Authors: Alexa Blair
Chapter 10
When morning did come, I woke alone back in Nik’s bed. I wiggled slightly and could tell I was still undressed, so the events of the night had not been a dream.
I put my clothes on from the previous day and tried again to make my way through the maze of halls and stairs to the kitchen. I ended up lost again, but found a bathroom. After attempting to make myself less disheveled I continued my search for the kitchen.
After a few turns I thought I detected a hint of coffee and bacon wafting through the air. The smell got stronger as I followed this new direction. When I finally reached the kitchen, Nik was not there. Instead, I found a plate, cup of coffee, and a note with my name in his handwriting.
I ate a piece of bacon as I read. He had left to search for Acidalia without me. He felt this was best since now I could be tracked more easily. He asked that I remain inside with the door locked, but said I should feel free to explore his home.
As I finished eating I gave the entire situation more thought. If anyone was going to find Acidalia, I was the best candidate. She had spent the most time with me and apparently Hermes planned to use me for bait anyway. If I was prepared I could defend myself, hopefully. I began trying to find my way through the cavernous corridors to where we came in last night. Instead, I ended up deeper in the cave.
After some time, I began to hear sounds of water. As I followed the sound I could tell it was a bubbling rushing sound. I reached an underground river and followed the direction of its flow. After several minutes and a few places where the cave descended sharply I saw the light of a natural exit. When I reached the opening, I stood at the top of a waterfall. As I looked down and out I could tell it was the waterfall in both of my dreams.
Standing on a rock formation in the center where the waterfall pooled, the woman from my dreams smiled up at me and beckoned me to her.
Chapter 11
As I raised a hand to wave and call out I slipped on a wet rock and began falling with the waterfall. At the bottom, instead of the splash I expected, I found myself caught by the arms of the dream woman. She was even more beautiful in person. I couldn’t explain the warmth and love that rushed over me as she smiled at me.
She stood me beside her in the water and eyed me closely. I looked at her, the shimmer of the water, and up at the water fall that parted to fall around us.
“Acidalia?” I asked.
I hoped she was my bear and not a strange beautiful wanderer. She half nodded.
“You may be more familiar with me as Aphrodite, Goddess of Love,” she replied. “My bear form was just to get to know the woman we had all been watching date the current successor of the Orrin line.”
I tried not to allow my jaw to drop, but she could clearly see my surprise and was amused. I had questions about the “we” she mentioned, but there were more pressing matters at hand.
“You have been watching Nik and me? Then, surely you know the trouble we are in. Hermes is here somewhere looking for all of us,” I said panicked.
“I can manage Hermes, so long as your ‘Nik’ does not find him first. He will fight, but there will be nothing he can do without the help of the Gods, and Apollo helped his family enough centuries ago,” she said still looking me up and down.
“Well, we should find them. Let’s hurry, there may not be much time,” I pleaded.
“All is well. You are with me now,” she said smiling about herself. “They will come to us.”
She sniffed the air then waved her arms in an almost conjuring, come-hither fashion.
“Yes, between Nik’s love for you and my natural appeal to Hermes, I expect they will both be here any moment,” Aphrodite said with a smile.
She gesticulated again in my direction and my clothes became a reflective, shimmering white gown similar to her own golden garment. Then she took my hands and began to play and splash in the water as if we were girls on school break at a beach or pool.
As if under a spell I felt happy to play with her and enjoy the water. Just as I cupped water in my hands and released it over my head down my body, I looked around and Aphrodite was gone. I felt new eyes on me that made me somewhat uneasy.
Chapter 12
“I see you are ready for me, though there is a change in the air around you,” Hermes said appearing from the treeline surrounding the water. “Someone has had you first. No matter, this will still be fun and I shall still have the recompense I seek.”
Hermes appeared a golden blur as he ran across the last stretch of grass, he lifted just slightly to run atop the water toward me. I heard a familiar guttural growl and saw a bear, one I hoped was Nik, charging my way from the opposite direction. I stepped back into the waterfall as the two collided and clashed in a flurry of gold, fur, and cascading water.
“Aphrodite! Aphrodite!” I called, hoping the goddess would be true to her word and end this.
