at my feet. I was furious. How dare she wish to defile the beauty of the art I had just created on her skin? It was just as I wished it to be. I warned her not to defile it. I back handed her, then stood watching the reddening make a frame for the already bluish streak I'd left moments before. I wanted her to fall and she didn't. I even tried to push her on the tip of that edge and she still remained there however waivering, she held. There was something very satisfying in that, something soothing and solid to me.

Regardless, her apologies fell on deaf ears, her pleadings for forgiveness only honing the slim gap I was carving beneath her. I did not want her sorrows unless they were mingled in the midst of her hungers and fears. She could coat them until they were icing thin before she would hand them back to me again.

As I turned to walk away I had to admit that the indention of red over the darkened purple when it finished its flare was quite beautiful. Perhaps I will tell her next time I see her that her addition had been well worth the effort.