Exit Light (15 page)

Gray skies, a heavy blanket and the soporific drone of a classic drama on the television all argued against wakefulness. Tovah, who’d been rubbing her stump with oil and doing all the adjustments to her prosthetic to make sure it stayed in working order, put aside the small bundle of tools and the bottle of lotion with a sigh. Her head fell back onto the couch.

“Just a little nap, Max.”

The dog didn’t bother lifting his head from his own sleep to comment on hers. Tovah sighed again, content in the warmth of the blanket and softness of the cushions. The phantom pains that had plagued her off and on all week trickled away. She closed her eyes.

She wandered for a while, hesitant to settle into one place that might be changed out from under her. The Ephemeros had betrayed her, badly, and it was hard to trust its promises again. She passed scenes half-finished, their occupants caught up in their own dramas that had nothing to do with her. Their wills tugged at her, some of them more urgently than others. Some needed guides. She ignored them all. She wasn’t much in the mood for interaction.

She did make a net of her will and cast it out, hoping to catch Spider, but once again he eluded her. If he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t.

The waking world came close but didn’t touch her. She knew where she was, heard the blah-blah of the television and saw light pressing her eyelids. She wasn’t down deep, but it was enough.

She sensed him before she saw him. A trickle of familiar will, a thread of desire she recognized. She stopped wandering and opened herself to the ebb and flow of the Ephemeros around her. Waiting.

It was impossible to know how long it took him to arrive, but when the gray veils parted, shifting and firming into a set scene, Tovah had been asleep long enough for the movie to end and another begin. They were in a park, now, with a nice wood-and-iron bench and a fountain. A stream, too. Ben’s familiar touch. He liked the sound of running water.

He was fishing again. He stopped when he saw her, like he was surprised. It stung, a little, the way he so clearly wanted to avoid her. She saw it in the hesitation of his step and his wary gaze.

“Hi, Ben.”

He nodded and looked toward the fountain. “That’s very nice.”

Until he said so, she hadn’t noticed, but as soon as she did she understood that she’d shaped it. Not him. “Thanks.”

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine. You?” Tovah sat on the bench. Its curved metal was cold and hard and bit into the backs of her thighs, a discomfort she allowed for a moment before shaping it away.

“Fine.”

Ben cleared his throat. “So…what’ve you been up to?”

Tovah’s mouth twisted on her answer. “According to you and Spider, nothing important.”

It was a mean thing to say, and she got no satisfaction from the slightly guilty look he shot her. His answer, though, surprised her. “Yeah. I can be a little bossy.”

She huffed a little, not willing to concede even though it wasn’t gracious of her. “A little?”

A small smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “I’m not as bad as Spider. C’mon. He’s frustrated me, too.”

She’d seen the way Ben worked hard to strengthen his shaping skills. Spider wasn’t always the one pushing him. “You work hard.”

Ben looked around. “Not hard enough. There are still people I can’t help.”

She studied him. “That’s always going to be true, Ben.”

Even though he nodded, she didn’t miss the way his fists clenched as he shoved them deep into his pockets. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“There’s no rule that says you have to save everyone you try to guide, you know. Spider says we dream what we’re meant to dream.”

Ben looked at her. She noticed, for the first time, faint lines at the corners of his eyes. “What about us, then?”

Tovah shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Ben gestured. “This. Us. Shapers. If we’re supposed to dream what we’re meant to, where does that leave us? If we can shape anything we want and unshape what we don’t, what does that mean?”

Once said aloud, the words made such utter sense Tovah couldn’t believe she’d never thought of it herself. “But…we are dreaming this, Ben. This is all a dream.”

He shook his head with a small scowl. “Sleepers dream both good and bad things. Sometimes they need someone to help them through. Find a conclusion. Solve a problem. Sometimes they just need to be rescued. Spider says we don’t have to know why, just that they do.”

He looked up at her. “What was the last dream you had before you knew you could shape?”

“I don’t remember.” Tovah shrugged, watching as he paced. “Do you?”

Ben shook his head. “No.”

