Gem Finder

It was an October night of wind.

In the house above the trees in the world underground, a creature in the skin of a man was roving.

It was unusual for Kunzite to travel his home like this; he preferred to stay in one place, like a heavy star, and let things be drawn to his gravity. But tonight he was in high spirits. He had in his possession four colored gems of extraordinary power, and the promise of three more made him incandescent with possibility. What he wanted now was his gem-finder, his prizewinner, his beautiful golden boygirl.

And so he climbed to the tiny round room at the top of the house's highest spire, and there, beneath a window that the wind blew through, he found a bed with body curled in it. This was how Zoisite slept, always. Sleek body shrimped into a tight semicircle; knees tucked up like a tumbler in flight. Arms crossed, hands upon the shoulders in a mean little hug. Leave me alone, said that body from the back. You'll be sorry if you don't.

The trouble with Kunzite, however, was that he was very rarely sorry. It was not a state that occurred naturally to him. Things that ought to make him sorry tended to escape his notice. He would say something and Zoisite would stiffen and turn away quickly, as though stifling a sneeze. Shortly thereafter, the boy would mumble an excuse and take his leave, and Kunzite would return to his business with the equanimity of a man whose self-worth was measured by deeds, not words.

Therefore he did not suspect, on this night of winds and possibility, that Zoisite had gone to bed angry. The curled body and crossed arms were nothing out of the ordinary. The boy closed up like a flower when he slept, battening down against his own bad dreams. It would be difficult for anyone to distinguish anger from the other hard cables that bound him up nightly and kept him from true repose. Kunzite regarded it as his unique skill –- indeed, his responsibility -– to untangle this knot and weave it into something more appropriate to the fineness of its thread. Never being sorry helped him in this regard. He was a good lover because he was certain of the rightness of his own desire. When he shed his clothes to lie bare against his mate, to touch and be touched and ride the boy's restless body until it grew calm, he believed he was making something beautiful out of their fellowship. At the hard core of his climax, when Zoisite went slack beneath him and opened to his final secret deepness, Kunzite would think of the colored gems, how they were meant to join together and become a better thing, singular and powerful and pure.

The bedframe creaked under Kunzite's weight. It was not a large bed; nor was it sturdy. It was, in fact, little more than a wooden cot: one of the relics of the surface world that had followed Zoisite when he had come to live with Kunzite in the kingdom underground. Like the other things that had followed him –- plant life, seasons, weather –- the bed had gone a little wild in the dark, growing and changing in ways that cut wood ought not to. But it was still in essence a small rickety thing, out of place amid the live stones of the house, and there was little room for Kunzite in it. Not that Kunzite minded. He liked the way the sagging mattress drew the boy's body against him, and he liked the mysterious smoky fragrance of the wood, similar as it was to the scent he sometimes caught in Zoisite's hair, and under Zoisite's arms, and in the tender cleft between the buttocks.

The scent and thought of these hidden places excited Kunzite. He settled in close behind his mate, hollowing his belly to the arc of the spine and pulling the narrow hips back against his own. The young one's breathing was soft and slightly frayed at the edges, like the scraps of torn silk that made up his bedclothes. Kunzite could tell from these edges that Zoisite was awake. But the boy did not stir, or speak, or relax in the slightest from his unfriendly hunch. This surprised Kunzite, but it did not trouble him. Here was a knot to untie. Here was a thing to make beautiful.

The last time Zoisite had gone to find gemstones for Kunzite, he had returned filthy and enraged, carrying nothing but mice in his sleeves. For some time afterward he'd secluded himself, tormented by humiliation and fleabites. What he didn't know was how deeply the spectacle of his failure had stirred his lover. In his fury and dishevelment, Zoisite had embodied the shadow of something that Kunzite remembered meeting once: an erl-child sired by lightning through a live willow: a wild fierce being with hair the color of dead leaves, that spat and bit and climbed walls and was deadly for its size. Before the creature had a name, or a language, or even a definite sex, Kunzite had discerned its loveliness and had chosen it as his special companion.