Instead, Hermes was using his agility and speed to attack Nik from a different angle with every moment. Nik launched a paw out and managed to slam Hermes into the water, but the nimble God only laughed. He stood, ready for their game to continue.
Nik stepped back to the waterfall to see if I was okay. As the water fell on his bear form, he seemed to morph again. I could see that he felt the shift as his shoulders tensed and he rounded his neck and head back and forth almost like a stretch.
“Nik, you are in a transition state,” I said, surprised. “Aphrodite did this.”
He looked at his hands, arms, and chest and saw that he had become a combination of the bear and manly states he had known. Hermes watched, smiling as though the fight might be more interesting now.
“This is the true state of my ancestors long ago. Something is changing the curse,” Nik said.
“No matter. I don’t care if it is paws or hands and feet. I will have retribution to bring forth to Zeus on Olympus,” Hermes cried out, lunging toward us.
Nik growled more fiercely than I had ever heard. As the two went to collide again they were interrupted by bubbling and singing rising from the water between them. As the bubbles climbed higher a shapely, womanly form began to present itself.
“What are you doing here?” Hermes said somewhat annoyed, yet flirtatiously.
Aphrodite had presented herself in all her glory. She glowed now more than before, more than in any of my dreams.
“I have come to declare that this dispute is settled. My ire has been quenched and it is due to this young lady, Vanessa,” she said with a smile.
She gave me a wink and blew a kiss.
“I am under the order of Zeus,” Hermes declared.
“Go see him yourself; your orders have changed,” she said simply.
Hermes bit his lip as if he weren’t sure what he felt towards Aphrodite at the moment. Then, with great speed, he ran climbing the very air until he was far from site.
Chapter 13
We stood in the water, Nik in his new “were” state, me in my gifted attire, and Aphrodite in all her glory. Nik kneeled before her. I felt I should, too, so I kneeled at his side.
“Thank you, but you can both feel free to stand. I feel like we are old friends,” Aphrodite laughed.
“Why did you spare me?” Nik asked.
“I didn’t,” Aphrodite said. “She did.”
“What? What did I do?” I asked.
Aphrodite took each of us by the hand and led us to the rocks I saw her sitting on when I first arrived. She sat us each down, then lounged on the higher rock above us.
“Dear Vanessa, you have no idea the power of loving body and soul. Neither did Polyphonte all those years ago. She defied me and ran, so I had to punish her,” she said.
Nik and I looked at each other and shifted, a little bit uncomfortable that she knew our activities and at dredging up his family’s history.
“The truest love comes from sharing yourself fully with someone. She refused to love in any form. Her punishment and the punishment bestowed on her family was about wanting to hold on to a selfish life and childish freedoms. My gift to the world is fully connecting and bonding with another. When this is fully realized, humans can live selflessly in the greatest love for another,” she explained.
“Then why have we all been living these torturous dual lives all these generations?” Nik asked, seeming more comfortable in his newest transformation.
“Because, Apollo’s blood runs through your veins as it did hers. By her own right she waged a war with me in refusing to experience what my role in her next phase of life was to be. Each of her descendants to follow also had their own agenda, seeking love on their own time. You, however, were the first to do differently. Despite the curse, we watched from Olympus as you didn’t just actively seek a mate. You sought a love to share in this great expression with you,” she said with a knowing smile.
“Wait a moment, Nik?” I asked, looking to him, confused.
“I dated those women you read about. I wanted to fully experience love, but I knew they were not the one. I met you, and I knew you were someone I wanted to spend every season with,” he said looking me in the eyes.
“So you were a virgin as well?” I asked surprised.
“He was,” Aphrodite smiled. “You two balanced Polyphonte’s debt in ways I couldn’t have expected. You both waited for love and even with the curse you both willingly shared every level of yourself with each other. Your secrets, fears, bodies. Now, with my blessing you may share a normal life, or whatever life you choose.”
With that, Aphrodite sat upright and blew us each a kiss. She vanished leaving only a golden haze.
Chapter 14
We hugged and rested for a few moments enjoying our success and freedom.
“I wonder what she meant by ‘any life we choose,’” Nik said.
“I think I might know,” I said.
I stood and walked over to the fall. I dipped my fingers in, and the water that ran down turned a glistening gold.