“So maybe this is what we’re meant to be doing. For whatever reason.” Tovah offered the suggestion quietly. He seemed so vehement. “Maybe Spider’s right, Ben. There’s a reason for everything that happens here. We just can’t know it.”

“Why not? God doesn’t want us to?” He laughed derisively and sneered the word God. He waved a hand around them. “Sorry. I don’t buy it.”

“Are we back to that? I’m not going to try to convince you it’s any sort of god, Ben.”

He peered at her. “Good.”

“In fact,” she said, getting up from the bench, “I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Tovah—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “No. I don’t come here to fight with you. And I’m not going to. You don’t like me. I get it, okay? I don’t need it spelled out for me.”

He tried again, saying her name, but Tovah dismissed him again. “Bye, Ben.”

“Tovah, wait!”

She didn’t wait. She left him behind. It should’ve been easier; she’d put worse behind her, after all. Even so, she looked over her shoulder at him just before she shaped herself away.

When she looked ahead again, she stood in the middle of a church. The scent of incense tickled her nostrils. Shafts of light pierced the stained glass, illuminating the lifted hands of the saints. She wasn’t alone. Penitents bent their heads in several long benches as the priest in full vestments murmured ancient words from the altar.

She was in a field of flowers, surrounded by mountains.

She was in a classroom, about to take a test for which she hadn’t studied.

A playground.

A treehouse, looking down at the world below.

And then she was in a quiet room, on a plush couch, wearing a long silk robe and smelling roses.

Tovah sighed, reclining a little. Soft fabric caressed her skin. Tension eased.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

She smiled. “Hi.”

Her lover approached on swift, silent steps and knelt before her. He put his head into her lap, and her hands came up to caress his short dark curls. His breath pushed against her thighs through the silk.

“How do you always know where I am?” she asked after a moment.

He tilted his face to look at her. “I can feel you wanting me.”

“That’s very convenient,” she teased. She traced the rim of each brow and the slope of his nose. “And clever. Surely you have better things to do here than find me.”

His smile warmed her. “Better than making love to you? Never.”

Tovah laughed, tipping back her head. He climbed her body and captured her mouth, stealing the laughter and giving it back to her at once. They laughed together, until he bent to nip her throat and she gasped. He licked her skin, his hands sliding up over silk to cup her breasts.

“It feels good to know you want me,” he murmured.

Pleasure built slowly, and she didn’t try to rush it. There was plenty of time. Her lover eased his lips and tongue over her skin, finding all the places that best pleased her. Tovah shivered, her body tensing and releasing. Bright sparkles of delicious tension surrounded her, hovering like butterflies. Or stars. She was covered in stars.

Stars covered him, too, until his nakedness gleamed with silver and gold. Even his hair turned to gold and she ran her fingers through it as his face pressed against her. He nuzzled her skin. His hands pulled her closer. He looked up at her.

He had blue eyes, now, and she smiled at him. “Why don’t you ever stay the same?”

“Would you like that better?” He kissed her mouth. “If I was always the same?”

She kissed him, too. “I don’t know.”

The couch had become a bed, just as soft but with much more room. She lay back, pulling him with her. He stretched out over her, his body hard where hers was soft. He kissed her jaw and throat. His teeth pressed her lightly as he took a mouthful of her and sucked gently.

“Tovah, I thought you understood. Nothing holds you back here. You can be whatever, whoever you want. Always. All the time.”

She rolled onto her side to look at him. When she reached to touch his cheek, her lover caught her hand and kissed her palm. He closed her fingers over the spot, which burned a little.

“I know that,” she said. “I do.”

“Then why not let yourself do it?” He seemed genuinely curious. He took the hand he held and put it to his chest. “Feel that. My heart beats because I tell it to.”

The pulse-thump under her fingers stopped. Alarmed, she tried to pull back her hand, but his kept hers prisoner. His skin was still warm. He kissed her. The familiar beat began again. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“See?”

Her own heart had sped its rhythm, her body’s innate reaction and not something she did on purpose. “You have more control than I do.”

“You can have what I have.”

