Shishkebobs!
Ceiphied yawned and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, looked around, and found himself precisely where he expected to be. That is to say, he was smack dab in the middle of the Unendingly Large Featherbed. Not a very specific location: if you are in the Unendingly Large Featherbed, you are automatically in the exact center. It is, after all, Unendingly Large.
Ceiphied cast about for clothing and reeled in a pair of white flannel pyjama bottoms. The top was nowhere to be found and quite possible had never existed in the first place. After a while Ceiphied gave up looking for it and started brushing his hair out. Being a god does not automatically mean that your hair will remain untangled after you… uh, sleep on it. (1)
Then he stood up to leave.
Now, the Unendingly Large Featherbed is, as previously mentioned, Unendingly Large. Therefore, it has no edges, bedposts, headboards, visible means of exit, etc., unless you happen to be Shabranigdo. Ceiphied is obviously not Shabranigdo, but he is a god, and gods have means of exit other than the visible ones.
With some surprise, he exited into the Bed's antechamber, a room which is usually inaccessible to everyone but Shabranigdo. (2)
"What time is it?" Ceiphied asked.
"It feels like about noon," (3) a light contralto told him.
"That late --" Ceiphied stopped dead. "Koibito?" he asked cautiously.
Shabranigdo smiled up at him from her cushioned armchair. "Ye-es?"
"Are you a woman?"
"Why, yes," Shabranigdo replied. "Would you like to see?"
Ceiphied groaned. "It's too early for this."
"What are you talking about? It's never too early for sex."
Ceiphied dropped into the opposite armchair and summoned a caffeinated beverage, any caffeinated beverage. He took a sip, tasted instant coffee, and sent it immediately back to be exchanged for a nice cup of tea.
"So what are you reading?" he asked.
Shabranigdo held her book up so that Ceiphied could see the cover. It depicted a young woman's back and the rose she had tattooed there.
"Want a tattoo like that?" Shabranigdo asked.
"No."
"No? How about a brand, then? Or a scar? Face-paint?"
"No, no, and no," Ceiphied said firmly. "What's it about?"
"A masochist whore, her prissy halfway-lover, and her dominatrix archenemy." (4)
"I see," Ceiphied said at last. "You're the dominatrix, are you?"
"Who else?" Shabranigdo had that amused, half-hooded look about her eyes.
Ceiphied cocked an eyebrow. "You don't look like a dominatrix," he commented.
Shabranigdo put down her book and twirled around, showing off a wine-red gown, a waistful of wavy black hair (5.), and a perfect figure. Her eyes, of course, remained the same: hard and glinting and toxically red against almost unnaturally pale skin. "So what do you think?"
"I think you're beautiful."
Shabranigdo's smile became a slight smirk. She bent down and tipped Ceiphied's chin up. "And sexy?"
Ceiphied smiled back, a small quiet kind of smile. "I always think you're sexy," he replied calmly. "And beautiful." Then he remembered some of Shabranigdo's more monster-like forms (6). "Well. Almost always."
He lifted Shabranigdo's hair away from her neck. "May I?"
"Of course."
Ceiphied leaned forward and sank his fangs into Shabranigdo's neck. At their most basic level, dragons are carnivorous creatures still. And blood tastes simply divine.
They pulled apart slowly.
"I'm still on top," Shabranigdo husked.
Ceiphied felt his breath catch in his throat. "Whatever you say," he agreed, and stood up to start undoing Shabranigdo's buttons.
"You know," Shabranigdo murmured against Ceiphied's chest, "I believe I may actually have some flechettes around here. (7) Now," she mused, one hand trailing up his spine, "where did I put them?" Her fingertips brushed along his shoulderblades. "Oh fuck, I think I've lost the flechettes."
"That's good," Ceiphied said firmly. He slid the velvet gown off Shabranigdo's shoulders. "I have no idea to experience them."
"No?" Shabranigdo asked.
"None at all," Ceiphied murmured, bending his head for a kiss. And that was the end of the conversation.
The Unendingly Large Featherbed has drapes. Red ones. No-one but Shabranigdo has ever seen them, because they're at the edges of the Bed, but they are there.
The Bed also has a canopy, which can be seen by anybody from any point in the bed, by the simple expedient of looking up. It resembles the sky, stretching on out of sight, high above the Earth -- er, mattress.
Ceiphied lay naked on his back in the middle of the Bed, waiting with closed eyes for his breathing to slow to a manageable pace.
Then he opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was the canopy. It was the same red as the drapes he'd never seen, the same red as Shabranigdo's discarded velvet gown.
He touched his hand to his chest and it came away bloody, a different red from the canopy and the drapes and the dress, not quite the red of Shabranigdo's eyes. She did find the flechettes, or perhaps she created them, about halfway through. In return, Ceiphied gave her a collection of puncture wounds in odd places.
Ceiphied started to wipe his fingers off on the pristine sheets, then decided to suck them clean instead. He turned his head to the side. Shabranigdo was lying on her stomach, watching him quietly.
"I suppose it could be worse," Ceiphied said after a while. "You could have been watching that show with all the duels and the shadow-girls and the swords coming out of people's chests." (8)
"And covered the Bed with roses, yes," Shabranigdo agreed amiably. "Thorny roses."
"Don't all roses have thorns?"
"The fake ones don't." Shabranigdo rolled over and sat up. "Perhaps next time. Brush my hair for me?"
Ceiphied went to kneel behind her. She handed him a brush.
A door opened in the air. Startled, Ceiphied jerked the brush the wrong way and ripped out some of Shabranigdo's hair. Shabranigdo yelped.
L-sama didn't even blink And if She had, no-one would have noticed because Her hair covered Her eyes. "Time for dinner, boys." (9)
The Lord of Nightmares can alter reality just by being there. Or more accurately, Her take on reality is the only correct one, and everyone else's interpretations of it -- and, indeed, reality itself -- adjust accordingly.
Anyway, the point we're trying to arrive at here is that as She spoke, Shabranigdo ceased to be a woman and became a boy. Man. Demon with a male, human(-oid) body. You get the point.
He was slightly put out by this, just like other boys all over the Worlds are when their Mothers spoil their fun. "Dinner had better be worth out while, Mother. Because we all know how well You cook."
She fixed him with a cold stare that Shabranigdo had no difficulty noticing despite Her eyes being obscured by Her hair. "There's still time to make lobster shishkebobs, Shabby-dear."
Shabranigdo muttered something ungracious.
Ceiphied coughed discreetly. "We'll be right along, Mother. As soon as I untangle the brush from Shabranigdo's hair."
L-sama favoured them with a tiny, inscrutable smile. "Good," She said, and shut the door behind Her.
Ceiphied freed the brush from Shabranigdo and stood up, exerting a touch of Power to groom and clothe himself. "Come on, koibito." He smiled and extended a hand to Shabranigdo. "Don't want to miss those lobster shishkebobs, do we?"
Click on the number to get back.
1. Nor does it automatically mean that your pronouns get capitalized.
2. And, if She so wishes, L-sama.
3. In the Sea of Chaos, of which the Bed is a part, time is very relative.
4. Kushiel's Chosen, second in a trilogy by Jacqueline Carey.
5. As opposed to straight and somewhat shaggy.
6. i.e. the LOBSTER.
7. Razor-fine blades used expressly for S&M.
8. Shoujo Kakumei/Revolutionary Girl Utena, by Chiho Saito, the Be-Papas, and Kunihiko Ikuhara. Or something like that.
9. L-sama, by the way, does get capitalized pronouns.