“I think this waterfall has the power to change the curse,” I said. “She has been appearing to me in dreams since all this started. In the first, she transformed me to a bear. In the second I transformed you into a man.”
“Is that what you want?” Nik asked.
I thought for a moment.
“I just want you to be yourself,” I said.
He was still in his blended form. I smiled at him and caressed his furred cheek.
“I love you in any form and would gladly join you as such just to be close to you,” I said.
Nik thought a moment. He touched the water and the same golden effect happened.
“Vanessa, I think Aphrodite has granted that wish,” he said.
At once I understood. I took his hand and we stood under the waterfall together. We each watched as the other morphed human, beast, and in between, still holding hands.
As we left the water, we were in our human forms. Nik held me in his arms and kissed me tightly. When he pulled back he released a strong growl of joy that shook the very mountain. I echoed his joy with a ground-shaking growl of my own.
THE END
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Scarlet’s Alien: Chapter One
1 a.m. was not an unfamiliar time for Scarlet, as much as she wished that it were. Working at a law firm was supposed to be a job people killed for, but all the glamour surrounding the profession usually comes from the six digit paycheck, without much thought going towards how many late nights are spent getting reports in to an asshole boss. Scarlet could just throw her computer across the room and go to sleep, but that wouldn't help her when tomorrow came. Especially considering that the report was already late.
Another hour and a half of excruciating writing went by before Scarlet could send the email off, then she got up, went over to the empty bed and flopped down. "Fuck this job," she muttered. Sure, it had gotten her a nice house on San Clemente beach in California, and she had enough smart investments to retire around fifty thanks to her connections, but nights like these made her wonder if the money was really worth it.
She tried to just relax, take a deep breath, and close her eyes. If she was ticked off before she laid down, she was livid now. Her body was so tired that it couldn't even get off to sleep.
"I can't believe it," Scarlet muttered to herself, then got out of bed, sluggishly shuffled down to the kitchen, made herself some tea, and groaned. Nights like these were the worst. All she could do was try to relax and get her mind off of things, or she would never be able to find the sweet land of sleep. So, she took her chamomile tea outside to her beach chair and just lounged, looking up at the night's sky.
It was a beautiful night. If she had a fancy camera, it would be one of those nights that a stunning photo of the sky could be caught. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and the city was enacting new energy conservation measures, so light pollution was at a minimum. It was just beautiful.
Though Scarlet was never too interested in astronomy, it wasn't hard to appreciate a night like this. There was even a comet with a faint greenish glow streaking along the clear night sky at a steady clip.
Funny, she mused to herself. Usually if comets were going to come by, then they would be all over the news. Yet, nothing of the sort had been on the local station she listened to in the morning. Yet that thing in the sky, that little greenish ball with the brilliant tail -- that had to be a comet, didn't it? Scarlet never really cared for astronomy, so she didn't know a comet from a meteor from any other extraterrestrial body that might come zipping along, but she was fairly sure that was what a comet looked like.
The beautiful and faint glow as the rock whizzed by in the sky soothed Scarlet, and she just sipped her tea as her eyes followed the comet. She started to feel at ease, until it became apparent to her that the comet's direction had changed, or at the very least it seemed for a moment to stop moving. The tail disappeared. Then the comet started getting larger.
The serenity that Scarlet felt not too long ago went up in smoke. Was what she was seeing even possible? The comet--if that's what she saw-- didn't stop moving. It was coming towards the Earth? Scarlet didn't even realize that comets could suddenly, and so clearly change directions like that, but she wasn't going to question it either. She dropped her cup into the sand and started running. She couldn't tell where the comet was going to land just yet, so she could be running right into the eventual impact zone. Regardless of that, her instincts just kicked in and told her to run.
She didn't get far. Maybe twenty feet, which barely got her to the fence around her estate, when the comet landed in the ocean, and the shock waves completely knocked her off her feet and made her legs feel like jelly.
Unable to do much else, Scarlet turned back towards the site of the comet, and she saw a huge wave forming from the impact. She tried to get back to her feet to run, but her legs wouldn't move, so she just held on tightly to her fence. Maybe it was sturdy enough to survive the torrent heading towards her?