That creature was underground now, but it wasn't buried deep. It was here, in the ragged silk edges of Zoisite's breathing, in the small bird beating at the osier cage of his ribs, in the burnt-leaf scent of his hair. Kunzite sensed it and began to dig deeper. He pushed his curved nose into the crown of Zoisite's head and dropped words through the seams hidden there. They weren't words that could go in through the ears. Into Zoisite's ear Kunzite put nothing but a kiss, and then another kiss, and then his tongue. He passed an arm beneath Zoisite's shoulders, scooped the spare willow frame close to him, and felt it begin to sweat. The water carried words that could not come out through the mouth. This was how the two of them began their lovemaking.

Soon Kunzite approached the other gates of Zoisite's body. He was coming in from the back, since that what was offered to him, but he touched the front first to be sure of his course. He spanned the chest with his hand and felt the small bird beat its wings harder. He traced with curiosity the mammalian stigmata of nipples and navel. The boy's genitals did not interest him much; they were sweet enough to taste when he had his head down there, but in the main they were superfluous things, designed to intrude and protrude and perform functions irrelevant to the feminine inwardness that drew Kunzite to his mate. Nevertheless he knew that Zoisite liked to be held there, and out of fairness he cupped the tender parts and stroked them once or twice. Zoisite sighed and his shifted his sweating body a little, but his sex remained soft and hooded and cool to touch. The hand lost interest and moved away. Now it was time to touch from the inside.

Kunzite was not built like his companion. He had come into being when the Earth contained many worlds layered on top of each other, the world of men being just one of them. Kunzite had the proportions of a man and he spoke men's languages, but he was from another layer altogether. He was a creature of shadows and concealments. His body was full of surprises. These he had revealed to no one except Zoisite, for theirs was an intimacy that had taken centuries to ripen. When they made love, he let Zoisite decide what shape and color he really was beneath his dusky skin and his white swinging mane. He let his mate look behind his eyes to behold a blackness ten times black. He allowed these things because he trusted Zoisite, and because the boy so clearly wanted him –- all of him -– even the parts that were strange or cruel or meant to tear apart tender things. Their couplings were never simple or safe. Zoisite was bold, and he had a core of green wood that was difficult to break, but there were thresholds that his body could not cross no matter how keen his desire. Therefore it was not unusual for him to refuse Kunzite certain favours.

What was unusual was for him to refuse his lover utterly. It was Zoisite, in fact, who most often started things: cajoling, flirting, enticing Kunzite with his beauty and his willingness to be fucked in ways that were not entirely wholesome. Yet now, for the first time in memory, he resisted. He let Kunzite spread his buttocks and press the tip of something slick and not quite human against the opening there, and then he struggled, broke loose, and sat up so quickly the bedframe rocked. His face, Kunzite now saw, was flushed and baleful; in the green shade behind his eyes, a wild thing was watching.

There followed an uneasy quiet as the two of them beheld each other in sudden strangeness, as they had not done for millennia. Time poured out across the bed. The wind was gentler now, and it breathed into the room a marshy scent that mingled with the smell of stone and desire and old, live wood.

"Zoisite." Kunzite didn't intend his voice to be stern, but he couldn't help it. Speech was not his gift. His mind ran with many currents, shallow and deep, and words sank in all of them. He thought again of the colored gems, how he only had four and needed three more to make a better thing. He tried again. "Zoisite. Little brother. Lie back down with me."

Zoisite obeyed because he heard a command, but he did so comically, flopping onto his back and making the little bed shriek. His hair fell across his face and he did not bother to correct it.

"You," came the voice through the hair, "are a brute."

Kunzite was taken aback. This was a novel conversation and he was uncertain which words would be of use. Zoisite was quicker with language and he spoke again.

"You say you want me to find the nijizuishou so that you can see Queen Beryl smile? Very well. Then let me get a proper rest. I'm too tired to fuck you."

Seconds passed as Kunzite thought about words and their treachery. He thought about the lovely wild thing with its tender parts and hurt pride and its fierce green core. How it had come to him ages ago, put its head on his knee, and let itself be given a stone-name. How centuries could lie between fragments and the whole.

"Zoisite, when I said—"

"Goodnight, Kunzite-sama."

Zoisite lifted his hair so Kunzite could see the green behind his eyes. The creature was still there. "I will get the nijizuishou, you know. Damn Beryl and her smile. I will get them for you. Just wait. You won't be sorry."

- END -