She shook her head. Her hair fell over her shoulders and across her breast. He brushed it away. His fingers cupped her. His touch still sent ripples of sensation through her, and she moved closer.

“What do you really look like?” she asked.

“Why does it matter?” He smiled, disarming her.

Why did it matter, really? Except that she’d had lovers in the Ephemeros before, but never more than once. This man…this lover…

“I don’t know,” she admitted, feeling foolish. “I shouldn’t try to control you.”

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll be it,” he said. “You might find you like the variety.”

Blond hair, green eyes. Brown eyes. Black eyes.

She laughed. “I might. But as long as they’re all you—”

“All me.” He kissed her again. “I know what you want, don’t I?”

His hands crept over her, stroking.

“Yes.” She shuddered. Need filled her, rushing into the empty spaces inside. “Yes, you do.”

“Then let me give it to you. Don’t ask why. Don’t question a gift.”

“Is this something I need, again?” she asked, sly, as her body responded to his touch.

Her lover laughed and mouthed her shoulder. “Something we both need.”

“I need you inside me,” she said.

He looked into her eyes. “Say it again.”

“I need you inside me. All the way inside me.”

“I think I can oblige.”

He shifted his weight and sank into her with a smooth, slow motion. His pelvis nudged hers. His first thrust took an eternity as he pulled out and pushed in, settling against her.

“You fit me just right. And I don’t have to do anything to make it so, it just is.” His slightly formal tone was like a burr on silk, ragged and a bit out of place, but making interesting patterns all the same. He moved inside her, propped on his arms to hold himself upright.

Then there were no more words. The world around them blurred at the edges, unnoticed and unneeded. Her lover pulled her close, turning them so she was astride him. They paused, settling this way. His hands held her hips. Tovah looked down at him. The chest beneath her hands was smooth, with twin dark nipples. His belly, taut and covered with hair thickening around the base of his cock. The thighs beneath her ass were hard with muscle. He might not look the same all the time, but those changes were minor and cosmetic. The man beneath was the same, and it didn’t matter how he represented.

“What’s wrong?” he asked when she stopped moving.

This wasn’t love. She couldn’t fall in love with someone she didn’t really know. This was pleasure and passion, the fulfillment of needs.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said.

Passion and pleasure. Her body wanted it. So did her mind. Tovah moved and her lover followed, each motion point and counterpoint. He groaned and the sound of his desire called out her own small gasp. Together they collapsed onto the bed, much solider now that it had become necessary. A room formed around them, small and not so lushly appointed as the ones he’d formed for them in the past.

After a second, she realized it was because she had shaped this place. No billowing curtains or aphrodisiacs or flickering candles. Bare walls, a soft place to lie and the warmth of her lover beside her. Those were the important things. To test herself, she opened the ceiling to reveal a nighttime sky littered with stars.

He turned on his side to pull her close, spooning. It took a moment for her to relax, but she did. He smelled good, not of stale sex. She smiled.

“What?” he murmured into her hair. “You’re laughing.”

“I’m not laughing. I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

“This is nice, that’s all.”

His hand rested flat on her belly. “It is nice.”

The in-out of their breathing met and matched. Tovah drew her knees closer to her, rubbing the left one absently. It didn’t hurt, but sometimes having it here felt as awkward as missing it did in the waking world.

“Most people don’t bother with this part,” she said. “The afterward.”

“You mean sleepers?”

She rolled to look at him. “I guess so. Yes. I mean, to them this isn’t real. Well, it’s not real.”

He didn’t laugh with her, this time. “Of course it’s real.”

“I mean…at least for them, it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t last.”

“Does something have to last to be real?” He reached to grab her hip a little too hard. “Doesn’t this feel real?”

“It feels real now,” she said. “But when I wake up I’ll only have a memory of it. It doesn’t last.”

He kissed her slowly, squeezing her hip and stealing her breath. He pulled away, searching her gaze with his. “It wouldn’t in the waking world, either. What makes it more real there, than here?”

“It just is,” she said, and sat. “I don’t know why.”